My adamere armor stuck to my body with clammy sweat. I pressed a button concealed in the collar of the jacket and the intricate fish scales released to allow cool air to soothe my sticky skin.
The running rug beneath my boots muffled my footsteps as I strode through the gallery. Its light green walls were tall and imposing with crown molding and archways, and beyond those open spaces were our staff, hurrying past with medical supplies, murmuring urgently amongst themselves. Their crisp uniforms of black and white were now smeared with ash and blood.
As I walked along the cavernous space, I glanced at the images of our ancestors where they hung on the walls or their likeness had been carved into marble and sat on pedestals, I rubbed the cheek Nelle had repeatedly struck—a furious ball of pain and grief. It hurt, but not as badly as it once would have. Her heightened strength was lost to her. She truly was separated from her wyrm.
Everything was a tangled mess—my mind was a tornado of opposing thoughts. So much fucking shit had gone down—was still happening. I couldn't get a grip on it, on myself—trapping my little bird, only to discover we were Wyrm and Tamer. The approach of the Witches Ball. Byron, here. What I was going to do about my aunt and her burning hatred of the Wychthorns, her contempt for Nelle? How the fuck was I going to protect Nelle from my aunt?
And Nelle...
Such overwhelming worry for her consumed my dark soul.
My heart jackhammered in my chest.
Fuck, fuck—fuuuck!
Nelle had called it right—I had no idea what I was doing.
But I sure as fuck wasn't going along with my family's original plan to lock her away out of sight, down in the holding cells below the Keep. I couldn't, I wouldn't lock her away in darkness.
Gods, Nelle...
Earlier when we'd captured her, I'd wrestled with the choice I had to make—such a fucking impossible choice—and even reminding myself that my mother was still alive, wasn't enough. I was cleaved in two, right down the center. My mother or Nelle. And Nelle had made the decision for me when I couldn't do it. She was the one to guide my hands and place Zrenyth's rope around her own neck. The moment that treacherous rope settled around her graceful throat... Gods, regret twisted inside, gutting me further. What I'd done. What I'd become. The message I'd chosen to send Byron by cruelly tying a Hangman's Noose around Nelle's neck.
I rubbed my chest where the crushing weight was pressing inward, the severity of it all. Selfish. Gods, I was so fucking selfish. But she was the only leverage we had over Byron.
Everything was moving too fast. Far too fast.
And now, what was I going to do?
Nelle...
Compartmentalize.
I couldn't worry about what I was going to do about Nelle right now.
One thing at a time. Just one.
I dragged in a deep breath, slow and steady, releasing it the same way. Slowing, slowing, slowing my racing heart down, pumping my trembling fingers, clenching and unclenching them.
First—Byron Wychthorn.
He was here on our estate, no doubt demanding to see his daughter. I had to find a way to break him.
Low lighting carved shadows in the paintings lining the gallery's walls, the friezes, and the full-scaled marble statues of our ancestors. My aunt waited for me halfway down the room. She stood as still as the sculptures. Her keen sight, a trait that had been bred into my family line from when the Gods walked the earth, glowed like a nocturnal animal, and they were fixed on me.
Aunt Valarie, now, was as different from who she'd once been as summer was from winter. She was ruthless and almost nothing of her prior softness was left in her. Gone was the woman who spent her day painting, who taught me to ride a bike and swim, played endless board games with me, and lived to tease a laugh out of all of us, she was a cold husk of a woman with nothing left inside but bitter determination.
After the Horned Gods had stolen my mother, when we hadn't returned home and my father couldn't reach the convoy that had been escorting us back to our estate, he and his men searched for us. They'd found me amongst the wreckage of our limousine. My broken body had mended enough that I'd been able to crawl toward my baby sister who'd mercifully passed out after Mistress Lyressa had plucked her eyes from their sockets, blood spilling down her cheeks like tears.
Ferne had been rushed to our infirmary.
Wes, our driver too.
None of us knew what to do.
Or if the Horned Gods would come for us.
The very last memory I held of my mother was her on her knees, begging for my life and calling upon Hamon and Draxxon's sacrifice to spare our family.
And it held sway.
Sirro had arrived at our home the next day, warning us that though we'd been spared, we were being watched.
All of us dealt with the gaping hole my mother had left behind in different ways. No one had come out unscathed or unchanged. Jett, her little shadow, was the one who had been hit the deepest. He had hardly spoken and barely ate. Aunt Valarie had locked herself away in her art studio and no one was able to coax her out.
Oppressive silence had descended upon our home like an unpleasant guest. Quiet murmuring throughout the day, and within the wing where all our bedrooms were gathered, came the sounds of muffled sobs at night. We'd grieved for our mother as if she had died because at that time the Horned Gods spared no one...until a week later when Jett had collapsed in a seizure, agony wracking his thin body under the intense connection he and our mother shared. And we'd learned then that she was alive...but suffering. And somehow that was much, much worse to learn.
My aunt had emerged from her art studio at our startled cries for help. Without our mother, we didn't know what to do for Jett—how to ease his pain, her pain, their pain. And the first moment my aunt's eyes met mine, guilt, such guilt fell upon me at the condemnation in her gaze.
My boots treaded softly over the running rug stretched along the family gallery.
I reached the spot where Aunt Valarie waited for me within the gallery and slowly drew to a halt, bracing my stance as my aunt stared at me, unblinking, as if she could pry apart my mind. But I kept myself purposely blank.
There was always the slightest of pauses before she spoke, while she thought through what she wanted to say. "Where is she?"
That thing inside me reared itself. It had intensified since I'd thrown myself off the cliff to save Nelle. I had no idea if this thing was the real reason I'd been brought back from the brink of death or if it had been my mother's unnatural healing or perhaps something else altogether had actually saved my life. But this wild and wicked thing now coursed through my veins and hissed through my blood. It sank its fangs into my flesh at my aunt's callous tone, and I wanted to roar at the injustice of what I was asked to do to Nelle.
My mouth started forming her name just before I caught myself. "Wychthorn is locked away," I replied in a cold, flat tone.
My first act of true defiance. Nelle was locked at the top of a tower. No way out but, more importantly, no one could get to her.
I steeled myself internally for her to demand, where exactly, the berating I'd receive when she learned the truth, and the curt demand to move Nelle to the holding cells below the Keep—the dungeon as my little bird had rightly called it.
My aunt, to my surprise, asked nothing further. Perhaps now wasn't the right time, perhaps she was solely focused on our next task—to tear apart Byron Wychthorn.
Her eyes narrowed as her gaze glanced away to survey the end of the gallery where guards were posted, one hand stroking the pearl pendant hanging around her neck on a silver chain. The necklace had been my mother's, gifted to her by my aunt shortly after they'd first met and become friends. My mother had worn it almost every single day. The only time she removed the necklace was when she left our estate for formal gatherings. And afterward, after that fateful day, my aunt retrieved it from my mother's dresser and had taken to wearing it herself.
Aunt Valarie's skirt rippled like liquid as she spun around and walked off. I fell into step beside her and we strode between the rows of marble statues and framed artwork on the walls. I took in all those faces and stark expressions from different time periods, the oils capturing the long, long line of our ancestors. My family was hanging there, too, in an ornate golden frame. My brothers and I, my sister Ferne—a pudgy baby at the time, cradled in my mother's arms as she stood beside my father.
My mother...
My mother wouldn't want this. It would destroy her to see what had become of her family. But how could we not? How could we live our lives and pretend she was dead? Ignore that fact, even when we were reminded, through Jett, she still lived?
But to use an innocent like this, she'd hate herself for putting us in this position.
As we walked toward the end of the gallery, in the corner of my eye I caught Aunt Valarie folding her hands together at the middle of her waist. Light glanced off a fingernail, and I remembered what it felt like, the sharp sting of her nails as they raked against my scalp, tearing apart skin, the shock of pain as she grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked. I was tall for a thirteen-year-old, nearly her own height, and she'd dragged me out to the inner courtyard by my hair. Her hands, rough from her use of blades, would scrape against my wrists as she shackled me to the whipping post, and I'd grip the wooden handles and hold tight until I couldn't.
I didn't cry or scream or beg. I had taken that first beating—those furious, hateful lashes slicing through my flesh that set my nerves and my mind on fire with agonizing pain—until I'd passed out.
It had been my fault that my mother had been stolen. All my fault. I'd simply wanted to protect Nelle. Instead, I'd given up my mother and ripped the heart out of our family.
Aunt Valarie clicked her tongue, dragging my attention back to her. "The timeline has shifted. The plan we had has altered somewhat, and for the most part, it has worked in our favor."
There was a sharp glint of satisfaction in her eye when she stared down the end of the gallery, through the narrower space, a hallway, where a pair of unfamiliar guards stood beside a black lacquered door. "Byron's under more pressure than if we'd simply claimed Nelle on her twentieth birthday." She angled her face toward me, her eyes were cunning and shrewd. "Make it work to our advantage. Push him and make him understand that he has to give us something in return for seeing his daughter. But not yet. Let him and his family sweat first. Let them feel the bite of anguish and desperation."
What would happen as soon as I stepped through that door was imperative. It had to be played perfectly. We'd gone through this time and time again—what we needed to press Byron to do, to give us.
We left the gallery behind, entered the hallway, and reached the very end—the door to my father's office. Byron's guards watched us warily, their unblinking gaze on both of us. I didn't need to taste their fear of us, I could scent it in the air—sour sweat permeated the space.
The sound of Byron shouting could be heard from behind the closed door, and my father's rumbling response, his voice like rocks smashing together.
When we discovered my mother was still alive—being tortured—my father had been broken in a different way from my aunt. He'd retreated within himself, and while the grief was fresh, he'd been forced to leave our home with our Warband to prove to the Horned Gods that our House was loyal to them. It had been a turbulent time within our world. Others were not tolerated and had been hunted down with a fierce vengeance. The Bratvas and the Yakuza had risen up against us along with several cartels. At Byron's command, our family, and all the other Houses versed in warfare had joined the campaign of bloodshed. The crime syndicates needed to be routed, examples made, and new crime lords appointed.
He'd spent the entire year away from our family, and in his absence, Aunt Valarie had taken over the mantle of Head in his stead. My aunt, who rarely left our family estate, too self-conscious of her stutter, who lived to paint and to make us laugh, had forged herself into what our family needed. She overcame her stuttering, became cold and ruthless, and entered the world of Houses—made connections, uncovered leads, twisted others to her needs, and rallied our family as one unit. She'd honed us all into weapons. Our family had one purpose, and one purpose only—save our mother.
And through it all, she took out her fury on me.
After a year of enduring being whipped every single week, of my aunt rubbing dust from our ancestors' bones into the ravaged and flayed skin of my back to stop the flesh from regenerating and to keep the scars as a shameful reminder of how I'd failed my mother, it ended.
So much of Nelle's life mirrored my own. I imagined the day her father discovered she'd been locked in the tithe prison was the same day my father returned. He'd entered the courtyard and found me bound to the whipping post.
I'd turned my head over my shoulder, the skin shredded to ribbons, and watched through a haze of mind-obliterating pain as he'd surged in a blur of shock and fury, grabbed hold of Aunt Valarie's wrist as she'd slung back the whip to unleash her wrath against my back, and stopped her.
Later, while my father tended to my wounds, he apologized in his brusque manner. Promised it wouldn't happen again, that he wouldn't leave us again. Yet on my tongue was the sharp tang of unease. He wasn't sure he could promise me that.
He'd taken me to a place within the Keep where no one could touch me. No one could get inside without my permission. A little after my fourteen birthday I chose to reside at the top of that tower, away from the rest of my family, but my separation from them had happened well before then. My aunt had made sure of that with her spiteful tongue, which hissed at me how I'd failed them all. I'd hardened and had ice flurries flowing through my veins, and my abhorrence for Nelle had grown with every lick of the whip.
With my father's return, slowly, life returned to our home, as well as laughter. We still had one goal we worked toward, but we could breathe again and be kids again.
I went to open the office door and stilled when my gaze fell on my hand. I let go of the brass door handle, stepping back and turning my palm upward. My fingers were dirty, and soot was ground into the creases and grooves of my hands. I frowned. "I should wash—"
"No. Let Byron see you like this," my aunt said. "Let him wonder and fret." Her hand snapped out to grip my upper arm, squeezing hard enough that pain shot through my nerves. She leveled a look of pure fire. "You do not fail us in this, Graysen."
I could almost hear the again... fail us again. Unspoken but hovering in the air between us.
There was an accusation in her tone that had remained with her in regard to me ever since we lost my mother. As if she were waiting for me to buckle and fail.
I have.
Almost.
My aunt let go, moved in front of me, twisted the door handle, and pushed the door open. She glided in, and I cracked my neck, letting ice creep through my veins, and emptied my mind of everything but breaking Byron Wychthorn.
If anything out of the mess I'd made, this was one thing I had to do.
And I didn't feel one ounce of guilt for doing it.