The raw power of the Mustang's engine vibrated beneath my boots, rattling and jostling my body. Nothing could be heard but the machine's deafening thunder, the scream of tires. Icy wind blustered through the open window, bringing with it the acrid smell of krekenn blood infused with gasoline, the smell of burning rubber. The wild currents of air raked at my hair, tugging at the collar of my armored jacket.

Focused on the twisting country road ahead, I clenched the steering wheel tightly. The car's headlights pierced the billowing banks of fog as we sliced right through, racing frantically toward my family's estate.

Rage had been my constant companion as I charged through the night, pushing the Mustang as fucking fast as it could go. Nelle's seething seemed endless. It boiled and spat through my veins, fouling my bloodstream and fraying the edges of my mind.

Urgency hackled the fine hair on my body. I'd kept a tight rein on the threads binding Nelle to me, sending soothing waves of calm along the lines of power, hoping to influence her mood as I'd done before when she'd needed an infusion of strength while she'd been searching for the escape tunnel beneath the Keep. But she was drowning beneath waves of anger. I couldn't sense my influence had eased her emotions even by one single degree.

I gripped the stick and dropped a gear, angling myself with the shuddering car as we skidded around the corner. Our wake scattered dead leaves to flurry behind us. Slamming my fucking foot down, I shifted back and forth from clutch to accelerator, punching through the gears, the supercharger pushing us faster, faster. Tall, gnarled trees thrust their crooked limbs up and over the narrow, uneven road creating a mist-enshrouded tunnel, and ahead, down the straight, were the rear lights of a convoy. The red lights began to expand from pin-pricks to brighter dots as I approached at a roaring, neck-breaking speed.

Nelle?

But the threads of power connecting us both were still weak as if she were still a distance away. I accelerated even faster, a rush of furious speed, vibrating metal and bitter fumes, to dodge past the three-deep convoy, frowning as I streaked by. My aunt maybe? My brothers?

I left the convoy behind and dug my phone from my bandoleer, rapidly scrolling to find a number, and pressed call. The Gate House answered on the second ring. Before they could even greet me, I barked above the sound of the roaring engine, "Open up the gates!'

"Gray—"

"NOW!"

Hanging up I tossed my phone onto the seat beside me. It slid into the tangle of harnesses and swords sheathed in leather.

As I closed in on the estate's gatehouse I slammed my fist on the horn, blaring my need for the guards to open the wall of iron and adamere up now! FUCKING NOW! The massive gates to the estate began to slide apart.

I kept up my manic speed. I sure as hells wasn't going to slow down. Yanking the steering wheel around, I gave a quick clutch-kick, countersteering as the Mustang's back wheels swung out with the loss of traction, transitioning sideways. The tires screamed, burning billows of whitish smoke like a blazing bonfire as I controlled the drift, throttling, and keeping a tight angle and line until the gates were dead ahead.

Then slammed forward...

...to barrel through the narrow gap, the car exploding with unleashed power, leaving a trail of churning smoke.

I was exhausted, existing purely on adrenalin that pounded my heart faster. I was teetering on the verge of burnout from chasing Yezekael, the battle beneath Ascendria, and the race through the catacombs to Florin's lair. Mela and Sirro. The drive here. My constant worry over Nelle.

I didn't know what was left of myself.

I sure as fuck didn't know what I was going to find when I reached home.

The car roared down the driveway, the headlights cutting through the dark night. The vast lawns whipped by before I plunged into the copse of trees, bursting free of them a moment later, spraying loose pebbles as the car carved around a bend, straight for the Keep. The Birds of Prey rookery jutted into a low-lying sky sparkling with the appearance of gemlike stars. Willwips, tiny elemental critters, danced above a bed of dandelions, streaking up to brush the night in the feathered strokes of a rainbow.

The steering wheel creaked beneath my knuckles as my fists tightened.

The Emporium.

All those godsdamned hours I'd been distracted within the catacombs. What the hells had my brothers put Nelle through? What had she endured because of them?

Panic coiled around my ribcage like a python, squeezing hard as Nelle's rage stumbled and faltered and then free-fell, spiraling into pure terror.

I needed to get to her now!

I approached my ancestral home. Though it was the early hours of the morning, the Keep was lit up with life. There was a multitude of vehicles parked outside the Keep with soldiers busy unpacking their holds and consequently blocking the drawbridge. I slammed on the brakes, bringing the Mustang to a skidding, shuddering halt. Flinging the car door open, I ignored the soldiers twisting around in curiosity, and the concern pitching my sister's voice higher as she called my name.

Ferne was overseeing something being hauled out the back of an SUV.

A large metal box—battered and cumbersome with its size.

I didn't know what it was, nor gave a fuck, as I launched from the Mustang. The night air tainted with burning rubber pinched my nostrils and rushed up against my skin, dragging through my hair as I exploded into a long stride, pistoning my arms, dodging cars and milling staff to hurtle across the drawbridge. My boots hammered a fraught rhythm against wood, then pounded a heavy beat against stone as I careened beneath the portcullis, its sharp edges hanging above my head.

The passageway that cut through the Keep swept by, blurring with blue wildfyre flames, and it was Nelle's voice I heard first, shrieking and cursing up a storm.

My heart almost stopped beating as I skidded into the inner courtyard.

Nelle was ahead of me, my aunt further away. Dread stole the air from my lungs as my gaze locked onto the whipping post.

Gods, how many times had I been tied up there?

How many times had I endured this punishment?

My little bird struggled to free herself, pulling frantically at the magical ropes binding her to the wooden posts like a wild animal, screaming, "Let me go!"

Aunt Valarie's complexion had lost its luster, and though her stern features were twisted with murderous rage, tears glistened on her cheeks as she flung her arm back, choking out a sob. The lash of the whip writhed through the air like a grisly ribbon, crackling with unearthly magic. Not an ordinary whip fashioned from simple leather that we were punished with as kids, but one forged with gruesome dark magic. Its sharp lash sizzled white-hot as if lightning had been drawn down from the sky and infused within its leather.

It happened so fast.

My aunt jerked her arm forward. A strangled cry expelled deep from within her wretched soul.

The cruel length of lash cracked—

And whipped forward, snapping through the air as fast as a snake's strike.

"NO!" I roared, surging toward my heart tied up at the post.

***

The lash cut through the cold night air.

A rageful slashing sound of vicious hate.

I screamed.

My clammy fingers clenched the wooden handles and my entire body locked rigid as I braced for pain the likes of which I'd never known slicing through my flesh. Ripping it apart. Setting it on fire with mind-shattering agony.

Except—

I felt nothing.

Instead, I heard a deep grunt edged in pain.

And felt warmth.

I darted a startled glance over my shoulder and sucked in a shocked gasp.

Graysen hissed out a breath between his teeth. Spiny agony creased his features and tightened his mouth into a pained line. He had placed himself behind my vulnerable figure. His powerful chest pressed against my back, warming my flesh with strength and reassurance as he bodily shielded me to take the brunt of my savage punishment.

He instantly scrambled for my wrists, trying to undo the coils of ropes binding me to the handles. But they wouldn't come free, wouldn't budge an inch. "LET HER GO!" he roared to his aunt.

But the whip came down—

CRACK!

The strike of the wicked lash, spitting and sparking with dark magic, cut through his armor and sliced across his back, made him stumble and falter. He bit back a pained groan as agony shuddered through his body.

"Remove yourself!" Valarie screamed, her voice high-pitched and hysterical, lost to madness.

"NO!"

And the whip kept coming faster, faster, faster—

CRACK!CRACK!CRACK!

With her heightened speed and strength, it was a volley of strikes.

Rapid gunfire in the form of merciless leather.

CRACK!CRACK!CRACK!CRACK!

Graysen crowded his body right up against my own. Covering me. Protecting me. His head bowed, lips meeting the shell of my ear. "I've got you, Nelle," he rasped, his weakened voice hoarse and raw. He slipped his shaking hands over mine, threading our fingers together, and he held tight against the brutality unleashed upon him.

"Don't!" I cried, trying to tell him—Not for me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But I was cut off by the loud sound of the lash whistling through the air, the whiplashing crack, the shredding of adamere armor and flesh.

Valarie was shrieking, demanding that he stand aside. It wasn't him she was punishing. She was whipping him, trying to drive him away so she could reach me.

CRACK!CRACK!CRACK!CRACK!CRACK!

He stumbled, barely stifling a bark of torturous pain. His hard chest slipped low against my back, his body jolting with every crack of the whip that inflicted savage agony. The stench of smoldering flesh churned my stomach. Terror quaked through me. I twisted my head around to look at him just as the whip came down, catching him on the shoulder, ripping flesh and spraying blood. It splattered across my face, the metallic taste sliding across my tongue as I screamed in utter terror for him, for what he was enduring. His eyes were squeezed shut. The crimson blood coating the side of his face was a bright contrast to his ashen skin. He pushed himself sluggishly back up, but his weight slumped against my smaller frame.

"Please! Please! Not for me!" I begged him. I'd been the one to do this. I'd destroyed his beloved mother's painting and triggered his aunt's madness.

Oh gods!

The strikes were barbaric.

Every time they came down, raining upon Graysen like a raging tempest of viciousness, I realized he was saying something to me, gritted out between clenched teeth. Even when one of his legs buckled beneath him and he staggered under the ruthless attack. He gasped hoarsely, a shudder running through his trembling body. His head had bowed low, his sweaty hair brushed my temple, and his breaths were ragged pants that poured heat against my cheek. But he kept repeating the same words as I tugged frantically at the ropes trapping me there, screaming at Valarie, "Stop, please stop!"

And every time that whip cracked down, Graysen rasped the same thing over and over and over again, but I didn't hear him, couldn't hear him over the lash cutting through the air, the thunder of my panicked heartbeat, the pleading to his aunt, "Stop, please stop! I'll do anything!"

A different pained cry came next—a girl's.

When the lash whistling through the air slowed, the tip sliding across the black night like a gentle ribbon, and the sparking of dark magic died away, I finally heard what he'd said to me with every strike of the whip. His ragged breath washed against my cheek as he spoke the words in a voice threaded with agony. "I love you."

Graysen swayed sluggishly. His sweat-clammy hands slipped from mine as he fell away, collapsing behind me.

The ropes binding my wrists to the whipping post untangled like wriggling vines and I was suddenly freed. I twisted around, my heart slamming against my ribs, astonished at his confession and utterly terrified at what I'd find left of him.

Graysen knelt at my feet, shaking, ashen, and silent.

In the background, there was sound and movement. I noted them distantly as if the world had come to a grinding halt, and our surroundings fell away and narrowed to just the two of us.

His confession replayed over and over in my mind in that low, gravelly voice of his, tight with torment. But I didn't, couldn't quite understand it. Confusion nudged my brows together.

Beats of sweat glistened over his forehead. Blood was splattered up his neck and drizzled below the collar of his armor. All those faint freckles beneath his naturally golden skin were bright against his blanched complexion. A light breeze stirred the back of his adamere jacket that had been shredded to thin strips.

He loves me?

Graysen leaned forward, panting, a hand splayed against the cobblestones supporting his sagging, trembling body. His dark hair, the locks damp and wavy, slid forward as he ducked his head, perhaps because he couldn't bear to look at me.

He was exactly where I wanted him, all those weeks ago, when I'd walked into the Keep and was enshrouded within the ruthless shadows of his home. I had sworn I would have him bloodied, broken, and begging at my feet.

And there he was.

But there was also a regalness to the way he was bowed at my feet—a fallen prince.

When he pushed his hand off the cobbles, grimacing against the pain, and straightened his tortured spine to raise his head and look back at me, wariness had entered his gaze. Vulnerability too. And hope. Gods, hope shone from his black eyes like a pale glint of sunshine on a dark desolate day.

How I'd longed to be loved and cherished by another—I love you.