Chapter 23
Nelle
Perverse exhilaration electrified the stifling air as the upper ranks gazed on, mesmerized by Valarie Crowther’s appearance.
For one brief, twisted moment, I admired the smile curving her lips, as graceful and shrewd as a death-dealer marking their opponent.
Valarie locked her gaze with my father in silent combat.
But my father…
Astonishment swept through me as his iron mask cracked, deep hurt seeping across his features before he wiped it away and fortified himself with a grim glare.
Who the hells was she to him?
She bowed with elegant precision. “Byron… Marissa.”
“Valarie,” my father acknowledged in a flinty tone.
My mother shrank closer, clutching his arm. She gestured to her neck with fluttering fingers, speaking low and fast and full of pleading fervor. “You latched that thing around my daughter’s throat.”
Candlelight softened Valarie’s sharp features as she turned my way, admiring me as if I were an old-world statue. “Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Remove it,” my father demanded.
“I’d rather not.”
He glanced at the courtesans behind me. “What do I have to do to stop this, Valarie?”
“You know what I want, Byron. But first, I want you on your knees. I want to see you bowing at my feet.”
His eyes dimmed with confusion, then sharpened with understanding.
I’d never seen my father bow to anyone. All my ancestors, all the Wychthorns before us, had bowed to none.
Not even to Master Sirro. A ghastly sensation, bleak as winter sleet, chilled my soul as I saw the moment he resigned himself to disgrace.
I watched in horror as his knees softened. Began to buckle.
No, no, no…
Fury razed across my flesh, gathering like a dark firestorm in my chest. I stomped a foot. “DON’T!”
Everyone, including Valarie and my father, snapped their gazes toward me. While my entire body shook with outrage, my father slackened with defeat. He loved me. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to save me. But like hells was I going to let them break him.
Valarie’s gaze narrowed. “You kneel,” she ordered, venom soaking her tone, before she addressed my father. “Both of you.”
The impudence of her demand almost obliterated my last shred of sanity. “NO!”
“Nelle,” my father implored, raising both palms. “Please,” he begged, but for a heartbeat I wasn’t sure who he was speaking to, whether the word was meant for myself or Valarie.
Wisps of pale strands wavered before my vision as I shook my head furiously.
Valarie slashed a finger downward to her black stilettos. “NOW!”
But my bloodstream was alight with the cold flames of injustice. I pinned my father with a defiant glare and whispered the mantra he’d helped me craft. He couldn’t hear me, but he could read my lips. We’d spoken the mantra often enough to each other over the years.
“My roots are deep. My strength is stone. My breath the wind. I bow to none.”
“Nelle, please,” my mother urged, tears brimming.
“We bow to no one,” I gritted through clenched teeth.
Wychthorn pride glimmered in my father’s eyes as they locked with mine. A barely perceptible dip of his chin, then he locked his spine and squared his shoulders in silent alliance.
My mother gasped. “Byron.” Panic seized her. She started to bow, but he jerked her upright before she could fold in submission.
“Jett!” Valarie hissed.
He activated those godsdamned bracelets, lacing his fingertips together.
A flare of magic brightened and bled through the chains, vibrating against my flesh as Furyos Bonefall answered eagerly. Age-scoured fingers cinched my throat, compressing my windpipe and denying me air. My heart kicked hard as adrenaline slashed through my veins, inflaming my rage.
Movement in the background snagged my attention. Caidan ran trembling hands through his hair, his complexion blanched as he paced in frantic indecision, his wide, horrified eyes bouncing between his aunt, Jett, and me.
Nelle, please—he mouthed, begging me to fall to my knees.
I glared back, contempt burning through the ache in my windpipe.
For five long seconds, Jett held my life in his hands until he unlaced his fingertips, calling the Bonefall off with a swipe against each bracelet.
Furyos loosened its grip, settling into a calmer state around my neck. I sucked in a deep breath, resisting the urge to knead the pain from my throat.
I got the message. We all did.
Bow or suffer.
Silence reigned, but for my ragged breaths.
The only sound on the crowded rooftop was the dark beat of music, its pulse matching my dread-filled heartbeat.
I tore my gaze from Valarie and scanned the Houses.
In the dim pockets of candlelight, their faces appeared like ghoulish masks, exaggerated caricatures of themselves.
They hung on every gesture, every flicker of emotion across my father’s features.
They fed greedily on our fear, gorging on the spectacle like fattened pigs.
The idea of the Great House brought to its knees thrilled them far more than the arrival of those we served.
They hadn’t noticed the slow gathering of Horned Gods.
Beneath the fake sky curving along the dome-shield of magic, a many-limbed Horned God with skin rippling like shifting sand clung to the top of a Corinthian column, delicate stone ivy curling around its crown.
More eyes appeared in the shadows behind the line of pillars.
Some golden amber, like Master Sirro’s, others a vivid hue of colors, bright as fractured light.
A gust of mist washed outward, like a dozing dragon had expelled a sleepy yawn. Mrysst entered our side of the court in skittering steps, curved horns angling as she surveyed the Houses before glancing over her shoulder as if awaiting someone.
My blood ran cold.
A wild, black nightmare, glistening and oily as if a cauldron had been tipped over, washed across the stone floor. Within the waves of darkness was a horde of tiny critters that were her bedmates.
Jurgana.
Taller than her sibling, she was different in appearance, as all Horned Gods were to one another, and from what little I could make of Mrysst beneath the layers of tattered lace, there was nothing similar about the sisters.
She stepped into our side of the Emporium with regal ease.
Sticky power swirled around her feet, her bedmates roiling and chittering.
She was lithe, human in form, naked but for loops of old rope crossing her body and concealing her modesty.
Small leather pouches made from human, animal, and lesser skins swung gently with her dreamy gait.
Pale light shimmered over her hairless skull and reptilian skin in an iridescent sheen.
Intrigue and desire shone in her moss-green eyes, their pupils a vertical slit of amber. She yearned for what I possessed, every quality humming inside me the perfect ingredient for her spells.
I knew. Deep down, I knew what I should do—bow. Doing so would strip away the quality Sirro warned me of. The quality that would push Jurgana to demand a Goods Appraisal from the Butcher.
It would be so easy to give in.
The crack of stilettos on stone snapped my gaze from the Witch to Valarie as she stalked closer. “Make this easier on yourself, Nelle. Save yourself from the Emporium… Fall to your knees.”
My fists balled. “I’ll never do that. You’ll never get that from me!”
“Kneel!”
Her brief sideways glance, lips twitching as if stifling a smile, revealed she knew they’d drawn Jurgana out.
Anger detonated.
“NO!”
I would never bow to a Crowther.
I would never kneel at their feet.
I’d rather die.
The Crowthers held enough of my family’s secrets to force my father’s obedience. And handing over Brangwene’s Hjarte would doom us all. But this threat, of my body being sold to another, I could stop.
My lips parted. “It’s a lie—”
A warm palm slapped across my mouth, cutting me off before my father could hear the truth—that this was all a ruse. The Crowthers were never going to sell me like a whore.
Jett’s voice was oddly vulnerable when I heard him whisper, “Don’t you dare expose our charade.”
I frowned. As I turned my head toward him, I caught a glimpse of his brothers.
Both looked stricken, uneasy, torn by loyalty.
Caidan, who loved my sister. Kenton, whom I suspected had saved Penn from the last Witches Ball only to shove me into her place.
Now both of their resolve seemed to crack once more.
And Jett, the worst of them…
…gave me pause when I saw where he was staring. Not at his aunt. But at Sarnia.
Sirro had left, but his assistant remained. Perhaps to watch over the proceedings and report back to him. Or maybe even to place a bid on me for him. Her appalled gaze was fixed on Jett. Such dismay and disappointment were reflected in its haunted depths.
I watched Jett’s long lashes sweep downward as he closed his eyes to hide his shame. The bob of his throat. The tremor in his exhale.
Oh gods. He liked her.
He really liked her.
“Do it,” Valarie ordered, cold and cruel. The dark fabric of her dress curved around long legs as she took a sidelong step, fury coiling through her bearing.
Jett’s eyes flashed open, full of distress.
He hesitated.
Penn’s reminder echoed through me.
It’s one thing to plan for it. Another thing altogether to actually do it.
“NOW, JETT!”
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Shit… fucking hells…” With a touch on the bracelets, he laced his fingertips. I felt a twitch of talons, a tightening of scarred bone, a second warning. This time he meant to hold it longer.
But it was Valarie’s gloating expression, drunk on power, that tipped me into madness.
Wrath exploded from me like wyrmfire.
A red veil descended over my vision. Great swathes of unadulterated fury gusted through my blood, heating my entire body as if my wyrm had unleashed itself, breathing torrents of moonlit fire in its savagery.
“I BOW TO NO ONE!”
I had nothing to lose. Die now, right here, or endure far more horrific suffering at the hands of the Butcher, who’d brutally hack me into pieces with his cleaver.
Strength snaked around my bones. A slither of dry scales.
As if my wyrm stood with me once more. Graysen had reforged me last night, reminding me I was strong.
Stronger than him.
Stronger than all of them.
I would never lower myself to anyone.
Least of all that loathsome woman.
Jett began to ease his fingers apart, and the Bonefall relaxed against my throat. “I can’t…”
He couldn’t do it.
So I did it for him.
It was one thing for the Crowthers to plan all of this, but it was another thing altogether to cross that line and go through with it. Capturing me had been easy. Bringing me here to frighten me in this appalling manner was the first true step in their machinations to save their mother.
If I was going to die at the Witches Ball, Jett needed to see what he was part of. He needed to face it head-on. I was going to break him and drag him down with me, even if it meant my life ended at my own hands.
I swiveled on the pedestal, confronting him. Grabbing a bone-chain, I moved faster than he could comprehend. Whipping the chain around his hands—once, twice more—trapping them tight, forcing his fingers to lace together. The Bonefall reacted instantly. Its fingers became a vise.
His eyes bulged and voice pitched high with panic. “What are you doing?”
“I will never bow to a Crowther,” I rasped, my throat straining against the relic’s iron grip.
Confusion and terror erupted in his stare.
He tried to yank his hands free, but I’d trapped them too cleverly. We were toe to toe, eye to eye, and he was going to watch me die.
The rooftop became a warzone of noise and enraged shouts.
Of tables upending, shattering glass, of fists striking flesh between black-suited soldiers.
Caidan yelled at Jett to stop, bellowed at his aunt to stand her soldiers down.
Kenton stood frozen in horror. My father’s guards pushed forward, but the Crowther soldiers held fast.
“Holy Hellsgate…” Jett gasped. “Stop! Stop!” He frantically wrenched at his trapped hands, trying to free himself, to stop what I was doing. In his mindless panic, he jerked us around, and I almost fell from the pedestal.
My mother screamed, staggering backward, unable to comprehend what she was seeing.
My father roared my name. “NELLE!”
I’m sorry… I’m sorry…
A part of me truly wanted this. If I died, my family would be free from everything the Crowthers desired. I could save them from the Horned Gods too.
I gasped like a fish dragged out of water. Furyos’s fingers crushed my throat, fiery pain flaring deep in my chest. My lungs felt slashed raw with razor blades, and black dots swarmed at the edges of my vision, seeping inward and growing fatter.
The world compressed into a wall of noise and blurred impressions as pandemonium rained down.
The crowd surged forward, drunk on the deliciously morbid spectacle.
Caidan fought through the jostling sea of bodies like a man battling a storm.
Kenton shoved after him, cutting toward his brother—I couldn’t tell if he meant to tackle Caidan or stop Jett.
Above it all, I heard only my father, roaring my name again and again. My mother sobbed, shaking, tears streaming along the hollows of her gaunt cheeks. My father strained against the impenetrable wall of Crowthers, utter terror etched into every line of his face.
Denied air for too long, my head throbbed hot and heavy. My sore lips swelled. Strength drained from my limbs while dizziness swallowed my senses. My vision blurred before me like a pane of frosted glass before it darkened, like sinking beneath cold ocean waves.
Until the only thing left was a pinprick of violet staring back at me in abject terror.
Until no more.
I tumbled sideways, dragging Jett with me.
I fell to my death.
And death was an empty abyss. Cold and black and endless.