What we wanted had been passed from Great House to Great House, when the reigning family had been either usurped or annihilated at the will of the Horned Gods. It was given over to be kept safe, but it was also a symbol of the family's ruling authority over all the other Houses—Brangwene's Hjarte.

And we desperately needed it. Enough to steal away Byron's beloved daughter and threaten him with her welfare.

Conflict rippled in Byron's gaze before it shuttered away and those blue eyes steeled themselves against me.

My fingers gripped the edge of my armchair, fingernails digging into its curving sides, carving moon-crescent grooves into the wood. Fucking hells-gate, Byron was going to be hard to break.

Silence once more descended the room while I internally fumed, recalculating what I could do to shatter the man. It wasn't just his youngest daughter at risk. He had a wife and two other daughters, an entire House to safeguard.

We waited for Sirro to address the reason why he'd called our House here, and still nothing from the Horned God. My father shifted forward, the fabric of his black Armani suit whispering with the movement. His thick brows drew over deep violet eyes surrounded by golden skin and feathered with fine lines. "Master Sirro, Jett—"

Sirro snapped up a hand, cutting my father off.

We waited for him to speak. When the silence dragged on, my father and I shared a swift anxious look. Jett was getting worse with every passing minute. He was so pale, almost white, and his wet, rasping breaths were the only noise in the solar.

Sirro arched a brow and tapped his forefinger against the wooden armrest in a bored beat. "Just a moment, Varen, I'm waiting for someone..." His eyes lit up, a smile curving his lips, and he straightened his posture just before the sound of hurried footsteps and a reedy voice barking at Sarnia could be heard coming from the hallway outside.

Sirro's smile became half-feral, and his gaze sharpened. "Ah, here he is," he purred, but the raw edge of his tone was savage, like a ferocious mountain lion bearing down on a fleeing doe.

The solar door swung open and Aldert Pelan barged in with a harried Sarnia behind him. Beyond the doorway, a spider scuttled into view. Its hairy legs clacked against the boned ceiling, and its chittering was a creepy trill accompanying the noise of snapping fangs and guttural snarling coming from the pack of wraith-wolves, dancing at the threshold of the solar. The wolves' misty bodies rippled in and out of existence as they awaited Sarnia's order to attack.

Aldert Fucking Pelan.

The air got sucked out of my chest. The room felt too small, too enclosed, with his vile presence in it. Danne and his brothers had all learned their cruelty from this man. Danne had tried to force himself on my younger sister Ferne...and Nelle.

A fierce need to end the man tore through my entire being and set my teeth grinding, filling my ears with a chalky, grating sound. I gripped the arms of my chair to stop myself from lunging at the smaller man. Compressed wood creaked beneath my ferocious grip.

"It's fine Sarnia," Sirro said, relaxing back into his armchair. "Thank the Heads for waiting for me. We shouldn't be too long here before we begin our meeting."

Sarnia flicked a quick concerned glance Jett's way and at the roll of velvet balanced on his trembling thigh, before nodding to Sirro. She closed the door behind her and left.

I willed my blood to cool, drew in a breath through my nose—a second, a third—and relaxed my hands, loosening my fingers on the wooden armrests, now hot from the intensity of my grip.

I chanced a quick sideways glance and saw my father's animal-bright eyes were slightly narrowed and his fingers twitched with the desire, I assumed, to go for his blade. Even Jett's glassy eyes, shot through with pain, were fixed on Aldert. He'd pushed his feet up to steady his balance, braced and ready to surge forward. And when my gaze returned to Sirro, surprise rippled through me as I observed his unblinking focus fixed on Aldert, those eyes of his darkening to bronze and hardening.

A heartbeat later, Sirro closed his eyes, and when his black eyelashes parted, their color had returned to buttery-scotch, the Horned God seemingly calm.

Aldert Pelan hadn't as yet even noticed us. However, his youngest son did.

Gerrit Pelan, sixteen years old, was right behind his father. His hazel eyes met mine first before darting away to the rest of us in the room, flaring wide to see the hunger burning from my family to snap his father's brittle bones into tiny shards and then grind them to dust.

"Father," he whispered, his voice full of warning. He curled a hand around his father's shoulder and squeezed. Aldert shook off his hand with an irritated shirk. Gerrit's hand fell to his side. He swallowed, his gaze now resting on the Horned God. He took a step back and bowed. "Master Sirro."

Sirro inclined his head in greeting, and leisurely swept his hand toward a seat with brass plating adorning the round-backed wood. The boy, tall and lanky, quickly seated himself into the Berber chair, crossed his ankles, and tucked his feet beneath the chair. His hands latched onto the armrests and he held himself rigid.

I leaned an elbow on my armchair, pinching my lip between my forefinger and thumb. I hadn't seen much of Gerrit over the years. He favored his mother, Irma, in his looks. Instead of a paler complexion, his was more a dark-honeyed hue with sun-kissed freckles across his nose rather than the heavy splattering his redheaded siblings had. Even his hair was browner than his autumnal brothers. But it wasn't just his looks that set him apart from his family. He couldn't conceal the unease and worry shadowing his eyes. If it were any other of his siblings seated before me, all I'd see reflected back would be the conceit and entitlement the Pelans seemed to be born with. And there was something strange sweeping across his expression—confliction—as his gaze met mine, only to shoot away again like a startled sparrow.

Aldert's quick steps toward Sirro, the sound cracking through the solar, stole my attention away from the younger Pelan.

Aldert bowed and addressed the Horned God. "My son is missing." A curt, imperious tone in his voice.

"Which one?" Sirro asked, cocking his head and frowning a little. He shifted in his seat, a small, sly smile now dancing on his lips as he leaned forward and drawled, "You have so many."

Aldert blinked.

His beady eyes shot about the room, at my father, Jett, and myself—realizing rather belatedly that he had an audience of Crowthers.

"Danne." Aldert honed in on me. His thin, chapped lips became a mean line as he took one step toward me. A freckled and age-spotted hand fisted tightly at his side, the ruddy skin whitening. I saw my father tense in the corner of my eye, readying himself, perhaps to intercede. I didn't think Aldert would try to attack me. There was nothing of the man, all skin and bones and cruel intent. But I wouldn't mind if he fucking tried.

Aldert's shifty eyes slid back to Sirro. "He hasn't been seen since the morning after the engagement blessing..." He glanced swiftly at Byron who was still fixated on me with barely veiled abhorrence. And I felt the room inhale a breath. Waiting. He'd been there, seen Nelle's death, and now word had reached the other Houses of what had happened at the Wychthorn estate, that Nelle had been replaced by a Changeling.

Sirro's finger still tapped a beat on the armchair, but each tap was a hard press. The strangest faintest tang on my tongue was coming from him—simmering rage, and he was trying to curb it.

Aldert said, "I received a message from Danne. He said he had something of worth and was returning home to the Carpellean Mountains... But he never made it home."

I saw it. The surprise in Byron, his features slackening the moment he grasped the answer to the question he'd put to me last night—Which House stole my daughter?

Byron's stunned gaze sliced to Aldert.

Sirro had been walking this earth since before our god Zrenyth had birthed the Horned Gods and was clever at hiding himself. However, I suddenly realized that Sirro didn't look surprised at all. His simmering rage was spilling over into fury. With this reveal, the missing piece of Nelle's whereabouts—which was basically a fucking neon sign pointing to Aldert's son—he lost a grip on his anger.

Those coiling threads of power roiled like black storm clouds around Sirro, and the entire room shook in a single pulse of rage as his dark magic punched out. It was just a split second, a surge that blew outward so fast and sharp that no one but my family would detect it.

Sirro knew. Somehow he'd known Danne was behind Nelle's abduction.

But why the outrage?

A moment later, Sirro dampened that rage. His power settled back into soft grays and metallic silvers which drifted like ghostly kelp about his figure.

"I'm sure he did have someone of worth," Sirro purred. The word, someone, registered within the room, and finally with Aldert.

"That would be Nelle," I provided in a flat tone that belied the fury coursing through my veins, pumping my heart faster just to speak to the rat-faced man. "Danne was the one who stole Nelle and replaced her with a Changeling."

I watched the confusion wash over Aldert's pointy features, morphing into trepidation as I unfolded myself from the chair, rising and stepping closer. My height, and the faint shadow cast from the bronze lamps above, loomed over him.

He was intimidated by my size and wary of my family, as he fucking should be. But there was still arrogance in the way he stiffened his spine and in the disdainful curl of his mouth. As Head of an Upper House, he believed his position protected him from the likes of me.

To my side, Sirro absentmindedly stroked the crown of his Familiar's head, much like a household cat. His slender fingers slunk through her lank gray locks as he took in the sight before him with sly eyes.

Aldert's mouth opened and closed. I could see his mind scrambling for the first thing he could think of as he blinked rapidly. "Surely you Crowthers were behind the Changeling."

Sirro sighed, bored. His fingers stilled. "Why on earth would the Crowthers bother? It seems like quite an ordeal to go through to exchange Nelle for a Changeling when they already possessed her through their boon."

Confusion creased Aldert's brow. He kept his gaze full of loathing, locked on mine, but the words rushed out in his panic to save his son, his House. "I can only assume Danne was helping Nelle escape. She didn't want to go through with the marriage to you."

Aldert had been there, he'd seen my reaction, Byron's too. The half-veiled accusations that we'd hurled at each other.

"Danne stole Nelle, against her will," I pressed.

Aldert scoffed. "Why would—"

"Because he hated me that much. He wanted to steal what was mine."

Anger wound around my bones and crunched the air from my lungs. A flash of memory of Nelle, pinned beneath Danne in the limousine, had my knuckles burning with heat because I was clenching them so tight. Pure heart-crushing terror—what that motherfucker was trying to do to her, had done to her—shining bright in her eyes when I'd slaughtered my way to her.

Aldert's hurried footfall on the wooden floor as he retreated had me snapping back to the present.

I realized it was showing all over my face—that icy rage that consumed my very breath—a feral need as an ancient, wicked melody whispered through my blood, to end him.

"I know how much you hated him." Aldert jabbed a finger at me while turning to spit the words at Sirro. "This is just an attempt to discredit my son!"

Sirro ignored Aldert and instead politely asked my father, "How is the lovely Ferne these days?"

He knew. Of course, he would know what Danne was capable of. What he'd attempted to do to my sister. What he suspected might have happened to Nelle when she was trapped with Danne.

I watched Aldert swallow thickly, and his complexion paled to a sickly color.

My father replied to Sirro in his deep, rough voice, but he kept his wrathful gaze on Aldert. "Ferne is well."

"Danne was obsessed with Nelle," I said. I caught the unease in Aldert's gaze, a flash of doubt. He knew—he knew what sickness roiled in his son because he was the one who had taught him cruelty, and that fact alone would make my lies sound like the truth. "So he stole her."

"He would never—"

"I went after what was mine and I found Danne with her. I didn't like the way he was looking at her... Touching her... She didn't like it either."

Byron's gaze cut to mine and I saw what I was inferring, slamming through him. He couldn't hide his shock, nor the fury that shone ferociously in his blue eyes.

And then to my surprise, Byron spoke up, his voice tight. "Danne had been at me all weekend trying to get to Nelle. If she hadn't kept constant company with Graysen, I'm sure your son would have stolen her earlier."

"They were friends. We all knew that."

Byron's cheeks blotched with building rage. "It would seem not, Aldert."

Byron also couldn't afford to have anyone suspect that his daughter was other. For once, he and I were aligned in thought. Everyone, including Aldert, needed to see Danne as an obsessive stalker—and that being the sole reason why he had stolen the Wychthorn Princess. I only hoped that Aldert believed Byron and didn't dig any further as to why his son thought he had possessed someone of worth.

I also hoped to hells that this was a wake-up call to Byron so that he'd end the engagement of Corné Pelan to his daughter Evelene. But there was something the Pelans had over him, this mysterious experiment they were performing for the Horned Gods that kept him in check.

Aldert lifted his chin, eyes slitting and spitting self-importance, I assumed, gloating over the fact that someone even as high-ranking as Bryon was, he wasn't even privy to know what was going on in the Pelan's laboratories deep under the Carpellean Mountains.

Like his sadistic eldest son, Corné, he arrogantly assumed this gave him a certain right to lord over Byron.

Aldert blatantly ignored Byron and instead asked me, daring to take a step closer, "What did you do to my son?"

I braced my stance, folding my arms across my chest, and stared down the length of my nose at him. The words rumbled from my throat, frayed with malice. "I simply retrieved what belonged to me and l let Danne go."

Well, I didn't. Nelle did. And technically, it was true, she did let him go...into the swifting void.

"He's vanished."

I mentally shrugged—again, technically true.

I lifted my eyebrows, silently replying—I didn't fucking care. And truly, I didn't.

I could still feel the razor-sharp edge of the blade Danne had held to my throat. The warm blood seeping from the shallow cut he'd made, dripping down my neck to wet the back collar of my adamere jacket, before he lifted the dagger. The latticework of morning sunlight and mountain shadow, striking off the slender blade and spinning away as he drove the dagger downward, intent on ending me.

The last terrified thought I'd had—that he would take Nelle and finish what he'd begun in the limousine.

And Nelle.

Brave, fearless Nelle, hurling herself at Danne and swifting. Both of them disappearing into the void, leaving behind a wake of gray-tipped feathered wind that brushed against my sweat-slick skin and cooled the bloodied wounds.

In the solar, Aldert pivoted, the soles of his shoes squeaking upon the wooden floor as he turned to face Sirro. Unadulterated fury reddened his face as he stabbed his finger at me. His voice boomed through the room like an explosion of thunder, presumptuous and demanding. "Sirro—"

The burst of savagery in Sirro's golden gaze was the only warning Aldert received.

Sirro's power lashed out as swiftly as a snake's strike. Silver strands whipped around Aldert's milky neck, squeezing viciously.

Everyone in the room reacted.

My father and I were a blur, taking defensive positions in front of my vulnerable brother.

Both Byron and Gerrit shot to their feet, the boy shunting the chair behind him as he stumbled backward.

Sirro's palm was now empty. His Familiar had quickly bowed, pressing her forehead to the ground, trembling hands splayed before her. The Horned God slowly straightened in his seat, a graceful, predatory movement. He angled his face, an eyebrow rising over amber eyes gone half-feral, and ground out, "Sirro?" There was some dark, sinister hum running beneath his tone that vibrated in the air, raising the hair at the back of my neck.

In his anger, Aldert had forgotten his place.