Fear that I wasn't going to be able to cut through the rope around my neck—the lesson I expect Graysen was trying to teach me—soured the pit of my stomach and made my heart rap an erratic beat.

Please, please, please...

The dagger had been forged by Zrenyth himself.

Ancient, savage power raked across my palms and fingers, crackling down my arm, and raising all the fine hair on my body. It reverberated right through my very being—wild, dark magic. Cruel. Merciless. Willful.

Its misty, shadowy form wavered in the air like steam coming off a hot pool at the foothills of a snowy mountain. As I brought it to the rope collaring my neck, I felt a tugging like opposing sides of a magnet pulling at one another.

I sawed the blade back and forth, careful of the angle, making sure the blade wouldn't pierce my flesh.

I knew with growing despair, with every second that passed, that I wasn't going to slice through the braids of twine.

Penn said in her soft way, a regretful note in her tone, "Nothing can cut through it. Only a Crowther can."

My heart sank.

She held out one hand—in the other she was holding the other two daggers. I assumed she'd collected them while I was fixated on Zrenyth's blade.

My fingers tightened around the hilt as I lowered the blade from my throat.

I can try again to attack her—

And I suppose my desperate thought was written all over my expression because her lips pressed into a firm line and she gave me a slight shake of her head from side to side—no.

My shoulders sagged.

What was the use?

As I handed the dagger over and she plucked it from my grip, a knock came from the bedroom door.

Penn and I shared a curious look as the other woman tucked Zrenyth's blade back into her pocket. I hurried across the sea of carpet, velvet beneath my bare feet, toward the door, wondering who it could be. As I reached for the door handle the rope cinched tighter around my throat.

Hellsgate!

I took a reluctant step back, and the constriction around my neck eased, the pinch of pain ebbing away.

Penn pulled the door wide, and standing behind it was the youngest Crowther.

Ferne stood there with a stack of neatly folded clothes in her arms, partially backlit by the sunlight flowing through arrow slits in the outer tower walls. Her black hair was swept into a loose side ponytail, a white ribbon binding the silken locks together. Her teeth tugged at her bottom lip as she shifted her ballet-shoe-clad feet nervously.

A strap of white lace crossed her forehead and covered her eyes. The night the Horned Gods had come for Tabitha Crowther because my parents had betrayed her to save me. Ferne's eyes had been stolen by Mistress Lyressa just because they were an exquisite canvas of pinks and violets and dusky blues. She'd been three years old when they'd been plucked from her sockets by that Frankenstein Horned God, who stole body parts and stitched them together to make up her own.

A small part of me abhorred my instant devious thoughts, but the rest of me drank Ferne in, assessing and calculating, my mind become mercenary, whirling with possibilities.

I kneaded my throat. The fibers of the rope scratched my soft palm.

Ferne could help me.

Nothing can cut through it. Only a Crowther wielding a weapon can.

"I thought you could use these," Ferne said, rolling to the balls of her feet and then back down again. "I know we're not the same size, but Gray..." Her hesitation in saying her brother's name to me—the man who had betrayed me—had her pausing and clearing her throat. It also had a keenly-honed blade carving pain and fierce fire through my insides. "Well, I know you don't like clothes that are too restrictive because..." and again the words drifted apart.

Because of what I was, a wyrm, a creature that couldn't be harnessed.

Penn retrieved the clothes from the other girl, and I took them. The soft fabrics of silk and cotton and linen whispered over my bare arms, and the smell of crisp laundry and apples filled my nose. "Thank you, Ferne."

Thank you, Ferne.

Thank you for capturing me.

Thank you for locking me away, only to sell me to the highest bidder at the Witches Ball.

Though ire had my jaw clenching, my limbs stiffening. Even I knew that was the wrong way to tackle this. I extinguished the flames burning beneath my skin—I wouldn't win her over with anger.

I spoke to her like a long-time friend, a confidant. "You know this is wrong." And though it might have been wrong of me to say it to a girl who lost her mother in the most horrific way, I said, "Your mother wouldn't want this. She wouldn't want you to be part of it..." Whose mother would? My own had lost herself in black despair for what she'd done to save me—exposing her best friend's secret. And my mother still thought Tabitha was dead, and that she was responsible for the Crowthers' mother's death. How was she going to feel when, if, she ever discovered that Tabitha still lived?

"I'm innocent Ferne, and you are going to sell me at the Witches Ball, where one of those Horned Gods will win my auction and carve me up into tiny little pieces."

Though she had no eyes, I could feel Ferne's anxious gaze. The pulse point in her neck fluttered like a butterfly trapped beneath a dome of glass, and the veins strained to silken cords.

"Let me go," I said, willing her to hear the forgiveness in my tone and act on it.

Ferne took a harried step back.

"You know this is wrong," I insisted. In my panic, my voice rose and hitched.

"I'm sorry," Ferne whispered before whirling around, her white dress rippling.

"Wait, Ferne!"

Her slapping footfall on stone steps echoed down the twisting staircase and faded with her retreat.

I spun around and collapsed against the wall, bowing my head and rubbing the heel of my palm against my forehead.

Godsdammit!

I'd pushed too hard.

I heard the rustling of fabric and the scuffing of footfall and glanced up. Penn was crossing the room to the walk-in closet. She opened it and gestured inside. "Graysen set up a bedroom for you in here."

Pushing off the wall, my bitterness at my failure faded as my narrowed gaze flicked to the set of tall drawers outside the walk-in closet where clothes hung on a portable rack, rows of shoes stacked neatly beneath them. I'd noticed them earlier when I'd gone through Graysen's things, but I hadn't thought about it. I just assumed maybe he hadn't enough room in the wardrobe to store everything.

I sidled up beside Penn and peeked inside the room. He'd emptied it of all his personal belongings. Inside there was just the low lighting from recesses in the ceiling, a full mirror on the back wall, and a small single bed.

The carpet was soft beneath my feet as I wandered into the room and found a bedside drawer with a few books stacked on top and a lamp.

"Why don't you get dressed for the day," Penn said, just before she left me alone, the door softly shutting behind her.

On top of the clothes Ferne had lent me was a packet of store-bought white underwear. I placed everything on the end of the little bed with its soft blankets in, yet again, differing shades of stone gray. Then I unwound the towel around my body and dropped it to the floor. The plastic crinkled as I unwrapped the packaging, tossing it away like a spoilt child. I thought better of it, sighing as I scooped it back up and put the torn plastic in a drawer to dispose of later.

As I put on the underthings, snapping waistbands and hooking eyelets, I found that the simple cotton underwear fit perfectly. I chose the top dress from the pile, I didn't care what it was and slipped it on. Just some flimsy summers dress in a lemony color, that was far too big and baggy, the skirt hanging limply and halfway down my calves. I adjusted the bodice, but it was too big and kept sliding to the edge of my shoulders. I was used to these oversized dresses, comfortable in natural fibers because I couldn't bare the feeling of confinement. But my mother would always get my dresses altered so they sat on my shoulders just right... And the reminder of my mother, my family, had a sharp pang twinging inside. Despair, a leaden weight and indifferent, forced me to squeeze my hands so my fingernails bit the soft flesh of my palms, the sting enough to stop me from buckling to the ground and crying.

I wouldn't break.

I wouldn't!

I'd vowed I'd find a way to freedom the moment my foot crossed the threshold of the Crowthers' fortress last night. And that's what I'd godsdamned do.

I was a Wyththorn from the Great House. I'd even hunted down the nest of an Uzrek from within the papered world of our family library, found a way off my family's estate, and met the creature in person.

This was no different. I just had a shorter time frame and needed a plan.

Resigned to the path ahead of me, I left my small room and entered Graysen's bedroom.

Penn was standing beside the dining table, her hand on the back of a chair.

I walked over and plopped down on the chair and decided to eat, even if I had to force it down. I'd be useless without food. I needed nutrition and strength to get me through the moment escape presented itself, and I swore I'd find it. Before me were fresh fruit and toast. Water, fruit juice, and a pot of tea.

Penn lifted the silver teapot and dark amber liquid poured from its spout, gently splashing into the bone-china cup. Wisps of steam curled up from the tea.

There wasn't a sugar bowl sitting on the tray, however, there was...honey.

I huffed. Honey. Of course, he knew that about me. Knew I preferred a teaspoon of honey in my morning cup of tea.

Asshole.

I dipped a teaspoon into the honeypot, and stirred it into the tea, the honey melting off the silver spoon before I went back for a tiny bit more, then one last dip of honey before taking a sip of the sweet, florally tea.

I did everything automatically, without thought.

My mind was a whirlwind of conspiring ideas.

My heartbeat was strong, yet tainted with the faint unease of self-doubt.

But my mood was pissed the hells off.

I propped an elbow on the table, leaning the side of my jaw against my hand, and stabbed chunks of fruit onto the fork with the other. Careful of my split lip, which throbbed dully, I slid the speared fruit off the tines with my teeth and tongue. I didn't taste anything in my mouth. Not sweet peach or exotic pineapple. I just chewed, like a cow on cud. I picked away under Penn's watchful gaze, only eating a quarter of the fruit salad, a few bites of rubbery toast that had been left out too long, which I'd smeared with tart lime marmalade, my favorite—something else Graysen had noted about me. All of it tasted of nothing. Picking up the glass of water, I swallowed back a mouthful before straightening in my chair and asking, "Can I at least leave this room?"

"No. Without him here..." her hand rose and I realized she was pointing to the rope around my neck, "you're still willed to this room."

I heaved an exasperated sigh through my nose.

Penn collected the cloche and placed it back on the silver tray before picking it up.

"What's your name?" I asked her. My fingers loosely gripped the fork which chinked an annoyed note on the bone-china plate.

"Penn," she replied, turning away and heading toward the door with quiet footsteps.

I bit back the irked retort that almost shot from my mouth and twisted around in my chair, one hand on the backrest, gritting out. "No, your last name?"

"It's just Penn," she answered politely, deftly balancing the tray on one hand while she opened the door to Graysen's quarters.

My forehead creased with a frown. "What family are you from?" I knew pretty much all the family names that made up the servants for the Houses. There hadn't been much for me to do when I'd been bound to my family estate, except to read everything within our library and soak up as much information as possible when I'd been tucked away in my father's office while he worked.

Penn hesitated. Her mouth opened, then teeth chewed on the bottom of her lip as she wondered, I assumed, what to tell me. She offered me a small bite of information. "I'm not from any family."

My eyebrows nudged together as I tilted my head in confusion.

A mortal? Was Penn a mortal? We replenished our ranks when necessary, sometimes when we needed new blood within the Houses. But it was rare to invite a mortal into our world who wasn't a soldier.

I was about to ask when she slipped through the door and closed it behind her.

And I was left alone, descending into sudden silence.

There was just me in an unfamiliar room, swathed in dark colors and oppressive stone.

A prison cell.

There wasn't much else to do but walk and pace and plot.

So I paced and thought and schemed, and as the day wore on and the hours passed I wondered about Penn, and how to get myself out of this gods-forsaken room.

I walked in circles until I could barely take another step. My thoughts began to muddle and unravel, and my determination faltered with the creeping realization that the only Crowther I could entice inside this room was Graysen, and he wasn't here.

Maybe I still hadn't recovered from yesterday's exertion as a crushing heaviness pressed against my limbs, the walls of my chest, and my gait became ponderous and stumbling. A cough tickled my throat and a cold shiver worked its way through my bones as I dragged myself off to that tiny little bedroom Graysen had carved out for me.

I stripped off the dress, dumping it onto the floor behind me, and slid between the cool sheets of the bed. Traitorous doubt had nestled and settled inside my mind like a toxic friend, whispering lies that sounded like truth, and made me wonder if there was any point in getting up again.

Within minutes I was fast asleep.

And on I slept.