"Aunt Rosa?" Nelle gently urged, one hand fiddling with the long fringe of her shawl.

Rosa was married to Harding Lyon. The Lyons were a hunting family we sometimes worked with. A few years after Mom had been stolen, Aunt Rosa had barged her way into our lives to help Dad with raising us. He was struggling to be everything to everyone while still trying to hunt down the whereabouts of our abducted mother. My brother Kenton, a teenager at the time, had stepped in when my father was forced to leave us the first year for war with the rest of the Houses. Kenton was a fucking helicopter parent but I loved him for it.

Aunt Rosa refused to budge, despite my father's brusque insistence he had everything under control. "Like hells you do, VV," she replied. Aunt Rosa back in our lives relieved the pressure of my mother's absence and reminded us that we were children and we should, along with our dad, be allowed to have fun too. Be it that Aunt Rosa's kind of fun was often fucking crazy.

I set about chopping up one half of the dead chicken into smaller pieces. "Aunt Rosa isn't an aunt by blood. She's my Dad's best friend so we've always called her that. He doesn't like many people, but he likes her. They go back a long way."

And she's currently helping him hunt a beast we need for the Blacksmith.

Nelle unwound her shawl and tossed it haphazardly on the kitchen counter. A vexed sensation scratched at my mind. My fingers itched to pick up the shawl, fold it, and put it away, where it lived—inside a fucking drawer—when I noticed the sly smirk twitching on Nelle's lips as if she'd purposely done it to taunt me.

My gaze sharpened on her. I didn't have a fucking problem like she thought. I simply liked my domain tidy, just like anyone else would do too.

While I tried to ignore the scarf just fucking sitting there in a heaped mess, Nelle stretched up on her toes to get to the shelf holding the drinking glasses, coffee mugs, and china teacups. Her fingers wrapped around a tall glass as she pursed her lips, contemplating. "I remember her from the House Gatherings. She's really chatty."

"Yeah." Sometimes it was hard to get a word in edgewise.

"She likes party planning, huh?"

A huff of laughter escaped my throat. "She loves party planning too fucking much." A heartbeat later my eyebrows nudged together in bewilderment. "Jett told you that?"

She nodded and turned her attention to filling her glass with water. Turning off the tap, she leaned the dip in her lower back against the counter edge and watched me while I rapidly sliced and diced the chicken. It was a moment later when I realized that Nelle was staring at me with a weird look. I stilled and cocked a curious brow at her.

She took a sip of water and swallowed. Lowering the glass to her middle, her fingers rapped against the glass before she said, "It was strange hearing about your family and Aunt Rosa as if..."

"We're normal?"

"Normal-ish," she amended flatly while thumbing Zrenyth's rope around her neck with her free hand.

I braced myself for the acrid guilt I carried with me to rise up and drown me beneath its inky depth. It came, but it was weakened by the buzzing beneath my skin. I had to forcefully suppress the impatient hum as I glanced fleetingly over the black messenger bag at her hip. I'd already noted how the strap dug into her shoulder because it carried something large and heavy.

Nelle wiped away a bead of water drizzling down the outside of her glass. "You stole circus performers?"

"The Cirque du Soleil no less." I puffed out a breath as my mind swept back to that horrific night. Aunt Rosa lit too many fireworks at once. The sky had been filled with flames and screaming. The intricate harnesses and ribbons were incinerated by wild sparks. And it didn't help matters when Aunt Rosa, ensnared in mindless panic, didn't stop describing what was going on to Ferne, including the way the ribbon twirler fell right to her feet and snapped her neck.

"Ferne is..." Nelle began, then drifted off as if hesitant to say what was so fucking obvious. Everyone else said it. Why bother with such extravagant gifts for a girl who was blind? Bristling, I furiously hacked the chicken up into smaller portions.

Except, in the corner of my eye, my little bird dropped her gaze to her feet and curled the tips of her dainty toes against the tile. She glanced up at me beneath her feathered eyelashes. "I think it's lovely that Ferne doesn't miss out on anything everyone else enjoys too," she shared softly.

Warmth curled inside my chest.

No, Ferne didn't. She might have had her sight stolen from her but it never held her back from anything she set her mind to.

Nelle finished her drink and placed the empty glass in the sink. I thought she'd leave for bed but instead, she remained, fidgeting in place and shifting her weight from foot to foot. She smoothed her hands over the shawl on the counter. Her fingers plucked at the soft material and she nibbled on the corner of her mouth as she neatly folded it. While I chopped up the other half of the foul chicken I felt her swift glances on my profile. It seemed as if something else was on her mind but she wasn't sure how to voice it.

For a long moment, just the sound of Sage's tail enthusiastically swishing along the tile and the slice of my adamere dagger against wood and bone and frozen flesh filled the room.

"Why do you live in the tower?" she asked quietly.

A cold splash of surprise shocked my insides that she'd ask me. I was pretty sure she'd already deduced the answer with her clever mind.

"I think you know why," I replied. My blade scraped against the wooden chopping block as I slid the foul chicken pieces into Sage's bowl. Washing the dagger and my hands in frothy soap, I dried up on a lime-checkered tea towel hanging on the oven's door handle and tucked away my blade. Grabbing hold of Sage's food bowl, I left the kitchen, stepping onto the balcony and into the gloom of night. The velvet fold of darkness was broken by the tower's light flowing through the spaces carved out of its curved walls.

Sage pranced at my heels as I strode around the tower, the chilly breeze nipping my arms. I squatted down and left Sage's food bowl on the stone floor beside his water dish. With an excited yelp, the wraith-wolf lunged in, greedily snatching up a rotten morsel. A ridgeline of hacked fur ran down his spine, and he flattened his ears back, loosening a deep growl, warning me off his food.

As fucking if—he was welcome to the putrid chicken.

Nelle had followed me out onto the balcony. Reluctant to leave the safety of the light, she leaned her shoulder against the pillar-like edge of the wall. "It's the one place your Aunt couldn't reach you," she answered.

"Yeah." As I rose, the thick roping of scars on my back stung in bitter memory.

"Did your Dad know what was happening to you?"

My hair swept sideways as I shook my head. "No. He had no idea."

"Mine either," she whispered. We shared a brief look of understanding, of darkness and suffering, of fathers promising it would never happen again.

Except my father was unable to keep his promise.

And this tower hadn't saved me from my aunt's wrath.

A dull burn flared around both of my wrists beneath the silver chains and leather straps my younger brother had tied around them because he couldn't bear to see the scars. Time and pain had been endless in the well of frigid darkness beneath the Keep.

Nelle was the one to break our locked gaze, flicking her line of sight toward the night sky.

Shaking the memory off and shoving it down deep, I drew my shoulders back as I tucked my hands in my sweatpants' back pockets. I cleared my throat, focusing on the here and now and fonder memories. "Dad brought me here and let me choose if I wanted to live alone, or with the rest of the family in the Keep."

Nelle peered into our room, sparkling with curiosity. Gentle light gilded her freckled features and her wavy pale hair in soft daffodil hues.

The tower had been empty for centuries. Dad helped clean it up and transform it into a self-sufficient space. He was the one who'd taught me how to cook the old family recipes from vó Bel. Cooking had been my grandmother's passion and the kitchen was Isobel's sacred space. Along with her laughter and the tales from her side of the family, the Teixeiras, the kitchen had always been filled with spicy scents and herbs, the counters dusted with tapioca flour.

"So you learned to cook and to take care of yourself, and keep your domain in particular order," she volleyed back, her cheeks rounding in a swift, shrewd grin.

I scowled as irritation at her jab prickled beneath my skin. "I just like things right. It's not weird, okay?"

Amusement brightened her gray eyes. "Not in the slightest."

A heartbeat later, she rubbed her lips together, dousing the mirth. Her messy bun tipped to the side, casting sweet shadows across the planes of her face as she angled her head toward me. "You can ask me a question if you like."

It seemed we were continuing to play the game I set in motion early today, a question for a question.

As she waited patiently, unease darkened her eyes and her fingers played anxiously with the messenger bag's strap. I pondered, searching her face, wondering what to ask. Tension ran along her lithe body and I could tell she was steeling herself for a question regarding Silas Boon, perhaps the wyrm or her family.

There were more serious questions I should be asking, but I couldn't resist this one. "What's your favorite childhood memory?"

Nelle's grip on the bag strap went slack as she blinked rapidly, taken by surprise at my question. Her eyebrows nudged together and she chewed on her plump bottom lip, thinking about it. "The day I saw the sea for the first time." She smiled. A real smile, vibrant in its openness and perfectly crooked, just like the smile she shared with me this morning up in my mother's reading nook.

Her loveliness stole my breath.

Nelle turned her diminutive figure and leaned her back against the stone wall, her gaze captured by the dark horizon. The edges of the forest and rolling hills were a rough brushstroke, detailed only by the scattering of stars beyond. Her eyes flicked briefly sidelong, still smiling. "I was five years old, and we'd all gone together—my parents, Lise, and Evvie. We traveled right across the States to the west coast so I could see the Pacific Ocean with my very own eyes. I'd never seen the sea before. I'd only seen pictures of it and I had no idea at all of how endless it appeared. It went on forever. It was all I could see, this majestic blue world with brine caught in the air. And the sand," she breathed. "I never knew how soft sand could be. Every time a wave rolled out, the water sucked the grains from beneath my toes and tickled the soles of my feet. It was the most incredible sensation."

Nelle stared ahead where darkness gathered. Her smile faltered and her voice grew quieter, melancholy shadowing her tone. "It was the last time we went anywhere as a family. The last time I left the estate for anything but dress fittings or the odd high tea at the Monarch Tower and the rare appearance at a House Gathering."

A cold feeling trickled down my spine. "Why?"

Sharpness haunted her gaze. "It was the first time fire showed itself."

Nelle abruptly pushed off the wall and the sound of her bare feet wisping against the rough balcony floor was carried on the crisp air. She hurried away to enter our rooms, obviously done for the night.

A desolate wind whispered through me at what I was a part of. There was a vast world out there, waiting for her to spread her wings and soar amongst its wonder. She had a little over two weeks to find a way to free herself.

A sudden rush of fear skated across my skin. I knew I would have felt her despair and terror trembling beneath my skin. I knew that Penn had lied to protect Nelle from my brothers. But I had to know for sure. I bolted after her and darted inside my quarters, my feet shifting from cold stone to warm carpet. My voice rang out and the question stopped her mid-step. "You're not crying when you're alone are you?"

Nelle turned back slowly, her delicate features lined with perplexion. "Crying?"

Fuck. I dragged my hand through my hair, searching for the right way to ask. I anxiously motioned toward her with a hand. "Feeling hopeless and terrified of my family? Of my brothers?" Of what was going to happen later if she didn't escape me.

Her eyes narrowed and her expression smoothed into a blank slate.

The questions were fired rapidly with each footstep closer. "You think I'm breaking when I'm alone? That I'm huddled in a corner sobbing in despair? Trembling in fear of your brothers?"

I nodded, worried it might be true.

Nelle stared back at me, scanning my face, giving nothing away.

All of a sudden her upper body buckled forward with a stifled chortle she tried to hide by slapping a palm over her mouth. A second later, her hand dropped away to her chest and an obnoxiously loud cackle of laughter erupted from her.

My eyelids flattened and my jaw went—tick, tick, tick—as I watched her slender shoulders quake and her cute, messy hair tremble when she fell into one of those deep belly laughs. The kind of hearty belly laugh you couldn't stop. The kind of laugh where you laughed so much you ended up crying.

Nelle did that.

She howled with laughter for a full two minutes. I knew because like a fucking masochist I stood there and actually counted in my head.

Every time she glanced at me, her cackling got rougher and more uneven. Tears streamed down her rosy, puffy cheeks. She even snort-laughed in between, "All alone and crying... Oh my gods, that's priceless."

Eventually, because it happened to the best of us, she got intoxicated on laughter, swayed drunkenly, and collapsed into a heap on the carpet.

I threw up my arms.

Oh, for fucks' sake.

Swiveling around on my heel, I stalked to my makeshift wardrobe, grabbed a pair of overalls marred with old stains of oil and grease from a drawer, and left. The tower's door slammed behind me with a loud bang as I shut away Nelle lying on the floor holding her jiggling stomach and sob-laughing like a fucking hyena.