Chapter 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 little bird, 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.
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, her little 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 ease his pain, her pain, their pain. 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 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 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 wicked thing now 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.
Others were 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 the other Houses versed in warfare, had joined the campaign of bloodshed.
He’d spent the entire year away from home, and in his absence, Aunt Valarie took over the mantle of Head in his stead.
My shy, self-conscious aunt forged herself into what was needed.
She overcame her stutter and ruthlessly entered the world of Houses, made connections, uncovered leads, twisted others to her needs.
She rallied our family into a single unit, honing us all into weapons.
Our family had one purpose, and one purpose only. To save our mother.
And through it all, she took out her fury on me.
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 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 surged in a blur of shock and fury. He caught hold of Aunt Valarie’s wrist mid-swing, stopping her before the whip could land again.
Utter rage exploded through him like a storm, and he unleashed it on his twin. I thought he was going to kill her. We all did. Only my siblings and I possessed unnatural healing.
And despite everything, we still loved her. Still hoped the person she once was might return.
Kenton and Caidan dragged him off her before his fury turned fatal.
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.
With my father’s return, life slowly 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 doorknob, stepping back and turning my palm upward. My fingers were dirty, and soot was ground into the creases. I frowned. “I should wash—”
“No. Let Byron see you like this. Let him wonder and fret.” She gripped my upper arm, squeezing hard enough that pain jarred through my nerves, and leveled a look of pure fire. “Do not fail us in this, Graysen.”
I could almost hear the ‘fail us again’ unspoken but hovering in the air between us.
There was an accusation in her tone that had remained ever since we lost my mother. As if she were waiting for me to buckle and fail.
I have.
Almost.
My aunt let go, pushing open the door. 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 didn’t feel one ounce of guilt for doing.