Part of me was still confused. "This didn't happen to her when she was locked in the Tithe Prison." Nelle hadn't mentioned it to me when she'd shared her secret. But I knew it couldn't have happened to her back then.

My sister sucked in a horrified breath. "What did you just say?"

I blinked, coming to, realizing this was a part of Nelle's history Ferne didn't know. "After our mother..." And I didn't need to go into it further because my sister knew what I'd be talking about. "Marissa locked Nelle in their family's Tithe Prison. Guilt, I expect, at betraying our mother." Even at that young age, Nelle's strange powers would have been growing stronger, and I'd say fear of her daughter would have been another reason why Marissa would have done such a desperate and cruel act.

"She would have...been..." the words drifted apart as she thought it through, calculating just how old Nelle would have been. "Seven years old."

"Yeah." Seven years old and trapped in absolute darkness, alone.

"Gods, that's—"

"Monstrous? Horrendous? Despicable? Is it any worse than what we're doing? What's going to happen to Nelle if she survives this sickness?"

In the corner of my eyes, I saw Ferne wince. And I sensed her confliction deepening as she chewed on her bottom lip, glancing away. A moment later, she leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, her black eyebrows nudged together beneath the lace strapped around her forehead covering her empty eye-sockets, as she gave what I'd said earlier some further thought. "The wyrm's growing, maturing with her. It would have been a youngling back then. Only when it reaches adolescence is it allowed out of the burrow to bask in moon rays or sunbeams."

And right now, we didn't have either.

I'd done this to Nelle. She was dying because of me. She'd die even if she survived the night because later on at the Witches Ball, I'd be the one that would place her on the auction block.

"She needs a friend," I said turning back toward my sister.

Ferne pushed abruptly off the doorframe. She pulled an anxious are-you-sure? face, instantly knowing who I was referring to. She clicked her tongue twice. "I've worked with him the past week or so. He can't bite your face off but he's going to let you know how he feels."

I was about to ask—beg, really—for her to bring him up here when she answered for me. "I'll go get him."

As Ferne fled down the stairwell, I walked back inside and lay Nelle gently on the leather couch, and carefully dragged it outside so as not to jostle her.

I squatted down so I was closer to peel the sticky locks from her temple and forehead and brush them aside, tucking them behind her ears. Her eyelashes fluttered shut, on a long whistling breath... And she didn't take another.

Bleak panic surged through my veins in fear that she'd never wake again. I shook her. "Come on, Nelle, stay with me." I kept shaking her until she took a breath, parting her lashes to stare at me through slitted glassy eyes. She was cold and feverish and though my instinct was to tuck the blankets around her, I couldn't. She needed warmth but more importantly, she needed every part of her body to be exposed to allow the moonlight to bathe her skin and fuel the trapped wyrm inside of her.

And yet I couldn't let her shiver out here either in the cold autumnal night.

Nelle was going to hate me for this, even more than she usually did, but fucked if that mattered right now.

Quickly, unzipping my boots, I shucked them off along with my armor, tossing them aside. I was still dusty and grimy and stunk of wildfyre smoke, but none of that mattered. I gently rolled Nelle onto her side and slid onto the couch behind her and stretched out.

I slipped an arm beneath her chest and pulled her closer so her back was pressed to my front, and I nudged a leg beneath hers, flinching at the ice-cold contact of her near-freezing limbs, and I shared my body heat with her.

Gently tugged up her nightie so more of her legs were exposed to the moonlight that I prayed to Mother Skalki to let shine down on her.

Please, please, please...

The door to my residence briefly opened and I heard the soft padding as the wraith-wolf approached, soft on the carpet, then clipped as his claws met stone. He gave me one low warning growl, as he rounded the couch, and those strange silver-misty eyes fixed on me, glowering. He didn't try to bite or bare his fangs at me. His attention swung straight to Nelle. He nudged her hand with his wet nose and licked her fingers, but it drew no response from her, and with a long mournful whine, he settled down on the stone balcony floor, curling into a ball to keep her company.

It seemed like an eternity of suffering and praying to Skalki and Zrenyth before the clouds slowly drifted apart and shafts of pure moonlight shone through their roiling mass.

I held Nelle in my arms as moonlight, soft and eerie, bathed her body and made the beads of cold sweat that goose-fleshed her skin sparkle. At the first contact of moonlight, she let out a heavy and weary sigh that scraped its way from her throat along with a wracking cough that rattled her body and my heart. Her muscles tensed, and then with a slow intake of breath, she relaxed and curved into me.

Over the course of the night, I held her as she shivered. The sound of her struggling for breath, with its cruel rasping edge, had bands of iron tightening around my own ribs and a feeling of despair and desperation choking my thoughts.

But I was thinking deeply upon what Sirro had told me after we'd left his solar. There was something teasing the back of my mind. The way the Horned God had looked at me, and the way he'd said it.

We all have to make choices. Some divide us right down the middle, cleave us in two. We have to pick one side or the other. Make one choice over another.

I began to wonder if he hadn't been so much talking about me but about himself. It didn't make sense, but I tucked it away to think about later. Because what Mela had said down in the catacombs beneath Ascendra, was a bell tolling loud inside my mind with every beat of my stumbling heart.

Don't choose.

There was only my mother or Nelle to choose between.

I had to use one to save the other.

I had to sacrifice one so the other could live.

But what if Mela was right and I didn't choose? What if I could save them both?

There was no other way around not using Nelle to save my mother. But only up to a point. We just had to get into the Witches Ball. There would be a way out of this for Nelle, and I was going to find it for her.

Movement dragged me out of my thoughts as Nelle turned over, angling her face so her cheek rested in the space between my shoulder and neck, and the tip of her cold nose nudged into my throat. She breathed me in while creeping an arm around my upper chest, higher and higher until her sweat-slick palm curled around the other side of my neck.

It wasn't me. It was what I was to her—a Tamer—why she sought my comfort, what soothed her.

Nelle deserved freedom.

But she also had a big heart and I knew if it was me who freed her, even if it was the bindings tying us together because of what we were, and what we were together that influenced her, she'd forgive me.

I didn't deserve forgiveness. I didn't deserve a girl of fire. She deserved a life where her spirit was unfettered, and she could soar wherever she willed.

As resolve seeped into me, a peacefulness settled like a mantle around my shoulder, not oppressive but freeing.

I'd free my little bird.

Somehow.

I had no fucking idea how I was going to go about unshackling those chains, and that was something to sort through if she made it through the night.

And finally, as the hours ticked by and the sun began to rise and warm light stretched across the horizon and lit her in a halo of gold, the shivering dissipated. When she dragged in her first healthy-sounding breath and made a contented humming sound, I blew out a pent-up breath.

As my hands tightened around her middle, now warm with heat, and her complexion back to its honeyed hue, I had to remind myself to ease back the pressure. I knew I was going to have to let her go, open up the door to her cage and let her fly free.

As soon as we could save my mother.

And that's why someone like me never deserved a girl like her.

***

Heat soaked into my skin and into my bones. Softness caressed my limbs. A hint of cedar swirled down my throat to soothe the banked fire in my lungs—its presence keeping the dark dreamworld away.

A warm breeze tinged with a chilled edge danced across my cheekbones, lifting strands of hair to tickle my forehead and nose—I batted the locks away with a sluggish movement. Enveloped in that place where I was still half-dreaming, it was a slow, slow rouse to awareness. I sighed in contentment and rolled over to my back, curling my arm beneath something comforting that held the scent of a pine forest, wanting to sleep just a little bit longer.

Languid.

Content.

I was dimly aware that the light behind my eyelids had changed—bright, incredibly bright. It couldn't be the lighting set into recesses in the bedroom's ceiling. It was too sharp for that.

I peeled my sticky eyelashes apart and met harsh blinding sunlight.

Slapping a hand across my eyes, I squinted to ease the sting. When my eyes adjusted to the change of light, I slowly slid my hand aside and found myself staring up at the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen.

Blue.

Glorious blue.

Vivid marlin blue with a buttery-golden orb set into the apex of the sky. A trio of swallows darted overhead, twirling and diving and soaring upward.

And my ears pricked. Noises—a ringing of steel; thumping of metal on wood; running water; the purr of engines—some soft and smooth, others more industrial and gruffer; footfall and conversation; rough-hewn voices shouting orders and eruptions of laughter.

Where the last week had been filled with oppressive silence, but for the soft whir of air-conditioning and the routine appearance of quiet Penn with her endless trays of meals, now I was surrounded by life.

Everyday life.

In fact, as I gazed around, my eyes growing wider and rounder, I discovered I was outside and on a balcony that seemingly wrapped around the top of the tower with balustrades and a thick railing, formed from the same stone that made up the tower, except rougher and weather-worn.

How did I get out here?

I levered up by my elbows.

My thoughts were muddled and insubstantial and it took a while to work out where I was and what had happened. As I drew in a surprised breath, it both sounded and felt a lot healthier than I had the day before. Or had it been several days before? I'd lost track of time, of life, of everything.

I sat up slowly and found I'd been sleeping on a leather couch. Soft cashmere blankets in creams and dove-gray were nestled around me, not quite over me, but tucked beneath my body to lend its warmth, and a fluffy pillow encased in midnight silk had cradled my head. As I patted my hair, my fingers snagging on knots, I knew it was a bird's nest and would take forever to untangle. I needed a shower, desperately...and food.

My stomach was practically gnawing itself with starvation.

Oh my gods, I was hungry.

Ravenous.

Thirsty too.

My fingers caught on the coarse rope collaring my neck as I rubbed my throat and swallowed gingerly. My throat felt raspy and dry as if I'd been screaming for a full day and afterward, deprived of water.

There was a small table set up beside the couch with a pitcher of water and a tall tumbler already filled. My fingers wrapped around glass warmed by the sun. I sipped gloriously refreshing water, almost sighing in pleasure, savoring the blissful feeling as the liquid worked down my parched throat and eased away the burning.

It had to be sometime in the afternoon judging by the sun's position in the sky.

I had no idea how I got here.

My hair slid over my shoulder and swayed above my chest in matted knots as I propped my free hand on the top of the back of the couch and half-twisted around.

I blinked, astounded.

Half the walls of my jail cell were gone as if the stone had been cut away. Sunshine flooded the interior, bathing the furniture with gold and ambers and lightening the bleak colors the room was adorned into a more bleached shade.

I turned back around to face the wondrous outside world. Past the fortress and its foreboding ramparts and cruel spires, I could see for miles. A thick forest of murky greens, touched by the oncoming autumn with a dusting of yellow, that rolled with gentle hills, and in the distance a mountain range in dusky blues.

Testing my limbs, I stretched my ligaments and wiggled my toes, taking stock of my body and appraising my physical state. I felt refreshed.

Recharged.

Energized.

Rising, I padded the few steps it took to get to the railing and leaned over, gasping at the dizzying height. I knew I was in a tower, but I hadn't realized just how high up I was.

Below was a courtyard that the formidable fortress was built around. Men and women—soldiers and servants—were crossing the cobblestoned area from differing points; one was sluicing water from a vehicle, and the sound of clashing steel came from a training pit, and...

I cocked my ear, my fingers tightening around the glass of water as I heard something that made a clipping noise on stone, swiftly approach—

And spun around, my heart pounding—

Something that shimmered and trailed wisps of mist barreled around the balcony.

100 pounds of pure muscle hit me hard—knocking me off my feet and the glass from my grip. I landed flat on the couch with an oomph. My breath punched out of my lungs as the beast landed on top of me.

A tongue, wet and rough like sandpaper, licked my face. And a whine mixed with excited barks that were more puppyish than I'd ever heard my fully grown wraith-wolf make had pure joy bursting through my heart and surging through my veins like sunshine. "Sage!" I wrapped my arms around my corporal wraith-wolf, my fingers slipping through his cool misty fur. I nuzzled into his neck and slid my face around his. His tail furiously thumped on the leather couch with delighted wags. I started crying. I couldn't help the fat tears that rolled down my cheeks. I had never felt more elated to see my wraith-wolf.

Sage licked up my tears and nudged his moist nose under my chin.

"Ugh, gross," I wailed, then laughed, a gods-honest laugh that croaked from my throat, and laughed some more as I scrubbed my saliva-slick face with a hand and pushed him off. He landed on the balcony floor with a thud and I swiftly followed. My kneecaps met warm stone where I knelt and patted Sage. I laughed and tickled him, rubbed behind his ears and beneath his chin, and when he rolled over to his back, his belly too. He huffed in pleasure, and my grin was as broad as my mouth could stretch.

A shadow fell over me, banishing the sun and its warmth.

I jerked my shoulders around and looked up to see Graysen Crowther towering over me. In his hands was the glass of water Sage had knocked from my fingers when he'd barreled into me. He'd obviously caught it before it had fallen and smashed upon stone.

A low growl from Sage.

Beneath my hands, I felt him bristle, his muscles bunching taut. And so did I.

Graysen's tall, broad figure was a blot of darkness against the rich blue sky. Typically, he was wearing all black—a casual appearance that belied the abhorrent situation we both were in. That traitorous feeling sparked against my skin like it always did when I was near Graysen—the Wyrm Tamer. I mentally scoffed at the title. The touch of it was detestable and loathsome and I dampened it down, forcing it away. 

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