72. Chapter 72
72
Graysen
T he anguished sounds had roused Aldert and his wife, Irma, along with a few other Pellans. Corné hovered in the background, with Carola beside him. Neither of them, for once, could say a word, shocked as much as the rest of us were.
Still dressed in his tuxedo from last night, Byron reached out and tried to take Nelle from me.
“Get away from her,” I hissed, rising to my feet. Nelle’s body hung like a rag doll in my arms.
Byron tried again.
Fury lit me up with razor-sharpness. “Don’t you fucking touch her!”
“Crowther—”
“GET THE FUCK AWAY!”
I glared at Marissa. At the woman who betrayed her best friend—my mother. “He wanted her dead. He couldn’t let us claim her, so he stole her life. All to save his fucking neck!”
Byron protested, his disheveled hair ruffling as he shook his head and glanced wide-eyed at his wife and daughter. He took a step toward Marissa. “That’s not what happened… I didn’t… Marissa…”
Marissa outstretched a trembling hand to ward off Byron.
Byron looked nothing like his former self—the man who ruled over the Houses with an iron fist. Shock and grief had etched deep lines into his sickly pale face. His tall figure seemed diminished, as if he’d shrunk. The rumpled tuxedo hung loosely from his body as if it no longer fit him.
“I came looking for you. I woke up and realized you hadn’t come to bed. And you were there, shouting at her,” Marissa cried.
“She wasn’t answering me when I found her on the stairs. I followed her because I was worried about her. I had no idea what she was doing or where she was going. I didn’t know, Marissa…I didn’t know what she intended to do until she’d crawled out onto the roof.”
A sudden rush of anger bit Byron hard, twisting his features into a snarl. He swung my way, lunging with a raised fist, and I half-turned aside, easily dodging his wild swing, and held Nelle’s body tighter. He didn’t try again. Instead, with cheeks stained red with rage, he bellowed, “You! You did this. You and your ruthless family. You just couldn’t let it alone, leave us in peace. You wanted her. You wanted to claim her with the Alverac, all to punish me!”
As sudden as his anger descended upon him, it fled. As his fury collapsed into anguish and hate, graying eyebrows slashed up and his eyes shone with tears. He darted a frantic glance at Marissa and me. “She knew what the Alverac was… Last night, I told her. And I guess she couldn’t…didn’t want to put herself through that. I never thought…” He spun my way, shoving a finger of accusation at me. “I never thought she’d do this to escape your vile family!”
His words struck deep with the swiftness and cruelty of an arrow strike. They struck the part of me I kept cold and black. And the agony, the truth of what he said, overwhelmed me like a tidal wave smashing through a concrete seawall, tearing through it with its might.
It was my fault. All my fault.
Horror washed through my chest.
What have I done?
Last night I’d terrified her enough that she couldn’t see a way free of me. Of my family. Of the things we’d do to her with the weight of the Alverac binding my will to hers.
That’s why she’d been on the roof of the mansion. Even if Byron hadn’t pushed her, she would have stepped off.
She’d given up.
Ended her own life because of me.
Oh Gods, what have I done?!
“Nelle needs to help us with Sage!” someone cried out from behind. I half-twisted around to see Lise approaching in hurried footsteps from the western side of the Wychthorns’ home. “Didn’t you hear him? He’s been howling. He threw himself against the kennel and now he’s hurt himself!” Her brows inched together in confusion as her approach slowed down.
Aldan, right behind her, carried Sage’s limp body. “What’s going on?”
Lisa drew nearer, taking in who we’d all gathered around. Who I held in my arms. And it whispered from her, more air than voice, “Nelle?” All the color drained from her cheeks as her eyes widened in shock and disbelief. “Nelle?! NELLE?!”
She ran, her nightgown flapping about her shins and bare feet slapping against the flagstone. Aldan cursed, picking up his pace.
“Gray…” Caidan held Evvie as she sobbed into his chest.
I buried my face in the crook of Nelle’s neck, her soft, bloodied hair whispering against my cheek. She smelled of nothing. As if everything about her had been wiped clean.
When I straightened, I found Aldan had placed Sage on the ground and kneeled beside Lise, who had crumbled to her knees on the grass. Her grief-stricken features were pinched tight as tears fell, and her choked sound of raw anguish joined her sister’s, her mother’s.
Sage wobbled as he got to his paws, padding woozily closer to Nelle’s hand hanging long and lifeless. He sniffed, drawing in her scent, and expelled his breath in a low huff.
Then he whined.
The noise crawling from his throat lowered and became rougher, more menacing, as his misty fur hackled down his spine. Thin black lips curled back from his vicious teeth. His entire body tensed as he hunkered down and growled viciously.
The sound of it scratched down my spine with unease.
“Sage?” Aldan rumbled in astonishment.
Nelle’s wraith-wolf snapped his fangs and he erupted into a string of howling barks
What the hells?
I lowered my head and drew Nelle’s scent in through my nostrils.
Nelle, the girl in my arms, had no smell to her whatsoever. Not a hint of that sweetly tart scent that drove me insane and inflamed my desire every time I was around her.
She smelled of nothing. Her trademark scent had vanished.
“It’s gone…it’s gone…”
“Brother?”
My gaze shot to Caidan, and I struggled to explain. “Her scent. It’s like … like fresh elder blossoms. Bittersweet and spicy with hints of fire… It’s gone.” I knew I wasn’t making sense to him.
Evvie’s lips quivered. She brushed at the wetness on her slick cheeks with a shaky hand. “She’s never smelled that way to me before. She likes… liked ,” she corrected herself and let out a raw sound of despair, her knees buckling. Caidan’s hands tightened on her sagging body to support her. She fisted the fabric of his shirt and the words she whispered in broken sobs were muffled into his chest. But I heard them clearly. “S-strawberry…she liked the s-smell of that strawberry soap.”
And I suppose at any other time I might have thought about that further, mulled it over, and wondered why Nelle’s unique scent was specific to me alone, but right now it slipped from my mind as easily as water past clenched knuckles.
Nelle’s nightie, that short-hemmed gown riding up her thighs, was similar, if not the same one she wore two nights ago at the tithe prison. Maybe she had plenty of nighties exactly the same. But the adamere bracelet wrapped around her wrist was perfectly formed. Not a single bead was broken or missing.
It was there, tumbling in my head.
Did she go up to the roof to end herself because she couldn’t endure being bound to me?
That isn’t her. Nelle isn’t one to give up.
Nelle burned with fire and brimstone.
She’d fight me every step. She’d pledge herself to making my life a misery.
No scent—
And it came to me so fast—the answer, the name—I recoiled, almost dropping Nelle’s body in surprise, not wanting to touch this thing in my arms.
I’d not find anything on this thing that wasn’t any different from Nelle. She looked like her. Wore her clothes. Even her unique fingerprints would be an exact match. She’d speak like her. But what they couldn’t do was replicate smell.
“It’s not her. It’s not her,” I kept repeating in bewilderment.
“Gray?”
I glanced sidelong over my shoulder and Caidan returned a look that was soaked in sorrow.
“It’s not… It’s not Nelle,” I whispered so quietly only my brother would have been able to hear.
This thing in my arms was a changeling.
Even knowing that, I couldn’t drop this thing . I carefully lowered Nelle’s replica to the ground, and Marissa swooped in.
I threw out my arm to stop her. “Don’t—”
Marissa paid me no mind. Dodging around me, she sank to her knees and gathered the changeling in her arms. She choked on tears while cradling it gently to her chest, not realizing it wasn’t her daughter .
Evvie pushed off Caidan. And Lise scrambled to her feet.
The sisters clustered about their shaken mother, holding her youngest daughter. Draped across her lap, Nelle’s wild hair, matted with blood, shivered with the sobs wracking Marissa’s frail body.
I stepped back, one step…two…three more…to gain distance from the Wychthorn women. Running a blood-coated hand over my head, I wrenched at the locks, hardly feeling the dull burn spreading along my scalp. I needed to think. I needed to work this out.
My brother’s brows nudged together as he stared at me, taking in the change flooding through my posture and expression. I’d let the grief go and replaced it with a grim determination to work this out.
Had Nelle done this?
Did she purposely leave the changeling as a decoy to buy herself freedom?
My gaze swept across the small crowd standing around with grieving Wychthorns. More of the Pellans had arisen and stumbled outside to find out what was wrong. More shocked servants hung back further away, standing alongside the family guards gathered in tight groups. Their disbelief and grief mirrored one another—a terrible blight against the grassy lawn and the low rising sun full of warmth and fresh sunshine.
Sage hunkered down nearby, his unblinking silver eyes slit and fixated on the thing now in Marissa’s arms. He bunched his rigid muscles, ready to pounce. And along his spine was a ridgeline of hackled misty fur.
I frowned in deep contemplation.
Could Nelle have left Sage behind?
Her loyal companion.
Her heart.
Could she have given up Sage for freedom?
No. I didn’t think she could be parted from Sage. She might have run, but she wouldn’t have left Sage behind. Which meant…?
Holy hellsgate!
My gaze whirled back to Marissa rocking her daughter’s lifeless body while murmuring sweet nothings, as if she were once again a babe swaddled in her arms.
Shit, shit, shit…
Spinning around, I headed toward the mansion. My brother caught up to me with quick leggy strides, and as his mouth parted to ask, no doubt, what I was up to, I interceded. “Tell me you brought my Ducati. ”
A frown creased his forehead as he shot a glance over his shoulder. I assumed he was looking at Evvie before his gaze swept back to me. “Fuck off. I brought my own.” Dark brows slashed over his inquisitive eyes. “What the hells is going on Gray?”
I kept my voice low so no one could overhear me. “That’s not Nelle. It’s a changeling. Someone else,” and I had to believe that part, “has stolen her and left that thing in her place.”
“A changeling?” His mouth fell out as he spun around swiftly, gaze wide with astonishment as he walked backward. I knew he’d be staring at that thing in Marissa’s arms, trying to work it out. “Are you sure?”
I arched a brow at him as he turned back to face the right way and flung a bewildered look at me. We hurried up the marble steps, two at a time, and crossed over the terrace that led to the massive oak doors of the rear entrance to the mansion. Our footfall on stone was dulled by the keening sound of grief and despair emanating all around.
“Shit, shit, shit … Byron?” Caidan hissed, ducking his head furtively. “Maybe he did all of this to hide her from us.”
I shook my head. Someone was after Nelle down in the Catacombs, and Byron, though I wanted to throttle him, his desolation was far too raw and open to fake. No, now, finally, I could see he’d never have been able to end Nelle’s life to save himself and his family, just as he’d never been able to hand Nelle over to the Horned Gods as a child.
“How did someone get a changeling in here, unnoticed? How could they get close to Nelle to reproduce her?” Caidan continued.
“While she was sleeping,” I hazarded a guess. Perhaps. Maybe. Probably. “Shit, I don’t know, and right now I don’t care. The end game’s the same. They’ve got her.”
“Where are you going?!” Caidan called out to me as the muted sunlight disappeared and I rushed into the Wychthorn mansion, surging forward.
“I’m going to get her back.” I was going on a hunt. I needed to be fast because whoever had Nelle had at least six hours on me.
I ran for my quarters—a streak of speed and flesh—with Caidan right behind me, and I pretty much kicked in the guest bedroom door to get inside. With a frantic, hurried motion, I stripped out of my tux, practically ripping the fucking clothes off, and yanked on my adamere armor, the soft material hugging my body tight, before shoving my feet into calf-high black boots and zipping them up.
Caidan went straight for my weapons bag and tossed me everything I needed. My fingers were a blur as I strapped and buckled and tightened my wyrmblade down my spine, along with a second sword.
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
Resting a foot on a chair, one at a time, I fastened the twin daggers around each of my boots. “As fast as I’ve jacked up Jett’s Mustang, it’s not as fast as the design changes I’d made to the Ducati.” And I was going to push it as fast as it could go. “I’m doing this alone.”
Sage’s ghostly form rippled through the outside wall of my room. The wraith-wolf returned to a corporeal state and limped to my side, nudging his moist muzzle into my thigh. I dropped to a crouch, rubbing behind one mist-furred ear, and he leaned into my touch, briefly closing his eyes, and whined. “I’ll get her back. Promise.”
He huffed a breath, then gave a low growl, as if telling me he’d chew through my leg if I didn’t do as I promised.
Rising, I caught the bandoleer Caidan threw my way and hefted the cache of small blades across my shoulders, spun around and, in a burst of speed, ran out the bedroom door, weaving through the mansion’s white hallways and spacious open rooms, heading to the front entrance.
Caidan’s Ducati was parked outside in the cul-de-sac. Like all our vehicles, it was a matte-black with additional funnels pumping through krekenn blood to mix with gasoline, which I’d discovered was an awesome way to triple the bike’s speed.
I swung a leg over, at the same time engaging the bike’s engine, thrusting the throttle down, and let the engine rip out a vicious roar as loud as the anger blazing through my veins.
“You help find Jett,” I told him while kicking the bike stand and righting the machine.
Caidan grimaced and darted in front to stop me. He held up his hands. “Shit, Gray… You know I don’t like this. What if you can’t handle whoever has her?”
Plucking my Wayfarers from where they’d been tucked inside a bandoleer pocket, I slipped them on while making a pffting sound my little bird always liked to make, my mouth tipping up on one side in a mockery of a smile. It was cold, that smile. It promised vengeance. “Whoever the fuck has her is going to wish they didn’t.” I was going to end them, and I was going to take my godsdamned sweet-fucking-ass time about it too. “Get those useless guards of Byron’s to have the gates open before I get there.”
Caidan hissed out a curse between his gritted teeth, glaring at me and looking as if he still wanted to argue the point. A second later, he dug out his phone from his pocket and dialed the gatehouse as he shifted out of my way.
The motorcycle’s rear tire sprayed an arc of pebbles in my wake as I left my brother behind. Pulling back the throttle, quickly flicking through the gears, I soared down the long winding driveway edged with gnarled oaks.
I didn’t have much of a plan.
Which was a little fucked.
But what scrap of a plan I had was simple.
Find my little bird, and crush whoever dared take her. I was going to shred through them and enjoy every single agonized scream I’d wring out of their pathetic bodies.
Whoever possessed her had, at the most, six hours on me. I only hoped that it wasn’t one of those things down in the catacombs beneath Ascendria, who could swift in and out. If they had her… Even I might not even be able to find her.
But… If not… And I suspected not, it had to be someone at the Blessing. One of the Houses. Who, or why they wanted Nelle, I couldn’t let myself think on. My only thought was to find her before she disappeared for good.
The sunlight poking through the line of trees reaching for the sky promised a brilliant-blue fall day. The early morning was already warm and burning away the high cloud, and there was a quiet stillness, the kind that only appeared after a storm had passed through. A storm roiled inside of me as well, one that was not the churning of hot anger, but an icy sleet of viciousness.
There was a mixture of scents along the driveway. What lingered in the air and on the road were gas fumes and rubber from limousines and SUVs and luxury cars… The faint trace of human… And nothing of her. But there was only one direction everyone could go, and that was the narrow road that cut through the woodland that eventually led to the highway.
Caidan had called ahead, and the enormous gates were wide open. I barreled through the opening at a thunderous speed, past the line of guards, the obelisk monoliths, the wall of adamere and magically infused electric fences, and out of the estate.
The early morning sun was still rising and the heavy roof of the woodland cast the country road in gloom. Fresh buttery rays cut through gaps of leaves in the high canopy, and like a slow-turning diamond, they shone a scattering of light on the asphalt. Leaves exploded in my wake, greens and golds raining down like a flurry of snow as I pushed the Ducati as fast as it could go—faster, faster, faster down the long stretch of road that took me to the first fork before hitting the highway.
As the fork drew nearer, I slowed the bike right down. I had to make a decision.
Left or right?
Right or wrong?
Find her or lose her?
How the hells was I going to find her?
Yesterday, her heartache had carved a hollow space inside my chest. Yet, I’d also felt her rage burning beneath my skin. And later, when she was happy, she’d glowed for me and her sunshine had consumed my shadows. We were connected, her and I, and it had always been that way since we’d first encountered one another as children—that shimmering allure that enticed me to watch and protect her from afar. No matter where she was, no matter if I hadn’t been turned in her direction, I’d always known where she stood.
But now… Now I couldn’t find her, I couldn’t feel her.
I’d lost her.
Easing back on the throttle, I let go of the handlebars and sat up straight. The bike beneath me purred a low rumble as we coasted through the dim woodland.
I closed my eyes, spread my arms like my little bird, and tipped my head back. An erratic pattern of alternating warmth and cold from the shuttering sunlight glanced off my brow and cheeks. Strands of wind teased the messy black locks of my hair. Cool air currents buffered my palms and the tips of my fingers. Freedom. That’s all she’d ever wanted.
I dug deep inside and turned my mind inward, seeking that connection that bound us together.
Where is she—
Emptiness greeted me.
Where is she, where is she, where is she—
I couldn’t lose her.
Whereisshewhereisshewhereisshewhereisshewhereisshewhereisshe—
There was nothing but pitch-black nothingness.
I couldn’t find her… I couldn’t find her!
And then —
Something… Something faintly glowed like a sliver of moonlight through thickly woven clouds.
There…
Right there…
I found it, a faint pinprick in the darkness, but it was there .
Nelle, Nelle, Nelle…
I dove deeper, reaching for that glow… For the threads of magic, of power, of her to me and me to her, when I’d tasted her blood and she’d tasted mine. Our blood mingled and shared. A bond forged deeper than the iron teeth of the Alverac. Deeper than even the incessant awareness that bounced between us.
Nelle.
I grabbed hold of that bond with everything I was, my body, mind, and cold, black soul, and I followed and let instinct take over.
And I felt it, felt her , only a faint, faint breath of sunshine, yet I knew which direction I needed to head.
I flicked my eyes open right as I reached the fork in the road. Seizing the handlebars, I swung left, turning the bike west. I pulled back the throttle, leaned low, and let speed take over, holding tight to those tenuous threads of power that bound us together and would lead me to her no matter where she was in the world.
I was going to find her.
She was mine, and I was hers, and no one was going to keep us apart.