What We Devour

by Linsey Miller

  “Felhollow’s taken care of then,” I said, setting the letter from Kara aside and smiling at Mack. Old Ivy still wasn’t talking to me, but she’d live. I could stand silence so long as they all survived. “Between the church, graveyard, and soldiers, everyone there should be all right.”

  Felhollow’s graveyard was larger than its smallest farm. No Felfolk would suffer Vile.

  “What about Julian?” Mack asked. He’d been quiet with me, staring any time I spoke of the councilors and courtiers.

  “Julian?” I hesitated so as not to sneer. That boy’s very name made my skin burn. I had no good memories of him, only fury and pain. My noblewright whimpered. “He’s still holding true to his path. I’ll talk to him one last time, but I don’t think he’ll listen. He listen to you?”

  Mack shook his head. We’d visited Julian together yesterday, and he’d refused to speak with me. Will hadn’t.

  Will had a lot of words for me.

  “I’ll try once more,” I said and sighed. “He’s said a lot of terrible things these last few days, but I know you love him.”

  Mack shot me an odd look. “You do too. Or you did. I imagine he’s said some choice things to you.”

  “He did,” I said, hardly listening. I couldn’t remember a good memory with Julian Chase. There were no laughs or smiles, no late-night talks. I knew why—so many of my memories with my mother were stained by the same odd lack. “I have to go.”

  I crept into the caves near the Door. Alistair was hard at work trying to shut it still, the clatter of bone against bone and swish of steel sliding over Hana’s flesh echoing through the area. The dim light flickered, and the other prisoners didn’t notice me. Julian didn’t either.

  He was mottled like an apple left on the ground too long. I grasped the bars.

  “Julian?” I whispered.

  “Who have you murdered now?” He lifted his head, the eight lines he’d carved into the wall above his head like a crown.

  “Are you still set on murdering over half of Cynlira?” I asked. “Or have you reconsidered what you want your legacy to be?”

  He only laughed.

  “Did I love you once?” I asked softly.

  He collapsed at the back of the cell. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  I nodded.

  “We were going to be married one day,” he whispered, “but I didn’t know you were vilewrought, and then the warrant showed up for my father.”

  Yes, my lies were far greater a slight than his father’s crimes.

  “I must have loved you.” I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it. “I came here instead of letting them take Will.”

  “I like to think you did,” Julian whispered.

  I peeked at him, taking in the tension of his arms and twitch in his calves. “If we left today and saved the councilors, would you still want to marry me?”

  He launched himself at me. His hands smacked against the bars, and I stepped back. His fingers barely brushed my chest, and I jumped, knocking my penknife from my pocket. I stared straight at him and pretended not to notice. My noblewright whined.

  “You betrayed me,” he said. “I would’ve given you everything. I was saving us. They’ll only weigh you down.”

  “Then I’ll bear it, because I am a part of Cynlira and should gladly support my people,” I said. “We shouldn’t be measured by usefulness. There are thousands of Julians out there right now. Success is always an indicator of pure self-sufficiency. You’re not special, I’m not special, and you’re certainly not special enough to decide who lives and who dies. I’m done being quiet and unassuming. It’s what the council and court and crown always wanted, and I refuse to give them what they want now.”

  He shook his head, an odd crook to it. “Lorena, how will they rule?”

  “You’re obsessed with ruling. It doesn’t matter.”

  “You then,” he said and laughed again.

  “Five days before the Chase legacy dies,” I said and left. “I’m glad I gave up half my memories of you.”

  It meant this hurt far less.

  Forty-Two

  I visited Julian once more. The day before I hoped he would open the Door went like any other, the morning a dash to ensure everything was prepared for the appearance of the Vile. The royal palace had a large church that had fallen into disuse after the gods left, and Carlow and Basil had claimed the attic with the bells, moving our things into it yesterday. We were utterly alone up there, and it was comforting to see Mori splayed out beneath us in its entirety. The new constructions around Formet loomed, taller than we’d planned but strong. Mori’s population had barely questioned it.

  Basil still worried about getting them all into Formet in time after the Door opened, but Carlow took my assurances that they would be safe with a side-eyed glare and a scoff. No matter what Basil said, she was shrewd.

  “Julian?” I called into his cell.

  Carlow had been the only one to ask why we didn’t just throw the councilors in the cells to the Door now and buy a few more days. I’d not answered her.

  “Julian,” I said again and stepped closer. The penknife was gone.

  Julian was curled up against the far wall of the cell, his shirt pulled over his head, and he didn’t answer. Above him were twelve gouges in the stone.

  Good.

  Footsteps shuffled behind me. “Leave him be.”

  “What are you still doing here?” I asked, retreating from the cells and joining Alistair.

  “Working.” Alistair, hair tangled in a knot at the nape of his neck and glasses drifting down his nose, shook his head at me. His heart fluttered in the curves of his pale neck. “I’ve been known to do it on occasion.”

  He would have been such a good noblewrought with how often he sacrificed himself for his work.

  “I’ve never heard such a vicious rumor,” I said, following him to the cave with the Door. “Come here.”

  He let me tug him down to my level and shivered when I pressed my lips to his forehead.

  “You need to sleep or you’ll work yourself sick.” My fingers kept hold of his sleeve. “Let’s go to your room.”

  “Lorena, it’s barely dusk.” He straightened up, and his spine creaked so loud I jumped.

  The Door, still appearing like the door to my mother’s sickroom, opened with a gust and slammed shut. Alistair tilted his head, studying it. I sat on the table he’d dragged in here.

  “I think it’s playing me,” he said. “Look.”

  His lips moved with a contract, and a single splinter fell from the Door. A small pain needled my hand, ripening with each breath. I hissed. The nails vanished from my left hand. Blood dripped across the table.

  “You could have warned me,” I mumbled, inspecting the bumpy skin where my nails used to be. “I don’t have enough nails for how big the Door is.”

  Alistair hummed and wrote in his journal. “It’s still there.”

  The splinter was still sitting atop the red dirt.

  “It didn’t last that long with anyone else,” he said. “What’s different about you?”

  I shrugged. “Perhaps the surprise mattered.”

  “No, I didn’t warn Carlow either.”

  It was hard to reconcile this boy with the one who’d stroked my jaw with a swan-feather quill.

  Finally, the splinter sunk into the dirt, and the crack in the Door was healed. Alistair closed his book and leaned against me.

  “I considered it, opening the Door,” he whispered. “I could be the villain if it freed us from this uncertainty.”

  “I’m not here to be your conscience,” I said softly, “but you’re not opening the Door.”

  “I know. I simply want us to always understand each other.” He took the lapels of my coat in his hands. “You rarely wear this these days. Did you wear it for
me?”

  I felt too close to Death these days to bother with the formality.

  “You rarely wear yours.” I laughed and touched his bare collar. “What does it matter?”

  “Why did you stop?” he asked, one hand sliding across my ribs and up to the brooch pinned to my chest. “I want to understand.”

  “I was the undertaker in Felhollow because it was needed and respected,” I whispered. “I feared they wouldn’t want me if I weren’t needed. I feared that if I didn’t take a job they found distasteful, they’d expect more of me than I was willing to give. So long as they needed me, they didn’t push my boundaries.”

  He licked his lips, gaze on the path of his fingers along my shoulder. He curled a strand of hair around his finger. “My mother wouldn’t have saved me if I weren’t vilewrought. She would’ve let my father kill me.”

  He said it with such certainty—he knew she would have, and he knew I would understand that pain of being half-loved and misunderstood by a parent—that my breath caught in my throat. I wanted to live in the quiet comfort of sitting next to someone who knew exactly what I was thinking and why, slip between the sheets of my bed and settle in with someone who understood why I put my work before myself. I wanted familiarity and understanding, talks so long my throat grew sore and my heart grew full. I wanted a life without complication.

  And in less than a day, I would ruin this.

  “We should rest.” I slipped from the table. “Your room?”

  He let me lead and didn’t let go of my hand. No shadows followed us, and we met no one but Wyrslaine soldiers in the halls. Alistair’s room was warm and stuffy, the air still, and despite the servants who must have kept it neat, he raced through ahead of me to open one of the slits in the ceiling. There were no windows in his rooms.

  I toed off my shoes. Alistair sat on his bed, elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. His eyes followed my hands as they undid the buttons of my coat and let it fall to the floor. He beckoned, and I went to him. His hands grasped my hips, turned me around, and tugged me until my back was flush against his chest. I pulled the blankets over our legs.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” he said softly and twisted a strand of hair at my temple around one finger. “Why?”

  The pressure in my head faded, but I couldn’t think fast enough of what to say, since I couldn’t lie.

  “Oh, Lorena Adler,” he whispered, the words rumbling in his chest and into me, “what are you up to?”

  He dragged one finger down the center line of my scalp and split my hair into two even sections. I shuddered again.

  “No answer?” he asked.

  I leaned my head against his right shoulder and stared up at him. “Why are you curious?”

  “Curiosity’s sake,” he said and wrapped his arms around me. He brought my hair over my shoulder, retangling his fingers in the ends, and rested his right cheek against my left. “You’ve been busy. Is it too much to assume I want to discuss whatever project is keeping you busy?”

  “Yes,” I said and gasped when he pulled hard on my hair again. “I believe you miss me. I don’t believe that’s why you’re asking.”

  I tilted my head slightly and watched his long fingers deftly braid my hair. The gentle movement prickled across my scalp.

  “Do you trust me?” I whispered. “Do you trust me enough for me not to answer?”

  “Of course.” One of his hands dropped to my waist. “It’s nothing that will kill you, is it?”

  I arched and kissed him, praying he couldn’t taste the lie I couldn’t say. His nose bumped my chin, and I pulled away to face him. He gripped my waist, his other hand sliding up my neck to the side of my face. I kissed him again.

  Alistair stilled. His lashes fluttered shut against my face, a soft breath escaping his nose. His lips moved against mine, opening slightly, and I pressed against him. He kissed me back far harder. His nails dug into my skin. His teeth nipped my bottom lip.

  The shock shivered down my spine and twisted in the pit of my stomach. Alistair spun us and shoved, pinning me to the bed.

  “I wonder,” he whispered against my throat, “what I would gain from devouring you.”

  “It would be a loss.” I slotted my knee into the curve of his hip and flipped us. “You don’t understand power like I do.”

  “Lore.” He gasped, not fighting my hold at all. “Do you actually want to do this, or are you being nice?”

  The waver in his voice drew away all the worries and thoughts trapped in my head. This was now, not tomorrow, and I understood him perfectly. He knew the little pieces of me that ached to be spoken but couldn’t be. We wouldn’t be all right, and it raged in me. Terrible. Monstrous.

  Finally, I had a home, and I was tearing it down.

  “I am not being nice,” I said and let go of his wrists. “Though I can’t say I want more than this.”

  “Fair enough.” He chuckled and threaded his fingers through my hair again. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to enjoy tonight. I want to enjoy tonight.”

  He rolled us onto our sides and tucked his face into my neck, lips trailing from collar to ear. I sighed, and he traced the curves of my ear with the tip of his nose. His tongue tasted my neck.

  “You never struck me as someone who likes to be touched,” he said and kissed my cheek.

  “I love being touched. I don’t like the expectations that come with it.” I curled up closer to him, hands slipping beneath his shirt. “What does both of us enjoying tonight look like?”

  “Sleep here,” he said and fell onto his back, “and answer one question for me.”

  I walked my fingers along his ribs and nodded.

  “Do you love me?” he asked, voice devoid of feeling.

  “No,” I said and flattened my hand against his side. “You’re uncaring and singular, and as much as I love how you have always respected and understood me, I know you wouldn’t extend the same respect to someone you didn’t find useful. I can’t love you as you are. To love you would be to hate most of Cynlira.”

  He reached out one hand, a warm breeze like a breath rolled over me, and the lanterns in his room flickered out. I yawned against his chest.

  “I’m not upset,” he said and kissed me gently. “Stop looking at me like I’ll break and rest. It’s not as if I can hate you for not loving me when you barely love yourself.”

  “You sacrificed my wakefulness,” I muttered.

  “Never what I’ve called it but yes.” He sat up, dragging the blankets out from under us, and tucked me in. His bare feet brushed mine. “I just wanted to make sure you still couldn’t lie.”

  I didn’t want to love Alistair. I wanted to devour him and stifle this odd hunger knowing him had awoken within me. No one else would ever understand.

  “I could have,” I said, and the act of his toes curling against mine was suddenly softer and sweeter than everything that had come before. “I never lied. I do understand why you do the things you do. I get it perfectly, but I still think it’s terrible. You’re the only one who’s noticed me. The real me. I am making terrible choices, and you’re the only one who understands them.”

  He would be the only one who understood when tomorrow came. I was sure of it.

  Forty-Three

  The morning dawned dark, an odd hum rattling in my teeth. Alistair was curled up in a ball, his back pressed into me, and I eased out from under the blanket. He grumbled and burrowed deeper under the blankets. My noblewright, its presence today an insistent thrum, created five deep lines of blue across the back of my hand. I touched one, and they faded.

  I’d asked my noblewright to create a sign when Julian made his move, and this must have been it.

  “Alistair!” I shook him awake.

  He grabbed my arm painfully tight, opened his bloodshot eyes, and let go. “Lorena? What—�
��

  “Julian escaped and is trying to open the Door,” I said and threw back the blankets atop him. “Come on.”

  I stumbled out of bed, yanking the curtain aside. I crawled out after him. My crinkled clothes were twisted and confining.

  Alistair knotted his hair back with a leather tie. He grabbed a dagger from his bedside. “How do you—”

  “Trust me!” I pulled on the red glasses he’d given me and tossed him his. “Come on.”

  Create my thoughts in Hana’s ears, I prayed. Take my panic, please, but leave the fear.

  “It’s time, Hana. Don’t let any of the peers know. Have the noblewrought send word to the others.”

  It was only right to be afraid of this.

  We raced down to the Door. The stairs were dim and slick with condensation, our feet slipping over the stones. Alistair burst through the tunnel before me and ran straight for the Door. I sprinted to the cells. Julian’s was empty, the hinges of the door removed. Will, free, was in the middle of the hall. The rest of the surviving councilors were gone.

  “Ah,” he said, running a shaking hand through his hair. “Of course you know.”

  “Let me guess,” I said, squaring myself between him and the exit. “You’re all running free to alert your conspirators so you can make a last-ditch effort to save only yourselves?”

  “You are eerily informed,” Julian’s father muttered.

  “And you’re letting Julian open the Door?” I asked. “Or are you going down together in some sort of self-righteous glory?”

  “Julian,” said Will slowly, “knows what needs to be done, and we imagine the Vile are not opposed to making a deal with us.”

  They had no idea what sacrifice meant and would never offer enough.

  “It hardly matters,” Will said. “You are also too late. We got word out already. Our people in Mori will be safe within the hour, and messengers will spread from here.”

  “So people, like the soldiers carrying those messages, will know you opened the Door?” I smiled, mouth stretching painfully, and his eyes widened in fear. “Most of Cynlira will know that the council that was meant to represent them opened the Door and let the Vile in, content to retreat to havens while people suffered?”