I didn't wake in the usual sense. It was a slow rousing. The golden, honeyed glow that veiled my surroundings dimmed and faded away, and the effervescence that sparkled in my veins like champagne went flat. The sharp, too-bright edges of reality came into focus.

Yet, I felt refreshed and calm.

Stretching my limbs like a cat, I became conscious of a change in direction and speed. The skittish sunlight warming my skin. And aware of the gruff purring noise in the background.

I was in a car.

A jolt of confusion cracked through me as I sat up straighter, peering through the windshield. We were traveling down a narrow road lined with gnarled trees, their leaves dappling the golden hues of sundown.

It was the slip of a finger on an ivory key, a sweet melody jarred by the wrong note played.

The last I remembered it was morning at the cottage, and now it was nearing dusk. We'd obviously been traveling for hours. As I ran my hands against my thighs, I realized I was wearing a white t-shirt that hit just below my knees and smelled faintly musty. It took another moment for it to sink in that it wasn't a road we were traveling along, it was a driveway.

I shifted slightly to face Graysen. "Fyae nectar." It hissed from me low and twisted. He'd drugged me with fyae nectar, those tiny, biting creatures that made homes near stagnant ponds, whose venom was more commonly called nectar and induced waking dreams. Much easier to slowly devour your kill over time if they were helpless and lethargic.

Why had Graysen wanted to lull me into a state of compliance?

I had my answer as the trees fell away behind us and the driveway cut through a great grassy lawn. A formidable mansion came into view.

Although mansion wasn't the right word to describe it.

Neither was castle.

It was a fortress.

An imposing stark structure, contrasting against a deep blue sky. It was enormous, and the shape of it wasn't quite uniform either, as if the towers and turrets had been added to the original keep over the ages. Sentries strode along the rampart, and unlike my father's men, none of them carried guns, merely blades. All it was missing was a moat and a drawbridge.

The fortress had been modernized, I supposed. Where the gatehouse might have once been, instead there were enormous oak doors and a terrace with steps leading down to the circular parking area paved with cobblestones. Surrounding the space was a low stone fence and a neatly clipped garden—apart from the white climbing roses that were seemingly left to ramble. The blooming flowers twined around the balustrades fencing the terrace and smothered the ivy climbing up the walls of the fortification.

"Where are we?"

Graysen's brow was deeply furrowed. He rapped the steering wheel with a thumb but still didn't answer.

"Graysen?"

"Home," he said in a flat voice.

It sank into me, exactly where I was—House Crowther.

He'd drugged me, albeit more pleasantly than Danne and Silas, and stolen me.

I wanted to scream and hit out at him. I should have been doing those things—shrieking and clawing at his face. I should be feeling those things—but all I could do was sit there in the front seat of his car, frozen and numb.

Shouldn't I know?

Shouldn't I have always known?

"You never intended to let me go." He remained silent, his entire focus was directed at the narrow driveway littered with fallen leaves. "What was that this morning? Was any of it real?"

He continued to stare ahead as if he hadn't heard me speak.

"Stop the car," I pleaded. "Turn around."

The thing inside me still slumbered. I prodded and poked it, but felt nothing but a mild stirring. Without it, there wasn't anything special about me and I started to suffocate under the same powerless feeling I'd had in the back of Danne's limousine.

Graysen had told me to run, begged me to. Urged me to find a place not even he could find me, fearing that his family would hunt me. That he might not be able to help himself either.

And now, here I was.

House Crowther.

And he'd driven me here. Him!

Betrayal, cold and filthy, rose up in bubbling waves.

Graysen Crowther betrayed me.

I was a fool.

A godsdamned stupid fool!

As we pulled up beside the flight of stone steps leading to the front entrance, I blinked back the tears. My fingers dug into the soft material of the t-shirt I wore as a dress, trying to tame the trembling coursing through my body. "You can't do this to me."

But of course, he could.

Finally, he turned to look at me. "This is your home now."

His features were carved in granite. Even the golden flecks in his ebony eyes seemed duller with the coldness radiating from him. There was no trace of warmth, not an ounce of the deeper feeling that had regarded me this morning either.

Heaviness sank through me like waterlogged clothes dragging me down to the silted bottom of a lake. A great crack fractured open my heart. It hurt. Everything hurt.

Graysen saw everything that was going on inside me, the agony and despair and confusion, and on his face, I saw nothing. Nothing at all.

I felt him, though. An iciness like a frozen lake. As if he'd banished the summer and all the glorious heat and drew in bone-biting frost.

Graysen got out of the car, his boots thudding on the cobblestones.

Panic erupted and I did the only thing I could think of. Before he could round the Mustang, I opened the car door and leaped out. My feet hit rough uneven stone and I took off running.

But what was I to a Crowther? He had hold of my arm in less than two steps, swinging me around. I fought, clawing at his large hand, yanking and striking out. I didn't fool myself into thinking it was me who had wrenched myself free. He let me go. I skittered away, my lower back smacked into the side of his car and pain jarred up my spine.

One step—

A second—

A third—he closed the gap between us and I let him. He braced his arms on either side of me, boxing me in.

"Don't do this," I pleaded. "You told me what was going to happen to me. What your aunt wanted." But it was more than that. More than just his family claiming me. My heart ached. How could he do this to me, to us? I wrapped my fingers around his upper arms and rose up on my tippy-toes to whisper, "Don't throw us away."

He bowed his head to reply quietly in my ear, his voice low and lethal. "There was no us. Not when you were going to leave me."

I managed not to flinch.

A hard lump formed in my throat. I closed my eyes briefly, blew out a deep breath, and locked gazes with him. "Please, Graysen, let me go."

The fine skin around his eyes pinched as he straightened his spine to stare coldly down the length of his nose. "Don't you understand? There's nowhere you can run. Nowhere you can hide. When Danne hid you behind Cloakers, I still found you." His jaw tightened. "No matter where you ran to, you would have ended up here."

"Don't you dare justify doing this to me with that." Anger ignited, driving hot wrath along with shame at my stupidity. "All that talk over breakfast." All that talking he did, making out he was going to set me free. "You were just sitting there, silently laughing at me. Mocking me."

Something warred on his face, emotions battling one another. He pushed off the car, uncaging me, glancing away momentarily at the steps leading to the terrace of his home. Tension caused his hands to clench and unclench at his sides as if he were conflicted. However, when his gaze slowly returned to mine, there was only one emotion shining sharply in his eyes—possessiveness.

Flat, cold words. "You're mine now."

"I'm no one's," I hissed.

"It's too late, Wychthorn."

The word clanged through me, Wychthorn. Not little bird. Not Nelle.

A hand rose, and his fingertip trailed lazily along my jaw with enough pressure to tilt my head to the side and expose my throat to him. Dark eyes glanced along the vulnerable line of flesh and lingered on the rapidly pulsing heartbeat. "I've touched you. Tasted you. I've been inside you." My eyes widened and unease slithered within my chest as I saw a silvery-gray hue seeping into his black irises, turning them into a reflection of my own eyes. There and gone in a heartbeat. "I can't—I won't let you go. Not now. Not ever."

He gripped my arm tightly and tugged me away from the car, practically half-dragging me to the bottom of the steps that lead up to the house, if you could call it that.

I felt the wrongness in my bones just as the creature stirred stickily.

Old...I could feel how old those blocks of stone were, more ancient than the temple on our estate. No doubt, like our temple, it had been shifted to America, block by block, and rebuilt exactly how it once stood in the old world. The fortress was enormous, built with adamere threading through the stone, its hard lines softened by a thick carpet of ivy and wild white roses clambering up the walls.

The front doors creaked open. Varen strode out, guiding Ferne, and one by one each of the brothers followed. Kenton. Caidan. Jett.

Their footfall was a death drum in my ears as they made a line across the terrace. Silent with impassive expressions.

As the sun descended to touch the horizon, the low-lying sunlight scored the clouds with apricot and peach. Warmth was draining from the earth, but that may have been more to do with the fear creeping inside me.

As one, the Crowthers bowed.

"Welcome Nelle," Varen's gravelly voice was pitched low but it was a thunderous boom inside my head.

"Welcome?" I repeated. "Welcome?" I dragged out, arching an eyebrow.

My gaze traveled across the male members of the Crowther family. At all those powerful physiques clad in battle-black, the material clinging to their forms with intricate fish scale detailing. At the blades strapped to their calf-high boots and bound to the outside of their thighs.

Because they knew what I was. That I was other.

My eyes slid sideways to Graysen and I spoke lowly, not caring that his family with their keen ears would hear every word. "Doesn't seem like a very welcoming party."

"I thought it was spoken cordially enough."

"They're all wearing armor," I hissed back.

He cleared his throat and squinted upward, his mouth pursed to one side. "Your temper is well known within my family."

My heartbeat pounded in my ears. "You can't claim me under the Alverac. I'm not twenty."

"You're nineteen, and my aunt was very clever with the amendment within the Alverac. If you're with me, you're under my authority. We're having a family reunion. And, since there's so many of us Crowthers, it's going to last a month...right up until your twentieth birthday."

Clever. So very clever of them.

How the hells am I going to get myself out of this?

I had to run. I had to swift.

But the monoliths kept me from swifting out of the estate. I poked the creature, screamed at it, mentally shook it, and felt nothing but a mild, drowsy stretch.

Hellsgate!

Sucking in a deep breath, I squared my shoulders.

No matter what happened next, I still needed to say this.

I spoke to Varen, who looked on with a stoic expression carved from stone. "I'm sorry that Tabitha died. Your wife."

Beside me, I was aware that Graysen had tensed.

To the Crowther siblings, I said, "And your mother." There was nothing revealed on their cold, empty faces. Nothing in their violet eyes either.

Ferne was the only one who moved. Her simple cotton dress swayed slightly as she leaned closer to her father to wrap her fingers around his forearm and squeeze gently.

"I am sorry—"

"Sorry?" someone interrupted. Their voice was carried on the dusk air from behind Varen, low and raspy and bitter.

My fingers curled into fists by my side.

I would not cower. I would not bow down. I was a godsdamn Wychthorn!

But that strength fled when Valarie appeared.

The Crowther aunt's expression had always been unreadable. Unfeeling. Unimpressed. Yet, like water churning under a spring-thawed layer of ice, her deep violet eyes burned bright with more feeling than I'd ever seen in her before. Eagerness and a perverse sort of relief glowed in their depth.

I was more terrified at that moment than I had ever been of Master Sirro.

Valarie angled her head to the side and the movement was so snakelike I almost jerked back. "What would you be sorry for?"

"What my father did was wrong—"

"Sorry. Wrong," Valarie interrupted once more. She swept her black skirt up with one hand and descended a step toward me. "Such empty words to describe what your parents did to Tabitha." Her eyes thinned as she raised her chin. "Your mother was Tabitha's best friend. Her confidant since childhood. Her keeper of secrets. And she just gave her up—"

"She gave her up for me."

"Yes, because of you."

"I didn't know. I've done nothing—"

"Wrong?"

What was the point of skirting around the truth? "I know what the Alverac is, what it means. I know what you want with me."

"And what exactly is that?"

"Revenge," I replied bluntly. "To hurt me. To break me. And in turn to break my father for what he did to..." and I stumbled, then, to say her name. To say what happened to Graysen's mother because of me.

Valarie's lips pulled back in a viper's smile. "I am looking forward to seeing Byron on his knees, broken and begging."

But it still didn't make sense. Why wait all this time if they only wanted revenge on my father?

"If you merely wanted to break my father, why didn't you claim me straight away on the night we signed the Alverac?"

"Timing. Timing is everything. Your father did us a service keeping you hidden all these years. And we needed to bide our time."

Timing?

What did they need to wait for?

And my mind spun through everything I knew about our world, frantically flipping through memories like skim-reading one of those dusty books in my family's library.

The answer came to me so fast that it punched the air from my lungs.

Oh my gods...

"The Witches Ball."

The cruel smile Valarie bestowed turned my blood to ice. "Yes. The Witches Ball."

Every seven years, those odious creatures that dealt with nefarious potions and spells gathered at the Witches Ball. And it drew in other Horned Gods, sometimes to bid, but mostly for morbid curiosity.

"Houses aren't invited."

"Hardly any have been invited. But there have been a few invitations extended throughout the millennia."

"Why would they invite you?"

She clicked her tongue at me as if I should know.

The answer was more air than words. "Me."

Oh my gods...me.

"The Witches Ball... It's an auction. They sell and bid on..." The words fell apart under the weight of meaning.

"They bid on mortals, creatures...others. Anything and anyone of interest."

To carve up and grind and boil and flay—reduce them down to the smallest of body parts to be used in their spells.

My knees buckled beneath me and Graysen caught me before I crumpled. I didn't have it in me to shove him away. My mind reeled, horror and pure terror pounded in my veins.

"We just need in," he said quietly.

I blinked.

The truth rushed through me.

The pieces fell into place, snatches of a bigger picture forming.

This is what this has been about—the Horned God who'd killed Tabitha. "You want vengeance on the Horned God." I half-twisted to Graysen. "The one with the red hair. The one you told me of."

In the corner of my eye, I saw Valarie's gaze slice to her nephew standing behind me. When I turned back to face her, there was a glint of something in her eyes that I didn't like, shrewd calculation and something else. Graysen telling me about the Horned God—that was a variable she hadn't anticipated.

"And I'll be the price of admission? The offering you'll put up on the auction block?"

"We'll do anything, anything, to get our hands on that heinous creature," Valarie snapped. "We will use you. Give you away. Sell you if need be."

Give you away...

Sell you if need be...

I wasn't sure if Graysen was breathing.

I know I wasn't.

His fingers tightened on my waist and I was only half aware of the soft snarl that whispered from him, felt it rumbling in his chest more than heard it. It wasn't directed at me. His anger was aimed at his aunt.

"You, my dear, will gain us access to the Witches Ball and we are going to use you as bait," Valarie said with a wicked smile.

Terror crawled all over my skin. It slunk inside my chest and raked at my heart and hissed in my ears—Run, run, run!

WAKE UP!—I shrieked at the dark power inside me.

I looked toward Graysen's family. "Let me go."

They merely stared back silently.

And to my utter relief, the creature awoke. It snarled low and viciously.

I turned to Graysen. "No one, not even you can hold me here against my will."

"We'll see, Wychthorn."

"Do you really expect me to stay?"

A line formed between his eyebrows and his lips pinched. "You have no choice."

But I did have a choice. I could obliterate them with a single burst of power. Didn't he understand that? That with this thing inside me, nothing and no one could trap me, enslave me.

I wrenched myself free and he reached for me. I knocked aside his hands with a crack of cruel windstorm.

He frowned. "Don't make this any harder than it needs to be."

"Funny," I said, "because that's what I should be saying to you."

The creature unfurled, shivering with anticipation, and coiled around my bones.

I swifted a short distance away. I went to clench my adamere bracelet, but it was gone, lost somewhere in that nightmare ride in Danne's limousine. But this time, I didn't need it to keep myself in check, because I was going to unleash my might entirely and let the Crowthers have a taste of what I was.

My voice rolled across the cobblestones. "My roots are deep, my strength is stone, my breath the wind. I bow to none."