So, I lay down, cradling my head as if I lay outside on a grassy lawn, letting a sunshower soak my body. Weariness dragged me down. I could hardly lift a hand to push the drenched hair away from my eyes. I was tired, so tired and weary. The dark power, the wyrm that resided in me since birth, was gone, and I’d never known what it felt like to be truly alone.
I felt orphaned.
Adrift.
Lost.
Heavy drops of water splashed my face as my eyelids drooped.
My exhaustion was so bone-deep that when I fell into the blissful nothingness of sleep, I did not dream.
3
Graysen
My adamere armor stuck to my body with clammy sweat. I pressed a concealed button in the jacket’s collar, and the intricate fish-scale cuts opened, allowing a wash of cool air to soothe my 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 uniforms smeared with ash and blood.
As I walked along the cavernous space, I glanced at the images of our ancestors hanging on the walls or carved into marble and sitting on pedestals, while rubbing the cheek that Nelle had repeatedly struck—a furious ball of pain and grief.
Everything was a tangled mess. My mind, a tornado of opposing thoughts. So much fucking shit had gone down. Was still happening. I couldn’t get a grip on it. Trapping my littlebird, only to discover we were wyrm and tamer. The approach of the Witches Ball. Byron, here. What was I 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.
Nelle had called it right—I had no idea what I was doing.
But I sure as hells wasn’t going along with my family’s original plan to lock her down in the holding cells below the Keep. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t imprison her in darkness.
Earlier, when we’d captured her, I’d wrestled with the impossible choice I had to make. 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 decided for me when I couldn’t do it. She was the one to guide my hands and place Zrenyth’s magic around her own neck. The moment that treacherous collar settled around her graceful throat, regret twisted hard in my gut. What I’d done. What I’d become. The message I’d chosen to send Byron in how I’d bound Nelle.
I kneaded my chest where the severity of it all pressed inward. 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?
Compartmentalize.
I couldn’t worry about what I was to do about Nelle right now.
One thing at a time. Just one.
First—Byron Wychthorn.
I dragged in a slow, deep breath, releasing it the same way. Slowing my racing heartbeat, pumping my trembling fingers.
Byron was here on our estate, and I had to find a way to break him.
My aunt waited for me halfway down the gallery. She stood as still as the statues surrounding her.
Aunt Valarie was as different from who she’d once been as summer was from winter. Almost nothing of her prior softness remained. Gone was the aunt who spent her days painting, who taught me to ride a bike and swim and played endless board games, who lived to tease a laugh out of all of us. Now she was a cold husk of a woman with only bitter determination left within.
When the Horned Gods had stolen my mother, it was Jett’s eruption of shadowed pain that had alerted my father. When he couldn’t reach the convoy that had been escorting our return to the estate, he and his men searched the countryside, desperate to find us. Eventually, they discovered me among 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.
