What We Devour Read online

  Also by Linsey Miller

  Belle Révolte

  Mask of Shadows duology

  Mask of Shadows

  Ruin of Stars

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2021 by Linsey Miller

  Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Spencer Fuller/Faceout Studio

  Cover images © Oleksandr Kostiuchenko/Shutterstock; Northern Soul/Shutterstock; Paul Campbell/Getty

  Map illustration by Misty Beee

  Internal design by Michelle Mayhall/Sourcebooks

  Sourcebooks Fire and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Part Two

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Belle Révolte

  One

  Two

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  Brent,

  none of this would have been possible without you.

  Here’s to another fifteen years.

  Part One

  Mouth Like Night

  If you can’t tame your demons, set them free.

  One

  It was an honor to work with the dead, but Rylan Hunt—four stone, fifty-two inches, eviscerated, my notes read—had died two days before his thirteenth birthday, and no funeral rites would fix that. I uncurled his clenched fists, the tense muscles creaking like tinder, and peeled off his sodden gloves. His mother had made them last autumn, and they’d been blue yesterday. Now the whole of him was red and brown and purple, the stains of death settling beneath his skin. I turned and tossed his gloves into the compost pile that would become his funeral plot. The collecting pool sloshed about my knees.

  Every part of him loved and every part of him returned to the earth except for the parts that seeped into me. I was a graveyard so no one else needed to be.

  Felhollow’s only undertaker: it wasn’t a title I wanted, but there had been nothing else left to do in this town when I arrived seven years ago.

  “And it means I’m here for you,” I said, one shaking hand on his arm.

  Rylan’s skin was in tatters, ribs splayed open like a hurricane lily. I collected what blood I could, but there was barely enough for funeral rites. There was hardly anything left of him.

  The person who’d done it had been captured, but breathing still tasted bitter. What good was vengeance? Rylan was dead.

  We feared the old tales of our long-gone demigod overlords, the Noble and the Vile, but we mortals were far worse. They might have ruled over us, warred with us, and dined on us, but the haughty court of peers with its money and soldiers was far more vicious than any old gossip’s tale.

  I covered Rylan’s torso with a sheet of canvas. My needle slipped through his skin easily, stitching the canvas to him to hide the wound. The stitching was an old comfort, the steady movement the same sway as the river waves I’d been born on. Death was as common there as it was here. Only the wealthy—or more often, the peerage who had long ago been gifted titles and holdings by the Crown and ruled over Cynlira—could avoid it.

  “You look older.” I brushed his hair from his face. “I know you liked that.”

  Most twelve-year-olds did.

  “I’ve never understood how you can stomach standing in that mess,” a familiar voice said behind me. “It makes my skin crawl.”

  I sighed and leaned my head back, letting the midday sun soak into me. The open-air pool where I performed funeral rites was a shout away from the church doors. Rylan rested on a stone slab in the center of the pool, and if needed, I could sprint to the church and heal anyone who took a turn. The bandits who’d tried to raid us this morning were all dead save for one—the vilewrought.

  “Don’t be rude, Jules,” I said without looking.

  “Am I ever?” He huffed and dropped something with a sickening crack. “Lore?”

  I turned. Julian stood over the crumpled vilewrought bandit and held out his bruised hand to me. He was Felhollow to the bone—pine green eyes, lean muscles from years felling trees, and a deep distrust of anyone not from Felhollow.

  I held up my hand. “Almost done.”

  I laid two square halfans atop Rylan’s eyes to hold them shut. Everything had a cost, including death. Most Felfolk could barely afford it these days. Well, except for Julian.

  “You don’t have to follow the old traditions, you know,” he said. “You’re not from here. No one would blame you.”

  “His mother asked for them,” I said and stepped out of the pool, pale pink water muddying the dirt. “How am I supposed to convince Felhollow I’m good enough to marry you without your traditions?”

  He shrugged. Julian didn’t follow them. I was as good as adopted by his family, but I’d be an outsider till we married, probably a little while after too.

  “You up to healing this trash?” asked Julian, nudging the vilewrought with his boot. “Fix her enough to talk. We need to know if we got all them bandits.”

  The vilewrought at his feet flinched. Magic rolled off her in wa
ves, raising the hair on my bare arms. I knelt down before her and touched her bloody hand. Her shoulders shook.

  “Sure,” I said. “Go look after the others and make sure none of my healing comes undone while I’m working.”

  Julian did what I asked without so much as blinking, and the dying girl’s laughter rattled out of her with a cough. I pulled my knife from its sheath.

  “You’re vilewrought,” I said. “That’s rare.”

  She lifted her head, blue eyes set in bruised white skin, and nodded to Rylan’s body. “He the only dead?”

  “He is.” I touched the dried blood coating her arms. The only wound I could see was a ragged one gouged across her chest. “Any of this yours?”

  “Probably,” she said. Her hands twisted in the tightly knotted ropes. I’d told Julian a dozen times vilewrought could still work even with bound hands. “What good’s a healer all the way out here?”

  “Lately, barely any.” I pressed the knife to my arm. My noblewright, a force of magic I could feel but never see, unfurled from me like smoke from fire. “Hold still.”

  She groaned. “No use healing me. There’s nothing to tell.”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “You’re hurt, so you’re getting healed.”

  Take it as sacrifice, I prayed and cut a strip of flesh from my arm, and heal her wound.

  A shiver like a cat’s tongue ran down my arm, and the blood and skin vanished. Noblewrights, like the Noble they came from, could only create, and they always needed a self-sacrifice to create from. I dropped the knife, hands shaking. She hissed.

  New flesh wove its way across her wound and settled as a shiny pink scar.

  “Noblewrought.” The girl stared at the scar. “You’re noblewrought.”

  Before the gods abandoned us and when the Noble and the Vile still walked this world, mortals hadn’t been able to use magic. They fought back against the Noble and Vile to no avail, and then, they were left with only one option. There was only one way to escape the terrifying grip of their immortal tyrants—they devoured the Noble and Vile and took their magic.

  We noblewrought and vilewrought were the legacy of those who had feasted.

  “You’re good.” She prodded the new skin and stared up at me. Even her shiner was gone. “Real good.”

  My noblewright was like having a god in my veins, answering my prayers when I made the right sacrifice.

  “Thank you.” I sat back and studied her. “Who did you sacrifice to kill Rylan?”

  “Right,” she said with a sneer. “Vile me, always sacrificing others. Maybe I’m tired of killing.”

  “Did you kill him?” I asked and pointed to Rylan.

  “The blond one did.” She scratched at her chest and winced. “I didn’t bother learning names.”

  There had been two blond bandits, and Julian’s father had ordered both killed this morning after questioning them.

  My noblewright shivered. A thrum, bees in a hive, started in my chest and spread through my hands.

  “You’re hurt elsewhere,” I said. My noblewright could only heal so much. I twisted my trembling hands together. “Tell me why you picked Felhollow, and I’ll fix it.”

  “I know what’s wrong with me, and you can’t fix it. Bleeding out. Or in, I guess.” She chuckled, and blood bubbled in the corner of her mouth. Her bound hands tugged at her shirt. “We didn’t pick Felhollow. He did.”

  Her vilewright, invisible and nearly intangible, hung between us like roiling storm air. She narrowed her eyes at me.

  “They bound me with Chaos’s sigil when I was seven and made me a soldier, and I can feel their terrible commands even now. I can feel what I’m supposed to do gnawing at me,” she said and yanked her shirt open.

  Beneath the new scar, a jagged sigil like a closed, bleeding eye had been carved into her chest and filled with red ink. All wrought, even the dualwrought Crown of Cynlira and her vilewrought son, were bound to serve and obey the court and common council. It kept their magic limited and tightly controlled, each sigil denoting what magic their wright could perform. The magic in hers ate away at her bleeding skin.

  “This will kill me if I don’t do what I’m supposed to, and I’m going to let it. The only self-sacrifice my vilewright would ever accept,” said the girl with a laugh. “It’ll be enough to destroy our tracks and erase everything that might lead him here.”

  “Who?” I asked. Mother had always told me to never let them bind me no matter what, so I’d run to Felhollow. What was this girl running from?

  I reached for my knife, and she kicked it away.

  “That man deserves what’s coming for him, but you don’t,” she said. “That vile boy’s going to love you, and I’m so sorry.”

  I shook my head and pulled her hands from her chest. “Who? Tell me, and I can fix this.”

  “This is my choice.” She smeared her hand through the blood on her chest and drew her fingers down her face. I knew the moves. All wrought did. Five lines over a half-moon, like a hand grasping from an open grave. Death’s sigil marked our final sacrifice, one last contract with our wrights. “My first real choice. Don’t worry. My vilewright will make it quick.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said and leaned over her, the prickling of her vilewright’s presence an itch I couldn’t scratch.

  “Tell that man I’m no assassin. Not for him.” She drew a line of red across her mouth. “And run. If he’s already here, run, because he will never let you go. You can’t fight him.”

  But I could. An uneasy ache, a need to destroy, rose up within me, and she reared back.

  “Oh, my noble sister,” she whispered. “That noblewright the only monster in you?”

  I didn’t answer, and she didn’t speak again.

  The only redemption for vilewrought was death.

  Two

  I stumbled to my feet. Julian appeared in the doorway of the church, a broad shadow cut in two by the rifle on his back. I was sitting on the edge of the pool by the time he got to me, my head in my hands, and he crouched down before me. His calloused fingers pried my face free, and the warmth of his hands was uncomfortably sticky in the late summer sun. He glanced at the vilewrought girl, fingers flinching toward his knife. I shook my head.

  “She said someone was coming.” I sniffed, drowning in death, and gestured to her. “She destroyed their tracks leading here—”

  “So she told you,” said Julian with a scowl.

  “—and told me to run if ‘he’ found me.”

  “She’s got a piece of Vile soul attached to her. Who knows if she was truthful?” he said and grabbed a rag. “Chin up. If anyone was chasing her, we can take them.”

  Felhollow could handle most bandits, and Julian’s father, Will, was in the good graces of enough peers to keep them from doing anything untoward. He was the richest person in town and kept it flush with munitions. Not that anyone ever came to Felhollow.

  “I should know what she meant.” I rubbed my face. “It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

  “You’ve been awake since yesterday morning.” Julian kissed my cheek, knelt before me, and gently cleaned the blood from my hands and legs. “Go rest. I’ll handle this. I can sleep through the funeral tonight, but you can’t.”

  “You should be there. Rylan looked up to you,” I said. I’d never be able to rest after what that vilewrought said.

  Julian tossed the rag into the compost pile and wiped his hands clean. “I wish you hadn’t sent me away. She could’ve hurt you.”

  “My noblewright could have handled her if she tried. Or my knife.” I cracked my neck. “You sure no one needs me?”

  “I need you to pretend you’ve got reasons for keeping me around,” he muttered and helped me stand. “Or are you just with me for my money?”

  Standing, we were eye to eye, and his smile was tight.
>
  “You got any other good qualities I don’t know about?” I asked and took his hand. Seven years I’d known him, and it still wasn’t enough. We’d been best friends long before we started stepping out. He was kind and comfortable, the first spring rain after a dreary winter. “Stay with me. Ivy and the others can handle the rest.”

  Julian stripped off his coat and draped it over me. “Deal. Let’s—”

  The sharp cry of Felhollow’s warning whistle cut him off. Julian spun, hand going to his rifle. I grabbed one of my bone saws and took off running for the center of town. He sprinted after me. My noblewright hummed in anticipation. I shivered. Magic was never sated.

  We ducked between the houses to the center square. A crowd was gathered around the water pump, forming one solid block of shoulders that barred the way for a group of soldiers. Old Ivy, the head of the guards and town council, stood before the five soldiers with her arms crossed. Her wife was behind her, an ax in her hands. The soldiers each held a rifle and carried a sword on their belt. None, so far as I could tell, were wrought.

  Behind them, a carriage black as pitch blocked the road leading out of town.

  “—killed a twelve-year-old this morning,” Ivy was saying with her mortar-on-pestle voice. “We want nothing to do with you.”

  Julian and I nudged our way to the middle of the crowd. Will hooked one arm through Julian’s, forcing him to sling his rifle back on his shoulder. They were two of a kind, same corn silk hair and green eyes, and they scowled as the soldier sneered at Old Ivy.

  “Thought you ordered all the bandits executed?” Julian asked.

  Will nodded and whispered, “They’re here for someone else. Do not antagonize them.”

  “Bandits don’t concern us,” said a soldier with a gold collar on his long red coat. I’d not seen a warrant officer since leaving the capital. Almost all of them were the second and third children of peers who hadn’t inherited the title. “We have a warrant for Willoughby Chase, and we won’t be leaving without him. If you do not present him, we are allowed to acquire him by any means necessary.”

  Julian stiffened next to me. Will didn’t so much as flinch.