Chapter 4
Graysen
Red-faced and breathing hard, Byron shook with barely controlled rage while my father remained stoic where he stood behind his desk facing off against the Head of Great House Wychthorn.
Byron’s bloodshot eyes tracked me as I strode deeper into the room.
And while he took me in, I was doing the same with him.
Our leader, who was always impeccably groomed, appeared wrecked.
New wrinkles etched his features, with dark smudges under his eyes, and his salt-and pepper hair stuck up in uneven tufts.
I noted his rumpled tuxedo and the shirt stained with cognac.
He clearly hadn’t changed since Nelle’s presumed death yesterday morning.
He looked exhausted and unhinged.
Perfect.
Byron assessed me and my father—our dirty faces, the soot and ash, the splatter of dried blood.
“What happened here?” he demanded as I approached.
When he’d arrived at our estate, the stench of fire would still have lingered in the air as our warband moved quickly to clear the battle site.
Bulldozers rumbling in to fill the deep rifts carved into the field.
He’d perhaps caught sight of our staff hurrying through our home for more medical supplies, or to assist with tending the wounded.
“A training exercise that went wrong,” my father replied, dragging Byron’s attention away from me.
He answered in a flat-bored tone as if he didn’t care that Byron’s daughter had to fight for freedom, that her wyrm had slaughtered members of our extended family, soldiers and friends.
But he did. My father wasn’t cold and unfeeling.
I often wondered if he felt too much—if it was too much for him to bear, having my mother stolen, tortured—and he’d had to shore up a wall to keep himself from shattering under the weight.
But there were cracks rendered in the wall, and plenty of moments of warmth when he picked up the mantle in her absence.
Byron’s left eye twitched.
He knew my father was lying. Knew what had happened tonight revolved around his daughter. He wanted to know if she was all right. Was desperate to ask—What is she?
Byron’s fierce gaze slashed to mine as I halted and bowed before him as tradition dictated. When I straightened, he snarled. “I want to speak with my daughter.”
“No,” I replied in a bored tone that matched my father’s perfectly.
“She’s not twenty. You can’t claim her!”
“Not yet… Not for a few more weeks.” I shrugged lightly. “However, you know exactly what she signed, the amendments made. We’re having a family reunion. Under the stipulations of the Alverac, she’s under my authority.”
Byron glanced at my aunt, who stood nearby. “Valarie.” There wasn’t one inch of softening. It was a curt demand.
She did not yield.
He briefly closed his eyes and released a weary sigh, his shoulders sagging. Strangely, when he spoke her name softly, “Valarie…” there was a despairing appeal laced within his tone, and some other feeling, heavy with shared memory. It was the closest I’d ever heard him come to begging.
Frowning, my gaze sliced to Aunt Valarie and, for a moment, she faltered, and the woman she used to be showed herself. There was a stumbling kindness and self-doubt.
Byron took a step toward her. “Valerie, let me speak with her.”
My aunt’s gaze slid over Byron’s shoulder, and I realized it had landed on a family photograph.
My mother smiled widely, her arm linked through lanky Kenton’s, Ferne beaming with a mouth full of baby teeth as she sat on my father’s shoulders, Caidan pulling a face behind Jett, and me grinning at our aunt as she ruffled my hair.
When she turned her attention to Byron, the subarctic wall of ice had returned, except now she relished his panic and desperation. “That’s not possible.”
His nostrils flared. “I want a moment alone with your son.”
As Head of Great House, he could order us in this way.
My father inclined his head, strode out from behind his desk to stand flush with his twin sister. He bowed, as did my aunt.
My father left the room. My aunt hesitated as she clasped the brass doorknob, wondering perhaps if I would buckle. The message in her steely gaze warned me to hold my ground, to make Byron suffer and twist the blade deeper.
I returned an almost imperceptible raise of my chin.
The door closed behind her with a soft snick.
Here was the defining moment, and I could not fail.
I would not fail.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I thought of Jett’s short, rasping breath, how stiffly he’d sat with a trembling arm crossed over his ribs. He was in agony. And that meant so too was our mother.
When I pried my eyes open, Byron had smoothed back his hair and buttoned his jacket, tugging once at the shirt cuffs before squaring his shoulders. The man who ruled over all the Houses regained his posture, his authority.
Byron stared at me thoughtfully. “I saw your reaction to Nelle’s death.”
Holy shit.
Every muscle in my body went on lockdown.
I don’t think I was even breathing.
Cradling Nelle’s blood-soaked body in my arms, I’d shattered, and everyone there had seen me fall apart, keening over her corpse.
Caidan was the only member of my family present, and I hoped to hells he’d shared my breakdown with no one.
I shoved a hand carelessly into my jacket pocket and refused to respond.
While Byron witnessed my reaction, I’d seen his too. Watching the raw grief spill from him, I realized he would never end his daughter’s life to save his own neck. Despite the great risk to himself and his family, he’d concealed her secret from the Horned Gods all these years.
He loved his daughter.
A frown creased his forehead, and as he tapped his forefinger upon the desk, he carried on speaking slowly, as if thinking through an earlier thought he hadn’t had time to untangle.
“I thought it was a ploy by your family, exchanging Nelle for a changeling and stealing her. But you’d simply take her.
You wouldn’t go through all of that to hide her from me.
And then I considered that maybe she’d planned this herself and escaped.
” He shook his head, glancing away as he cleared his throat.
“My daughter is too kind-hearted to let us believe she’d died. ”
Nelle does have a big heart.
He regarded me with a measured look. “Who stole my daughter?”
There wasn’t any reason to keep the information hidden, but I wasn’t going to give him everything he wanted to know. He needed to earn that. And not knowing would be far more unsettling.
How I’d yearned for this day.
It was much like when I’d waited for the moment to reveal the truth of the Alverac to Nelle. I’d desired for years to see her panic and fear take root. But when that moment came, it no longer seemed right.
This, however, was the complete opposite.
We needed something from Byron, and I was going to enjoy forcing him to hand it over.
“Another House,” I finally replied.
“Which one?”
I didn’t answer.
“Which of the Houses dared do this?”
I could see his mind ticking over, wondering who it might be, if they knew Nelle was other. And if they did, what kind of hold would they have over him?
I remained silent.
He exhaled and gave a curt nod. His gaze dropped to his hand, now splayed upon the desk—smooth, long fingers that had never had to harden with the daily use of blades. They’d only ever curled around pens and quills.
He swallowed thickly, his voice close to breaking. “Don’t hurt her.”
My chest tightened as those words hacked at my heart with a rust-edged blade.
The only way to get what we needed from Byron was to threaten him with his daughter. My only regret was using Nelle as the tool to do so, but I had to exploit her. There was no alternative to this mess.
I can’t fail.
I can’t…
There was a flatness to my tone that I’d perfected over the years, an emptiness to my expression that could intensify fear, far darker and swifter than anything else. “I can do whatever I feel like to her, and there is nothing you can do about it.”
His gaze shot to mine.
Terror. I tasted it on my tongue.
“What is it you want from me? What can I give you to free her?” The same question he’d posed to me time and time again throughout the years.
There was no point in pretending civility anymore.
He had a choice to make. Cut Nelle off or give us anything we wanted.
And there was no way he’d abandon his daughter.
Yet if the Horned Gods discovered she was a wyrm, for fuck’s sake, they wouldn’t only kill his entire House, they’d erase every single mention of the Wychthorns from history.
We owned Byron just like we owned his daughter.
But I let him scramble in the hopes that he could pull himself out of this shithole he’d shoved himself into.
He waved his hand dismissively. “This revenge on me, going through my daughter to make me pay for your mother’s death…”
This was what had my blood spitting, my fingers fisting. Had that wicked, ancient strain humming through my body, demanding to end him.
The Houses believed my mother had died in a car accident. We’d even held a funeral, and there was an empty tomb resting in our family mausoleum with her name and date of death carved into stone. Though Byron knew the truth, as far as he was aware, my mother had died at the Horned Gods’ hands.
And yet, still nothing. Nothing from him for the part he’d played. At the very least, he owed us a godsdamned apology for condemning every single member of my House to death when he betrayed my mother. He knew they would slaughter all of us along with her.
I stalked around the office, taking my time to answer, purely to get the hot swathes of rage burning beneath my skin under control. There were numerous weapons on the wall, and it was far too tempting to snatch up an Egyptian dagger and plunge the copper blade right through Bryon’s callous heart.
“You know what, Byron? I’d have expected something from you. Maybe even an apology for what you did to our mother, betraying her to the Horned Gods. And yet…nothing.”
Weakness.
He couldn’t afford it.
He was still trying to ensure he’d never be our lackey.
Byron met my furious gaze with his own. “And what would you have done if it were the other way around? If you had to choose between Tabitha or Nelle?”
That question. That fucking insidious question. It had ruined my fucking life.
Anyone else would understand.
Any of my family could have done the exact same thing as Byron.
Turned Nelle over to save my mother.
But I wasn’t just anyone.
Neither was Nelle.
And it had been my choice that set us down this bleak path, pitting our Houses against one another. Even as a child, Nelle had stolen a piece of me. She’d owned me back then, too.
“Where is my daughter?!”
“Locked away in the dungeon below the Keep. It’s dark down there…no light. Who would have known that your fearless daughter would be terrified of the dark?” I tsked. “Certainly not me.”
Byron’s face paled with shock and rage.
I fucking loved seeing that look on him.
And yet hated myself for saying, “She’s such a pretty thing with those big, wide eyes. So fucking innocent, on her knees, begging… It’s like a song, those words she keeps repeating. All she wants is to see you… Speak with you.”
“Then let her see me.”
Raising my hand, I studied my fingernails as if bored. “Everything comes at a price.”
“What is it? What do you want from me?” His patience thinned to its last thread.
He was teetering on the precipice, but he hadn’t yet fallen over.
“All of this,” he said, gesturing with a dismissive sweep of his hand.
“Everything you’ve done was for this sole purpose.
You schemed and manipulated to get me exactly where you wanted.
So, what do I have to give over to see my daughter returned? ”
I gave it some thought, or I made it look like I did. I stepped closer and drummed my fingertips on the sleek surface of my father’s desk. It was the only noise in the office besides Byron’s angry breath. “Something that belongs to the Head of the Great House… Only the Head.”
His eyes widened. It began to dawn ever so slowly exactly what I was talking about. “You’d give me back my daughter?”
“I won’t let her go because she’s mine. But I can be persuaded to be benevolent and kind.
Make her life here a little more bearable.
Maybe unlock the dungeon she’s rotting in and put her up in a proper bedroom like the little Wychthorn Princess she is.
Wipe away those tears and tell her everything will be alright.
” I softened my voice as far as I could at that moment, making it sound enticing.
“Let her speak with you, her mother and sisters too. I expect they’d like to see her very much.
The last time they saw Nelle, she was broken and bleeding and very much dead. ”
Grief washed over him and made those age spots stark against a complexion that grayed in reminiscence of what it felt to watch his daughter purposely step off the roof of his family home, intent on killing herself.
I tsked. “Such a terrible last memory of someone so vibrant and full of life.”
He went to speak, but I held up my hand, cutting him off. Something that wouldn’t ever be tolerated under normal circumstances. “In the matter of your daughter, think on it. Think about all the things I could do to your sweet, precious little girl.”
I bowed and strode from the room. One of Byron’s guards watched warily as I passed by.
My father stood in the hallway, patiently waiting to speak with Byron after my meeting with our illustrious leader.
Deep in thought, he rubbed his blood-splattered chin.
I stalked past with a silent acknowledgment, aware of his gaze assessing me.
Yet I knew he’d overheard everything that had transpired inside his office.
I left Byron Wychthorn stewing in the stinking cesspit he’d created for himself.
I’d let him stew and sweat and panic over what we’d do to his beloved daughter.
When it came time to collect what we wanted, he’d be so desperate he’d hand over anything.
But it wasn’t just anything. We needed the one possession the Head of a Great House was entreated to protect.
And we knew he held it, because once, a long, long time ago, we’d been Great House Crowther.