Violence burned in my veins as I took off, reaching the top of the tower's landing a few seconds later. I pretty much kicked the door in and burst into my rooms. "Don't you dare!"

Nelle stood on the balcony, holding another board game over the edge of the balcony, taunting me with it. Pinched between the fingers of her other hand was a small red figure.

"That's my fucking Clue set!" I bellowed, storming across the room toward her.

She quickly jabbed the hand holding the red figurine over the balcony railing and wiggled the game piece. "Take one more step and Colonel Mustard gets it!" she warned.

I groaned, halting just at the opening in the wall. I tugged at my hair with both hands. "It's Miss Scarlett." For fucks sake!

Her gaze darted to Miss Scarlett, pinched between her fingers. "Huh," she said before her eyes sliced back to mine. "Whatever." She shrugged nonchalantly.

"It's a godsdamned collector's item." I pleaded, freaking out. I held my hands out in submission as I approached cautiously. "Worth thousands. I don't want a single piece lost."

"Then let me out of here, or else I'll fling it all, including pretty Miss Scarlett all over your courtyard. Trust me, you'll never ever find all the pieces...guaranteed."

I hesitated.

"You can't keep me locked up here," she pushed, her gray eyes slitting.

"I sure as fuck can."

"Let me out," she hissed.

"Not gonna happen."

"All I've had is these walls to look at. It's driving me mad."

No fucking kidding. Me too.

She fingered the rope around her neck. "What do you think I can do? Run away?"

Fuck with me further. That's what she could do.

I glanced at the Clue box, held haphazardly in her hand, and gave up. I waved my hand, my stomach sinking, indicating for her to toss it over the side.

Then her whole demeanor shifted and softened. She sighed, pulling the game of Clue from where she'd been holding it over the edge of the railing. "I promise to behave. I just need to be able to stretch my legs properly, not pace around and around in this cage." She tapped the cardboard box with her thumbs, looking up at me beneath her lashes. "I'll be on my best behavior."

When I remained silent, she walked closer to halt right in front of me, the edge of the Clue game resting on her thighs. She craned her head back, blinking up at me with those intense gray eyes. She asked quietly, "Are you going to take this rope off and set me free?"

She was wearing a sundress in a soft cream. It was too big for her, perfect for a girl who couldn't be harnessed like a wyrm. It had buttons running down the front and capped sleeves, and a cut to the fabric with tiers of layers that gave the dress an old-fashioned antique look. She looked like she was from another time period. A princess trapped in a tower.

"No." Not a lie and not a truth. My answer was a gray area, the place between black and white, good and bad. Like my name. Like me. I resided in the shadows, as Nelle had rightly said in the woodlands.

"Here's the thing..." she replied, tilting her head and running her gaze over my face, searching for what, I wasn't sure. "Your family can't do anything to me. They need me in one piece to sell at the Witches Ball. "I'm not particularly worried about your family. What can they do that would be worse than what the Butcher will do to me?"

I closed my eyes, reminding myself to breathe, just breathe.

"If I'm going to die, then I want to live, even if it is confined to this estate and only for a few months. Please, let me out of the tower."

I swallowed thickly. "Okay."

"Okay?"

I nodded my head, opening my eyes to see her beaming up at me.

I shrugged. "Just let me shower first."

"Ugh," she grouched, her shoulders slumping as she walked away. She tossed the game on one end of the couch while flopping down on the other, the leather groaning beneath her sudden weight. She sullenly looked over at me. "You take forever in there."

I shucked off my sparkly pink boots. I still hadn't gotten around to ordering new shoes. "I'll use my Crowther superpowers to move faster."

Her mouth twitched on the cusp of a grin, but she bit it back with her teeth.

I was true to my word. I scrubbed myself furiously with soap and water in a whirl of speed. I was washed, dried, and in fresh clothes within a minute, re-entering my rooms.

Nelle stood by the doorway, half-bent over, patting Sage who sat on his haunches, his large bushy tail wagging. She'd fixed her hair into a fish braid, and the tail hung over a shoulder. Her cheeks were filling out, and she looked a lot healthier than she had almost a week ago.

She straightened when I joined her in front of the heavy wooden door. I silently called on the wild magic in the tower and simply allowed it to let her come and go as she pleased. It strummed through the room, the adamere walls shimmering in response.

I opened up the door. Nelle's big eyes flared even wider, her thick gray lashes fluttering with her building excitement. She stepped forward—

I slapped my arm across the open doorway, preventing her from leaving. She flashed me a dark look, one that was tempered with confusion.

"Three rules," I said, holding up one finger at a time, counting them off. "One: Keep that fucking temper of yours in check." She rolled her eyes. "Two: Sage is with you at all times, and if anything should happen, he's to give you enough time—"

"For what?"

"To run," I replied, hoping to hells it would never come to that. I was going to be with her, but I didn't know what was going to happen out there with my family. "Three: You run fast, and get back inside this tower. No one can come in here. Not my family. Only you, me, and Penn."

She nodded and said softly, "I know." When I frowned, because I hadn't told her, she elaborated, "Penn told me last night."

"My brothers are messed up," I told her truthfully.

She cocked her head, raising her eyebrows. "And you're not?"

"I'm as fucked up as they come."

She patted my chest and it sent a shockwave of electricity right through me so hard it punched the air from my lungs. Her freckled cheeks rounded as her mouth twisted to the side, and her eyes narrowed. Not mean, but playful. "Yes, that is the first true thing you've said."

She turned her gaze to stare out the open doorway, grinning her crooked grin, gray eyes sparkling with excitement as she jittered on the spot. She swung her gaze back up to me, waiting expectantly.

I grinned back.

Her smile faded, and her gaze hardened. "I'm not smiling at you, Crowther."

My own smile faltered, just for a split second as part of me died a little bit, but the other part of me kept grinning. She hadn't called me dickface. Small victories and all.

I dropped my arm and gestured for her to leave the tower.

Back to smiling broadly, Nelle pushed off, Sage by her side, and stepped out onto the stone landing. I followed and hoped to Zrenyth I hadn't fucked up by letting her out earlier than I'd intended to do.

***

That first night when I was captured and imprisoned, the Crowthers' fortress had been a dark foreboding place lit with candlelight. A night that had sent snow flurries flowing through my veins. A night I really wished not to remember. And it had been only a week and a half ago. For less than two weeks I'd been trapped in Graysen's tower. In a few weeks' time, I'd turn twenty and the Alverac would bind us together forever, my will tied to Graysen's until death.

But right now I was free.

As free as I could be.

The tower's spiral staircase was shadowed with little light allowed in from the arrow slits in the curved walls. Our downward footsteps echoed the beat of my heart. With every step closer to the arched entrance of the tower, Graysen shut down. I could feel the ice radiating from him, chilling my bare skin and raising gooseflesh. Stiffness entered his body that clenched his muscles taut and pushed back his shoulders. And the impassive expression returned.

Cold as hoarfrost.

There was nothing in his gaze when his black eyes landed on mine as he curtly gestured for me to go ahead of him and step outside the tower.

I passed from the gloomy inner staircase to the outside and came to a standstill. The morning was balmy even though we'd turned from summer to autumn. Just for a moment, I closed my eyes and let myself bask in the sun's rays. Such warmth. I could feel it in my skin, and in my bones, and my body sighed as I continued to soak up the energy that fueled the wyrm.

Freedom, even though I was still confined.

"Wychthorn..." A quiet murmur beside me.

Turning to Graysen, I lifted a hand to shield my eyes against the bright sunshine. A gentle caress of a breeze teased the loose strands of hair that had come free from my braid. Golden light edged his tall figure and bled across one side of his stubbled face. After a good night's sleep, the weariness and stress that had lined his features had been erased.

He went to speak but my attention slid away.

At the foot of the tower, servants were cleaning up the destruction I'd wrought. They gathered shattered wood and busted metal, clothes and belts, and the board game pieces I'd tossed over the side of the tower like frisbees. They wore black uniforms trimmed in white. A somewhat old-fashioned attire, with their long skirts that reminded me of something from early last century, compared to the modern cut of our servants' uniform on my family estate.

Penn was there, helping with the cleanup, loading the broken pieces into a wheelbarrow and the clothes into a wash basket. She noticed our arrival and silent approval flashed in her blue eyes when she saw me standing in front of Graysen. Sage stood beside me, his misty fur hackled and his body tense, but he didn't growl when she approached.

"You'll be needing new replacements," Penn said to Graysen. I saw the twitch of her lips as if she were holding back a laugh.

In the background came the sound of clashing steel, the clack of wood on wood, grunts, and boisterous banter from those soldiers that leaned against the wooden railing of the training pit. Graysen swiveled around to face Penn and nodded, but his gaze had been drawn to the training pit where the sound of battle had begun to fade. His thick eyebrows nudged together and his jaw clenched as though he was bracing himself for something, or more than likely someone—three of them. His brothers.

Penn dipped her head and left us both, rounding the base of the tower and heading toward the northern side of the fortress.

Graysen's tower and its wraparound balcony was a crow's nest that allowed me an unhindered view of the Crowthers' home. The tall imposing structure of the fortress surrounded the inner courtyard, much like a water well. Sunlight should have been restrictive, casting most of it in shadows for the vast proportion of the day as the sun moved across the sky, but the Crowthers had set up banks of shimmering magic along the roofline, almost undetectable. The magic acted like mirrors, reflecting sunlight downward and across to the opposite side of the fortress to maximize the sun. Clever. Extremely clever.

"Where first?" Graysen asked, startling me out of my thoughts. That bored-as-fuck tone was back and my spine stiffened to hear it once more. "A walk—"

"Your home." I turned my body toward the western wing of the fortress, my eyebrows drawing downward. "What's that over there?" The structure in the western side of the fortress seemed new and it jutted out in a strange tiered way. I'd been curious about the wooden fences and iron gates running across each of the four levels. They looked like homes. After I'd awakened from almost falling into hibernation, I'd spent most of my time on the tower's balcony keeping a careful eye on the comings and goings of the Crowthers and their servants, and jotted everything down in a pad I'd stolen from Graysen's work desk and kept hidden in my bedroom.

I hadn't seen anyone but servants leave and return to that side of the fortress, and I was curious. Graysen's black hair slightly ruffled as he angled his head, the untamable hank of hair sliding across his forehead as he looked toward my line of sight.

"Is that where your relatives live?" I asked. I wasn't sure if the Crowther family lived there and had an alternative way of leaving, rather than the open walkway in front of each level.

"No, those are our staff homes," he replied, then angled himself toward the eastern wing with its bloated body and half-towers that broke up the straight lines. "My cousins, aunts, and uncles live over there."

Surprise flooded through me. I turned to gape up at him, thinking how big the western structure was. Homes, he said. They probably shared the space, with several servants in each home. And if so, with how many iron gates I'd counted in each level, the Crowthers must have a lot of servants working for them. "They take up a great deal of real estate within the fortress."

"Keep," Graysen corrected, his voice gritty.

I rolled my eyes, popping a hand on my hip. "Fortress. Keep. Dungeon, whatever."

He let loose a gruff sigh. "You're right," he conceded as if bored with my argument. "It's not technically a Keep anymore. It's grown since then. But it's the name that we've kept."

Fair enough.

"How about I show you." Graysen met my gaze. There was nothing showing on his expression or in those black depthless eyes. Gone was the man who'd kept me company up in his tower, replaced by who he'd been when he'd spent the last day of every month with me on my family's estate. A mask, exactly as Penn had revealed to me last night. One he wore even with his family.

I nodded, warily.

The cobblestones were rough and uneven beneath my bare feet as I pushed off to walk behind him. Sage's claws clipped against the stone as he kept close to my side. As we crossed the inner courtyard, the sound of chatter and banter from the Crowther soldiers died, along with the ringing of steel coming from the training pit, a deep hole gouged within the inner courtyard. I could feel every single pair of curious eyes slide my way.

Though my shoulders were a rigid line, my poise imperious, inside I was more than a little nervous at what I was going to encounter when I entered the formidable fortress and the people that inhabited it. But I'd never let them see me weak. Sage's misty fur was a welcome presence as his cool body bumped against my outer thighs ever so often.

And then the Crowther brothers climbed the open wooden staircase that wound around the inner sides of the training pit, one by one—Kenton, Caidan, and Jett stepped up into the courtyard. They carried quarterstaffs with bloodied knuckles. Sweat and smeared blood coated their bare chests, and there were fading bruises and cuts that were healing on their exposed limbs. They came to stand in a line as Graysen stalked ahead of me and watched us both. Cold. Emotionless.

Fire warmed my blood. Anger.

It wasn't Graysen's earlier reminder to keep my anger in check, but my father's deep voice flowing through my mind.

Calm, calm, calm.

I had a plan. A very basic plan. I needed Zrenyth's rope off my neck and I needed off this estate. Free of the rope, my wyrm would get me out, and a little mass destruction was appealing. My wyrm was adolescent, but we could bring down a wall or two, or create an oven inside the adamere fortress with wyrmfire and outright gut it.

However, I might have to resort to subterfuge and sneak the hells out somehow. Somewhere in the fortress, I'd learn how to do this. I also needed to get to know my enemy, the Crowthers, and discover their weaknesses.

I had to use Graysen Crowther. I had to get him to trust me enough so he'd let me out of the tower and eventually let me wander around unattended. I wasn't stupid enough to think that he'd just let me free straight away, no doubt he'd shadow me, and then at my urging, let Penn accompany me instead. And she'd be much easier to slip away from.

For now, I had to play by Graysen's rules. And that meant not giving in to spiteful anger.