"Five years ago?" I breathed. Hurt, sharp as a barbed thorn, pierced my heart at the realization Evvie had been lying to me for so long.

Caidan took another mouthful of his drink, then lowered the tumbler, resting it on his thigh. "Evvie snuck out that night. We ran into one another down at the fighting pit."

I blinked, astounded. Even I knew of the fighting pit—a place carved out beneath the earth, amongst the twisted steel foundations of Ascendria, where the upper ranks went to fight one another in bare-knuckle brawls. Bets were made and money was traded on the winners. My head was awhirl with the fact my sweet, rule-abiding sister defied my parents and stole out of the house, let alone go there. My hair rustled as I shook my head in disbelief. "I can't believe she did that."

He flashed a mega-bright grin with dimpled cheeks, and a deep chuckle rumbled from his chest. "She was a right mess trying to fit in with the rest of us." White teeth bit down on his smile as he turned back to the window, staring distantly at the passing scenery, the faces of people blurring with the shape of buildings and colors of the city. "I looked out for her that night. We hung out and she had fun. We've been doing much the same ever since."

For five long years, she'd been sneaking out with Caidan and keeping this secret friendship from me.

Fury erupted. It slashed through my veins and boiled my blood. But worse, it fucking stung. I turned it from me to him because I wanted someone else to feel this kind of stinging betrayal. "You used her to get to me!"

Exasperation flashed in his gaze. Hurt too. His mouth curled into a snarl as tension locked his body tight. "Not that you or Evvie will believe me," he ground out, "but my friendship with your sister was real. There wasn't any deceit in it." He flung the hand holding the whiskey wide. The uneven motion caused droplets of amber to arc over the edge of the glass and splatter over his jacket. "What we had together had nothing to do with you or any of this." Our gazes clashed and mine was full of fire. I burned him with every inch of rage I felt toward him. Caidan broke away first, cursing low. He flicked away the droplets of alcohol clinging to his jacket before sinking dejectedly against the seat. His lips pinched into a firm line as he frowned up at the curved ceiling. When he next spoke, he added more quietly. "Your family didn't know about us, and neither did my father or aunt. Not even my brothers knew."

Rushed fingers untied the scarf around my neck and I tugged it free to reveal the Hangman's Noose. "Let me go." The silk fell across my lap and draped down my thighs. "I know only a Crowther can untie this rope. Just do it, Caidan. Prove to Evvie you care for her."

His head whipped back to mine. He looked torn and confused and shifted forward to reach for me, and then jerked his hand back. "It's not as simple as that. My mother—"

"What about me?" I hissed, thumping a fist on the armrest. "My sister will never forgive you for what you're going to do. Your mother won't either!"

"Maybe...maybe not!" he whisper-hissed back.

I'm innocent in all of this!—I went to shout, but I was silenced as his words rang in my head.

Maybe...Maybe not.

"She's our mother. She'll be devastated because we've been put in this position," he continued. Scowling, he threw back his head and emptied the glass of whiskey, his throat working the fiery liquid down. He wiped the moisture from his mouth with a palm. "Maybe she's suffered so much she'd trade places with anyone in a heartbeat... Maybe she gave my father permission a long, long time ago to save her. And to do it by any means necessary. Because, maybe, she's crossed that line herself."

The world went quiet inside my head. "How do you know that?"

He sighed, running a hand down his face. He looked down at his lap, where droplets of whiskey were soaking into his pants, and he brushed them off the fabric with the back of his fingers. He sounded bone tired when he answered. "Something my father said a long time ago when he was drunk and lost and in so much pain without her, I was frightened that he was forever broken." I stared at him. At the anger and hurt and misery sweeping across his features. He wasn't asking for forgiveness, nor really understanding either. "She didn't sacrifice herself for you," he continued in that same weary voice. "She sacrificed herself for Graysen. For my family. How far would you go to save those you loved?"

I tipped up my chin, feeling the iron truth in every inch of my body. "Further than you."

He smiled and it was small and sad and mirrored my own. "Exactly."

The thing was, I didn't need Caidan to help me. I already had the mites.

The limousine slowed down and I suddenly became aware that we'd been traveling uphill. The vehicle came to a rumbling standstill. Glancing through the window, I frowned. Too little time had passed for us to have left the city.

A moment later the car door opened. Caidan ducked out first and offered me his hand. Warmth and strength met my fingers when I wrapped mine around his. I climbed out of the limousine and let go of him, straightening my spine and breathing in the smell of the city, of greenery too, with the sound of raining water coming from a nearby fountain.

I was standing at a majestic drop-off point outside the lobby of a low-rise building.

And we weren't alone.

The temperature instantly dropped to a frigid point. I felt as if I were trapped in an arctic blizzard with icy sleet pounding my body. The blood in my veins froze to see her walking into view to stand right in front of me. Inky strands of hair were coiled into a sophisticated updo. Glossy black fabric fell around her figure like dark water. She looked elegant in an evening cocktail dress, soft pink coloring her cheeks and lips. "Hello Nelle," she greeted me with a viperish smile.

"Valarie." I wasn't going to be calling her Miss Crowther anytime soon.

A myriad of questions crashed through my mind. Why the fuck had we stopped here? Were we meeting up with Valarie so she could escort me back to the estate? Were the Crowthers suspicious that Graysen might betray them?

I glanced behind Valarie's tall figure. My gaze trailed up, up, up along the bone-chilling lines of the building at which we'd arrived. Eerie with darkness pooling around its form with whorls of shadows and smoke. In my periphery I caught movement, and I half-twisted around to watch men and women strolling along the pavement on the other side of the street, moving much slower than those marching down the sidewalk with not so much as a glance at the building. These mortals appeared ordinary but for one thing. Desire swirled in the depth of their eyes and arousal made them wet their lips. Yearning made them slow their pace even further and turn their bodies slightly in the direction of the ancient building. They were drawn here for a reason that eluded them.

I wondered if, in some small way, they were distantly aware they were other.

A terrifying sensation sank through me and pitched my gut. Even though I knew exactly where we were I still asked the question. "Where are we?"

Caidan answered. "The Emporium."

The sky detonated into the tropical hues of a sunset. Fuschia, coral, and canary yellow were splashed across the window panes in a reflection of the setting sun. Though the day's ferocious heat beat against my skin, I was ice-cold, right through to my very bones.

The Emporium.

Beautiful yet deadly.

Exactly how I would describe Valarie.

The elder Crowther swept gracefully around to stand flush with me so she could stare upwards. Valarie had been absent from the Keep for almost as long as I'd been a prisoner there, and now she was back from only gods-knows-where. Delicately pleated fabric draped around her figure, and silver twinkled through the black lamé to give the one-shouldered dress a submetallic luster like anthracite coal. A glint of reflected sunlight caught the teardrop pendant nestled in the shallow valley of her cleavage. She plucked it up and turned the pearl absentmindedly between her fingertips while admiring the building.

I was hemmed in by Valarie and Caidan.

Anger was a breath blown onto a bed of embers, stoking my temper hotter. My fingers bunched into fists. I snapped my head toward Caidan and caught him staring down at me beneath a fringe of lashes. Guilt was stamped across his broad features, there and gone before his gaze darted away. He widened his stance and drew his cell phone out of his pocket, deliberately avoiding meeting my eye, by checking his messages

Traitorous motherfucker.

I tipped my chin up and glared at his profile. I'd make Caidan pay for whatever was in store for me inside the Emporium. Because us being here wasn't good.

Standing there, with my face angled toward Caidan, allowed me to peek through the corner of my eye to see the Emporium as one would without truesight. To the mortals, the building appeared to be squat and staid, understated with classic lines to its heavy masonry. A decorative wrought-iron fence surrounded it, and the ground-floor windows were positioned high so one couldn't peer inside from the sidewalk.

The soft purr of an engine rising into a rumble had my upper body twisting sideways. The Crowthers' limousine glided away, circling the water fountain before it carried on along the drop-off point to disappear into the underground private parking facility, which left me marooned in the company of Valarie and Caidan. I noticed a few more bodyguards were joining us with Valarie's arrival. Her personal security detail was smaller than Caidan's, and the men and women were more weathered-looking, with cold, sharp eyes that swept the area.

We'd driven up serpentine streets to the foothills of the large mountain that loomed over Ascendria and its lake. The same mountain that an artist had sculptured in a snow globe that Graysen had bought for me at the market. Pretty, I'd thought at the time, and intriguing enough I wanted to keep it as a memento of my day at the market. The Emporium resided in an older, dignified part of the city, in the company of a luxurious apartment building and a fine-dining restaurant further along up the road. Across from us was an elegant park, and through the clusters of maple trees with lime-gold leaves, I spied children running ahead of their parents down a webbing of paths toward a slow-running stream with ducks and swans.

No mortal who lived or worked in the area knew the Emporium for anything other than what it presented itself as: a respectable Gentleman's Club. Nor would they ever be able to spot the faintest distortion of light striking off the magical shield that surrounded the building. This type of magic was the same kind that ran through the electrified fences that encircled our compounds. It was an intense magic that kept mortals away from our country estates. It whispered into their minds that there was nothing here to look at, nothing here of note, and kept them driving onwards without a single glance towards our property.

Unless, as in this particular case, you were the kind of other that was inexplicably drawn here because of what they sensed behind that shield. Desired it. Was desperate for it. Wanted to spread your legs for it. The kind of other that had a ferocious appetite for sex and in turn wrenched mind-blowing orgasms from those they plunged their cocks into or clenched around them with their sex. Nymphomaniacs and Terotas. We didn't even need to steal them. They willingly offered themselves up to our bordellos, eager to dissolve into soul-obliterating orgasms, and only desiring to disappear into a tangle of limbs, whether it be with a human...or not.

The exact kind of other that was currently drifting along the pavement at a snail's pace with arousal-flushed cheeks and heavy-lidded gazes fixed on the building behind me.

It was the scraping of high heels on the bricked sidewalk that had me swinging back to the Crowthers. Valarie had shifted herself to face Caidan. She frowned. "Where's Graysen?"

I was curious myself if Graysen knew anything about this. I was going to snap every bone in his body the next time we met if I discovered he had. Even if I didn't have my wyrm and its power, maybe I could get my hands on a baseball bat and break his godsdamned kneecaps.

Caidan paused typing a message into his phone and glanced up at his aunt. He answered in an easy tone. "He's been called in to finish Sirro's task. I took possession of Wychthorn so he could join his team and the Văduvas down in the catacombs."

Mela Văduva.

Despite the fact that I refused to think of Graysen as mine. Despite knowing that Mela was in love with someone else, and no doubt barely able to breathe through her grief and heartache. Despite the constraints of logic, savagery roared through my blood, fierce and bright.

My fists clenched tighter and sharply-tipped fingernails carved through flesh.

The spikes of hot pain searing through my palms jolted me mentally awake.

He wasn't mine.

I had to remember that.

Arching my neck to the side, I rolled my shoulders to release the tension.

Valarie's mouth flattened. She glanced over the top of my head to her nephew, her brow furrowing deeper, and she spoke as if I weren't even present. "Graysen took her off the estate?"

I almost snorted. It was weird to be talked about in this way. I wanted to remind them I was right here. I could fucking hear them.

Caidan casually hitched a shoulder. "It was a side mission for Sirro. He was killing two birds with one stone. Wychthorn needed to be brought to the city... And Gray does love to mess with her." He flashed a sharp-toothed grin that reminded me of a shark.

I blinked.

Interesting.

He was protecting his brother.

My heart thumped in my throat when Valarie's arctic gaze suddenly lowered to mine. She stared at me thoughtfully, like I was an object, a thing. I allowed her to see a glimmer of fear in my eyes. At my sides, I unfurled my fists to knead my fingers nervously in the skirt of my dress. I flitted my gaze down to my shoes as if I were unable to handle looking at her directly because I was so frightened. As much as I loathed doing it, I'd give her that. Not for me but for Graysen. I didn't want her to learn he wasn't doing as she expected—terrorizing me up in the tower to break me.