I drifted within the abyss, slipping between the realms as if the underworld was the darkness between stars. I was at rest. At peace. There was no more struggle to hide the secret of my wyrm. No more fear over my fate. I'd set myself free and in turn, saved my family.

But then...

Something pulled at me. A gentle tug. A careful nudge.

I began to rise toward a pinprick of feeble light in the cold, empty darkness.

Exhilaration flowed through me at the thought of the flaming Hellsgate opening and welcoming me into its hallowed kingdom.

But...

Something wasn't quite right.

Something was wrong.

I should be without feeling, but awareness lapped at my flesh, nibbling with tiny, sharp teeth, making me feel the barest of sensations—heat.

Chaotic noises began to filter through the dark abyss.

Male voices spitting with anger and resentment.

You pushed it too far demanding her to kneel!

I didn't know... I didn't know she'd try to take her own life!

You're a fucking psychopath, Jett!

Thumping footsteps.

A thud. A crash. Glass shattering.

An oof. A strike of a fist. A groan filled with pain.

Panic arose at the thought the god of death, Hazus, didn't want me.

That the light I traveled toward wasn't the flaming Hellsgate at all.

The dark material of the endless abyss shifted and altered as if it were cut from the same cloth as the night sky. The pinprick of light I was gliding toward expanded and glittered like a cluster of stars. The black brightened to a muted gray with warm undertones.

This wasn't an abyss at all—my eyes were closed and beyond my eyelids was light.

A small, shocked part of me recognized I was alive.

Another darker, regretful side to me was disappointed I'd been cheated out of death.

I stretched back into my body and swam to consciousness. Warmth began to invade my cold flesh. It was a pleasant sensation for the briefest of moments, but then the warmth became fiery heat. And with the heat came pain.

Rusty blades slashed at my throat. Blazing flames set fire to my chest and lungs. My blood boiled and spat in my veins. I tried to lift a hand but my limbs were heavy and unmovable, as if they belonged to someone else. As if they'd been chained. The last memories I possessed were a rapid flash of images, like flipping through a fistful of Polaroids, spinning through my mind.

The merciless constriction when I'd cinched the collar into a vice around my throat.

Trapping Jett within my madness.

A siege of suited men and women warring against one another as anarchy exploded across the rooftop of the Emporium. My father struggling to reach me.

And me...

Such mind-obliterating wrath had incinerated my sanity. It had left nothing of me but a vessel of rage and a menacing need to destroy Jett, to force him to see and feel what was going to happen to me at the Witches Ball. I'd achieved it too. The last memory I had was of Jett's wide eyes, haunted with abject terror, staring back at me as I choked myself to death.

Except...

I hadn't died.

My eyelids twitched but wouldn't yet open. Beneath my body was something soft. I was lying down on a couch and someone's hands were on me. Their slender fingers were small and gentle, their touch firm, as they probed and assessed my throat. The back of a hand brushed over my cheekbone. A thumb gripped my chin to tilt my face upward. A voice, female, relieved yet authoritative, spoke. "She's coming around."

And indeed I did. I awoke sluggishly. It felt like a lifetime before I was able to prise my heavy eyelids open. The room was a blur of color and images, like dabs of watercolor bleeding into one another and spreading wide through quilted paper. The world around me was noisy and loud and slowly came into focus. I was lying on a chaise in one of the Emporium's boudoirs that was adorned in seductive silks and painted in rich reds, golds, and blacks.

Against the noise, the blur of bodies and fighting in the background, I stared up at the older woman half-perched on the seat beside me, a frown creasing a line into the bridge of her nose as she finished carefully smoothing a lotion into the burn scars marring my flesh beneath Zrenyth's collar. The crisp, fresh scent of aloe vera and a spicy hit of dark magic tickled my nostrils as she rubbed the excess into the backs of her hands. When she saw me blinking up at her, she murmured with a small smile, "Ah, there you are." She was one of the Crowthers' physicians, I assumed. Slender fingers quickly plucked a medical penlight from the front pocket of her white blazer, and while she flashed the light into one of my eyes and then the other to check my pupil response, someone nearby muttered something. She jerked around, pointing and replying in a low, urgent voice, "No, not that one... The yellow vial... Yes, that's it."

The noises surrounding us were frenzied and clashing. My gaze darted sidelong to see the bedroom was a warzone. The brothers were trying to take one another down. Furnishings had tipped over and artwork hung crooked on the walls. A tall lamp had been knocked over, its bulb broken. One of the four-poster bed's curtain rails had been snapped off, and the brocade curtain on the floor was trampled upon as Caidan charged Jett, murderous fury blotching his hardened features scarlet. Kenton rushed in from the side, to stop Caidan or help him I wasn't sure, because I dragged in a startled breath and was distracted by the sensation of gulping down a hot lungful of shattered glass. I wheezed out a cough, hacking and gasping, my vision going blurry as agony wracked my chest and tears welled in my eyes. Behind the shimmering veil, I heard the woman say hastily, "Thank you," to someone else as she accepted something small and yellow from them.

I swiped away the tears, easing a painful breath inward. When I started to push myself upright, I groaned, tentatively touching the side of my head with shaky fingertips. Ghastly tension squeezed my head and pounded at my temple like a jackhammer had taken to it., and my lips felt fat and hot. The woman swiveled around and placed a firm hand on my upper arm to help me to sit up. "Easy."

"I..." But I couldn't voice anymore. I gently kneaded my burning throat, the coarse fibers of the rope scratching the sides of my fingers. Obviously, I hadn't broken the Crowthers enough to have them remove the collar from my neck.

The physician quickly uncorked the vial in her hands and a small curl of yellowish vapor puffed up from the tiny bottleneck. She passed it to me. "Here, take a small sip. It will help."

The glass was warm beneath my fingertips. I pressed the vial to my swollen lips and tipped my head back, staring up at the bedroom's embossed ceiling as the concoction poured into my mouth. I let it sit there for a moment before swallowing. The potion was honey-coated and there was a bitter twang of magic that fizzed and popped on my tongue. The tonic glided down my throat and soothed it instantly. Revitalizing energy flowed through my body. The weariness fell away as if I'd shed invisible chains that had been looped around my limbs.

I loosened a sigh, my lips twitching into a relieved smile. The other woman was a lot older than me with fine lines etched around her features. She angled her narrow face to stare back at me through thin eyes while I slid my gaze to the man standing behind her. The same man who had bid on me. His blue eyes were wide and fixed on mine. He expelled a pent-up breath and his hand, clasping the woman's shoulder, squeezed gently. Soft bedroom light brushed over her pixie haircut finger-teased into gentle waves, as she reached up to pat his hand, half-turning to look up at him with an enthusiastic told-you-so smile. "Sit down, my love. You're far too big for me to handle if you faint."

"Who are you?" I asked her, my voice sharp.

Her attention swiveled back to me and she blinked, her gaze turning wary. "I'm Mei, one of the Crowthers' physicians." She gestured upward without taking her eyes from mine. "And this is my paramour—"

"Paramour...?" he cut in, affronted. "I wish you'd stop calling me that."

"Because it's true and it's far too much fun not to." Mei grinned up at him. "Besides Os—"

I interrupted, frowning up at the giant of a man. "Oswin. The Crowthers' gardener, right?" He nodded, his silvery blond curls bouncing with the jerky movement around his broad, weathered features. "The man pretending to bid on me," I added snarkily.

Guilt tinged the tips of his ears red before it bloomed on his cheeks. "Yes," he croaked, and was about to say more, perhaps even offer an apology, but I didn't want to hear it.

I flicked up a hand, stopping him. "I've seen you before, working on one of their gardens," I drawled, about to launch into a tirade over the Crowthers' ruse when an ear-splintering crash tore my attention from Oswin back to the brothers.

Jett was thrown bodily against the wall by Caidan. The force rattled and dented the wall, upending porcelain statues. Pain and wide-eyed fright etched Jett's bloodied and bruised face as he wheezed, scrabbling at Caidan's hand locked around his throat.

Kenton grabbed hold of Caidan, who was swinging in with a punch.

He wrapped a hand around Caidan's forearm, stopping the wild strike, quickly cuffed the other arm, and hauled them both behind Caidan's back, dragging him off their youngest brother. Kicking out a leg, Caidan wrestled futilely against his older brother. "Let me go!"

Jett half slid down the wall, wincing as he gingerly massaged his throat, sucking in a ragged breath. His long hair was a disheveled mess and his right cheekbone looked caved in, the bone shattered by a fist. He got his legs back underneath him and pushed back up the wall, blood pouring from his nose to drip upon his shirt and on the thick piles of the carpet.

Such fury was outlined on Caidan's expression, menacing and wild as he threw himself about and managed to yank an arm free from Kenton's hold. He swung back around to Jett. Kenton scrabbled to keep hold of Caidan's other arm, to keep him from reaching Jett. Caidan shoved a fucked-off finger toward Jett. "This was a sick ploy! You know neither of us wanted a part of it but you went ahead with it anyway!"

"It's the godsdamned Emporium, Caidan. We needed to gain Jurgana's attention. How else do you think we were going to do it?" Jett protested, his voice muffled behind the shirt sleeve he used to soak up the blood. "We needed to break her in order to break Byron."

Kenton huffed out a bitter laugh. Black strands of sweaty hair ruffled as he shook his head at his youngest brother, looking both disgusted and bemused. "Break her?" he scoffed. "She broke us!"

Caidan ripped himself free of Kenton. Pale and wary, Jett stumbled sideways, bringing up both fists, but his brother didn't come for him.

"Look at what we've become!" Caidan shouted, anguish threading through his tone as he threw his arms wide, indicating them—he and his brothers, the room, the mess of it all reflecting the mess of them. "We're better than this!" The fight winked out of him and his shoulders slumped in defeat, head bowing. "How did we end up here?" he asked, his voice weak, bewilderment shining in his violet eyes. "How did scaring a girl like this become us?"

Buttons had been torn from Kenton's waistcoat. One sleeve was ripped lengthwise and the fabric flapped around his forearm as he stepped back, ducking his head and dragging a hand down the slope of his features, muttering, "We're going to do worse at the Witches Ball."

Caidan blinked, his mouth gaping as it sank in. He knew it, they all did, but once again it was one thing to plan it, another thing to act on it. He hitched his shoulders if he was beyond all of this. As if he was at a loss as to how they'd arrived here, at this very point. "After we save her, Mom won't recognize us. What we've become."

"She's the only one we need to think of!" Jett's fisted hands shook. He stood, pressed defensively up against the wall like a wounded, cornered animal.

No one, not even me, realized that the bedroom door had opened until Valarie's bitterly cold voice bellowed, "ENOUGH!"

At their aunt's barking order, the brothers spun her way.

Her cadre of personal bodyguards edged around her, their sharp gazes taking in every single detail of the room. And at Valarie's side was Ferne, the crook of her arm linked around her aunt's. Ferne was sweetly dressed for the Emporium in a dress that matched the yellow strip of pretty lace tied around her eyes. The ends were looped into a bow at the back of her head and drifted to and fro, matching her leggy gait as she accompanied her aunt deeper into the bedroom.

Valarie's lips thinned and turned downward as she scanned the broken furnishings and the bloodied state her nephews were in before her flinty gaze swept to where I sat on the chaise. She briefly took note of the gardener and physician unobtrusively packing up the medical supplies in the background.

Caidan breathed out a puff of relief when he followed his Aunt's gaze and finally took me in, alive and well.

But when Jett glanced at me, emotion tumbled in rapid succession across his bruised and battered features—confliction, guilt, wretchedness—before he burst into motion. He shoved past his brothers, towards the door, shaken and out of sorts. He looked as if he'd seen a ghost. Me. I was the ghost that haunted him. "I-I-I've got to go... I've got to get out of here," he rambled and in a rush of speed, he was gone.

The silver in Valarie's lamé dress sparkled as she half-twisted to her nephews and snapped, "Go after him, get him under control, and return to the Keep." A second later she softened, a tight smile adorning her lips and a pleased note lifting her tone. "And thank you," she said to the brothers. "You've done your part tonight. The rest is up to me. I'll speak to Byron."

Kenton and Caidan shared a disheartened look before they left swiftly to chase down their youngest brother.

A pang of homesickness squeezed my heart at my father's name spilling from Valarie's cruel mouth. My father was still here. My mother too, I assumed. My palm rubbed my chest right above my aching guilty heart. Oh gods. I'd let them think the worst had happened, that I had killed myself. Desperate longing to see them both, to show them that I still lived, strummed with urgency through my veins.

Valarie stared at me long and hard, regarding me as if I was some strange creature, one she finally realized could bite back. Her voice was curiously gentle and thoughtful when she said, "I imagine you've been desperate to see your father for some time now."

I couldn't help myself. Pure excitement to see my father barreled into me and lifted my spirits. I bounced to my feet. "I have," tripped off my tongue fast.

"Well then, come along, Wychthorn. I'm sure he's feeling the same way."

She turned, guiding Ferne, their tall figures cutting gracefully through the room. I lifted my long, sheer skirt, the Hangman's Noose slapping against my spine as I hurried after them both.

We were escorted through the Emporium by Lila Simonis once more. The strange girl strode before us majestically, her thick, wavy hair a riotous cascade of blue.

Valarie's cadre flanked us as we strode through the Emporium. They seemed just as stoic and ruthless as their mistress. Indeed Valarie seemed to project a subarctic coldness that radiated outward to chill my flesh. We entered a quiet, unobtrusive part of the ancient building that had no foot traffic and came to a halt at a door.

Lila opened the door and Valarie led Ferne inside, and I trailed behind. Valarie's cadre fanned out around us as we walked deeper into the room. It was a boardroom, less seductive and more refined elegance with the choice of furnishings, artwork, and decor.

And there were my parents standing across the room.