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 had of my mother was of 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, herlittle shadow, was the one who had been hit the deepest. He hardly spoke and barely ate. Aunt Valarie had locked herself away in her art studio, and nobody could 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, at night rose the muffled sobs from my siblings. We’d grieved our mother’s death…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. We learned then that she was alive…but suffering. And somehow that was much, much worse to learn.
Without our mother, we didn’t know what to do for Jett—how to easehispain,herpain,theirpain. And the first moment my aunt’s eyes met mine, such guilt fell upon me at the condemnation in her gaze.
I stalked through the low-lit gallery, shadows etched deep into the paintings, the friezes, and marble ancestors lining the room, until I reached the spot where Aunt Valarie waited. Drawing to a halt, I braced my stance as she studied me sharply, as if trying to pry my mind apart. But I kept myself purposely blank.
There was always the slightest pause before she spoke. “Where isshe?”
Thatthinginside me reared itself. It had intensified since I’d thrown myself off the cliff to save Nelle. I had no idea if this 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 that had saved my life. But this wild and wickedthingnow coursed through my veins and hissed through my blood. It sank its fangs into my flesh at my aunt’s callous voice, and I wanted to roar at the injustice of what I was asked to do to Nelle.
My mouth started forming her name before I caught myself. “Wychthorn is locked away,” I replied in a cold, flat tone.
My first act of true defiance.
I steeled myself internally for her to demand,where exactly, the berating I’d receive when she learned the truth.
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 she glanced toward the far end of the gallery where guards were posted. One hand lifted to the pearl pendant at her throat, stroking it absently. The necklace had been my mother’s, a gift from my aunt shortly after they’d first met and become friends. My mother wore it almost every single day.
I fell into step beside her, and as we strode along the gallery, a single ornate frame caught my eye. A portrait of my family hung amongst our ancestors. My brothers and I, my sister Ferne, a pudgy baby at the time, cradled in my mother’s arms as she stood by my father.
My mother…
She 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 that she still lived?
But to use an innocent like this…she’d hate herself for putting us in this position.
Aunt Valarie folded her hands at her waist. Light glanced off a fingernail, and I remembered what it felt like—the sharp sting as her nails raked against my scalp, the shock of her fist closing in my hair as she dragged me into the courtyard.
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 passed out.
It had been my fault that my mother had been abducted. 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. “The timeline has shifted. The plan we had has altered somewhat, and for the most part, it’s working in our favor.”
There was a sharp gleam of satisfaction in her gaze when she stared down the gallery to the hallway where a pair of unfamiliar guards stood beside the lacquered black door. “Byron’s under more pressure than if we’d simply claimed Nelle on her twentieth birthday. Make it work to our advantage. Push him and make him understand 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 and entered the hallway, reaching my father’s office. Byron’s guards watched warily. I didn’t need to taste their fear, I could scent it in the sour sweat that permeated the space.
Behind the closed door, Byron shouted, and my father answered with a rumbling voice that sounded like rocks smashing together.
When we discovered my mother was still alive and being tortured, my father broke in a different way to my aunt. He retreated inside himself. While the grief was fresh, he’d been forced to leave our home with our warband to prove our House’s loyalty to the Horned Gods. It had been a turbulent time within our world.Otherswere hunted down with fearsome vengeance. The Bratvas and the Yakuza had risen against us along with several cartels. At Byron’s command, our family, and all theother Houses versed in warfare, had joined the campaign of bloodshed.
