"How the fuck would I know?" I replied to the silent question they all directed at me, keeping my voice calm but edged with vexation.

Hidden beside Flossie, I stretched my hand against my thigh, flexing my fingers wide, clenching and unclenching the muscles and tendons. I was off-kilter, but I couldn't let them see that. I had to let them see what they wanted to see. And that was me—cold, loyal, hateful.

My siblings had no idea I'd already bonded with Nelle. I didn't know if it was the full connection a wyrm and tamer shared between them or if there was more to it than what I currently experienced. I felt her emotions under my skin. It made sense to me now, this was one way a Tamer could keep one step ahead of the wyrm if the beast lost its temper, wanting to strike out and take a bite out of me or anyone else.

"You're the Tamer," Jett replied, his mouth curling downward, as if annoyed I wasn't sharing vital information.

"That's right, I am." A smug smirk twitched on my lips as I pointed a finger with the hand holding the blunt at Jett. "And you're not."

I'd been the first Tamer born in over five hundred years. My father, with his violet eyes so dark they were almost black, had been on the verge of becoming a Tamer himself. Unlike the degree to which I experienced it, my father could feel a faint and weak vibration coming from Draxxon's body lining the Great Hall. And while I carried full wyrmblood in my veins, he carried the barest trace of it too.

I tried not to bristle. The fact they were even bothering to understand something that was of no use to them just fucked me off. And even more irritating, they were messing with my private affairs. I took a puff on the blunt and blew out a thin stream of smoke. Leaning forward I placed it on the ashtray. The leather beneath me whispered with my movement as I rose from the armchair. Flossie leaped off my lap, circling around to jump back onto the seat I'd departed. Stalking around the table, I leaned between Caidan and Jett to pick up the bottle of Glenfiddich and fill a tumbler with whiskey. "All of this conjecture doesn't matter," I gritted out. "We're using Wychthorn to get into the Witches—"

My sister cut me off, stabbing the wooden table with a finger to emphasize her point. "It matters to us if she can influence you in the meantime."

Kenton interjected. "Ferne's right. You're so territorial you won't let us in the tower." It was so fucking lucky that he thought it was the territorial Tamer side of me that refused them access to the tower, not the truth, that I wanted to protect Nelle from them.

"She's not going to influence me," I scoffed.

"How do we know that?" Ferne replied, her forehead creased with a frown. A heavy curtain of black hair slid across the lace strapped across her empty eyes. She roughly pushed it aside, tucking the locks behind an ear. "Both of you have been connected since birth. I sensed it humming beneath the surface whenever you two were within range of one another. How do we know she isn't going to manipulate you into freeing her?"

A soft voice unexpectedly answered Ferne. "She can't."

Everyone turned in surprise to Penn.

She twisted around in her seat to look upward and speak to Kenton. "I've told you before, she's just as confused as Graysen about all of this."

I kept my expression schooled to disinterest. My siblings had obviously pressured Penn into revealing what was going on between Nelle and me up in the tower.

Penn continued talking to Kenton. "Before your family captured her she had no idea she was a wyrm or what any of it means." She shifted around to turn her gaze to mine and there was an unease haunting her fine features, as if she was thinking of something truly frightening. "You intimidate and terrorize her every opportunity you can. She puts on a brave face, but she's utterly terrified and very much alone." Penn dropped her gaze to the book in front of her. She ran her fingers back and forth over the wrinkled page as if uncertain if she should share more. Finally, she spoke and her voice was so quiet we all strained to hear. "She breaks when she thinks she's alone and there's no one listening. I've heard her crying. It's filled with terror and hopelessness."

For a moment I couldn't even think of how to reply. I had no idea what a brilliant actress Penn was.

I took a sip from my whiskey, the fierce liquid pouring down my throat. My voice was cold and flat. "She deserves it and more." It was something our aunt reminded us of, how Wychthorn was coddled and pampered, living a life of freedom without fear while our mother was confined and tortured. "We need her broken to break Byron." I glared at Jett. "We fucking need him to give us what we need from his treasury."

Within the Wychthorn's Treasure Trove was a crucial item the Blacksmith needed to forge a weapon to trap a Horned God. A piece Byron had so far refused to give us, believing it was his only leverage. Byron was playing a dangerous game. He knew we were desperate to claim Brangwene's Hjarte and he hoped it would spare Nelle's life if he kept it out of our reach.

"He will," Jett reassured me. "Zielenski believes Jurgana will be at the Emporium within the week. We'll give Byron his moment with his daughter then and there. He'll hand over Brangwene's Hjarte to save her."

"Good," I bit back. Even though it worried me I had no fucking idea what nefarious plan he had in store for Nelle.

The easing mood resonating off my siblings relaxed the tension in my limbs—they trusted I remained loyal to their cause. I finished off the glass of whiskey, turning the tumbler around between my pinched fingers so the firelight caught the crystal.

Penn continued to stare at the page in front of her, and her fine-boned features softened as she admired a rough sketch of a wyrm, its serpentine body coiled and wings spread wide as it set the sky on fire with flames. "They're magnificent," she whispered, her voice filled with awe.

I wandered back to refill my glass with more whiskey and listened to Penn speak to Kenton. "From what you've told me, Wychthorn's wyrm wasn't a true wyrm. Not like the ones in these pictures or the ones you spoke of, in the sense that it wasn't a real beast like Draxxon."

"The wyrm was formed of flames." Kenton angled his chin at me as I straightened and started heading back to the hearth with its burning logs permeating the air with pine and chestnut. "It came out of the fire surrounding Wychthorn when you flicked Zrenyth's whip—"

"Leviathan Spinebender." The whip had felt so right, so natural, gripped in my hand.

He nodded. "As if you manifested its flamed form."

I frowned. Kenton was fucking right. The moment the tip of the whip had struck wyrmfire the beast had appeared.

"Is the wyrm her?" Penn asked.

"No, they're separate entities, yet tethered to one another" he replied, rubbing his knuckles beneath his chin as he thought back on it. "When she battled us they worked independently to one another. It wasn't corporeal. The wyrm wasn't physically there, not like a true wyrm. It wasn't alive in that sense."

"Not-quite-living," I corrected Kenton, coming to a standstill. "The reason why she can swift."

"Wyrms don't swift."

"Wychthorn can because her wyrm isn't quite alive."

Penn tilted her head, and the long strand of brown hair Kenton had freed dipped low over her shirt. "So I guess you're saying she has the spirit of a wyrm inside her?"

"Yeah," I agreed, rocking back on my heels.

"How did Wychthorn possess the spirit of a wyrm?" She ran her fingers over the page, smoothing it flat. "What makes her special that the beast was able to bond with her?"

"The question is what else is she?" Ferne put forth.

There was a moment of astonished silence as we all processed this new thought, and tried to align it against everything else we knew about Nelle, which we were starting to realize was jack-shit.

I shrugged casually as if I didn't know and didn't care.

Penn's gaze bounced from Ferne's to mine. "What would happen if you two..." The words drifted apart. Penn's eyes startled wide as if she suddenly became aware of what she was about to say. A blush crept across her cheeks and she dropped her attention to the book splayed open before her as if it fascinated her.

"You two—what?" Kenton asked, gently urging her to continue.

The tumbler was warm beneath my fingers as I raised it to my mouth, watching Penn over its rim while swallowing back a mouthful of whiskey. Penn winced, then darted a nervous look to my brother before her wide-eyed gaze locked with mine, and there was an apology in their blue depth. "Reproduced."

My body jerked with shock. I hacked and coughed, thumping my chest with a fist to stop myself from spraying a mouthful of whiskey. "What the fuck?" I hissed through a burning-ticklish throat.

Kenton angled himself closer to Penn, bracing a hand on the wooden edge of her high-back chair. "It's the question we're all asking. You're human. Wychthorn's part wyrm, but she's very much human."

My siblings erupted into fast-pitched theories, talking around me as if I weren't there.

"Can they reproduce?" Jett asked.

"A wyrm's gestation period is a seriously long time," Caidan offered. "Maybe Wychthorn can't with that beast inside her."

"What would happen if a Tamer mated with her?" Kenton asked dark brows slashed over his deep purple eyes. His fingers tightened on the back of Penn's chair. "What kind of offspring would they have?"

"Or anyone else for that matter," Ferne replied, flinging a slender hand wide. "Could she mate with a Horned God?" It was unheard of for a Horned God to produce offspring with a human.

Something akin to astonishment swept across Ferne's features. She whipped around to face me, her hair swaying across her shoulder. The words rushed out of her. "What about the Children of the Harbinger? If they know she's a wyrm, maybe that's why they've been hunting her."

My entire body stiffened as an unsettling sensation, utterly horrifying and chilling, crept slowly down my spine. A voice from a darker part of my mind whispered—What if this is why Silas Boon wants Nelle?

My siblings faded into the background while I stared at Ferne, processing her question, the insidious fear regarding Silas Boon clawing its way through me.

And some darker feeling trembled and cracked through my bones like a vicious blast of aether. My nostrils flared as my fingers tightened around the crystal tumbler. A faint crick of compressed glass scraped my eardrums as a crack fractured down its side.

Silas knew Nelle was a wyrm. Did he desire her because of the immense power residing inside her or was it more than that? He was aware she was a unique mix of wyrm and human. So did he want her because he, or someone even something else, could mate with her?

What the hells was Silas?

How the fuck did he even know about her?

We hadn't even known what Nelle was. No one had, not even Nelle herself. So how did this fucker know she was a wyrm? And worse, Silas was with the Children of the Harbinger too.

My mind spiraled to a cavern beneath the city of Ascendria, where I'd breathed in stale air as I'd stalked through darkness. Pitch black but for feeble torchlight and a string of blinking fairy lights wrapped around Nelle's shoulders as she spoke to a monster, an otherworldly creature of vast age—the Uzrek.

As I'd approached, my fingers had clenched around twin daggers, my footfall silent on damp rough stone. I'd heard the last part of her conversation with the enormous beast towering over her tiny figure with pin-prick eyes and a coat of downy-gray fur. It had known all along what she was but had refused to tell her.

But me, it had known my truth.

A thief. A death-dealer. A spinner of deceit.

And something else too.

You do not know what you are either, son of the Wyrm. You do not know what you mean together.

Even knowing what we were, what it meant—wyrm and tamer—it had tried to kill me. Fucking eat me. But Nelle had revealed her secret with a punch of power, saving me as the Uzrek's jaws yawned wide, hot rancid breath washing over my face as fangs gnashed downward.

There'd been a moment when I swore they'd been mentally talking. Now I wondered whether she'd claimed my life in front of the foul beast, or perhaps there was something else in their exchange.

My sister's voice cut apart my thoughts and it sounded as if she'd been repeating my name. "Gray?"

I blinked, coming to, my sister staring blindly in my direction while Caidan and Jett shot back and forth between them what it would mean if the Children of the Harbinger wanted Nelle for the purpose of breeding. Kenton was on his phone to my father's Second in Command, Wes Zhang, ordering additional security around the estate.

Finishing up his conversation, Kenton tucked his phone away. "It's getting late. We can talk more about this while I do everyone's ink." Kenton was the one who tattooed our skin. He took after our aunt with her artistic soul. He'd spent most of his childhood in her company, both of them sketching and painting in our forest or off our estate. After our mother was stolen, my aunt had put away her paintbrushes, locked up her art studio, and hadn't entered it since. Kenton couldn't give it up, though. It was too enmeshed in his soul, the need to create. His fingers would be stained and splashed with rich colors as he worked on a new piece, painting right through the night until the sun rose above the hills that surrounded the Keep. I always thought it had more to do with filling in his time, rather than fucking some random, much as I'd done, desperate to deny my attraction to Nelle.

A loud sound boomed through the library as Jett clapped his hands together, grinning wickedly, fucking enthused about the prospect. "Let's get this wyrm battle tattooed on our bodies!"

I pursed my mouth. There was something my younger brother hadn't quite clicked to. However, just as I parted my lips to inform him, it was Kenton who answered once again on my behalf, his deep bass voice annoyed. "Jett, we can't ink the tale of us taking down a wyrm on our bodies. It's Ukkenskrit, the old language."

"So?"

"The Horned Gods can read the language. We'll have to tell the tale a different way."

"Capturing a tiny, little bird..." I murmured taking a sip of whiskey, the smokey flavor rolling across my tongue before I swallowed.

Jett's gaze cut to mine. His dark eyebrows slashed upward and his mouth curled downward. "Really?" His expression was so downright miserable it was laughable.

Ferne rose from her chair. She collected her phone, her fingers searching for her tote, dragging it across the table. "Kenton's right. We can't outright mention a wyrm. I guess you'd at least know what the tale was referring to," she said, her nose scrunching.

Jett threw up an arm as he stalked past. "Taking down a bird, for fucks' sake. I'm not writing that shit on my body permanently." Scooping up Flossie, he slumped into the armchair.

Penn stood, pushed her chair neatly behind the table, and then fussed with her shirt's cuffed sleeves, rearranging the errant lock of hair behind a shoulder. "Goodnight," she said softly, to which we all replied in our various ways.

She quietly padded away. My older brother's gaze lingered on her all the way to the door until she disappeared from the library and his sight.

Caidan braced his hands on the table and rose, rolled a shoulder, and stretched his back. "Let's go and get this done. We need to get up early tomorrow."

My brothers were going to shadow the mortal shipment the Troelsen's had hunted, and were headed to the Emporium. Snacks, as Nelle rightly said. A few would be other, the kind of sensual other that would give you the most mindfucking orgasm you'd ever experienced. The rest would be the buffet to feed the Horned Gods that frequented the bordello.

Zielenski ruled the Emporium, while his family oversaw the mortal brothels for our empire. Zielenski was a year older than me and had a ruthless cold soul. You had to be if you reigned over and lived within the Emporium. Over the years we'd fought often in the fighting pit beneath Ascendria. He was the only one who would willingly step forward to fight me. Sometimes I wondered while we slammed our fists into one another, splitting skin and spitting blood, if he just wanted to feel pain, to feel anything.

"You coming?" Caidan asked me as he started out after Ferne and Kenton who were walking ahead of him.

"I'll be there soon," I replied. There was something I needed to talk to my youngest brother about.