21. Chapter 21
21
Graysen
I wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon. Not because I was keyed up over hunting the tithe or dealing with Byron’s pathetic attempt at ending me, but because I didn’t sleep. Only one other besides my family knew that I was an insomniac—awake for days until eventually I’d crash, dragged under to sleep half the day away, sometimes a full day if I was lucky and left undisturbed. Until then, I filled my nights with working out or running through drills with my blades, reading, sifting through music, or down in the garage fine-tuning engines and making performance adjustments to our vehicles.
It was maybe three or four in the morning. The storm had bypassed this area, but wisps of clouds shadowed the moon. I’d already showered and changed. Now I was on the lawns heading toward the woodland. I was curious about where my little bird ran every morning and evening. Maybe, somewhere in the trees, I’d discover her secret.
There were a few lights still on in the mansion and guards stalking the perimeter.
Heavy curtains were half open and a dim golden light spilled from Wychthorn’s bedroom. A night light perhaps. I didn’t think she was awake.
At least I hadn’t thought she was awake until I heard the soft whine of a wolf floating through the night air. My gaze whipped toward the direction from which it came. Sage’s wraith form bounded across the lawn, following on the heels of Wychthorn as she darted over the grass, her nightie clinging to her petite figure as she ran. I grinned. White nightie, a little see-through, and certainly not ruffled and patterned with pink unicorns and sparkly moonbeams.
Then I frowned. Something was twined around her neck and shoulders, flashing intermittently .
What is that? Fairy lights?
I went to chase after her, and that’s when I spotted a figure lurking in the shadows near her bedroom window. I was upwind of whoever it was and couldn’t scent them. They had a hood pulled too low over their face for me to make them out either. We caught one another—both staring—across the vast distance of the lawn. I tensed, my fingers curling into fists, every part of me ready to surge forward.
Who the hells is that?
Were they stalking Wychthorn or had I interrupted their midnight stroll?
They slowly melted into the darkness and disappeared around the side of the mansion.
I went to hunt them down, then stopped myself.
Fuck it. Wychthorn, right now, was more important. Besides, I’d just realized the hemline of her nightie was riding high on her thighs, and I needed to know…if she was wearing panties underneath.
She’d headed in a direct line straight into the dark forest. Launching forward, I ran silently in her direction, plunging into the forest to trail behind at a safe distance. Sage danced beside her, whining and tugging at the end of her nightie as she scurried, barefoot, along a flagstone path and across a short bridge over a murmuring brook. The path led her to an outbuilding: a three-storied circular structure much like a silo, made from stone. She started pawing at the rough brickwork, shouting, “I hear you! I’m here! I’m here! You’re not alone!”
From my position hunkered down beneath a hawthorn, hidden in the undergrowth surrounding the building, I could see the glistening of adamere that infused the stone. She’d never dig her way in, and whoever it was she was shouting to wouldn’t hear her.
Who is she shouting to?
Except I knew, because every single House had a building like that on their property. A tithe prison. I’d handed our Bird of Prey and Gaptooth over to my eldest brother before returning to the Wychthorns. Our own tithe prison would now hold the serial killer that Jett and I had caught this evening.
Wychthorn ran along the curved walls of the prison, back and forth, agitated, her wild hair wavering through the air behind her. “I’m here! I’m here!” Her hands didn’t pause in her search for fuck-knows-what, her tiny fingers scratching at the walls as she frantically searched for the seam of a doorway.
A shiver of soft leaves.
Curious, I cocked my head from side to side, glancing about the periphery of trees surrounding the tithe prison. It was a still night, but the leaves of every tree—oak and ash, hawthorn and willow and birch—rustled in pulses.
I rubbed my chin with a knuckle as the answer slowly filtered through my mind. The leaves were rustling in time with her heartbeat…mine as well. Godsdammit, she’d been right earlier on the patio. Our heartbeats did sync.
“I can hear you! I CAN HEAR YOU!” she yelled, growing more frantic.
All the hair on my body prickled.
My nostrils flared. The air, tainted with aether, stirred like it had done in her bedroom when I had been kissing, biting, and licking my way up the graceful column of her throat. But instead of the heat that infused the room, the wind coiling around my figure, raking through the trees, buffering branches and leaves, was bitterly cold.
Gods, I didn’t think it would be this easy.
What are you?
My heart faltered—
Blood—
Droplets of blood dripped off her fingers, splattering over her nightie, and her voice had reached a heart-wrenching pitch. Something in my chest caved. Something I didn’t understand. An overwhelming need to comfort her erupted, scrambling my senses. Before I knew what I was doing, I uncoiled my length, straightening, stepping toward her.
Wait—
Give her time to reveal herself.
I gritted my teeth, fisting my hands, forcing myself to halt.
What is it about this girl, about us?
Fuck, why did I want to protect her when I had every right to kill her for who she was?
I felt it then.
The earth beneath me gave the slightest tremble, a hint of an earthquake.
“You’re not alone!” she cried out, and her voice broke as if she were on the verge of tears. “I’m here! I’m here! I’M HERE!”
Shit, she was messed up. As she continued scratching at the walls, she tore her fingernails and made the pads of her fingers bleed, as if she could dig her way through. “ Where is the door? Where is the door? Where is the door? ”
It was there, carefully hidden. She might find it in time, but only a special key would fit the lock.
All that pounded between my ears —Stop her stop her stop her !
In the intermittent flashes of the fairy lights wound around her shoulders, I saw the sheen of wetness slicking down her cheeks, and I gave in.
I approached slowly, like she was a cornered wild animal. Sage didn’t lunge at me, ready to bite my face off. He backed off, whining and lowering himself in submission. As if asking, this one time, to help him.
Wychthorn didn’t even acknowledge me when I reached her side. She scratched at the wall, her fingers digging, frantically searching for the outline of a door. “ Whereisthedoorwereisthedoorwhereisthedoor— ”
“Wychthorn, you’re only hurting yourself.”
She glanced at me then, and her eyes were wild and wide in her tear-soaked face. She didn’t seem surprised to see me standing by her side. It seemed as if she was still caught in that place between waking and dreaming. “I need to get her out. She shouldn’t be here!”
The power vibrating from her slight form was an intoxicating beat, brushing over me in pulses, practically singing to my own senses. I’d felt it before, always a subtle hint. But this, this was an almighty thrumming that bombarded my senses. And yet, I knew instinctively she hadn’t revealed herself fully.
Slowly, I reached out to gently rest a careful hand on her shoulder. “Wychthorn…”
I don’t know what or why, maybe because I was here touching her, but whatever dark might that radiated from her died. The jostling earth beneath my boots, branches creaking and groaning, and the pulsing shiver of leaves—stopped. As simply as that. Like a candle being pinched out, a calm settled over the area.
Her fingers snapped around one of my forearms, and her blood smeared my jacket as she tugged urgently, demanding I listen. “I can feel her on my skin. She’s scalding hot. Bright as a summer’s sun beating upon cracked barren earth!” Letting me go, she continued searching for the door. “She woke me up. I can hear her!”
“Her? How do you know—”
“She’s crying!”
The walls were one meter thick, partially made from adamere. Even I couldn’t hear anything behind it. So how could she? And not here either. She’d been first roused in the mansion.
She pounded on the curved wall with bloodied fists. “ I hear you! I HEAR YOU!”
Grabbing hold of Wychthorn, I dragged her away to create distance between us and the tithe prison. She fought me, scrabbling to return to the building, crying out that she could hear, that whoever it was trapped in that place, wasn’ t alone.
“For fuck’s sake, shut up,” I hissed. It was a still night and sound carried.
I shook her in a violent motion. Her gaze snapped into focus. Blinking, she swiveled her head as if swiping away cobwebs from her mind. “Graysen?” Her tiny hands skimmed my arms, drifting upward to run across my shoulders and down my chest. Maybe to reassure herself that I was here and real. “Graysen?”
For some stupid, fucked up reason, I enjoyed hearing my name spill from her mouth. She rarely used it, and when she did, she always spat it out like filth. This time, the softness she inflected almost made me smile.
She darted her gaze about the clearing, to the building, then back to me. Eyebrows nudged together as she whispered with confusion dusting her tone. “What are you doing here?”
Remaining still, she allowed me to brush her tears away. “I was up. I heard you.”
She cast a dark glare at the tithe prison. “I hate this place. I never come here.” When her gaze returned to mine, the hurt haunting her red-rimmed eyes startled me. “This is where my father keeps his tithes.” Her hands balled my t-shirt. “Tithes.” The word dripped with distaste. “They are people, tithes… People. ”
“Yes.”
She pushed free of me and began pacing, tugging at her hair, her bare feet shuffling through a litter of dead leaves, twigs snapping underfoot. She wrung her hands before her fingers fumbled for the adamere beads of her bracelet. “We stole them. We’re going to hand them over to—”
“The Horned Gods.”
She retreated a quick step. The look she delivered, fearful and accusing, cut me up. She pointed a finger at me. “You… You stole a soul tonight.”
I nodded. It was true. I had. But I didn’t want her looking at me like that. Like I’d stolen an innocent. “His soul was black, little bird. He killed pretty girls just like you.”
She blinked, surprised. Distrust dissolved from her face.
Worry tightened in my chest when I saw her bloodied fingers. “Shit. Your hands, Wychthorn.”
She glanced down, turning her palms upward. Surprise flared in her expression as she realized how torn up her fingers were.
I jerked my chin toward the low bridge. Striding for her, I took her gently by the arm and guided her to the stream of water.
The brook foamed a little as it flowed beneath the bridge. I’d led her to the marshy edge, and she crouched down beside me. Carefully, I held her hands under the cool water and washed the wounds. Afterward, I tore a strip off my t-shirt and bound both of her hands like mittens.
She shivered, her voice barely a whisper as she looked over her shoulder toward the tithe prison. “What will they do to her?”
I frowned as I finished tying the strip of soft material around her hand. “You don’t want to know, little bird.”
Her teeth chewed her lower lip as she glanced back at me. “Have you seen it? What they do to them?”
I nodded. Too many times.
She slowly shook her head, rising, the ends of her wild, pale hair gently swayed with the motion. She stared down at her bound hands, flexing them. “I’ve never… I’ve never been to a Blessing, not even Annalise and Aldan’s.” Her gaze was drawn back to the tithe prison. “My mind, it imagines things… Terrible things…” She moved toward the shadowed structure. Her voice pitched higher. “This is wrong. It’s wrong—”
I rose swiftly, lunging forward to snap my hand around her wrist, stopping her. I whispered, “It’s too late for her. She’s caught.”
She went to protest, but I shrugged. What could Wychthorn do? Let the tithe escape? They’d only hunt it down, and Wychthorn would face punishment for assisting with the escape.
Everything about Wychthorn slackened. Her shoulders slumped, her expression fell, and that bottom lip wobbled a little.
Something painful cut through me, seeing her like that. She was so small, desperately wanting to help whoever was caged behind a meter of brick, but finding herself unable to because of what we were, who we served.
She looked up and her gaze flitted away before bouncing back with a question in her eyes. Somehow, I knew what she was going to ask. “Do you ever…” she began, letting the words drift apart.
This was dangerous territory. I sent my senses swirling outward, checking for threats. We were alone. I led her over to a fallen tree trunk, our feet traversing long blades of grass and dead leaves. Wrapping my hands around her waist, I lifted her up and placed her on the tree trunk. Standing before her, we were almost at eye level with each other. Her nightie was a thin scrap of material, and the heat of her body singed mine. I wanted to brush her hair over a shoulder. I wanted to draw her closer and cage her in my arms. But I did neither.
I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Ever— what? ”
“Do you ever regret this life we’re ensnared in?” she whispered back, her breath teasing my lips. “Doing those things? Stealing souls to give to the Horned Gods, knowing what they’re going to do with them? To them?”
Yes.
No.
This life afforded us riches and luxury, but in exchange for our souls. All we had to do was devote ourselves to the Horned Gods. Blood stained my hands. I wasn’t innocent. Sometimes, afterward, I’d catch myself washing and washing my hands over and over again as if I could scrub away everything I’d done and cleanse my soul with liquid soap. Stupid.
“We are what we are, Wychthorn—born into servitude. The only way out of this life is death.”
She closed her eyes briefly and breathed out a sigh of pain, of defeat. When she opened them again, they shimmered with unspilled tears and pleaded with mine. “I need to stay with her.”
As soon as I nodded, Wychthorn jumped from the broken tree trunk and ran back to the tithe prison to press an ear against the curved brickwork. We strengthened the formidable structure with adamere to confine the more lethal tithes that we hunted on behalf of the Horned Gods—otherworldly beasts and lesser creatures.
I followed Wychthorn, my boots shifting through the damp blades of grass to the leaf-dusted flagstones surrounding the sinister building. Wychthorn began murmuring softly to the woman trapped within the prison. I blinked in surprise to hear speaking of an old tale about our goddess Skalki.
Leaning a shoulder against the stone, I listened to Wychthorn spinning a story we’d all grown up with—Skalki braving hells to find her mortal lover—except our tales weren’t a myth. They were our history. As I soaked in her words, my finger and thumb never ceased in movement. I paused, realizing I was mirroring Wychthorn as she worked her fingers through the string of adamere beads wrapped around her wrist. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket and then noticed she was only in her thin nightie. She didn’t pause in her tale. She gave the slightest curve of her lips, acknowledging me as I shrugged my jacket off and draped it across her shoulders.
After a while she stopped talking and slid down the wall to sit on the flagstone with her knees bent, resting her chin on her folded arms. She glanced sidelong. “She’s fallen asleep.”
I offered her a hand. “Time for you to go to bed too.”
The ends of her long, pale hair danced about her figure as she shook her head, shooting me a resolute look. “No. I need to stay with her. She needs to know she’s not alone.”
I huffed out a breath. Stubborn, so stubborn, Nelle Wychthorn.
Slowly spinning around, I lowered myself to sit down beside her. We sat in silence. My thoughts drifted away to the tithe we caught. How he’d now be trapped in our own tithe prison. He was a serial killer who enjoyed choking little girls to death. I felt justified handing him over to the Horned Gods. But the girl in there, confined behind stone… She’d be innocent.
We’d sat in silence for so long that when Wychthorn spoke, I jolted. “Sometimes… I was put in there… The door shut and locked.”
I grew still. Everything grew still. Even the soft breeze slinking through the woodlands seemed to die.
Locked in a tithe prison?
What had she done?
Anger sparked.
Who would do that to her?
I frowned. “There’s no windows, no light…”
“Absolute darkness,” she said softly, staring ahead, her gaze fixed on the undergrowth. “So dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.”
I wondered if that was the reason for her night light. The string of fairy lights she’d wrapped around her shoulders.
“Why?”
“I have a temper. Or hadn’t you noticed?” She tried to make light of it, but there was a tightness to her confession. She sighed—the sound full of pain, full of memory. “I lost myself in terror for the first few days.”
I think my heart stopped right then. My stomach fell away.
A few days?
How long…how long had she been kept in there?
“That kind of darkness…it felt like I was nothing but a whisper of thoughts. I’d pinch myself, the pain a reminder I was there, alive, whole, I lived in a body.”
I fisted my hands so tightly that my nails cut into my palms.
Byron, that motherfucker.
“Your father put you in there.” It wasn’t a question.
She turned to look at me, angling her head so her cheek rested against her folded arms. “No. My mother did. My father didn’t know. He was away a lot… It was a bad year.”
Horror flared. Her mother… Marissa did that do her.
Over the course of a year… a year…
My gut went ice cold.
Don’t ask don’t ask don’t ask—
“When was this?”
“When I was seven. Just before I turned eight.”
A sickness roiled inside my stomach, flooding my senses with an urge to retch. I scrubbed my face before dragging my fingers roughly through my hair. My hands felt hot against my skin, which had gone clammy. For a moment those iron bands tightened around my chest again, making it hard to breathe. Back then, when she was about to turn eight, I’d not long celebrated my thirteenth birthday. And I knew …I knew why she’d been treated like that. And she hadn’t a clue. No idea what she’d done to my family.
“My mother loves me, but she’s afraid of me. Whenever my father left, and it seemed he was hardly home that year, she’d lock me up and make my sisters promise not to tell.” Her fingers tightened on the adamere bracelet. “I think I would have lost my mind completely if I hadn’t heard her voice.” At my questioning glance, she answered. “Evvie. She would sit outside the prison and spin me tales or sing lullabies. When I was a child, Evvie was the only one who could calm me.”
She hadn’t realized that she’d given away one of her secrets to me. Her senses were heightened to a degree they even superseded my own. No one should be able to hear through the thick walls of the tithe prison, but she’d been able to.
“When did it stop?” I asked.
She yawned, stretching an arm before pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. With oncoming sleep, her eyelids grew heavy. “Lise finally told my father, and he put an end to it.” She gave me a small, sleepy smile. “You once told me Evvie was a simpleton with no backbone…that she was worthless. You couldn’t be so wrong. Evvie is the strongest one in our family. She’s the sweetest, kindest person. She puts herself second. Always.” Her words came slower as her eyelids drooped. “The perfect Wychthorn daughter… She will marry that asshole Pellan because my father desires the union… She will endure it. But she is no simpleton. And she isn’t worthless… Not to me.”
She fell asleep and her head lolled against my shoulder. I didn’t move her away when I knew I should have. She shivered as she slept, even beneath my jacket. Sage was curled up by her side, but his wraith body offered no warmth, only comfort.
I could have left her there, alone. Could have carried her away. But I didn’t. I stayed and let her presence comfort the tithe trapped within the prison.
Wychthorn stirred as I pulled her onto my lap. Her entire body tensed. Then she expelled the deepest sigh, weary and heavy, and she relaxed, letting herself give in as she curled into me, into my warmth, her wounded hands bound with strips of my t-shirt snuggling around my chest.
The hours slipped by as my mind turned over everything she’d said, and more puzzle pieces fell into place. The year she’d been locked up in the tithe prison was the worst year of my life. I’d failed my mother. I’d failed my sister. And while Nelle was imprisoned in darkness, terrified and alone, I had my own punishment dealt out. Every single month for a full year. And with every lick of the whip, I’d hated her more.
And now here with her, learning what I had, everything had changed, and yet, at the same time, nothing.
I rested my chin on top of her head, breathing her in. A girl who braved the darkness with only a string of blinking lights to comfort a girl she’d never met, locked behind a wall infused with adamere.
Dawn lit the woodland, burning leaves into pale pink and peach and gold. An hour later, I heard movement heading our way. Servants, no doubt, to tend to the tithe, and then escort her to the temple where she’d stay until the blessing ceremony. When I rose with Wychthorn in my arms, she murmured something into my chest. “ Cold snap of dawn. ”
I didn’t know what that meant, why she would say it. Shaking her gently to rouse her from slumber, I hoped I could ask. But she remained asleep.
As the sunlight poked through the trees, I carried her back to the mansion before we were discovered.