Across the bed, Graysen shot a dark glare at me.

I wagged my eyebrows in a challenge and returned a cheeky smirk.

Sage, barking and wagging his tail, chased the ball that had rebounded off one of the lacquered pieces of wood that curved over Graysen's bed and bounced lazily toward the large leather armchair.

Graysen kept narrowed eyes on me as he reached for another shirt to fold.

Holding a hand across my mouth, I hid the wide-ass grin. What he didn't realize was I'd marked almost every single shirt he owned with the invisible pen I'd found in his arts and crafts box. At some point, as he had with 'Meet Mr. Limp Dick' he'd discover the other messages I'd scrawled over his clothes.

The brand-new-yet-old bedside tables—because from the look of them, they were antiques from a variety of time periods and cultures—he'd already moved into place beside the birdcage bed of his.

My finger made a dull, flat sound as I absentmindedly tapped it against the glass. I had a myriad of questions. Which one first? Tabitha. "How do you know your mother is still alive? It's been twelve years."

Graysen stopped folding, straightening, but his gaze had gone distant in thought, and something warred on his expression as if he were hesitant at how much he could divulge. He took so long in answering, I wasn't sure if he was going to. Finally, his dark eyes sharpened. "There's a connection between us. We know she's still alive."

I frowned, tilting my head. A connection?

"We can feel that she is still alive," he elaborated.

"How?"

"When she's in pain, we can feel it."

I pushed off the gentle curve of the countertop, taking a couple of steps across the sun-baked tiles. "We? You all feel it?"

"One of us." He dropped his gaze to the shirt in his hands and kneaded it. His forehead creased. "A shadow if you like. A sort of echo. A reverberation." He slowly brought his gaze back to mine, his eyebrows knitting together. "Specifically pain, whenever she feels it... My mother's been hurt badly over the years."

Dipping my head, I lowered my gaze to the glass in my hands, rotating it around as guilt stung the back of my throat.

Gods. Twelve long years, she'd been gone...

And that shadow, the reverberation of her pain, would mean one of the Crowthers, one of the brothers was connected to Tabitha, I was sure of it. Graysen—no. I thought with all that time we'd spent together I'd have known.

"That's how we know she still lives," Graysen said quietly, putting the t-shirt on top of those he'd already folded and picking up a new one from the basket. "Because whoever or whatever has her, has been hurting her."

I looked at him beneath my eyelashes, my breath tight in my chest, feeling awful. "Does it hurt her when she steals pain?" How does her other ability work?

"She's a conduit, so she channels the pain into something else, like an object, a rock, something else inanimate. It still hurts her, but not as intensely as if she doesn't have something to channel it into."

"So maybe her being in pain is just that. Her stealing someone else's pain?"

His black eyes went flinty. A tick in his jaw. "It goes on for too long. Someone's forcing her, using her, hurting her."

Heaviness plunged through my entire body, as if a chain was wound around my ankle and the earth tugged at it, trying to swallow me whole.

"And you have no idea who has her?" I rasped, briefly squeezing my eyes shut.

"None."

Just the red-headed Horned God, who I assumed could have kept Tabitha. Or she'd given the Crowthers' mother away. And if they couldn't hunt down this Horned God in all these years, indeed their only hope was at the Witches Ball.

Right this moment, I didn't know who I felt more sorry for—Tabitha or myself.

There was a hard lump in my throat, making it painful to drink the water I consumed in big gulps. I cradled the empty glass in my hands. "Why do you think the Horned Gods wanted your mother? She can steal pain, but she could also detect others." When I was a child, she'd known even then that I was something special. "Maybe that's why they wanted her. An other hunter of sorts." I was clutching at straws and we both knew it.

The corner of his mouth turned down. "Why hurt her?"

Why indeed. What Horned God suffered enough to need someone with Tabitha's skill set? I ran my mind through everything and everyone I knew within the world of Horned Gods. I had an extensive library's worth stored in my head, centuries of information, but there was so much of it unknown to us, to me.

"Does Master Sirro know she's still alive?"

"No. At least, that's what he wants us to believe."

"Does he know who the Horned Gods were that came for her that night?"

Shaking his head, locks of hair swayed across his forehead. "Apart from Lyressa, of course, he claims neither he nor Lyressa knows of the identities of the other twoir identities."

"Do you believe him? He could be lying."

He gave it some thought, sucking at his teeth. "I do. For some reason, he's rather fond of my mother."

"He is?"

It surprised me Master Sirro was charmed by the Crowthers' mother, and a small smile lit my mouth, only to fade away when Graysen said, "There are circles within circles within the world of Horned Gods. Many of them are unknown to us as they are to them as well. Sirro doesn't know who the fuck took her."

My empty glass made a gentle chinking sound against the granite counter when I placed it down before wandering over to the threshold of the room. I stood in the open archway, letting my skin bask in the dying rays of the sun, and the gentle sundown breeze tease my damp hair, but mostly I drank in the air, trying to breathe through the despondency that had writhed around my chest and coiled tight.

Graysen was busy sorting through the neatly stacked t-shirts and arranging them into color order and then shade order, intent on the task, too intent on the task. Perhaps he too needed to work through the feelings this conversation was stirring between us. "Did you try to get an invite to the last Witches Ball?" Surely they had tried seven years ago.

His shoulders stiffened as he glanced upward meeting my gaze. "We did."

"You found someone of interest as your offering?"

He nodded, pausing in his work, his eyes now wary.

"Who did you find?"

"Someone."

I frowned. He was being purposely vague. I turned around to face him fully. "What happened?"

"We didn't get an invite."

I knew it, deep in my bones, I knew it. "You're lying."

His jaw sawed. "We faltered last minute. We couldn't do it."

My lips pinched into a thin, mean line as I crossed my arms over my chest. Yet, they could with me.

"Soon after, we realized who we'd found wouldn't have gotten us an invite anyway." He placed a black t-shirt on the growing folded pile and drew away from the bed, pacing closer to where I stood. "We can only hunt our own kind to tempt the Witches. Seventh son of a seventh son, all that kind of bullshit. Murderers—easy enough to find and we collect them anyway for their tithes and sacrifices. Broken Shards, rare as fuck, but still not of interest."

"Why do you think they'd want me?"

"The Witches don't extend invitations to the Houses. They don't want us there. None have been invited during the last seven hundred years. Everyone tries. Every one of us hunts mortals. And we did too. Until we unearthed something." He stood next to the wooden dining table and loosely gripped the back of a chair, his eyebrows slanting over eyes that had gone dark with thought as if he was mulling over how to tell me. The sound of his fingertips drumming against the wood was loud in the room and it matched my racing heart as I waited with bated breath, wondering what he was going to reveal.

"To an extent, we'd be right," he said carefully, slowly. "They do want humans, humans with something curious about them. But the Witches, their whims and fancies, are more intrigued with us."

"What do you mean—us?"

"We found two references to invites hidden amongst the rambling of old tomes, and both cases shared one similarity—their offering belonged to one of the Upper Ranks. They were one of us."

Us—the word clanged through me.

"There was a House, long ago, that received an invite. Their offering was a child, four years old, a daughter of a House."

My stomach roiled with nausea. "A child?"

"Yes." He quickly added, perhaps knowing I was just about to ask which one of us it was, "Upper House Bergaan. A century later it was annihilated by a House War." He tapped his fingers against the wooden chair. "The girl's mother was the House's true heir and she died while giving birth to a daughter with flawless black hair and skin as white as fresh snow, eyes as blue as an autumn sky without a single fleck of another color to mar them. Her father locked her away behind a wall of adamere with a wet nurse. Neither sunlight nor moonlight touched her skin. And when she was four years old he offered her up to gain an invite to the Witches Ball. Though we think there was interest in her unique qualities, we're hedging our bets the Witches were tempted purely by the betrayal."

My stomach sank. "Betrayal?"

He prowled closer to stop flush in front of me. His height towered over mine. He stared down at me with something close to pity shining in the depth of his eyes. "It's an interesting quality, especially coming from the Houses there to serve their needs. I suspect the Witches are simply intrigued by the betrayal by one of our own kind. Innocence stolen and used by another."

I looked up, anxiously kneading my fingers into fists by my sides. "But they haven't bitten yet, so..."

"They'll want you," he said softly. "You're from Great House Wychthorn. A Princess of the Underworld. A girl who bows to no one, ensnared with the Alverac. And owned by the family yours betrayed."

An arctic chill frosted my insides, creeping through my blood, and making my bones brittle. I closed my eyes, my head so heavy it dipped forward. Graysen's family had a long time to plan all of this.

They'd bound me so tightly with their clever plans and deceit I could almost feel the chains coiled around my body. Chilling. Heavy. Cruel. There were circles within circles, plans within plans, and many layers to the Crowthers' machinations. It was a maze of lies and subterfuge, and amongst the network of false ends and choices that circled in on themselves, one path led straight to me—where I stood, alone, at the very center of its dark intrigue.

Even though Tabitha deserved freedom, I couldn't give it to her if it meant my life was forfeit. I refused to stand on the auction block at the Witches Ball in two months' time.

I opened my eyes and raised my weary head to find Graysen quietly studying me. The dying sun gilded his hard edges in fiery light and cast his beauty in shadow. His black eyes slid over my face, assessing to see if I'd broken with the truth of what was unique about me—why the Witches would desire to possess a Wychthorn Princess, this particular Wychthorn Princess.

Innocence betrayed.

I was already broken.

My voice was threadbare and scratchy when I asked, "What about the Pelans? Does Aldert know that I killed—"

"Last week," Graysen interrupted quickly, perhaps to spare me saying that man's name. "We had a meeting with Sirro and Aldert showed up uninvited. As far as Aldert is aware..." His mouth pinched white as he briefly glanced away. When his gaze returned it was hard. Not at me, but at the loathing he felt for the Pelans. "His son's gone missing. Aldert knows about the kidnapping, but we spun an illusion that he was obsessed with you. Your father helped with that too."

I blinked in surprise. "He did?"

"Byron can't afford for anyone to suspect that you are other, why you were kidnapped in the first place. It would put your family in a precarious position."

Sage wandered over, dropping the tennis ball at my feet. I sighed, bowing my head and running my fingertips beneath the curve of an eyebrow as guilt writhed inside my chest. "It always has." I'd been a constant worry for my father.

Graysen said quietly, "Aldert knows I found you, retrieved you, and that I'd let his son walk away, unscathed."

Shock had my mouth gaping. "Aldert doesn't know he's dead?"

He shrugged a shoulder, then slid his hand into his jeans pocket, shifting his weight to one leg. "Aldert suspects it. Or will soon enough when his son doesn't come back home. But he can't retaliate because—"

"Of the Alverac. No one can interfere with your ownership," I said bitterly. I kicked the tennis ball and it bounced away, hitting one of the coffee table legs, but Sage wasn't interested. He nudged my hand and, grateful for his loyal companionship, I half-bent over to briskly rub his neck. The crackle of pulsing energy coursed up my fingers, jarring my bones. The Crowthers had tied bottled lightning around my wraith-wolf's neck. Sage was trapped just like me, but my collar was of a different nature. Graysen had chosen to place a Hangman's Noose around my neck—a message to my father. My eyebrows slashed forward as I straightened and glared up at Graysen. "What do you want from my father? Because this," and I thumbed the rope around my throat, "is more than a threat to expose him. You want something from him."

Cunning lurked in black eyes and admiration too. "We do."

"What do you want?"

It all had to do with their mission to save their mother. Everything the Crowthers did, every move they made, was all for Tabitha.

Graysen's voice was as soft and rich as the last burst of tangerine sunshine across a dark blue sky before it winked out beneath the horizon. "Something that will put him and your family at great risk."