I searched through the milling crowd and found him easily enough. The boy was staring at my sister with a dreamy kind of look in his green eyes. He became aware of my incensed attention fixed on him, and his head swiveled my way so fast that his chocolate brown hair shivered.

Snatching my dagger from the inside of my tux jacket, I twirled it. The spinning blade caught wildfyre light and gleamed blue as I delivered Ezra Qillisan a cold vicious smile.

His eyes widened in understanding and his throat bobbed as he swallowed.

Yeah, that's right—stay away.

My sister tensed. "What did you do?" She pressed her lips into a thin line.

I tucked away the dagger and used my most innocent voice. "Nothing."

Her nostrils flared. "Ezra Qillisan, right?"

I grunted, glaring at the boy, who I thought would have heeded my warning and shuffled away, but the little fucker tipped his chin up at me. A sliver of me delighted in his bravado. The rest of me wanted to crush him beneath my shiny leather shoes.

Ferne crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. "He's my friend." But her cheeks flushed a brighter pink at her botched attempt at subterfuge.

"Then what,"—waving a pointed finger at her expression—"is all this?"

She slapped my hand away. "I'm sixteen, Gray. Siiixteeen and old enough to like a boy and hope he likes her back."

An anguished noise crawled from my throat as I scrubbed a palm against my face while hissing, "Gods, Ferne, I'm your brother."

She thwacked me on the arm, good and hard, and expelled a sound like ugh, but more peeved. "I knew I should have stayed with Caidan."

I didn't know if the suffocating sensation around my neck was the uncomfortable knowledge that my baby sister was growing up or the fact I'd messed up the knot in my tie, as per fucking usual. My fingers scrabbled at the knot, trying to loosen it up.

Ferne heaved an annoyed sigh and reached for the silky fabric of my tie, her fingers inching upward along its length until she reached its apex. She deftly unknotted it and began to retie it properly, the silken ends whirling around with her deft moves. "I don't know why you're all so useless at this." Finished, her hands brushed along my shoulders, feeling the fabric of my jacket beneath her touch. "What number tux is this?"

"Fourth," I grouched.

"Lucky for you I'd brought so many," she grinned. My sister, though resentful of Nelle, had always found my time spent with Little Miss Annoying grudgingly amusing, and knew the tricks played on me well enough to have thought ahead and brought not one, but half a dozen tuxedos with her.

Ferne's fingers stilled. She tipped her head to the side. Dark eyebrows nudged together over the delicate lace that covered her forehead and eyeless sockets. The lace was a soft pink color that matched her dress perfectly. She brought her hands up to hover in front of my face, fingers spread wide, before she made a soft considering hum. I felt her senses sweeping over my body, wrapping around me, prodding and poking.

Ferne reeled back, her mouth falling open. "Something's changed...shifted in you brother."

"Nothing has—"

"Bullshit," she snarled. Her fury cut brutally into her beauty.

Dread clenched my heart with sharp claws and squeezed like a motherfucker.

If my sister could sense what I railed against, who else could? My gaze instinctively cut to my aunt, but she was too busy listening to Kenton informing her that he and Jett would be escorting the tithe convoy later tonight, to have noticed.

"Ferne," I glared, shoving her hands away from my face. "Just leave it alone, okay? I got this."

She grew serious, deadly. Everything about her. "You better. The Witches Ball is nearly upon us and we need her."

The Witches Ball was held every seven years at a secret location and attended by those Horned Gods whose power dealt in nefarious spells and potions. It was less a ball, and more an auction. We'd already teased out our bait and were waiting for the tug on the line to reel in an invitation. Houses were very rarely invited to the Witches Ball unless you possessed a unique offering or something that would pique their curiosity...like a Wychthorn princess.

Revulsion, as thick as bile, surged up my throat.

Why couldn't it have been any of my other brothers chosen to do this to her?

I looped a hand around Ferne's elbow and gently led her away. She frowned in question but allowed me to direct her off the cobblestones and into the woodland, the curtain of leaves and branches blocked out the radiance glowing from the wildfyre torches and plunged us into darkness. I carefully guided her a short distance from my family, over jutting roots and the uneven layer of dead matter rotting on the ground, stopping before a twisted adolescent wild pine.

There was a question that Nelle had asked me last night. One I had asked myself over the years but never raised. "Why me?" I asked my sister quietly, my voice strangely hoarse.

Confusion had her angling her head. The dark curtain of her hair fell across the laced forehead and the shiny lengths cascaded over a shoulder.

"Why did you choose me for the Alverac?"

The question startled her. But the way she quickly settled, made me feel that she'd been expecting me to have asked, perhaps for a long time now. "Complicated and simple."

I squeezed her hand urging her to explain.

She huffed, her bottom lip jutting out a fraction, and she looked exactly her age, a surly teenager. "Simply, spite. I was too young and angry to be standing there amongst the Wychthorns. And I figured she deserved to be broken by the person who needs it to heal himself."

My breath constricted tight in my throat.

Is that me?

Broken? Fractured?

My sister seemed to read my mind and my feelings. Reaching out with her free hand, her callus-roughened skin scraped atop mine. She whispered, distress in her tone, "You shouldn't carry the burden of what happened that night with our mother. It's not right—"

"None of this is right," I barked, cringing when I glimpsed my aunt swing my way at my outburst, her sharp eyes glowing like a nocturnal animal. I ducked my head until my aunt's attention went back to Kenton, before hissing quietly, "What we're going to do with her? The why of it all. She doesn't know. She's innocent—"

"None of this is fair, or right." Ferne whipped back fiercely. "There's only what we can do, what we have to do." She squeezed my hand so hard my knuckles buckled, and fiery pain shot through my fingerbones, my arm. "Our father and aunt won't rest. And neither will I until it's done."

My sister was right. None of us would stop. We'd been at this for far too long to give up. It was too ingrained in my siblings, the hate for the Wychthorns.

Ferne gentled with a long expulsion of breath. She released my hand and lifted her own in a defeated manner. "Gray...I know it's complicated. That's what I meant earlier." She gnawed her bottom lip, her brow furrowing as if she wondered how to voice it. She sighed, a resigned sound, turning her head in my direction, and I imagined, though she no longer possessed eyes, she was staring at me hard. "There's something between you two...I felt it the night of the Alverac...I'd felt it before when you two were in one another's space at House Gatherings." She glanced away, her face angled toward Nelle as if she was drawn to her the same way I had always been. "I still don't know what it is...but I recognized that night, it had to be you, it had always been you."

My heart lurched with hope. Stupid hope that my sister might understand.

Her hand wrapped around my forearm as swiftly as an asp. Agonizing pain erupted as my bones crunched together under the force she wielded. I struggled not to wince, not to tear her hand from my arm. Her voice was edged in savagery as she dragged me closer, teeth shining brightly in the dark night. "You cannot pity her or give in to her if we are to honor our mother."

My heart drummed a rapid beat inside an empty, hollow chest.

My sister was right.

I was teetering on the precipice of something all-consuming, about to fall into oblivion. I had to haul myself back from the edge, from making the wrong choice before it was too late and I was condemned along with Nelle.

As if sensing my resolve, Ferne relaxed her hold on me but didn't let go. She jerked her chin in the direction of Aunt Valarie and pushed me toward her.

If I was ice, my aunt was absolute zero. And it was she—with every slash of the whip, every hissed accusation that fell from her lips that I'd failed my mother, my family, our House—who had sculptured the wall of ice and incinerated my heart, rendering it to ash.

She'd strategically placed herself where she could see through the line of guards that separated the Wychthorns from the rest of the Houses.

Don't look, don't look, don't look—

But I'd never been very wise. And my gaze traveled to the Wychthorns.

I covertly watched Aldan guide Lise away to House Reska as his family made their way inside the temple. Lise absentmindedly rubbed her swollen belly with a delicate hand, glancing back over her shoulder at her youngest sister, smiling as she mouthed—See you later.

It wasn't her jerky movement that ensnared my attention. It was a sudden flare of panic that erupted beneath my skin and set my senses scrambling.

My little bird stood in front of her father, the layers of her silver-gray dress swirling with the brisk wind. His broad hands gripped her upper arms so tightly I saw her bite her bottom lip to stop from wincing.

Fury engulfed me with the ferocity of a brush fire.

I'm going to fucking annihilate him!

Byron had been absent most of the day, spending his time in his office in meetings with Heads of Upper and Lower Houses as they'd arrived. His bright blue eyes studied hers, but there was a glassiness to them, shining with too much alcohol.

My heightened senses allowed me to listen to their conversation. He'd demanded she explain what had happened to Corné. She was trying to, without giving herself away—what she'd almost done, reveal herself—but Byron wasn't having any of it.

"Enough!" he barked, raising a hand, and she reared back, flinching.

Violence hissed through my veins. I almost took a step toward him, wanting to strike him back.

Self-preservation roared in my head, overriding the bloodlust—DON'T!

Fuck, just don't!

I caught myself in time, forcing myself to stand still, and became aware that my hand had inched inside my jacket pocket, reaching for my dagger. Withdrawing it quickly, I balled my fist against my thigh instead.

Every inch of my body went on lockdown.

I felt my aunt's curiosity, her intrigue at my reaction.

Despite the rage, my expression was still schooled into boredom as if everything disinterested me. But nothing was further from the truth. Satisfied, Aunt Valarie turned back to the Wychthorns, her hands linked at the center of her waist, and we both watched Nelle shrink, confused and hurt by her father's reaction.

Byron paused momentarily, then raked a trembling hand through his salt-peppered hair. His thin lips parted as if he was going to speak, then they fell shut. Smooth fingers, which had never held a blade, went to her chin so he could tilt her face upward. And he stared at her as if he was memorizing how she looked, how she felt, as if this was a goodbye. He whispered hoarsely, "I'm sorry."

I tasted guilt, desperation, and fear clouding his emotions. A godsdamned volatile cocktail. The memory of Marissa's warning and the thought of Byron even considering ending Nelle's life chilled my blood. It was an effort to curb my natural instincts. I wanted to shove my dagger into the back of his skull.

Byron blinked and the moment between them broke. He stepped into his role once more, brutal stoicism returning. An order. "Keep it hidden, Nelle. For your sisters' sakes. For all the Wychthorns."

She nodded, rising up on her toes and then rolling back on her heels, one white-knuckled hand clenching her bracelet of beads behind her back. Her other hand slid over her swirling skirt, gripping the fabric to stop the layers from being buffeted by the storm winds. But I saw it for what it was, nervousness and something to do to avoid his cold glare.

At that moment I was struck by the beauty of her wildness.

She hadn't changed. Maybe she hadn't found the time or had the inclination to do so. Her skirt lifted and fluttered. A few of those fine silvery layers were dirtied and torn and hooked with tiny leaves. The silver shoes were stained with grass and mud. Her hair, the pale locks of moonlight, was a tangled mess of cobwebs across a bare shoulder, and her high-cut cheeks were flushed from the harsh rebuke from her father.

She stole the breath from me.

Nelle suddenly glanced sideways. An intoxicating jolt razed through me with the velocity of a lightning strike as her silver-grays locked with my blacks.

I felt like I'd been sucker punched.

Her thick lashes widened in surprise at encountering my stare. Astonishment glittered in those pretty eyes first before she flashed a secretive feminine smile and my heart thrummed in response. Everything in me wanted to return it.

Don't...don't...don't...

A flash flood of panic drowned me beneath a sickly deluge, making it hard to breathe.

I was going to ruin her in every single depraved way.

She was going to burn with hate for me.

It wouldn't matter to her that I already hated myself.

The hurt and fear had dissolved and now there was something else slinking beneath my skin, humming down that strange bond we shared—curiosity tempered with trepidation. And delight, utter enchanting delight.

I couldn't look. I couldn't feel. I had to shut it out. Shut her out. Shut out all those feelings she was projecting.

Gods, no good will come of wanting someone like me.

Didn't she know that, recognize it?

The sweetness in her features cleverly disguised the creature lurking beneath her skin. The markings that should warn of her lethality were innocent freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks, shifting as she failed to tame the charming crooked grin blooming on her lush pink lips.

But me, I practically screamed predator—the blatant markings were all over my body, the tattoos, the Ukkenskrit tales that told of my exploits, of those who had fallen to the blades I carried, even to my bare hands—screaming loud enough to spike the protective instincts of those weaker and send them scrambling away. My entire body was a weapon, forged in violence.

And she was my prey.

But I wasn't delusional not to realize that I was also hers.

Gods, she's my match in every single way.

I closed my eyes and drew in my aunt's subarctic temperament. A reminder of what was at stake here—my mother.

A heavy feeling pressed itself on me. It wasn't her, it was all me. A dull aching void had carved a hole inside my chest.

I wanted her.

I wanted everything.

I wanted everything I couldn't have.

I shoved that want down, down, down, to that dank dim place where I shoved every complicated feeling I had for her, but for those rare moments where I'd forgotten myself and let it surface.

As if she's everything.

I cracked my neck and let that bleak frostiness seeping from my aunt flood my veins and freeze my cold black heart.

It came down to a choice—my choice.

Her or letting go of our plans and schemes.

Her or the Horned God.

Her or my mother.