My mother smoothed her hair with trembling fingers, though there wasn't a strand out of place, however, the gesture seemed to settle her. A moment later she placed her hands on her lap, folding them on top of one another, and began to speak softly. "Tabitha Crowther was my best friend since childhood. We were thick as thieves, she and I." She may have smiled, but whatever it was quickly faded. "Years ago, when you were seven years old, she phoned to warn me. She knew the Horned Gods were coming for you that night. And just like Tabitha, she gave no thought to herself or the fact that she was betraying the Horned Gods." She shook her head as if she couldn't believe it herself. "I'd never breathed a word about Tabitha. About what she was, what she could do."

"She was an other?" The shock of it left me breathless.

That was why the Horned Gods were there the night of the car crash.

My mother nodded. "I never divulged her secret to anyone, not even with your father. Just as she'd done the same for me. She'd never told a soul about you either. Not even her husband, Varen, knew."

I was other...as Tabitha Crowther had been too.

And then I remembered Graysen had been there that night too. He'd have overheard his mother's phone call.

"Your father overheard me talking to Tabitha. And in my panic, I hadn't realized what I'd said, I'd been worried for her too." She glanced toward my father, but he didn't meet her eye. She sucked in a breath and squared her frail shoulders. "Your father made me choose. He said, if we could give the Horned Gods someone else, it will divert them from you." She wet her dry lips with her tongue and this time when she looked his way, he turned away from her fully. Perhaps because he couldn't face what he'd asked her to do, perhaps because he couldn't look at her while she told me the truth. I watched him make his way to the window, his back to us both as he leaned his palms against the glass and stared at the lightning forking across the rolling black clouds.

My mother's gaze dropped to her hands as she began to rotate the wedding ring around her too-thin finger, the gold band too loose to fit properly because of the weight she'd lost. Deep creases gouged her brow. "You were fast asleep in the family room when Master Sirro arrived at the estate, and you never knew he paid you a visit. I don't know by what miracle, only Zrenyth knows, but he never detected anything other about you."

I shot a look at my father's turned back. "And Master Sirro just accepted that, without talking to me, investigating further?"

He kept his gaze on the roiling storm. Down below, stretched out on the vast lawns, the marquee was flooded with light and life. "It was a tumultuous time between the Houses, Nelle. The Horned Gods did not tolerate others. Families were betraying one another."

"Your father dropped a heavy hint about Tabitha, suggesting that the rumor about you came from her and that she'd done it to protect herself," my mother said, raising eyes welling with tears.

I took a step back from both of them, my shoes sliding through splayed books and broken china.

"I did it for you, Nelle." My mother clapped a hand to her quivering mouth. "I gave her up, Nelle. I gave up my best friend for you. I'd do it again without hesitation." She spread her other hand across her stomach as the words tumbled from her tongue in a heaving mess of anguish. "But it killed me betraying her... I died the day I saved you."

And she had. One day she'd been my mother, full of smiles and laughter, the next, a quiet shadow. Perhaps the tithe prison wasn't just about me losing control of my power, perhaps it was more about her not wanting to face the child she'd chosen over her best friend.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

The creature shivered, unfurling, and my powers seeped outward as I descended into a nightmare of chaotic thoughts. I didn't see the rush of wild wind buffeting the room, skittering loose paper and thin cardboard, picking up the broken glass like spindrift. Nor did I hear the crackling sound of compressed glass coming from the desk and windows.

"Nelle—"

I could only feel my heart weighed down with grief. Torn between sorrow and guilt, the heaviness pulling me down, down, down, and the horror roaring in my ears—Me, it was me who'd been responsible for Graysen's mother's death.

No wonder Graysen had despised me.

"Nelle." I finally heard my father sharply urge, "Calm."

I blinked, coming to, finally seeing what my roiling emotions had wrought as the turbulent stormwinds continued to tear through the office, whipping the ends of my hair across my face. My mother hunkered down with her arms crossed over the top of her head to shield herself from the scattered wreckage of antiques and ancient artifacts spinning through the air and crashing against the walls.

I tugged at my magic, reeling the power back in, and everything that had been whirling in the air froze for a brief eerie moment before dropping to the wooden floor with a clatter like a deluge of hail.

I didn't apologize. I was past that now.

My mother dropped her arms, straightened, and glanced around the room with wide terrified eyes before finally meeting my flinty gaze sharp with accusation. "Graysen was there when the Horned Gods came for Tabitha and he couldn't save her. His aunt punished him for it. Because of what you'd done," and I included my father with a swift hateful look, "she whipped him for a full year. He was a child!"

Torment shadowed my mother's unblinking blue-eyed stare. She crumpled against the leather couch and expelled an anguished sound, bunching her bony fingers into her skirt.

My father stood before the tall window. The stormy sky seemed to be held up by the trees behind the wall of glass. I wearily padded up to him. "Father."

He looked exhausted, yet there wasn't a single grain of regret in him either. His jaw clenched and defiance gleamed in his gaze. "They were coming for you. They knew there was an other amongst us. I just handed them the wrong one." He tipped up his chin. "I expect it didn't take the Crowthers long to figure it out. Your mother was the only person outside their family who knew what Tabitha was."

"And so I was saved and their mother killed. How is that fair?"

His eyes hardened. "Our world, our place in it, isn't fair, Nelle."

No, he was right, it wasn't.

He stepped toward me, reaching out to take hold of my shoulders but I swiftly moved back, batting his hands away. For a split second, surprise and hurt swam in his gaze. Then determination seeped into the tension lines around his mouth and both of his hands fisted. "I won't let the Crowthers take you. I'll keep you safe."

I snorted, taking another step back, and the sound of broken glass grating beneath my heels filled the silence between us. Safe. He thought to clip my wings and keep me safe. I'd never been safe. I was just coddled. Kept swathed.

My jaw clenched. "For how long? Until I turn twenty. That's in a few weeks' time."

"Nelle," he said in warning, his tone roughening. The severity on his face deepened.

Lies. He couldn't stop this then, he couldn't stop this now.

Anger burned down my throat, great swathes of it filling my belly. He'd kept me caged all this time. I was only going from one prison to another.

My father spoke firmly but quietly. The same threat that hovered over my life. My childhood. "It's not just the Crowthers who'd want you."

The Horned Gods.

I blinked, pausing in my retreat. "Is that what they want? Revenge? To turn me over to the Horned Gods?"

"I suspect as much. We'll all die. None of us will be spared like the Estlores were. Not Evvie or Lise, or her unborn child. They want retribution. To make us pay for Tabitha. We'll all swing by the noose. Every single last one of us...I-I have to think of your sisters, Nelle."

"Can't I run?" Gods, I could, couldn't I? Couldn't I flee? Run as far as I could go?

"The Crowthers will hunt you. There's nowhere you can go that they can't find you and we'll be punished for letting you slip away. They'll demand our deaths as payment."

My eyes widened and I shook my head in denial. "He won't... He wouldn't do that to me..." But as the words fell from my mouth, I realized I didn't know that, not really.

We'd grown together over the weekend. Graysen cared for me. I knew it. Felt it.

But was it enough?

Was it his truth?

Because now I knew I hadn't shown myself after the Uzrek at all. He'd lied to me. He'd known all this time I was other.

I stumbled back, my worldview tipping sideways, upside down. I didn't know what to do or what to think... So I ran.

***

The aviary, in all its grandeur with its pretty wrought-iron and paper-skinned birches, brought no peace.

Long damp grass grazed my ankles as I stepped inside. My gaze swept from the wooden bench where my mother would sit every morning while I tossed handfuls of seeds out to her birds; skirted through the small grove of thin trees swaying with the gusts of stormwind; and turned upward to the aviary's bell-shaped dome.

This place was me.

This was what I'd always been.

A caged bird.

I hadn't gone anywhere. I hadn't experienced anything. I hadn't lived. My parents had kept me happy with snippets of the outside world so I'd smile and be content to stay behind these bars. And I'd lied to myself and given myself false hope. I had truly believed I would find a way from this estate and be set free.

My mother's birds, her thrushes and sparrows and finches, huddled on the swaying birch branches. Trapped. Just like me.

I shoved open the door to the aviary, the metal clanged and vibrated, and I spun a blustery current of air, startling the sleeping birds. They shot from their perches in a flurry of panicked wings and feathers, and the gusty breeze guided them from their cage. They flew out in a whorl, then broke apart, and scattered to freedom.

It should have made me feel better, but it didn't.

I twisted back around to face the cage and grabbed hold of the metal bars like they were a piece of driftwood in a vast empty sea. I was in shock—learning too much, all at once. And my mind reeled in jarring fragments as I rifled through the past moments shared with Graysen over the course of this year, considering every angle, every detail, every cold smile. Every dark look.

And yet...we'd forged a connection.

Was any of it real? Had everything that happened between us over this weekend all been orchestrated?

I was responsible for the Crowthers' mother's death.

And I didn't know how I felt about surviving when she had not.

A soft humming sensation brushed across my skin and raised the fine hair on my body much like static electricity. It wasn't so much seeing Graysen enter the aviary, or hearing his footsteps rustling the grass, but feeling he was here. I had always been able to feel his presence.

As I'd rushed into the gigantic birdcage, I knew he would seek me out and find me in here just as he'd done five years ago, before we'd signed the Alverac.

His body crowded up behind mine and warmed my flesh, but it couldn't penetrate the biting winter that had settled inside my chest, nor could it ease the discordant rhythm of my heartbeat.

Careful fingers drew aside the curtain of my hair, and he swept it over my shoulder. The long locks tickled the exposed skin of my arm and chest as the ends slithered downward.

"I'm sorry...I'm so sorry," I whispered, pressing my forehead onto the birdcage. My fingers curled around the bars. Locked. Caged. That was me. By metal. By his body.

One of Graysen's hands wound around my waist as his lips found the nape of my neck to press a warm kiss against my clammy skin. "What are you sorry for?"

Even caught in turmoil, my body betrayed me and responded to his touch. My nerves sparked and flared with need. Was it wrong to be afraid of him, yet still want him to kiss me?

I sucked in a breath, horrified at what I'd learned "I didn't know...I didn't know that I was responsible for your mother's death."

His fingers tightened on my waist. But it was more than that. His whole body tensed behind me, muscles flexing and hardening. His surprise filled the aviary and drowned out the noise of the rustling leaves, the distant sounds coming from the marquee. He spoke slowly, carefully, "What are you talking about?"

My hands clenched helplessly around the bars. "Your mother...Tabitha... She warned my mother that the Horned Gods were coming for me. That they suspected I was other."

He cursed low.

"It's true, isn't it."

He was silent for a long moment. When he finally replied, the words rumbled from his front to my back and I felt them reverberate all the way to my soul. "My mother warned yours because of me, little bird."

Shock rounded my mouth and I twisted around to face him. "You?"

He was a study in midnight with his black tuxedo and dress shirt, the inky hair and obsidian eyes. He smiled briefly and it was a streak of sunlight on a dull overcast sky. "When we were children I'd only caught glimpses of you on rare occasions when Marissa brought you to a House gathering. But I felt something. Felt you reaching out to me, curious and intrigued." His thick brows slashed forward over eyes that glittered with memory. "You were five years old when we first met face-to-face, and I knew then, right then, what you were."

My eyes widened, and I stared at him as shock washed over me. He'd known all that time. Well before his mother's death. "You told your parents."

His expression became grave and his gaze fell to his hand where he was rubbing his thumb over a tightly, curled knuckle. "No. I kept your secret until the night the Horned Gods came for my mother." There was sorrow and guilt weighing heavily in his eyes when they lifted to meet my own. "Up until then, I hadn't realized she'd known all along that you were other."

"Why?" He knew what I was asking. Why hadn't he spilled my secret? Why had he kept it to himself?

He shrugged a shoulder, glancing at me, looking as confused as I felt. "I just couldn't."

My breath caught at the truth of him. He'd kept my secret and protected me as a child. And that knowledge began to thaw the shards of ice deep inside my chest and made me want to believe in him and in us.