As soon as I nodded, Wychthorn jumped from the broken tree trunk and ran back to the tithe prison to press an ear against the curved brickwork. The formidable structure was strengthened with adamere to confine the more lethal tithes we hunted on behalf of the Horned Gods—otherworldly beasts and lesser creatures.

I followed Wychthorn, my boots shifting through the damp blades of grass to the leaf-dusted flagstones surrounding the sinister building. Wychthorn began murmuring softly to the woman trapped within the prison. I blinked in surprise to hear speaking of an old tale about our goddess Skalki.

Leaning a shoulder against the stone, I listened to Wychthorn spinning an old tale we'd all grown up with—Skalki braving hells to find her mortal lover—except our tales weren't myth. They were our history. As I soaked in her words, my finger and thumb never ceased in movement. I paused, realizing I was mirroring Wychthorn as she worked her fingers through the string of adamere beads wrapped around her wrist as she told her story. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket and then noticed she was just in her thin nightie. She didn't pause in her tale, she just gave the slightest curve of her lips acknowledging me as I shrugged my jacket off and draped it across her shoulders.

After a while she stopped talking and slid down the wall to sit on the flagstone with her knees bent, resting her chin on her folded arms. She gave me a sidelong glance. "She's fallen asleep."

I offered her a hand. "Time for you to go to bed too."

The ends of her pale hair danced around her shoulders as she shook her head, shooting me a resolute look. "No. I need to stay with her. She needs to know she's not alone."

I huffed out a breath. Stubborn, so stubborn, Nelle Wychthorn.

Slowly spinning around I lowered myself to sit down beside her. We sat in silence. My thoughts drifted away to the tithe we caught. How I'd handed him over to my brother, Kenton, who would have taken him home to my family's estate and locked him up in our own tithe prison. He was a serial killer who liked choking little girls to death. I felt justified handing him over to the Horned Gods...but the girl in there, locked behind stone...she'd be innocent.

We'd sat in silence for so long that when Wychthorn spoke, I jolted. "Sometimes...I was put in there...the door shut and locked."

I grew still. Everything grew still. Even the soft breeze slinking through the woodlands seemed to die.

Locked in a tithe prison?

What had she done?

Anger sparked—Who would do that to her?

I frowned. "There's no windows, no light..."

"Absolute darkness," she said softly, still staring ahead, her gaze fixed on the undergrowth. "So dark I couldn't see my hand in front of my face."

I wondered if that was the reason for her night light. The string of fairy lights she'd wrapped around her shoulders.

"Why?"

"I have a temper. Or hadn't you noticed?" She tried to make light of it, but there was a tightness to her confession. She sighed—the sound full of pain, full of memory. "I lost myself in terror for the first few days."

I think my heart stopped right then. My stomach fell away. A few days? How long...how long had she been kept in there?

"That kind of darkness...it felt like I was nothing but a whisper of thoughts. I'd pinch myself, the pain a reminder I was there, alive, whole, I lived in a body."

My hands were fisted so tightly, my nails cut into my palms. Byron, that motherfucker. "Your father put you in there." It wasn't a question.

She turned to look at me, angling her head so her cheek rested against her folded arms. "No. My mother did. My father didn't know. He was away a lot... It was a bad year."

Horror flared. Her mother... Marissa did that do her—

Over the course of a year....a year...

My gut went ice-cold.

Don't ask, don't ask, don't ask—

"When was this?"

"When I was seven. Just before I turned eight."

A sickness roiled inside my gut, flooding my senses with an urge to retch. I scrubbed my face before dragging my fingers roughly through my hair. My hands felt cold against my skin which had gone clammy. Fuck, for a moment those iron bands tightened around my chest again, making it hard to breathe. Back then, when she was about to turn eight, I'd not long celebrated my thirteenth birthday. And I knew...I knew why she'd been treated like that. And she hadn't a clue. No idea what she'd done to my family.

"My mother loves me, but she's afraid of me. Whenever my father left, and it seemed he was hardly home that year, she'd lock me up and made my sisters' promise not to tell." Her fingers tightened on the adamere bracelet. "I think I would have lost my mind completely if I hadn't heard her voice." At my questioning glance, she answered, "Evvie. She would sit outside the prison and spin me tales or sing lullabies. When I was a child, Evvie was the only one who could calm me."

She hadn't realized that she'd given away one of her secrets to me. Her senses were heightened to a degree they even superseded my own. No one should be able to hear through the thick walls of the tithe prison, but she'd been able to.

"When did it stop?" I asked.

She yawned, stretching an arm before pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. With oncoming sleep, her eyelids grew heavy. "Lise finally told my father and he put an end to it." She gave me a small sleepy smile. "You once told me Evvie was a simpleton with no backbone...that she was worthless. You couldn't be so wrong. Evvie is the strongest one in our family. She's the sweetest, kindest person. She puts herself second. Always." Her words came slower as her eyelids drooped. "The perfect Wychthorn daughter... She will marry that asshole Pelan because my father desires the union... She will endure it. But she is no simpleton. And she isn't worthless... Not to me."

She fell asleep and her head lolled against my shoulder. I didn't move her away when I knew I should have. She shivered as she slept, even beneath my jacket. Sage was curled up by her side, but his wraith body offered no warmth, just comfort.

I could have left her there, alone. Could have carried her away. But I didn't. I stayed and let her presence comfort the tithe trapped within the prison.

Wychthorn stirred as I pulled her onto my lap. Her entire body tensed. Then she let out the deepest sigh, weary and heavy, and she relaxed, finally letting herself just give in as she curled into me, into my warmth, her wounded hands bound with strips of my t-shirt snuggling around my chest.

The hours slipped by as my mind turned over everything she'd said, and more puzzle pieces fell into place. The year she'd been locked up in the tithe prison was the worst year of my life. I'd failed my mother. I'd failed my sister. And while Nelle was imprisoned in darkness, terrified and alone, I had my own punishment dealt out. Week after week after week for a full year. And with every lick of the whip, I'd hated her more.

And now here with her, learning what I had, everything had changed, and yet, at the same time, nothing.

I rested my chin on top of her head, breathing her in. A girl who braved the darkness with only a string of blinking lights to comfort a girl she'd never met, locked behind a wall of adamere.

Dawn lit the woodland, burning leaves into pale pink and peach and gold. An hour later I heard movement heading our way. Servants, no doubt, to tend to the tithe, to later take her to the temple where she'd stay until the blessing ceremony. When I rose with Wychthorn in my arms she murmured something into my chest. "Cold snap of dawn."

I didn't know what that meant, why she would say it. Shaking her gently, to rouse her from slumber, I hoped I could ask her. But she remained asleep.

As the sunlight poked through the trees, I carried her back to the mansion before we were discovered.

***

I'd been so wild with fury over Danne Pelan I hadn't taken any notice of Nelle's quarters the first time I'd stepped in there.

This time, my pace faltered as I carried her inside.

She had large rooms. No surprise there. Spacious living room—the usual multi-media, soft couch and armchairs, a workspace. Her bedroom door was ajar and I could see that pretty four-poster bed we'd tumbled and fought and dry-fucked on. No doubt a walk-in closet and bathroom would be off that room too.

I turned around slowly, taking it all in. I don't know what I had been expecting. Maybe stuffed teddy bears or Hello Kitty with everything adorned in a gaudy pink.

Not what I was greeted with, at all.

I'd walked into a psycho stalker's lair.

Except not.

Her walls were covered to the point I had absolutely no idea what color they'd been painted. There was one lonely area not dedicated to Wychthorn's obsession: a floor-to-ceiling bookcase overly stuffed with books crammed into every available space, even piled around the massive TV and music system.

But these pictures plastered all over the walls weren't of some random guy, his face tacked across the wall with a myriad of photographs showing him meandering unwittingly through his droll life, paying bills, or going off to work, or private moments at his home.

But shouldn't I have suspected this?

Every day Wychthorn and I had spent together, her head had been shoved into some kind of book...or her Kindle. I couldn't help the stupid grin. I knew exactly what kind of books were stored on her Kindle.

Every inch of wall space was covered with maps of the world and pictures of anything of interest. There were the usual things, like the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, and Uluru. But, interestingly, odd information as well. Like a news article about a small family-run bistro that served a secret family recipe of stews passed down from generation to generation. A news clipping showcasing an urban garden of weeds tucked into the corner of Street no. 43 and 56 of Ascendria. A close-up picture of belladonna flowers and their deadly petals which grew where krekenns lurked beneath manholes in the city.

There were images of street performers and mime artists. A tattoo parlor. The best stall to get a knock-off designer handbag. A diner with plastic red-checkered table clothes. Buskers. Art galleries too.

My gaze skimmed over a map of a rambling warren of catacombs that resided beneath the sprawling city of Ascendria, before moving over to a picture of a pristine lake, no doubt tacked on the wall because of the brilliant azure blue of the water. But swimmers often were dragged to their deaths by black-scaled creatures that lurked in its depth.

Entering her bedroom, I lowered Wychthorn to her bed, carefully removing my jacket from her shoulders and untangling the fairy lights from her too. As I pulled up the pale yellow quilt and tucked her into bed, she wiggled a little, getting comfortable beneath the cozy layers, and gave another breathy sigh.

Sage jumped up and curled up into a ball at the very end of the bed, resting his head on his paws and keeping a close eye on me. I sat down, the mattress dipping beneath my weight. But I had to see. I unwound the strips of material from both of Wychthorn's hands. Sure enough, exactly as I'd suspected, her fingernails were still torn, some of them to the quick, but not a single wound on the flesh.

Unnatural healing.

Interesting.

Just like me and my siblings.

Tendrils of blond hair had fallen across her brow. I pushed them back, pausing as that prickling sensation sparked at my touch.

I should have left then, but something snagged my attention—

An enormous map covered a single wall in her bedroom.

With my jacket held in one hand, I rose, silently padding over to the wall. Squinting, my gaze dragged across the map, trying to decipher what place this was. It struck me then, what she'd done. It was the Wychthorn estate. She'd mapped it out like a cartographer. The mansion in the middle, streams, the river that ran across the eastern border. A well of water. The rolling hills. She'd marked out the woodland. Even her favorite spots, the trees she liked to sit in, the trails she'd carved through the woods. Nests of birds she checked on. The burrows of woodland animals.

Fuck me. Did Byron ever allow her off the estate?

I glanced about her bedroom, at the furniture in pale beech wood, their fabric patterned with ivy in shades of lemon. A dresser caught my attention and a surprised smile tugged at my lips—well what do you know—silly things, stupid things, were kept in an open box on her dressers. My heartbeat quickened to see the bar coasters. A dried pressed flower. A subway ticket. A menu and napkin. Even a sea shell.

And a tiny paper bird.

My eyebrows shot up.

Fuck.

She'd kept it.

I hadn't fully understood why I'd made it for her the evening we'd signed the Alverac. I just found myself tearing a page from a random book, my fingers bending the paper to my will. I'd been mocking her, but there was also an apology in the creases, the tucks and folds of the tiny paper bird. Even then I'd known I was going to cage her. Clip her wings.

The soft sound of rustling behind me had my upper body half-twisting around. I glanced over my shoulder and found Wychthorn awake. She rubbed her sleepy eyes with her delicate hands. She flicked her gaze to the window and the curtains cast aside. Abruptly pushing into motion, she sat up, and with a voice still slurry with slumber, asked. "Is she—"

"You fell asleep. But we stayed until morning until the servants came and took her to the temple."

Her mouth opened to protest, but I raised my hand to stop her. "There's nothing you can do for her."

Her shoulders slumped in defeat, but a moment later she gave a single nod. Leaning forward, she pushed the blankets down to her hips and her gaze turned wary and considering when it met mine. She wet her lips with her tongue and cleared her throat. "Thank you for staying with me."

I turned back to the wall covered in her map of the estate. "You don't get out much, do you?"

"You know that."

I suppose I did, I just didn't realize how little she was let out of her home. The youngest Wychthorn was kept a mystery from the rest of the Houses. But, given my position in her life, I was one of the few let into her little world. Obviously, a small, confined world, restricted to the estate.

Behind me, I heard the quilt being pushed aside; the sound of approaching footsteps muffled by the carpet; then a yawn and a stretch of limbs.

I turned fully, my inquiring gaze clashing with hers. "Why do they keep you caged, little bird?" It was the same question I'd asked in the aviary five years ago, slightly reworded. "Why you and not your sisters?"

"Who's to say they weren't caged too?"

My family had kept a vigilant eye on the Wychthorns for many years. And I knew that while her sisters were let out, she remained on the estate. I didn't think she'd ever been on vacation. Nor had she joined her mother and sisters when they traveled to fashion houses in Rome or Barcelona, even as near as New York.

Wychthorn made her way to a tall set of drawers. She pulled open a drawer to rifle through cottony underthings. "They're only allowed out to play because they're either married or engaged," she said, snagging a pair of underwear. Soft, white cotton. Virginal. My lips twitched. I bit back the grin—I hadn't thought to find out if she did wear a pair of panties beneath that short nightie of hers.

"You are too," I answered, my gaze covertly sliding all over her legs. Fuck, she really did have a tight, toned body. And that ass, round and firm. I wanted to run my hands over it again.

She swiveled around and I schooled my features not to give away the fact I'd been leering at her like a godsdamned creep. She realized what was in her hand and bunched the material in her fist before hiding her underthings behind her back. A flush of dusky pink burned her cheeks. "Not in the same way they are."

I had to agree. "No. Not in the same way."

Her gaze was level, not shying from her truth. "Isn't that what we are, daughters? Just something to barter with? Earn a higher placement. Join Houses together."