Devoured

by Jordan Stephanie Gray

Genres: YA Contemporary; YA Werewolves & Shifters; YA Romance

Synopsis

Welcome back to the Wolf Queen’s Court.

Vanessa Hart is done being a victim. After the brutal winter massacre stole everything from her, she vows vengeance against her enemies once and for all—even if that means killing the boy she once loved...

Vanessa bides her time playing the role of a docile subject. But beneath her mask, she sharpens her powers, embracing the werewolf within while weaving a complicated web of lies, betrayals, and alliances to topple the throne.

Unfortunately, vengeance isn’t easy, and nothing in the Wolf Queen’s Court is ever as it seems. As the darkness of the castle bleeds into human society, it’s clear no one is safe. Cora’s vicious reign grows stronger by the day, Sinclair continues hiding deadly secrets, and Calix—the boy Vanessa might loathe most of all—is threatening her every plan.

With nowhere to run and no place to hide, Vanessa sheds the last of her humanity to play this lethal game of werewolves. And if she doesn’t win, the consequences will destroy her life—and the entire world as she knows it—forever.

Release date: October 6, 2026

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 400

Sample

I DO NOT SLEEP ANYMORE.

Instead, I wander the halls of Castle Severi and try to remember what it used to look like before. Starry tapestries hung from the ceiling, billowing in a magical, sugar-sweet breeze, while flowers exploded from cracks in the walls as if the Realm of Superiority were erupting from stone in an effort to reclaim the werewolf stronghold. At first, I’d loathed the sight. Detested the newness with every fiber of my human-born being. And then, weeks after being Bitten and transforming into a werewolf, I grew to appreciate the little moments. Bursts of beautiful magic here and there. An enchanted infirmary. A bed carved into a tree. A bubbling bathtub hidden behind a portrait of cresting waves.

Those things no longer exist.

Queen Cora Severi killed them. Just as she killed everything—everyone—else.

My hand drifts over a wrought iron banister as I cross what used to be the third floor’s sitting area. Black flames swallow baroque settees and chairs, the contained, alchemically created fire blowing smoke in thick, suffocating clouds throughout the rest of the hall. I cough roughly, painfully, but smoke will not harm me. It will not harm any of us. So I stay.

I stay, and I watch it burn.

Cora’s favorite werewolves rip ancient tapestries from hooks and nails, shredding them with sharpened claws before pitching the ribbons into the fire. More tear flowers from crevices and stomp them under hasty boots or paws. Windows are broken with rocks. Enchantments are set ablaze. It’s burning. All of it is burning.

And I—I cannot do anything about it. I am just Vanessa Hart.

To them, I am still just a girl.

To them, I am not planning their demise.

I tilt my head, eyes narrowed, and count the exact number of werewolves surrounding me. Twenty-six on this floor alone. I count the newest faces—Bitten and turned by Cora in the days after the slaughter. Eight. I swallow hard. My claws threaten to descend, to slice through my fingers. Emotion roils inside—so much emotion over the last week, I feel as if I’ve been dragged to the bottom of the sea. I can’t breathe. I can’t—

“Do they really think themselves better for not wearing uniforms? Aprons or no, they’re still prancing around like eager pups. Utterly embarrassing.”

My lungs threaten to explode at the sudden lilting tone. A thick Irish accent sounds on my right, and Oona glances at me with amusement twinkling in her whiskey-colored eyes. She wipes her hands against a muted brown apron, shaking bright orange curls away from her round face. “Inane, aren’t they?” she asks with an indelicate snort. “Cora must not have chosen them for their wit.”

She’s not wrong. Cora’s new werewolves haven’t been sorted as servants or nobles. Instead, they think they’re above the old hierarchy. Queen Cora Severi has claimed birthright and nobility do not exist inside this castle any longer. Which is, frankly, ridiculous, but not unbelievable.

What’s unbelievable is Oona. Standing beside me. Smiling.

I stare at her, desperate to memorize every errant curl and freckle before it vanishes. Sure enough, between one blink and the next, Oona flickers in and out of focus. She looks like the blur of a photograph, captured in the dark with a flash far too bright, and the gaping hole in the center of her chest—it begins to ooze.

I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming.

I glance up at the sconces flickering blue flames along the walls. Then at the tiled floor. The burning chairs. I blink. Again and again and again. Clench my fists until my nails break through my skin. Wake up. Wake up, I command my subconscious. Please, God, let me wake up.

I open my eyes, but—Oona is still grinning at me. Only now my old Combat instructor, Shepherd, stands directly behind her. He places a gentle hand on her shoulder and presses a reverent kiss to her temple. All the while, blood pours like tears down his cheeks.

Not a dream.

A tragedy.

My knees almost buckle, but I hold tighter to the banister. They said my hallucinations would stop after my transformation. They were wrong. “Oona,” I whisper, “I’m so—”

As always, before I can apologize, she and Shepherd vanish. I blink away the puddles of blood they leave in their wake until those are also gone. Every last trace of them.

My heart splinters. In three months, I have lost everyone: Celeste, my father, even myself. Then Oona, Shepherd, Nettie, Eric, Katerina, Queen Sybil… people I didn’t even like. But people I didn’t want to see slaughtered all the same.

However, now is not the time to weep. It’s not the time to hesitate.

It is my turn to destroy.

Sliding a small bottle from my sleeve, I curl a palm tight around the glass. The sharp corners cut into my skin. The pain grounds me, reminding me exactly what’s at stake. Without hesitation, with a single flicker of movement, I toss the bottle in the flames dancing atop Sybil’s old chairs.

The glass shatters on impact.

The noxious liquor inside explodes in a violent roar of bitter blue flames.

Fire singes the hands of the nearest werewolves. It puckers the flesh on their skin, and they cry out. One even drops to his knees with a muffled shriek.

“Did you lose control?” he hisses to the werewolf beside him, but she only shakes her head and watches her skin blister in agonizing silence. “What the hell?” He kicks the leg of a chair, and fire erupts higher. Higher. It takes all their concentration to contain it.

Nearly grinning, I slip into a nearby corridor and vanish from their sight. As if I was never here at all.

Dawn crests the broken windows and begins to spill soft morning light at my feet. I glance at the black smoke behind me, listening to the werewolves’ chaotic cries for a few seconds longer, and then I leave.

Queen Cora is waiting for me.

And so is my fiancé.

Sinclair Severi, crown prince of this horrid new court, lounges at the heart of a massive rectangular banquet table. No longer is furniture arranged in divided sections. Cora doesn’t separate us during mandatory mealtimes. Now we eat together, forced to brush elbows with the very people who ripped the hearts and spines from the old court. I am forced to pretend I don’t want to rip out their hearts and spines in the same way.

Sin—my dearest fiancé—picks up a crystal glass and takes a small sip of something bold, red, and bitter. Fury strangles my heart in wretched claws, as it always does when I see him. So I jostle his elbow upon sitting beside him, an accidental nudge from a clumsy girl, and he spills the wine all over his pristine white shirt.

“Shit,” he growls. A frown mars his handsome face, douses the gleam in his burgundy eyes. He glances at the mess—a stain spreading like blood across his chest—and the frown deepens further. He doesn’t glance at me. Not once. “That was a new shirt,” he murmurs. And I want to rub his face in it. I want to smash the glass on his skull and use the shards to impale the rest of these monsters. I want to tackle his mother to the floor and make her choke on my rage. That fire in the hall wasn’t enough. It will never be enough for what they’ve done. But—

I can’t do anything else.

Three months have passed since my transformation into a werewolf. Three months. And I am still no better than a prisoner. If anything, I’m worse off.

Inhaling sharply, I unravel a cloth napkin onto my lap before reaching across the table and plucking up a glass of my own. As delicately and demurely as possible, I take a sip before glancing at the boy who ruined my life.

The boy I used to love.

My voice threatens to break, to expose my every loathing, but I speak on a soft exhale to disguise it. “Perhaps we should see if an Alchemist can wash that stain out.”

His gaze flicks to the first Alchemist he can think of: our old classmate—his former intended mate—Evelyn Lee. Once the daughter of the King and Queen of the Asian Court. Now an orphan. She doesn’t glance at us. She’s too busy shaving a broom handle into a stake under the table and glowering at the new wolves around her. She doesn’t speak to anyone, and if they notice the broom handle, they don’t mention it. They don’t care. In this new court, she no longer matters.

And neither does Calix Severi, who sits across from her and refuses to tear his gaze from Sin and me. I ignore him just as everyone else does, however. I can only handle so much deception at once.

Sinclair smooths out his shirt, wine and all. “No, no. I’ll do it.”

I lean back in my chair, swirling the putrid wine in my own glass. “Oh, really, Prince Sinclair? Have you ever done laundry before?”

He almost turns. Almost. But he catches himself before he can and grumbles instead to his empty plate, “Yes.”

A bolt of fire shoots between my ribs.

It’s as easy as breathing to detect his dishonesty now.

“Liar,” I murmur—and I mean every bit of the word. Maybe he can tell. Maybe I’m not as covert as I think. He flinches then, and his ears redden beneath the gold of his hair. He is still beautiful, breathtaking even in his ruined shirt, like the portrait of a saint come to life. And it isn’t fair. He looks like the boy I loved even though he’s become more than a stranger. Even though he’s become worse than an enemy.

“I can learn how to wash my own shirts, Vanessa,” he says abruptly, tugging a platter of bacon from the center of the table and throwing massive strips onto my empty plate. He follows up with three sausage links, four hard-boiled eggs, and so much yogurt it floods over the side of the porcelain and onto the velvet table runner. “I can learn to become domestic.” He throws a spoonful of granola atop everything, and suddenly breakfast looks like a charcuterie board of indigestion.

“Sin…”

“Yes?” he asks.

And then he looks at me.

For the first time today—this week—he actually looks at me. My heart stutters to a sudden, painful halt. His gaze dips to my nose, to my lips, tracing a familiar path before rising back to my eyes. And yet again, I can’t breathe. His burgundy gaze darkens, nearly black now, though pinpricks of bright red stars dance around his pupils. Looking at him hurts. It always hurts.

But, regardless of what he believes, he is no longer mine.

I blink at him, trying to diffuse the image before me. Only then can I manage to say, “You’ve ruined my breakfast.”

He blinks right back at me, as if he’s startled by my words. As if he expected a different sort of fight. “What?”

I gesture vaguely to the yogurt curdling around hot bacon. “I’m not sure domesticity is a valid career path for you.” Then I shove the whole plate away from me, knocking it against a gilded platter of green grapes and ripe berries. “Anyway, I’m not hungry.”

“You’re never hungry anymore.”

“No.” I drain the rest of my wine in one gulp before pouring myself another glass. Celeste would be proud. But she’s not. Because just like everyone else, my best friend is dead. They’re all dead, but for some cruel reason—“I’m not.”

And if I allowed myself to sleep, if I allowed myself to dream, he would know that. He would enter my mind just as before and read my innermost thoughts. He would know how I feel. And this entire ruse would be destroyed. I do not sleep anymore because I can’t. I won’t let him—let anyone—have that power over me again.

“Vanessa—” he starts.

I don’t care. I don’t care what he says after that. Nothing he says matters now.

Sinclair Severi is worse than an enemy, and I am going to kill him.

I have to kill him. Revenge is all I have left.

QUEEN CORA SEVERI ARRIVES TO BREAKFAST APPROXIMATELY ten minutes late. Wearing a black lace gown and balancing a sparkling black diadem on her braided salt-and-pepper hair, she glides through wide double doors and into the Great Hall with a twisted smile on her loathsome face. Her gaze, her nails, even the lipstick painted on her thin lips—all black. Just like her soul. She has not mourned the loss of her sister. She has not seemed to regret the bloodshed for even a second. She only ever smiles, dark and snarled, as if she’s just returned from some wild, cannibalistic feast.

I track her movements from behind the rim of my glass, forcing my posture to relax. Forcing my muscles to stop tensing as she nears. I barely manage a slouch when her gaze flits to mine. She smiles harder.

“Apologies for my belatedness,” she coos, still staring right at me. “There was a little mishap with fire on the third floor. But it’s sorted now.”

I stiffen, although her gaze moves elsewhere and no one else so much as reacts.

My jaw tightens. I thought Cora would at least seem stressed by the fire. I thought she would care if her wolves were burned. Apparently not.

Behind Cora, the doors open again, thrown wide to reveal two of her dearest werewolves yanking thick chains in their permanently curled claws. Amethyst—a young woman with bright yellow eyes and braided black hair—and Jasper—a middle-aged man with a thick Russian accent and an ash-white widow’s peak—saunter inside with twin smirks.

Her newest wolves all had different names before their transformation. Different lives. But Queen Cora claims to believe in fresh starts; she believes in renaming her pets, baptizing them in the waters of her court, and remaking them anew in her image. And they seem all too happy to do her bidding in turn.

Lyra stumbles in after the pair, the chains wrapped around her throat, her wrists, even her ankles as Cora’s werewolves drag her inside with vicious force. A whimper passes Lyra’s pursed lips, but she doesn’t scream. She doesn’t reveal the true depths of her torment. Though—I can smell it. We can all smell it. Rotten as a red tide, foul and smothering in the Great Hall. The Oracle lifts her chin, her blue eyes glowing with resilience, even as she trips over a purposely outstretched foot. Even as she hits her knees with a sickening crack. Even as Jasper and Amethyst marionette her back to her feet and haul her forward faster, until Lyra is sprinting on feeble, bruised legs.

They force Lyra to the floor as if she’s an unwanted pet, and it takes everything in me to keep from lunging toward her. From trying to save her when we’re surrounded by enemies.

“Oh, hurry up, now!” Cora demands, her voice echoing through the hall. “I would think an oracle would be able to stop herself from falling so much. Clumsy, foolish girl.”

“Mother,” Sin starts—and he always starts. He always tries to appeal to Cora. But she never listens, and he never tries harder.

Which is why I can predict Cora’s vexed sigh, followed by the abrupt wave of her hands. “She is not one of us, Sinclair, and she does not belong here.” Cora pulls out her chair—the middle of the table, right beside Sinclair and far too close to me—and gracefully picks up her luxurious lace skirt before sitting down. “She should be grateful we are keeping her at all. If we tossed her on the streets, she would probably die within a fortnight. No one knows what happens to oracles outside their respective courts.”

“I’m willing to find out,” Lyra croaks through pale lips. Her dark hair mats in vicious knots while the tattoos on her skin have dimmed to a sickly gray. She pulls her knees into her chest, pressing her back against the wall. “Kick me out and let’s see, Your Majesty.”

Cora glares at Lyra. “I do not take commands from humans.”

“Didn’t you screw a human once?” Evelyn Lee asks, her voice the soft hum of a birdsong even as her words cut like a blade. Evie leans forward on her elbows, setting down the stake she was whittling seconds ago. Every werewolf in the room turns to look at her. “What?” She shrugs. “Yesterday, you said, ‘In this new court, we are all free to ask questions and voice our opinions.’ ”

I grind my teeth. Sinclair stiffens. Tension thickens as whorls of black smoke begin to seep from the rest of the castle into the hall.

Queen Cora tilts her head, though the crown atop it doesn’t wobble in the slightest. “In fact, I did, Evelyn Lee. Yours is a good question, and I am happy to answer it.” That snarled smile pulls unnaturally wide. “You see, in my court, it does not matter if a werewolf is the disgraced child of dead royals”—Evie flinches—“or Bitten and turned. I value each and every one of you equally.” Cora dips a spoon into a bowl of porridge, swirling meager streaks of brown sugar and syrup with a demure hand. “I did have sex with a human. A human I attempted to transform into a werewolf so we might be together. Sybil Severi took that away from me. She—just like the rest of her bigoted ilk—felt that only Born werewolves were true werewolves. She wanted to keep bloodlines pure. She was wrong, and she suffered for it.”

Evie nods shortly, her red gaze flaring hotter by the second. She’s too impatient. Unruly. She’s going to get us all killed. “So you treat Lyra like a dog because—”

“Because she is an oracle, a speaker for a universe whose mouth does not otherwise exist. I treat Lyra like the interloper she is because I do not believe in the stars, and I do not believe in being controlled. We are the leaders of our own destinies, Evelyn Lee, and you would do well to remember that. I sacrificed my family to grant us each the ability to live our lives the way we choose. If you would like to go and screw a human, I encourage you to do so. I encourage you to bite them, transform them, bring them among our kind. We should be growing our numbers, not stifling them due to overwrought rules from centuries ago told to us by a young woman who does not belong here.” Cora drops her spoon, looking over the rest of the room. Looking out at Evie, at Calix, Portia, Lyra, and me. “I understand there will be growing pains. I am not too ignorant to think you won’t need time to adapt to this new regime. But remember that our strength comes from one another, and weakness simply will not be tolerated. A garden can only flourish once the weeds have been pruned.”

“Am I a weed, then?” Evie asks, her voice low and taut.

“Only time will tell. Now, eat.”

Cora doesn’t need to command the feast to begin. This court isn’t supposed to work like the old court. Werewolves aren’t supposed to fear eating before the queen or her son. Still, they only return to their gilded plates once she demands it. The clang of metal against metal fills the cracks of silence, and soon dozens of werewolves are gobbling down eggs and sausages and heaping bowls of steaming oats. All the while, I just sit here. I just watch.

“Eat,” Sin murmurs to me. “Please, Vanessa.”

I want to glare at him. I want to stab my fork through his pale hand. But when I look up, the queen is watching us.

“Are you not hungry, darling?” she asks, and though her tone is as airy as a summer breeze, I know her meaning is not. “My son has been worried you aren’t eating enough. We can’t have such a valuable member of this court falling ill, now, can we?”

Freaking Sin.

I have tried so hard to keep Cora’s attention off me. Of course he’s sabotaging that too. I snatch a piece of buttered toast from the center of the table and slather it with strawberry jelly before taking a huge, performative bite.

After I swallow, I say, “Oh,” and match her grin with a cheery one of my own. I think of Celeste, of the sunshine she radiated on a daily basis. I think of Oona’s laugh. I think of how, because of Cora, they’re both dead. “No. I’ve just avoided eating meat.” I finish the toast with Cora’s narrowed eyes trained on my every movement. “All that useless slaughter, you know? It unsettles me.”

Sin glances between us. “I… didn’t know, actually.” His brow furrows, a deep crease of concern dividing his golden forehead.

I arch a brow at him. Tilt my head. Try anything to make it seem as if I’m annoyed. Mildly humored. Not nauseous. Not sick from that lump of bread churning hot in my stomach. I’m just annoyed. “I thought you would notice.”

The muscles along his jaw flex. “Then, we’ll stock up on vegetarian items. Beans, legumes, lentils, tofu. Are you allergic to soy? Soy allergies are very common, even among werewolves. Perhaps we should order more fruit to the castle. Everyone likes fresh produce—”

I promptly tune him out. While Sinclair lists every single fruit known to werewolf kind, counting them off on his fingers, I stare straight ahead and nibble on another piece of toast. I’m not doing enough. This performance—it’s not going to convince anyone if I can’t douse the flames of rage burning through my chest. I try to breathe, but it’s as if I can’t quite gather the air in my lungs. As if the air is empty. As if I’m empty.

A shadow ripples just behind the queen.

An apparition of Celeste with a ribbon of blood spilling down her scalp.

My claws threaten to rip from my nails and expose every hideous thing I’m thinking. I stare at the table, at the petrified sausages on my plate, at their wrinkled casings and grill marks. I do not look at the goblets of wine. I do not picture them as goblets of blood. I do not smell the viscera of the dead haunting this hall.

I need to get a grip right now if I’m going to deliver any sort of justice. I lift my gaze, meeting Celeste’s watering brown eyes. They are hazy, but I can still make out the flecks of sunlight amber in them. I can still count the moles and freckles on her arms. I know, if I allow myself, I could hear her too. I could waste the rest of my life talking to this hallucination of her.

But that won’t help, and I’m done losing this game.

I didn’t sign up to play it. I didn’t ask to be part of this court. But that no longer matters.

I will not lose again.

So I shift my gaze from Celeste to Cora, smile, and take a larger bite of my toast. I chew as if it tastes better than ambrosia and swallow with a smooth gulp. “Breakfast is delicious,” I add sweetly.

“Good. I’m happy to hear it.” Her eyes sear into mine, smoke reflecting, undulating, in the blackness as that thick, unnatural smog from earlier rises. It sweeps through my hair, around my shoulders, and clings to my skin like sweat.

Cora claps then, as if she can smell the negativity of my thoughts, and I startle in my seat.

“Since you’re feeling a bit lighter today, Vanessa, I suppose it’s a fantastic time to share my news.”

Beside me, Sin tenses. His hands clench the mahogany edge of the table until his knuckles turn ghost white. “Mother, no. We’re still discussing—”

“Nonsense, Sinclair. You’re engaged to be mated to Vanessa in three months. She will be ecstatic.” Cora props her head on her hand, licking the tips of the fangs that have begun to descend from her mouth. “Won’t you, Vanessa?”

It’s only a game, I tell myself.

“Maybe,” I offer with a small shrug, jerking my chair the tiniest bit closer to Sin. “If my fiancé is involved, I’m sure I’ll love whatever… gift you’ve prepared for us.”

She cackles at that. The sharp bark of a rabid hyena. “Fabulous. I am so glad to hear it.”

At that, the spark of a lie incinerates deep inside my heart. A painful flicker of flames.

With Cora, for some strange reason, my abilities as a Truthseer don’t always work. Most of the time, I can’t feel her at all. Very rarely can I ever sense that she’s telling the truth. It’s as if honesty doesn’t exist for her. As if truth and lies are opinions rather than facts, and she simply refuses to believe in them.

But right now—the glint in her eyes, the smile on her lips—she’s lying. Worse, she wants me to know she’s lying.

It’s only a game.

“What is it?” I ask Sin, the lilt of curiosity painting my question calm and easy. “What were you discussing?”

“Nothing.” He turns his head slowly, away from me and toward his mother, and his muscles tense enough that the material around his biceps stretches to within an inch of its life. “Later, Mother.”

Cora’s smile withers. Her gaze hardens. Internally, I wince.

If Sin thinks he’s playing this game well, he’s wrong.

Proving my point, Cora stands abruptly. Her chair squeals along the tile floor as she shoves it backward. The discordant shriek captures the attention of every werewolf in the room. Glowing red, yellow, brown, and gray eyes flick toward the queen with either urgency or—in the case of Evie and Calix—unabashed hatred.

“An announcement!” Cora’s crown glitters in the darkness, all the while plumes of smoke smother the tables, the chairs, even the chandeliers. “As you are all well aware, Castle Severi is changing. With the corpses of the old regime rotting in the Realm of Superiority, we must move forward as one in this new world. A better world.”

Her voice drops then, and her tone sharpens. My entire being narrows on the next two words that fall from her hideous lips: “Our world.”

CORA SEVERI’S BITTEN PACK OF WEREWOLVES ALL BUT salivates at her words.

I don’t know who they were before Cora came along, but it isn’t just their inability to fully transform that’s concerning. It’s not that they often maintain their human ears or toes after shifting into their werewolf forms. It’s not even that Cora herself turned them, had to put a bit of her black soul in every single one.

It’s the way they look around the castle, the way they take in their surroundings with wide, hungry eyes. It feels a lot like how a barracuda might infiltrate a fish tank, not even bothering to hide its bloodlust from easy prey.

I swallow hard and lean forward to listen to Cora.

“For a millennium, werewolves existed in the shadows. For a millennium, we hid ourselves away, cowering between realms while never truly belonging to either. That’s over now. We will not hide, we will not cower, and we will not persecute one another for the power running in our veins.”

A shiver racks my spine.

My claws push painfully at my nail beds, knives waiting to break through skin, as her werewolves nod and snarl in agreement. Their restlessness presses against the hall—as thick and suffocating as the smoke—until even Calix shifts in his seat.

Cora spreads her arms wide to encompass all of us as she continues. “We are werewolves, and we are more fearsome than anyone outside these castle walls. We have driven away the sirens and vampires. We have made the faeries—the first of our kind—vanish into the night sky. The human realm will bow to us. We can use them to bolster our numbers; we can grow our populace to new heights. We will not hide. We will not cower. We will not allow anyone else to conquer us again.”

Her werewolves roar their approval. They smack goblets together, spill wine down their throats, rattle the table, and blow the smoke faster, faster. Until, once more, it’s impossible for me to breathe.

After Calix murdered my best friend and Sin bit me, they stole me from my father. They ripped me from my home, my school, from everything I loved. And now Cora wants to destroy what remains? Slowly, I lower the toast to my plate before removing my hands, hiding them under the table. I won’t let her. I can’t let her. If her control seeps out of this castle, if she somehow poisons the rest of the state, the country, the world—

My stomach churns. Sweat dampens my hair.

I grip the edge of my chair, breathing desperately as one, two, three claws break loose.

Dad will die. Everyone will die. Or, worse, she’ll transform them. She’ll force them to live here, to play these bloody games until they succumb. And they will succumb.

No one, except Cora, has ever left Castle Severi alive.

“That’s ridiculous,” Calix says.

The roughness of his words, the harsh growl of his voice, pulls me from my panic enough that I turn. I finally look at him. He looks back at me. Not at Cora, at me. As if he knew, in this moment, I needed a distraction. His eyes gleam red, however. The same color as Celeste’s blood.

I look away quickly.

I can’t trust anyone. Not even him.

“Dearest Calix,” Cora croons, craning her neck to smile at him with genuine delight. As if she wanted him to speak. “Sweet little nephew. Is there a problem?”

Even from here, I hear his jaw crack. “Aside from the other six courts that must be out for our blood? We don’t need to worry about the humans—or vampires, sirens, and faeries. Most of them are extinct, while there are werewolf courts who want you dead right this very second.”

That sense of restlessness only grows, but Cora doesn’t bat an eye. “I’m taking care of that.”

Calix scoffs and pushes his chair back. He leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees as a lock of black hair falls over his brow. “There is no taking care of it. The Asian Court won’t be reasoned with. You slaughtered their dynastic lineage and kidnapped their only heir. Unless you release Evie, and even then, the various packs and dukedoms of the North American Court will be smashing through our door any day now.”

“Evelyn has not been kidnapped,” Cora says tightly, her grin vanishing as abruptly as it appeared. Our new queen is volatile, and it’ll take only one wrong word to incite another bloodbath. Calix must know this. Evie too.

“I’m a bargaining chip,” Evie hisses, as if oblivious to the muscle throbbing in Cora’s cheek. “We all know it.”

Cora ignores her. “Even if dukedoms and packs and courts come to fight us, they will not win.” Her claws cut into her palms.