I'd never witnessed Graysen like this, not even when he'd been fighting the Pelans' small army. This was something else altogether.

There was the barest trace of an iridescent sparkle of aether in the air. The night seemed alight with power, the likes of which almost felt the same as that which radiated from a Horned God. Every footfall Graysen made charged the ground with energy. It was a faint rumble of angry might traveling through the cobblestone, shivering beneath my bare feet to crackle up my legs and bones, electrifying my bloodstream.

The Crowthers' Warband, veteran enforcers, were woefully unskilled in the face of his abilities. The inner courtyard echoed with the deafening clamor of soldiers shouting, the stampede of rushing men and women, the strikes of flesh on flesh, and the startled, pained cries of the wounded.

The fight had been ruthless and savage.

The stony ground was strewn with the injured.

There were moments when Graysen had moved so fast that even I couldn't see him. He was there and gone in a blink and it was impossible to determine where he'd appear next. His powerful body had been like a blade slicing through the air as he reappeared out of nowhere, twisting above the heads of the soldiers to land with a heavy thud amongst the throng, cracking cobbles beneath his boots. He'd become a gauzy blur of lethal tornado kicks, crescent, and ax, his legs and body spinning fluidly as he razed a path through the soldiers. Breaking bones. Knocking a few unconscious. Sending them toppling like dominoes.

I had watched it all with malevolence surging through my veins, the rancor tang of it coating my tongue.

I stood near the whipping post. My skirt was caught up by the blustering squalls, the sheer fabric fluttering around my figure. The wind swirled the loose locks of my hair around my face as icy currents buffered up against my skin, as chilling as the Arctic, as cold as moonlight.

Clack-clack, clack-clack, clack-clack.

I snapped the long length of my adamere bracelet into my palm, releasing and catching it, just as I'd always done when I was simmering with rage. The beads chinked up against one another in a steady rhythm with the fiendish melody of vengeance that sang in my heart.

I was drunk on retribution. Woozy with the reckoning unfolding before me.

It was intoxicating and I swilled it down, wanting more.

I didn't have my wyrm. I couldn't burn the Keep down and all the Crowthers in it. But I had Graysen. Just as his brothers had arrived at the Keep, it had occurred to me that perhaps there was a way I could twist him to do my bidding.

I continued to dig deep, gathering up my soul, my very being, powering my fury and hatred into it. I let it vibrate and skitter and shudder beneath my flesh like a quake that could shatter a mountain and bring it to its knees. I poured my craving for bloodshed, the scorching need for violence, into the otherworldly threads that bound Graysen to me, and I leaned, using the sway, just as he'd done yesterday. I turned Graysen into a weapon I could wield against his own blood kin.

Victory danced at the tips of my fingers.

I wanted him to take them all down.

Every single fucking Crowther.

Earlier, with a single glance at Ferne and Valarie, I'd hungered for payback. Demanded it. Needed it. The Crowthers had conspired against my family for years. They'd used me as leverage to force my father's hand. Made a show of me to obtain the Goods Appraisal from the Witches.

Valarie had dared take to me with a whip.

And failed because her nephew had shielded my body with his own and taken the punishment in my stead.

Seeing Graysen on his knees, with blood dripping from his flayed flesh, had added fuel to the festering desire that demanded retribution. What he'd endured, so easily could have been me. I wanted to give the Crowthers a taste of what I'd endured this evening at their hands—the humiliation of the Emporium. The threat of the Witches Ball.

And now Jett was a ragdoll in Graysen's fist, his other hand a bloodied blade.

END HIM! END HIM! END HIM!

Hate and madness were a red shroud that shadowed my sight.

I wanted Graysen's body coated in Jett's blood like warpaint.

I wanted Valarie's blood to splash all over him next.

I wanted her gone.

Preferably fucking dead.

I was so enthralled by the wicked chaos, that I didn't even hear Sage barking as he burst from the tower. He careened into my thighs and rocked me off balance. Throwing my arms wide to steady myself, I glanced downward as he prowled in front of me, the bottled lightning crackling against his hackled misty fur. His silvery eyes were fixed on the fight, and he lowered his stance, muscles coiled, claws digging into the cobbles. The wraith-wolf bared his vicious fangs as a protective growl rumbled from his barrelled chest.

More and more of the Crowthers' soldiers returned from wherever Valarie had sent them. They poured into the courtyard, splitting outward, shouting to one another, adding to the moans of the wounded, the cries for the medics. My fury faltered when I saw the appearance of cursed weaponry. And Zrenyth's too.

The soldiers had brought with them the weapons that had trapped my wyrm—the long cords of ropes and hefty rattling chains. All of them thrummed with Zrenyth's power, slithering with dark might and shadows. This time the soldiers were aimed not at me but at Graysen.

Jett wheezed. His puffy, swollen face had gone red-blue, eyes glazed with mind-bending pain as he dangled helplessly in Graysen's iron grip.

The brothers rejoined the fight. They weren't completely healed, but they'd recovered enough that they'd found their feet, swaying, grimacing with pain.

Kenton bellowed, "Let Jett go!" charging like a bull.

Caidan snatched up the whip from where it lay on the ground. He used his good arm to fling the whip back. The lash coiled through the night, the white-hot magic sizzling like a flash of lightning as it cracked, flicking forward.

Graysen punched his arm toward Jett's chest. His bloodied fist was within a hair's breadth of Jett's breastbone when the lashes tip whipped around his wrist, forcefully restraining his strike. Caidan leaned back, grunting as he dug his heels into the ground, hauling on the whip, trying to yank Graysen off-balance.

Kenton slammed into Graysen sidelong, but it was like he'd hit a brick wall. He rebounded, staggering back, then surged forward to slam a fist right into Graysen's jaw, snapping his brother's head sideways. But Graysen was immovable and glared back with cold, gray eyes. My eyes.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Kenton boomed, slinging behind his younger brother to wrap a forearm around Graysen's throat in a chokehold. Graysen only clenched his fist tighter around Jett's throat.

Caidan and Kenton were yelling at him to "Stop!"

While I was roaring for him to "End him!"

A hand slapped down on my wrist and spun me away from the violence. I came face to face with Ferne. The ends of the lace tied around her eyes snapped in the wild breeze, her skirt billowing out, molding to the side of her tall, slender figure. Her features were creased in angry perplexity. "What are you doing to him?!"

She knew...somehow she knew I was manipulating her brother.

I pressed my mouth together petulantly. Spitefully.

Her fingers tightened on my wrist so hard agonizing shards speared up and down my arm. "Stop it!" she shouted, shaking me. "Stop using him!" She kept at it, kept shaking me, and I was thrust back and forth with her furious panic. Sage barked, shoving bodily at her, trying to get her to stop.

In the corner of my eye, I watched Graysen toss Jett's body to the ground. Jett lay like a discarded doll, gasping for breath and unable to move his broken body.

Ferne stopped, her grip loosening on my arm as strange currents of feral wind surged about the courtyard, guttering torches and tearing at the pennants fluttering on the ramparts high above. Sandstorms were teased from the training pit below, the whirling clouds scouring adamere and stinging my skin as they raked past.

Graysen moved like a stream of rogue wind. He swung around and grabbed hold of Kenton, swinging him wide, lifting him off the ground and hurling him clear across the courtyard. Kenton crashed into the whipping post, breaking one of its spread arms.

Graysen drove his fist downward, spinning his arm in a swift corkscrew to untangle the lash from his wrist. He lunged his upper body forward to snatch hold of the freed lash, heaving backward with a powerful yank to jerk Caidan off his feet. Caidan stumbled forward.

Graysen vanished from sight—

And reappeared right in front of Caidan—

Pivoting around with a violent strike of his combat boot, he kicked Caidan in the gut so hard he flew through the air to smack with a sickening crunch into the far wall of the courtyard. Knocked out, Caidan slithered into an untidy heap of limbs on the ground.

The victory was fleeting.

My heart stumbled when I saw a soldier fire a crossbow loaded with a stinger-tipped bolt.

It soared through the air—

But Graysen was faster, lowering, sliding sideways—

It flew past and instead struck one of Valarie's cronies. The stinger pierced her right in the upper chest, releasing its poison, and she fell unconscious, collapsing upon the cobbles.

Valarie stood like a general on the porch landing to the steps that led from the Keep, bellowing commands at her cadre and the warband.

Soldiers unpinned cursed grenades.

And the world erupted into explosions and ricocheting heat that broke up the darkness with blinding light and writhing black clouds that gobbled the illumination bleeding from Keep.

Graysen disappeared within a flood of seething black tendrils.

He reappeared a moment later, bursting free from the oily cloud, ripping the tendrils from his body as he ran, flinging the writhing threads into the training pit.

Another grenade detonated before he could evade it.

Pale blue light shattered the night.

Tiny, translucent blue spiders swarmed up his figure in a frenzy, spinning a thick blue webbing around his body. He was bound like a fly. I watched his limbs stretch, pushing outward against the otherworldly cocoon.

And I waited, with worry ricocheting in my chest. Part of me was anxious he'd be hurt, the rest of me fretted that he wouldn't finish what I'd started.

Graysen exploded into furious motion. A thrashing fight. The webbing was torn to scraps, the silky yarn fluttering outward like dandelions caught up in a breeze. Freed, he moved like a machine, a blur of angry speed, crushing the spiders with his fists, squashing them in a shower of furious stamps.

Just as he'd smashed the last of the spiders a cursed bolt whizzed through the air, aimed right at his boots. It detonated with a jarring crack, flinging out a sheet of warped lightning that wrapped around his lethal physique. Graysen froze, shuddering with the force of electrifying magic that held him in place almost as if he'd been trapped in time.

A grenade of repeating thunder was unleashed. It discharged with an ear-shattering BOOM and I bounced upward as if it had exploded beneath my feet.

Graysen staggered against its might.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

Graysen shuddered and rocked and stumbled to his knees, bowing once more.

The soldiers rushed toward him with Zrenyth's ropes and chains, intending to bind him like a prisoner.

Oh gods...

Dread wove a cold, ominous path through my veins, cooling my vengeance.

A voice beside me jerked my attention away. Ferne had an ear cocked, listening to the sounds of warfare, to the pained grunts Graysen expelled as he shuddered where he knelt, withstanding hit after hit of raucous thunder. Desperation and terror tightened her features. She knew what was going on out there, with the trill of her fingers lifted to the air and her senses unspooled over the courtyard. "They're winning against him, aren't they?"

I nodded and then remembered she wouldn't see it. "Yes." A sinister part of me was still seething that Graysen was losing and he wasn't going to be able to destroy Valarie.

"My aunt won't let him stop us from doing what we need to do to save our mother. She'll do everything in her power to bend him."

An icy fingertip of alarm slipped down my spine. "What do you mean?"

Her chin quivered and she cried, "When he returns he won't be the same. You won't recognize him!"

And then Valarie and her cadre turned my way.

"They're going to come after you too," Ferne warned.

"Free me," I begged, although there was little chance I'd make it ten footsteps before one of them recaptured me.

"Little bird." Ferne's eyebrows nudged together above the strip of lace. "That's what he calls you, right?"

"Yes," I breathed.

She let go of my arm and drew back a step. "Then fly, little bird."