The woodland, Caidan, and Graysen melted away into the background. It was just me and those words spinning through my mind, chasing one another endlessly.

As if she's everything...

Those words filled the empty space inside my chest with bright golden warmth like sunshine, and I smiled. I smiled for him.

I was met with such agony and sorrow carving deep lines into Graysen's handsome features, my smile wobbled and then slipped from my lips.

The sunshine sputtered out.

A heartbeat later, that raw emotion was shuttered away as his mouth curled into a snarl. "I can't! You know I can't!"

He drove his fist for Caidan's face.

I stumbled back, and without thinking, I threw out a surge of power. "Enough!"

The gust of squalling wind struck the brothers and split them apart. They rolled in opposite directions, skidding and tumbling, crashing through the undergrowth.

It seemed like an eternity of waiting, my head muddled with the knowledge Graysen had lied to me until I heard the sounds of footfall and ragged breath.

Graysen was the first to appear, bloodied and bruised, panting hard, his dirt-stained tuxedo ripped and ruined. He glanced at me sideways, as if it were too hard for him to look at me, and his eyes darted away before I could hold his gaze. He grimaced, roughly scrubbing his face, smearing blood across his cheeks, before his palm ran upward to rake through his hair.

Caidan stalked between two spindly birch trees snapped in half, with his fingers pinching the bridge of his broken, bloodied nose. He bent sideways, brushing dirt and leaves from his pants, finding a tear in one leg. "Fuck, my tux, you asshole."

Graysen ignored him. He ignored me too.

"Go find Evvie," I told Caidan, keeping my line of sight on his older brother. "I need to know she's okay."

He nodded, then burst into speed, disappearing swiftly.

Graysen strode toward me. Still unable to look at me directly, he'd fixed his gaze somewhere above my head. He didn't slow his approach and I knew he was going to stride past.

Is he really going to walk away without even saying anything?

I slid sideways into his path and blocked him. He abruptly halted, his shoulders stiff, while refusing to meet my gaze.

Spinning my bracelet between my fingers, I drew strength and courage from its familiar touch. My eyes were wide. My heart beat fast, and I knew his would be too.

"You never slept with Corné's mistress. You were never part of that bet. You lied to me. You were cruel and vicious. You hurt me. This is your chance right here, right now, to be honest and tell me the truth!"

He didn't even blink, but his breath quickened. He finally looked down at me, watching warily as I stepped right up to him, so we were toe to toe.

I craned my neck to look up at him and spoke more softly, more gently. "Tell me the truth. Don't I deserve it?"

Jaw clenched and brow furrowed, he swiveled his head to the side, looking as if he were working something out in his head. He turned back to me, and there was such hopelessness devouring his black eyes it stunned me.

His lips parted—

And I thought, here it is—

He let loose a deep raw sigh, shaking his head once, his hands fisting at his sides, and he shut his mouth, remaining silent.

He stepped around me—

And walked away.

Godsdammit!!

Maybe everything I'd been feeling caught up with me in a different way than my earlier rage. I was angry, but this time for knowledge. There was no way in hells I was going to let him go without getting answers. "Don't you turn your back on me!" I shrieked. "Don't you dare walk away!"

His pace faltered for one brief moment, but he carried on, and my gaze was fixed on his broad back as he disappeared into the gloom of the woodland.

Motherfu—

Memory ignited.

His back, his back, his back—

The scars on his back, the whiplashes...

Last night... I'd touched his back... Seen the scars...

And he'd just snapped. Pushed me away with vile ugly words. What he'd said to me, I'd easily swallowed because it was so close to the truth of us.

And while my stupid pride and ego and heart were bleeding out, I didn't see what was so blindingly obvious.

My fingertips spun through my adamere beads, faster and faster and faster, as my mind sifted through all the little pieces of puzzles. Rotating them, flipping them around, sliding them against one another to see where they fit.

A flickering thought came to me...and then one of those puzzle pieces clicked into another.

We keep the scars we're given.

I realized what I should have at the time, however, the vileness spilling from him had enshrouded everything else. He'd been purposely cruel to make me go away. To stop me from asking about the scars.

I threw myself into a swift—

Reappearing right in front of Graysen in a swirl of featherlight wind.

He reared back in surprise. "The fuck?!"

I didn't give him a chance to say or do anything further. I just blurted it out. "Those whip marks on your back. Who did it? Which one of your family did it?"

Shock briefly scored across his features. He surged forward, bolting—

"Godsdamn you, Graysen Crowther!"

I swifted, intercepted him—

He dodged me, disappearing in a burst of black velocity—

We spun through the woodland, me swifting, him using his speed. Until furious and frustrated, I knocked him off his feet with a punch of cold wind. He fell on his ass with a startled oomph.

I pounced, tangling him up with threads of power. I didn't bother hiding them this time, allowing them to glow with a silvery otherworldly light as they ensnared his body.

He struggled, his arms tied to his sides. "Let me fucking go!"

I straddled his thighs, bending slightly so we were eye to eye.

"Tell me now! What don't you want me to know?" My fingers bunched into the lapels of his jacket, jerking him forward. His jaw clenched tight and his nostrils flared. "Who did it?"

He said nothing, glaring back.

And I just lost it.

"Who did it?! Godsdamn you, Graysen! Who did it to you?!" I slapped his chest. "You went out of your way to make me feel small, insignificant. You stole something precious from me, twisted and tainted it!" I didn't even know what was pouring from my mouth, but I let it all go, everything I'd been keeping bound tight inside. "And worse than that...you! Your stupid smiles and your stupid laugh. You let me in. Shared another side of you. And for some godsforsaken, stupid, fucked up reason, I like you!"

His eyes startled wide.

"What don't you want me to know?" I let loose a barrel of slaps, my palm stinging every time it encountered his muscled chest. "What was it? Go on. Tell me why you said such horrible, nasty things to me?!" I kept hitting him. "What made you hurt me?!"

He was breathing as hard as I was, practically panting.

"Open your godsdamn fucking mouth and tell me!" I bellowed. "Who hurt you?!"

"My Aunt!" he roared.

My hand froze mid-motion. "Valarie?"

My power slipped from my grasp, the threads of magic loosened around his body, and he was free.

Graysen let out a raw wounded noise. "My Aunt Valarie. It was her."

I slowly blinked, absorbing his admission. My hand fell to his chest, right above his heart. Beneath my palm, his chest rose and fell erratically, as if he were on the verge of gasping for breath.

My legs buckled, and I twisted, sinking to my knees beside him, staring blankly at a twisted misshapen pine draped in ivy.

If I thought Graysen was ice, Valarie was arctic.

Although it was her twin brother, Varen, who held led House Crowther, she seemed to rule the family. Out of the pair of them, I'd always known she was the one to watch out for.

And she'd whipped him. Beaten him.

A muffled thud and I swung back to find Graysen on his back, cushioned by moss and thimbleweed.

He stared up at the canopy of leaves dancing in the wind, his breathing just as wild.

Minutes passed where I sat beside him, wanting him to speak, wanting to ask, but couldn't bring myself to. Minutes where I'd hoped he might open up and explain. Instead, I watched shadows flit and shift in the small clearing we'd ended up in. The gloaming had settled in, and motes floated in the pale shafts of dying light.

He let out a low anguished sigh, and I turned just in time to see him fling his forearm over his eyes as if it were too much to look at me, to be this vulnerable, to share this kind of pain. "I didn't know when she'd take to me," he rasped quietly as if his mouth was dry as sandpaper. "Once a week, she'd find me, drag me out, tie me to the whipping post... She whipped me until I couldn't stand. Until I'd almost passed out."

Something caved inside of my chest, and I dug my fingernails into my palms to stop the tears from pricking the corner of my eyes.

His back, his beautiful, ruined back... The punishment he'd endured was savage and had happened over a great length of time, not just one whipping but countless whippings. "How long?" My voice broke on the words.

The barest of touches brushed against my hand, featherlight and coarse at the same time. I glanced down, watching his little finger curl around mine. A simple touch. Perhaps all he could allow himself right now.

Half his face was still hidden beneath his arm. He cleared his throat before saying, "For a full year."

My pinky locked around his tightly. The edge of my palm burned against his cold clammy hand as I shifted my body, turning to face him better, as shock and horror curdled my blood.

"It's our way. A reminder to be better, faster, stronger. Never to fail."

Why would his aunt punish him like that? Cold fear settled inside my gut as a terrible thought took root. "What did you do?"

I grew still as death.

Everything in the woodland seemed to grow still.

Even the wind rustling leaves, the hum of insects quietened.

"I didn't save my mother."

He moved his arm up further on his forehead, and his eyes slid to mine. There was such desolation staring back at me...my heart shattered for him.

He let loose a raw, pained sound, and the hand resting across his forehead clenched into a fist. "I was the only one there and...I couldn't save her!" He kicked out, frustrated and angry. "What use is a blade against a Horned God?!"

My breath left me in a whoosh.

The Horned Gods...

"Who, which ones?"

"There were three of them. Only one I knew—a monster with the face of a child. She accompanied something else, a creature of mist and shadow and wind. And the other was a Horned God with vivid red hair."

The bitter way he spoke the last...I knew that particular Horned God had ended his mother's life.

"I just... I wasn't good enough to protect her... I couldn't save her from them!"

I knew Tabitha Crowther had died, but I'd been told it had been a car accident. I'd never known her death had been at the hands of the Horned Gods. Nor that Graysen had been there at the time. That meant something, I knew that, but my mind was racing far too fast and I was busy flicking through my memories...when had she died? Twelve years ago. "How could you? You were so young. You'd only be—"

"Thirteen. I'd just turned thirteen."

"So your aunt punished you for not being able to save her? You were a godsdamned kid." What could he have done to stop them? What could anyone of us have done against such malevolent power?

He closed his eyes, swallowing hard, and said hoarsely, "I deserved it. Every single lash of the whip."

"Gray—"

"No—"

"I'm sorry..." I whispered, knowing how pathetic it sounded, wishing I could take away his pain.

His eyes snapped open. Then, his hands were on me, flipping me over, pinning me beneath him. His body heat was a furnace, the hungry flames burning in his eyes just as hot.

My body reacted instantly. My heart ricocheted against my ribs. Aether charged the air. Electricity hummed between us, crackling currents of lust bouncing back and forth.

What was he doing?

I wasn't even sure if he knew, either.

And it was stupid of me, so stupid after all the cruel things he'd said to me, to still want him now.

He suddenly couldn't look at me. The shadows of his eyelashes grazed the golden skin of his cheeks. "Don't pity me," his voice low and rough.

Inching my hand between us, I rested it on his chest and slowed...slowed...my heartbeat down. "I don't."

He sucked in a breath as if he'd been deprived of air. His gaze lifted to mine as he slid his hand around the back of my neck, drawing me closer, and for one moment, time paused, and we stared into one another's eyes, seeing past every barrier we'd erected. I wondered why I had never recognized the pain and guilt hidden inside.

The intense heat burning in his eyes for me, dampened with confusion as if he couldn't understand why I could want him in return. And there was a little bit of sorrow too. "Don't...don't look at me like that."

My mouth went dry. The words softly rasped out, "Like what?"

Both of us breathed as one, our heartbeats matching perfectly. His gaze dipped to my mouth and followed the movement of my tongue as it darted out to wet my lower lip.

"As if you want me," he whispered.

He didn't give me the chance to think it through. Lowering his head, his breath kissed my lips, an exhale, a promise.

My entire body sighed.

Just as I thought he'd claim my lips in a bruising desperate kiss, his lips gently ghosted mine, tracing the lines, the curve, the bow indenting my top lip. A deep groan left his throat in a gruff vibration I felt spin through me, spiraling into my core, down to the tips of my toes curling in my shoes.

Cupping his face, my thumbs became sticky with the blood coating his cheeks. More. I wanted more. And I leaned into him, slightly parting my lips, inviting him in, and I made a greedy murmur, "You want me too."

His lips moving over mine, warm and hard and curiously soft—froze.

He pulled back a fraction to stare at me. Even though he was looking at me, he wasn't, he was staring inward. A flash of something, I wasn't quite sure of—guilt perhaps—darkened his eyes. "I can't...do this...I can't..." the words stumbling from him.

He pushed off me. Rising. Standing. His shadow fell over me, denying me light like a shriveled, spindly sapling that would never grow into its full potential.

I looked up at him, confused. My mouth parted—

"I can't, Nelle..." he gasped, retreating., his head hanging low. Everything about him, his stance, the sagging lines of his body, seemed defeated. He whispered in a rough, raw voice, unable to meet my gaze, "I just can't."

He spun away, and in a blur...disappeared.

I stared at the spot he'd just stood, the shadows of twilight engulfing the space, just as a cold and hollow feeling devoured me.

He'd pushed me away again.

This time, a little kinder than the first.

I slowly got to my feet, my mind and heart reeling with what he'd revealed about his scarred back...and his mother.

The wind blustering the layers of my skirt was chilly, but that wasn't what prickled goosebumps all over my exposed skin, what had a shiver slithering down my spine.

Thirteen years old...so young for such pain to be inflicted...and I'd been seven at the time. Seven years old and locked in a tithe prison.

Both of us were punished during the same year.

And his mother...his mother had died that year.