Chapter 5
Graysen
When I strode into the family room, my aunt didn’t acknowledge me. No one did. The room was deathly silent. Glancing around, I realized why. Most of the candles had been extinguished, and darkness enshrouded Jett.
“How bad?” my aunt asked quietly. She sat stiff-backed in an armchair, her features strained.
Ferne knelt on the floor, a hand laced with Jett’s. He lay on the couch, one knee bent, the other leg outstretched, an arm flung across his face to hide himself. His fingers entwined with hers, clenched tighter then released, repeating the motion in time with the waves of pain crashing through him.
“Bad,” he hissed.
Fear flooded my chest like brackish water surging on a high tide.
My brother’s connection with our mother kept everyone tethered to our purpose.
In some ways, I thought Jett considered this as a form of punishment and a relief of sorts.
Her suffering meant she was alive. But no amount of coaxing, bribing, or even yelling would convince him to take some pain medication.
He endured the agony along with her. I had done my penance. This was his.
Crushing guilt bore down hard. I went straight for the liquor cabinet, snatched up a bottle and poured the whiskey into a crystal tumbler. I slammed it back, heat stinging my throat, then poured another. None of us knew how long the torture would last or even if she’d survive.
Behind me, I heard the whisper of fabric and guessed my sister had risen. Her footsteps crossed stone, then rugs, and returned to stone again as she approached. She leaned a hip against the liquor cabinet, felt for the tumbler in my hand and stole it from me.
“Ferne,” I warned.
She held up a finger. “Don’t care, Gray. Tonight…it’s gone straight to hells.” Arching her neck back, she swallowed a mouthful of whiskey. Her face scrunched up with disgust as she shook her head, her dark hair flicking about her shoulders. “Ew.”
I pried the tumbler from her grip and refilled it.
“Where is she?” Ferne asked.
“Locked away.”
“Your rooms?”
“Yes.”
She angled herself subtly toward my aunt, who was in close conversation with Kenton. Caidan had taken vigil beside Jett, sitting with his back against the couch, his hands clasped between his bent knees.
Ferne leaned closer. “Are you insane, Gray? Aunt Valarie is going to—”
“Don’t want to hear it.”
She scowled.
I did not give a fuck.
She huffed, and then her shoulders dipped as something troubling rippled across her expression as she stared downward, running her fingers over the mirrored surface of the liquor cabinet. “How long did Danne have her trapped?”
At that name—that fucking name—hate surged in great icy waves and turned everything into a haze of red. He got away with too much. Hurt her too much. Not as much as he’d wanted—and that was a small, pathetic blessing.
My sister, through whatever means she had, sensed the rage blustering through my veins. She rested a hand over mine, stroking a comforting touch back and forth.
Calm. I had to calm down.
Drawing a deep breath, I exhaled, repeating it until my racing heart steadied and I locked down the fury.
I tipped my neck back, draining the whiskey, then tapped my finger against the rim of the empty tumbler, watching the barest of candlelight splinter across the crystal before finally answering quietly, “Too long.”
A small, pained sound came from Ferne. She squeezed my hand. “I’m not sorry you ended him.”
“I didn’t. Nelle did.”
I could feel her surprise, could taste it.
Anguish broke her voice as she glanced upward. “Gray…what are we doing?”
A heavy sigh rose from my chest, but the words were cold and flat. “Finding our mother. Isn’t this the only thing we’ve been doing all these years?” I set the tumbler on the cabinet. The hollow strike against mirrored-glass too loud in the stillness.
A moment later, Jett’s pain-roughened voice had me twisting around. “Wychthorn’s a wyrm.” He’d lowered a shaky arm from his face, and his agony-glazed eyes focused on my aunt. “A wyrm,” he repeated. “A prize any Horned God would slather over. Why don’t we trade Wychthorn for our mother?”
Fear tightened a hold on my heart.
My aunt’s reply slashed through the room like lightning. “Because we still don’t know which Horned God has your mother.”
“We broker a deal through Sirro,” Jett insisted.
“And risk him stealing Wychthorn for himself and condemning us all to death?” Aunt Valarie shook her head. “No, we stick to the plan. We use Wychthorn to get into the Witches Ball, and we’ll find the Horned God there… We have to.”
I didn’t know what I could do to right this all.
We just needed in.
Nelle could get us in.
We didn’t need to go any further than that.
Kenton stood at the long table where we used to gather to play board games or read or share a casual lunch when we were all kids. He braced both hands on the wooden surface. “And if we don’t?”
“We’ll deal with that outcome then,” my aunt replied.
From where he sat, leaning his back against the couch, Caidan raised his bowed head. “We haven’t even received a request for a Goods Appraisal.”
“We need the Horned Gods’ interest, and so far, no one has bitten,” Kenton added bitterly. “All of this is a wasted exercise if we can’t get into the Witches Ball.”
My aunt was about to reply when the jarring sound of the door opening made her pause. Everyone turned to watch our father stride in and head straight for me.
I assumed he’d come straight from Byron. He grabbed the whiskey bottle and drank straight from the lip, downing it in big gulps, hissing out a breath before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The bottle thunked onto the cabinet.
Silence.
It was a long, drawn-out moment before he spoke. “You did good.”
Fuck, it didn’t feel like that to me. Using Nelle in that despicable way against her father sickened me.
“Byron’s panicking over what might happen to his daughter… To his family. The Blacksmith needs the piece that Byron holds. When you see him next, you need to break him and get him to hand it over to us.” And there it was. The unspoken—break her.
The girl was impossible to break. My family was going to learn that.
“Where is she exactly?” my aunt asked, rising gracefully from her seat and drawing nearer.
Shit, here it was.
I steeled myself for her wrath. “My quarters.”
Shock swamped the room.
I could feel the question—why?—rolling in everyone’s minds.
Aunt Valarie took a slow, measured step closer, and I braced my stance. Her voice was silken menace. “What is she doing in there?”
I still had no fucking idea how to reply to that.
Ferne, my brave, clever sister, saved me.
Her authoritative tone cut through the tense moment, distracting everyone. “We need to find out what Aldert Pellan knows. We need to know if Danne revealed to his father that he’d stolen Nelle. If he revealed she was other. “
My aunt shared a look with my father. Both remained silent, yet an answer seemed to pass between them. She nodded in confirmation. “I’ll take a trip up to the Carpellean Mountains and see what I can find out.”
“We’ve got another problem,” my father said to us all. “Sirro’s called a meeting with our House tomorrow morning. He wants answers as to who attacked the tithe convoy and why.” His stormy gaze landed on my youngest brother. “Supposedly, you’re the only witness that survived, Jett.”
Jett had been staring up at the ceiling, a forearm over his clammy forehead, mouth a thin line. His gaze slid to my father, and he gingerly sat upright.
My father, with his imposing size, stalked across the room, the glow of dim light catching on his dusty armor.
“I have no idea how the fu—” He caught himself in time, pressing his lips together firmly.
He’d never sworn since my mother had been stolen.
The rest of us… I think we did it hoping one day she’d be there to cuff us around the ears.
“I don’t know how we are to get our House out of this mess you’ve landed us all in. ”
Kenton rounded the table. “I’ll take the lead in the investigation. Anything that points Jett’s way, I’ll make it go away.”
A nod from my father. “After the meeting with Sirro, if we survive it, you,”—he pointed a finger at me—“and the rest of your brothers, need to head to New York. There’s trouble with the Widowmakers and an insurrection brewing.”
“I’m not leaving.”
I’m not leaving Nelle here alone.
“You’ll attend this meeting with Sirro, and you’ll accompany your brothers and deal with the Albanian syndicate. No one returns until they are put back in their place!”
Fuck!
It could be days before we got a handle on that shit with the Widowmakers.
My father’s gaze moved across all of us, and with each second that passed, the hardened angle of his body softened.
He ran a hand through his graying, ash-coated hair.
He spoke more quietly when he gave his next order.
“First, we bury our dead and clear the battle site. We keep this contained. And we do this now.”
It was going to be a long night, one full of sorrow and grief.
But before it began, I needed to check on Nelle.
My brothers gathered and headed for the door.
“Jett,” Ferne cried. “You need to rest. Take a painkiller…please.”
Jett limped toward the desk, riddled with paperwork and half-formed devices, resting a moment while he tried to catch his breath. “I’m fine.” He dragged a loose lock of sweat-dampened hair from where it had fallen across his eyes.
“He needs to rest, he can’t—” my sister protested, appealing to our aunt.
“Jett will rest…after he’s taken his dues,” she snapped back.
Gods, he’d earned a whipping.
And one look at my father’s formidable glare locked on his youngest son—he agreed.
Still, it would be nothing like my punishment all those years ago. This was a single lick of the whip. A tradition set long ago by our ancestor Oskar.