A sharp clinking sound of glass on glass rang in my ears as I frantically shoved the jar onto the shelf in front of me, nudging a space for it between the others. My skirt billowed up like a bell as I whipped around. A scream of terror almost ripped from my throat as Florin charged toward me. I stumbled backward. My spine hit a table's sharp edge and a bite of fiery pain sliced through flesh and bone. Behind me, stone and wooden bowls clattered on the table from the forceful knock.

Wide nostrils flared as Florin tipped his head down, horns slicing through the air and smoke rolling off his figure like wind surging through a campfire. Intense power stirred the Stormbird's feather. As if it were responding to his fury, the silky vane wavered with the dark energy trembling through the air.

I was short compared to Graysen, but it was nothing compared to the Horned God. He was a giant running down a tiny mouse. His long shadow reached where I stood quaking, my knees buckling beneath me.

My father's deep voice filled my mind once more.

Who are you, Nelle?

Strength and entitlement flowed through my veins like gold raining into coffers. My family held rights within the world of Houses. I came from a long line of imperious rulers, and I needed to remember that. I squared my shoulders and sloped up my chin, squeezing my fingers together as if I gripped my adamere bracelet. I held my ground against the terrible wrath of the Horned God, for I was a Wychthorn Princess. If he was about to bite my head off, literally, then so be it. I refused to cower.

Suddenly a broad back swathed in soft black swept in front of me. Graysen held up his hands to pacify the Horned God. "I'm sure it's simply a misunderstanding," he gritted out hastily, but he was completely ignored by Florin who stamped to a stop.

The Purveyor of Rarities glared and bent his huge frame downward, peering over Graysen. His breath washed across my temple and my hair wavered. "You dare to steal from me, Wychthorn Princess?"

Graysen slid a step sideways, twisting around to face me. My heart hammered in my chest as I tucked my hands behind my back. His gaze was full of dread. I widened my eyes, blinking back innocently. At my innocent look his eyebrows slashed downward and his mouth flattened as if the sliver of hope he'd held onto that I hadn't done as accused, crumbled. Black hair ruffled as he tipped his head back, shifting his weight onto one hip. He braced one hand on his waist and pinched the bridge of his nose with the other, releasing a pained sigh. "Fuck. Please tell me you didn't."

I clicked my tongue and made a half-committal humming sound, wondering how to get myself out of this predicament.

"What do you have in your hand?" Florin snarled.

Hellsgate!

Bringing out my right hand I opened up my palm and showed him that it was empty. Florin huffed through his nose. Dark blood-red eyes slit. "And the other," he ordered with quiet menace.

This time it was Graysen's voice whispering into my mind. A few days back when he grabbed hold of me just before his brothers entered the Great Hall like wolves, he'd given me a warning. 'Show them what they want to see.'

I carefully slid my concealed hand along the stone table directly behind me, blindly feeling for something, anything. Bristly prickles stabbed my fingers when I wrapped them around something small. I brought my hand out from behind my back and uncurled my fingers slowly to show Florin what rested on my palm. It looked like a sea urchin but with glittering quills that looked like they were formed from sapphires and rubies and citrine. I had no idea what it was and what it did.

Graysen bowed his head and loosened a world-weary groan. "Did you have to go out of your way to get into trouble?"

I hitched a shoulder and scrunched my nose. "I didn't say I wouldn't, I said I'd try not to," I replied, speaking just as low as him.

A furious growl rumbled from Florin's chest. Candlelight wavered, guttered, flared, and sparked. The ropes of intestines and fur and hair draping from the ceiling swung with wild offshoots of magic that blustered about the lair like bracing wind. Beneath my bare feet, the ground trembled, and the walls jostled. The Horned God snatched the gemlike urchin from my palm. Pain slashed across my flesh from his talons that scratched along my skin. "Do you know what I do to thieves?" he hissed and then didn't wait for me to reply. He pointed straight up to the tapestry of lizard skin hanging from the ceiling. "The last thief I caught, I flayed...alive."

I gulped.

Graysen quickly interjected. "I'm sure Nelle was just—"

"Get the thief out of my home!" Florin roared, cutting him off.

Graysen turned us both around quickly, pushing me ahead of him, his touch urgent yet gentle. "Time to leave, Wychthorn. We've outstayed our welcome."

As we hurried toward the front door, I quickly scooped up my discarded shoes and shoved them back on. Florin stormed behind us, his hooves stamping a furious rhythm on the stone floor layered with rugs. Graysen opened up the door and the silver bell rang—tink, tink, tink. But before we slipped outside, Florin's voice stopped us. His tone was sharp but calmer and pitched lower. "Who opened the doorway upstairs?"

Graysen and I both turned around at the same time, shooting each other a bewildered look.

"I knocked..." I began, and was about to answer that it was both of us who opened the magical door...but no, that wasn't right. Earlier, I'd felt nothing but a faint hint of what was obvious to Graysen as we'd walked down the market's corridor toward the utility closet and the secret doorway. And once inside the utility closet I'd knocked on the brick wall and...nothing. I'd felt no prickling awareness of dark energy humming in the air and tickling my knuckles, awaiting a second trigger. "It wasn't me who opened the door. It opened for him when he knocked," I answered nodding toward Graysen. The doorway had flared into being the moment Graysen had rapped his knuckles on the brick wall.

Florin grunted. It seemed to me that the Horned God wasn't at all surprised. He continued to stare at me but it was Graysen he was speaking to when he murmured, "She's not what she appears to be."

"What's that?" I asked, genuinely curious.

His voice was low and thoughtful. "A mere girl."

For a moment his gaze dipped to the scarf tied around my throat, and I wondered if he knew it was there, hidden behind the silky fabric. I swallowed, my tongue thick and heavy in a mouth suddenly barren of moisture. Did he know I'd stolen something from him? Did he know that the mites were climbing all over the rope, squiggling into the slivered crevasses of the knot and beginning to feast on the dark force infused within the fibrous strands?

The Horned God's eyes slid from me to Graysen, and the fringe of lashes shadowed his blood-red irises. "What are you up to Sticky Fingers?" His voice darkened to a snarl. "What are you doing in her company? A daughter from Great House."

Graysen didn't answer. He clamped his hands on my shoulders and swiveled us around, nudging me through the open door ahead of him. One day I hoped I might return and speak with the Horned God while spending a lazy day rifling through his splendid lair and all the wondrous and macabre collection of rarities. A sudden burst of warmth met my side. Graysen crowded up beside me and slung an arm around my shoulders as if he was aware of what I needed from him at that very moment. A surge of gratitude washed through me as he led me out of the lair, into darkness, and onto the stairwell's landing. I glanced up at him, at the harsh lines in his tense features that were exaggerated with muted darkness and filmy lavender as the door shut behind us. Aware of my attention, his black eyes sliced downward and one side of his mouth tipped up while the other twisted downward. A peculiar emotion, pretty much how I felt too. Off-kilter.

I stole one last harried glimpse of the Purveyor of Rarities. He was a giant towering above us, blocking out most of the light. Florin stamped his cleaved hooves apart and eyed me with those strange horizontal pupils, glaring down the length of his wide nose in a mixture of anger and perplexion. Thick ghostly smoke roiled off his body and his feathered tunic ruffled like wind-teased leaves, the deep color of the feathers like oil spilled on water with whorls of black emerald and sea blue-greens.

And then he was gone, the door shut behind us with a foreboding thud.

I frowned as I curled closer beside Graysen, relishing in his warmth and the safety he provided with his presence. How curious that his mother had become friends with the Horned God. All this time Tabitha Crowther had a secret life she kept apart from her family, a secret no one knew, not even her husband.

What else had she been hiding from her family?

***

We walked through darkness.

Beneath the earth it was colder, a goose-prickling contrast to the hot afternoon we'd spent at the market. Pressed up against my cool skin, Graysen's body felt like iron tossed into a bed of embers. He had one arm wrapped around my shoulder, the other crossed over his waist so I could clasp his hand in a death grip with both of mine. Even enveloped in his comforting presence, the dark was still able to stroke terrifying fingers down my spine.

As we ascended the staircase gouged from rock, we passed through a cloud of lavender light radiating from a glass orb of fluttering pix, and I glanced up. A deep line was chiseled between Graysen's thick brows, drawn forward over narrowed eyes. He'd grown introspective as we ascended the staircase. I didn't pry, nor urge him to open up about whatever arrested his thoughts. Instead, I let him be, thankful in part that he wasn't suspicious of what I'd done—actually stolen from a Horned God and gotten away with it.

I was a little shell-shocked too. I couldn't believe that I'd found the mites and they were settled on the knotted rope and gorging on Zrenyth's magic. My 20th birthday was less than two weeks away and from what I'd learned about the mites, that was the length of time it would take for them to chew through the rope...if they could.

A chilling worry crept across my skin like a winter's day drawing to an end. The rope collaring my throat was thick, much thicker than the thin sliver of leather I'd found them crawling over in the bottom of the glass jar.

What if the chunkiness of the rope was too much?

What if it took them much longer to eat through the fibers to free me?

Yet, while anxiety wormed its way inside my body, there was hope too. Maybe having a generous cluster of mites gnawing on the magic would lessen Zrenyth's hold on the wyrm. Maybe I'd connect with my wyrm before the rope was severed from my neck.

We continued climbing the staircase in silence, our footsteps echoing around us, the soft billow and snap of my dress teasing against my thighs. The ends of my hair lifted with the Horned God's might, breezing through the passageway. Pale strands floated in front of my eyes just as we reached the top landing and stopped in front of the dead-end where the utility closet waited beyond the pitted rockface. Graysen squeezed my fingers gently before he pulled his hand free of mine. I tucked the wayward waves of hair behind an ear while he raised a fist to the black rock. We glanced briefly at one another just as he rapped his knuckles, one, two, three, and the eerie green magic flared into life, zipping up and across the rough-hewn surface to outline a door.

At the broad grin and the warmth in his eyes, a rush of wild emotion swept through my body like a twisting tempest, tingling the tips of my toes, the ends of my fingers, right through to the crown of my head. My lips curled into a smile...

And then...

A bitter wash of confusion crashed upon me and my smile slipped just as he turned his attention back to the wall and pressed his palm against the heavy doorway to push it open.

My feelings for Graysen were getting more and more complicated. The animosity with which I regarded him had dissipated since last night when our bodies had come together and we'd burned as one. Things were getting increasingly tangled between us. Earlier I'd wanted to soothe his melancholy, kiss away his despair.

How could I do that when I was going to escape and run?

How could I feel that way for someone who wasn't only my jailer but my executioner as well?

Suddenly I was shying away and blinking against the fizzy light of the closet, breathing in its stale air, permeated with chemicals. The soles of my shoes scraped against rough stone then met smooth lino as I stepped out from beneath Graysen's arm and re-entered the world of the market and Ascendria. Now that I found myself entering the closet and stepping into a harsh spotlight of reality, the heaviness that cloyed my lungs was breathed outward on a soft puff of air. I knew what I had to do—look out for myself. I shoved all those strange warring feelings I held for Graysen down deep into a place of shadows.

Rubbing my eyes free from the sting, I waited for my sight to adjust to the brighter light. I no longer had an appetite, but nevertheless, I plucked the limp paper bag of fudges and caramels off the shelf before trailing Graysen to the closet door. By the time he reached it, his body was a rigid line and an icy expression frosted his features. He latched his fingers around the door handle, twisted, and pulled the battered door open.

Diligently awaiting our arrival were Luther and two other bodyguards we'd earlier left behind.

Luther wore a stoic expression, but I caught the quick flash of relief scoring across his features when he saw Graysen.

"See? All in one piece," Graysen drawled in a dull tone, sweeping his hands wide.

The older man's mouth flattened with annoyance, but he quickly took charge, issuing his orders.

Reaching forward, Graysen took back my shopping bags from one of the bodyguards and I leaned sideways to drop my stash of leftover sweets into the bag that held the snow globe Graysen had bought for me when we'd been perusing the market stalls.

Luther stalked ahead of us and Graysen and I fell in behind, while the other two guards held the rear. We made our way down the empty, gloomy corridor, and at the approach of the corner that would take us back to the market's restrooms, Graysen's phone pinged with a series of incoming messages. It seemed the phone had been out of service while we'd been down at the Purveyor of Rarities lair, and now he was being hit with a barrage of messages. All I heard was ping, ping, ping, above the buzz of activity filtering from the market beyond.

Graysen shifted the shopping bags to one hand so he could fish the cell phone out of his back pocket. He swiped its screen with a thumb just as we turned the corner and were greeted by a haze of industrial lighting set into the ceiling with a flock of small birds flying across its stone surface. We walked toward the thin streams of people heading to and from the restrooms, and I noticed the din of the market wasn't so loud any longer. I could easily see past the patrons to the arched entranceway that sprawled ahead of me. A little girl with strawberry blond curls had raised herself onto her toes to peer inside the enormous bird cage with its clockwork canaries. An elderly couple, arm and arm, strode past a young woman pushing a stroller with a dozing toddler. But fewer people were milling around the stalls. It seemed as if the market was coming to a close.

An abrupt sensation crackled lightly across my exposed skin like a burst of static electricity. An awareness. Of what, I wasn't sure. It drew my gaze onward to skip across the faces of those walking down the passageway toward us. My line of sight bounced over broad smiles and faces lit up with laughter. A middle-aged woman had her head bent over her phone like Graysen, and beyond her I caught the barest glimpse of someone beneath a baseball cap, shifting out of sight behind a group of giggling teenage girls heading toward the yawning entrance to the restroom's wide corridor.