A soft meow beside my armchair had me glancing downward to see Flossie looking half-put out that I occupied her favorite spot by the fire. Her ginger and white tail swished from side to side as she meowed again. I clicked my fingers in an invite, and she jumped onto my lap, pressing into my touch as I stroked my hand along her spine. The fluffy cat stretched up to rub her silken head beneath my chin, purring and kneading her paws into my chest, demanding more attention.

As I petted Flossie, Jett continued to mess with his dagger, and Penn and Kenton disappeared amongst the tall rows of books, hoping to find more information on wyrms.

While our father and aunt were away, Ferne was in charge of organizing the family reunion. She was currently fielding questions from the Head Housekeeper, Butler, and Chef, listening to their messages with VoiceOver, before rapidly typing her replies using her phone's braille keyboard.

The soft ping of a new incoming message had her reaching for the thin cord hanging around her neck. She plugged a bud into her ear and listened to the message that had just come through. I watched with building curiosity as she picked a lock of black hair and absentmindedly brushed its feathered end across her lips as she listened. Her cheeks pinked and she was trying not to smile too broadly.

My nostrils flared.

I fucking knew who had messaged—Ezra Qillisan.

But could I do anything about it? Fuck, no. Ferne had continually reminded me, she was sixteen and old enough to be dating boys.

Across from Ferne, Caidan was having his own drama with his phone. He'd propped his elbows on the table, face hidden behind his broad hands. I heard the long string of curses muttered as his phone continued to buzz with an onslaught of messages, the vibration setting it dancing upon the table. With an annoyed, "Fuck," Caidan snatched it up, a deep frown marring his forehead as his fingers flew over the screen.

Jett pushed his boots braced on the edge of the table to tilt his chair back further. He rolled his eyes while tucking his dagger away into the inside pocket of his jacket. "Your harem giving you a hard time?" he drawled.

Caidan paused long enough to flip him off before continuing to type his message. Caidan never lacked attention or company. He liked having a good time, especially with pretty girls who did all the chasing before they fell into crushing disappointment when someone shinier and new came along. It got to a point I no longer bothered remembering their names when he introduced us to them. I suspected Caidan didn't either.

"I forgot I was supposed to take Sarnia out tonight," Caidan muttered.

The thunk of Jett's chair landing flat on its feet thumped through the room. Jett sat up straight, astounded. "Sarnia? Sarnia Reska?"

Caidan rubbed his hand over a tight jawline while frowning at his phone, and replied off-handedly. "Yeah, she's pretty pissed."

Jett stood up so suddenly the chair behind him was knocked on its back. Leaning over the table, Jett smacked the polished wood with the flat of his hand. "I've been at Sarnia for over a year asking for a date—you asshole!"

The abrupt sounds of anger startled Flossie and she hackled. Her claws dug into my leg and I flinched at the small spike of pain flaring across my thigh. I ran my hands up and down the cat's arched spine. Her claws retracted and she softened with my petting to curl up into a ball on my lap.

We all knew that Jett had a thing for Sarnia Reska. Sarnia worked as Sirro's Personal Assistant and Jett usually found a way to be the one to direct any dealings we had on the Horned God's behalf to Sarnia, simply to flirt with her.

Caidan glanced up from his phone with a cocky smirk. "Sarnia likes men, little brother."

"You're a fucking asshole," Jett snarled. He spun away, cursing as he hauled the chair he'd knocked over upright, and while my youngest brother's back was turned, Caidan flashed a sly grin my way and winked. I bit my fist to stop the bark of laughter. The fucker was messing with Jett. He just couldn't help himself, stirring up shit.

Jett's combat boots slammed upon the stone floor as he stormed down a long aisle of books to get a grip on his anger and, I suspected, come up with a plan to get Caidan back.

Relaxing back in my chair, I tried to catch a glimpse at Caidan's phone to see if he really was talking to Sarnia, or someone else. I had the strangest sensation as something sour tripped across my tongue when he darted a swift uneasy glance at me. Guilt shadowed the stiff lines in his features as he hunched over his phone. I began to have an unsettling idea who might be harassing him with the slew of messages—Evelene Wychthorn. And in that case, he'd never have saved her true name in her contacts, she'd have some fake name.

Until Caidan had confessed to me his friendship with Evvie, I had no idea my younger brother had been friends with her. I understood why Caidan had kept silent about it. Our aunt would have tied him to the whipping post if she'd discovered he was friends with Evelene, hells, with any member of the Wychthorn family.

His friendship with Evvie had been forged the same night Nelle and I had signed the Alverac. I had my own memories of that night, how I'd signed my name in blood to ancient parchment, and afterward, fueled with anger and guilt I'd fought Zielenski, both of us trading blows and fighting our own demons in the pits below Ascendria, and then...

As I sat in the library, rubbing behind Flossie's ear, pondering my younger brother and what he was up to, my wrists burned with memories of darkness and suffering.

Caidan shoved his phone away in his back pocket and reached for a nest of wires spilling out of a small black device like strings of intestines. Beside his electrical tool kit was a mottled-green stone that emitted a low hum of magic.

"What are you working on?" I asked curious. Caidan was always pulling apart House Simonis devices and tinkering with them to make them run more efficiently or changing their purpose altogether. He'd gone and collected his kit as soon as I'd shared Nelle's news about Silas Boon and the Children of the Harbinger. And in between fielding phone calls and researching wyrms, he'd started tinkering with whatever the hells this was going to be.

He squinted, concentrating on stripping back the plastic coating a coil of electric wiring. "Now that we have a fucking army of dead warriors that are able to swift, it'd be good if I could figure out a way to create an anti-swifting device we can carry on us."

My eyebrows shot up. "You can do that?"

He hitched a shoulder, shooting me a grin. "Dunno. But it'll be fun working on it in the meantime."

Footsteps drew my attention away from my younger brother.

Penn softly approached with Kenton right behind her, carrying a fresh armful of leather-bound tomes. He placed them beside the growing stack at the far end of the table while Penn sat down beside Ferne. She smiled warmly as she accepted the book Kenton offered, spread it open on the table in front of her, and began carefully flicking through the dust-edged pages. My brother chose a book from the pile and started researching once more.

My gaze zeroed in on Penn as she absentmindedly began fiddling with the long silver chain that adorned her neck.

Penn glanced up, catching me staring.

I shot her a quick smile.

A smile she returned.

However, she held my gaze a touch too long and her mouth slackened, lips parting.

There it was once more—a tension warring across her delicate doll-like features, as if she were on the cusp of saying something.

Penn had been born with the rare gift of secondsight.

Secondsight allowed one to see our world of otherworldly and lesser creatures. Penn was mortal, and although she never spoke of her family line, they had to be special, especially with the way she carefully evaded questions regarding them.

Penn was more than intriguing.

Just as my brother carried many secrets about himself, so did she.

I could taste them. Felt them thickening the air.

Saw them in the way she sometimes looked at me.

Secrets that were desperate to be let loose from her tongue, but she'd clamp her lips shut and the moment would be over.

She either wanted to tell me something. Or us something.

I wasn't sure which one it was.

Like all those other times that came before, she clamped her mouth shut and dropped her gaze back to her book. And I turned my attention back to my siblings wondering if she would ever share what was on her mind.

I half-listened to Kenton trading wyrm curiosities with Ferne, while stroking gently beneath Flossie's chin. A satisfied rumble vibrated against my body as her purr intensified and she pushed and rubbed into my touch. Thin strands of smoke curled through the air from the blunt pinched between my fingers as I slouched against my chair, heavy-lidded and drifting off in thought, wondering what my next move was going to be. I still needed to check in with Mela and see if everything was still on for tomorrow.

Jett stalked out from between two book rows with his own find. He perched his ass up on the opposite table, his lean figure backlit by the table lamp's white light while he skimmed the contents of his book, grumbling that there was nothing to be found within the library.

He continued to grumble and bitch about it so much, he began to piss me off. In fact, they all were, especially the way my brothers kept glancing at me with distrust and suspicion darkening their gazes.

Flossie stirred, reacting to my body tensing beneath her. My voice, too loud and sharp with irritation, cut through Caidan and Ferne's thoughts on Wychthorn and her wyrm. "I don't know why the fuck you're bothering to research this!"

Ferne slapped her phone down. She angled her face in my direction, the ends of the strip of white lace tied across her empty eye sockets fluttering with the movement. "We're curious," she snapped. "There hasn't ever been a wyrm and human blending before."

"Exactly," I shot back, flinging a hand wide at the library with its centuries of history recorded on parchment. "You won't find anything about it in here."

Ferne was right. No one had ever heard of this unique blending before. Of course, they'd be curious, more than curious. Here I was, a Tamer, paired with Nelle, who wasn't an otherworldly beast as my ancestors before me had tamed, but a human.

Kenton, half-crouched at the hearth, carefully shoved a new log onto the fire. A shower of orange sparks erupted as flames engulfed its dried bark, sending a spray of amber light to illuminate his thoughtful expression. He straightened, turning to face me, and asked, "What marked differences have you noted?"

I narrowed my gaze on him, my hand stopping mid-stroke on Flossie's neck. What the fuck did that mean?

Kenton took a couple of strides closer so I was forced to crane my head back. "This tamer aspect," he elaborated, gesturing with a wave of his hand toward me.

I shrugged casually as if I didn't know what the hells he was talking about. Movement in the corner of my eye had my ire and attention snapping in another direction. Jett squinted as he braced his elbows on his thighs and leaned forward, scanning my face, searching for fuck knows what. I kept my expression neutral as I stared back. "This morning in the training pit you were faster and stronger, and something weird went on with your eyes, I was sure of it," he said.

Pointing to the corner of my eyes, I gave him a cocky wink. "They look much prettier these days."

He grunted in annoyance, muttering, "Gods you're a dick," as he pushed off the table he was sitting on and began to pace down the length of the table to draw nearer and scowl at me.

In the training pit, I had felt something shifting beneath my skin, something strange and dry like a bluster of windswept sand scouring my flesh. I had kicked my brothers' asses so fucking easily. And moved fast...almost as if I had swifted. I knew I hadn't moved through the void Nelle used to swift between places. I couldn't use them because I wasn't dead, nor not-quite-living. Yet I'd moved faster than I'd ever done before.

A soft voice cut through the tension in the room. "What do you know?" Penn asked. A keen look was shared between Jett and Caidan that out of all of them here, Penn had been the one to ask. It made sense, as Penn didn't know the full intricacies of our ancestors' relationship with wyrms. She sat straight in her high-backed chair, her posture perfect, big sapphire eyes brimming with inquisitiveness. "I don't understand how it all works—this wyrm and tamer."

Kenton's heavy footsteps were muffled by the rug beneath the long table as he wandered over to where she sat. "A Tamer is there to act as a point guard to the wyrm to direct it in battle," he explained in his deep bass voice, tucking a hand into the pocket of his slacks. "All knowledge of how our family tamed wyrms were buried, lost, or simply destroyed an age ago. We know only the basic dynamics. The tamer trapped and tamed the wyrm, and somehow the two bonded with the tamer holding sway over the beast."

"What's sway?" Penn asked.

"It's the tamer's will," I replied before Kenton could.

Penn turned her attention to me, her eyebrows drawing together. "You can control a wyrm with sway—your will?"

From what I'd learned from scraps of information scattered throughout the library, I knew the theory of it, just not the practical how of it all. "A tamer can use the sway to influence the wyrm and bend it in the direction it's needed." I huffed an empty laugh, shaking my head at the fucking ridiculousness of it all. I flicked my palm upward. "But it's a fucking wyrm, much like a wilful dog—"

"An enormous wilful dog with wyrmfire and a poison-tipped tail, amongst other deadly things," Caidan interjected, grinning broadly at Penn.

"It has a mind of its own and it'll do what it fucking wants, sway or no sway," I finished off.

Penn frowned. "And the bond is?"

Trust, I imagined. When the wyrm submitted and placed its trust in the tamer. "A connection between the two of them. Without it, the wyrm will turn feral."

"That doesn't sound good," Penn breathed.

No, it sure as fuck didn't. I'd found a brief description in a crumbling book of a broken bond after a tamer had been killed in a skirmish between Houses. The frost-wyrm had laid waste to everyone, no matter if they served our family. Many Crowthers had died that day, shredded with ice, including the heir to our Great House.

I thought about it while cozy warmth wrapped around my body from the fire popping and crackling in the background. Taking a deep drag off the blunt, I blew a cloud of swirling smoke across the table. The whitish vapor crept like mist to curl around the brass lamp with frosted glass sitting in the middle of polished wood. I cleared my throat before answering Penn. "It could attack anyone within range, whether or not they'd been under the protection of the Tamer or members of our House. If could lay siege to the land and burn everything and everyone to the ground. It could simply leave everyone unharmed and fly away. Pretty much, the wyrm is freed and will do anything it wants."

It was my sister who pondered this aloud, her fingers rapping a fast beat upon the table. "How do you bond with a wyrm?"

Penn answered lightly, obviously not thinking about how it would be received. "I expect in this case, you'd bond with Nelle since she's human."

It was such an innocently posed statement.

Silence descended upon the library.

The air grew thick with curiosity and warning.

Every single one of my siblings fixed their gazes on me. I was surrounded by them all, pincered in as if I held all the answers.