Penn's eyes flared wide and she clapped her hands across her mouth in horror, as she remembered belatedly who she'd snapped at. Lila Simonis was a member of the upper ranks, still was a member even if she'd returned from the prison in the Godsbane Forest and somehow ended up here, at the Emporium. Penn visibly cringed, dropping her hands to her sides and shifting her feet nervously. "I'm sorry, please forgive my rudeness."

Lila waved it away as if it were nothing to apologize for.

Guilt tasted terrible on my tongue that I'd caused Penn distress.

Mortified, Penn whirled around and helped the stylists finish packing up. Her spine was ramrod straight and she was trying to make out that she was fine, but I saw how hot she was, how uncomfortable I'd made her feel by nagging at her to change. She worked with trembling fingers and I heard a raw defeated sound coming from her when she fumbled clumsily with a large bottle of foundation.

The distinct sound of a ping had my attention sliding over to Lila who'd fished a cell phone out of somewhere on her figure. She scrolled through the message on her screen, a notch formed between her brows, and her mouth pursed thoughtfully. Glancing upward, she smiled with regret. "If you'll excuse me for a moment, I have something to attend to." She spoke with more authority to the stylists. "Leave this for later and come with me."

The pleated dress swung wide and rippled through the air as she spun around. The two stylists trailed her and shut the door behind them. It was just me and Penn left alone in the dressing room. "I'm sorry, Penn" I apologized. Rushing forward I snatched up a fan from the duchess and snapped it open. Blustering air flowed from the fan I was waving in front of Penn's face. If I was hot, even in this dress that was practically a negligee, she must be on the verge of fainting. "Sit down, and at the very least roll your sleeves up and undo some buttons on that shirt of yours." It was ridiculous to be wearing something that covered up every inch of her.

Penn sank down onto the stool and gave me a miserable look. She held up an arm. Liquid foundation in a pale hue had spilled over her fingers and dribbled in long lines beneath the cuff of her shirt. I gave her a look of commiseration before handing her the fan. Lifting up my skirts I strode to the steam trunk and yanked a dress from a hanger. The sound of shredding fabric filling the room was glorious as I ripped into the dress.

"That's a Balenciaga!" Penn gasped, pausing to beat the air with the fan.

I shrugged, with a wicked grin. "What's a hundred thousand dollars to the Crowthers? They can afford it." And then, just because it felt fucking great, I tore the dress right down the middle, ripping it a few more times until it was turned into scraps of material. "Here use this to soak up the spill," I said, handing a few strips of fabric to Penn and tossing the remaining scraps onto the dressing table beside her. She lifted her arm and began to wipe her wrist and fingers free from liquid gunk, before dabbing at the stained fabric, unbuttoning the cuff to get to the sticky mess beneath the sleeve. She was so busy concentrating on wiping her forearm clean that she wasn't aware I hovered close by and my gaze had sliced to the patch of skin above her wrist. She quickly finished her task, smoothing the sleeve back down, and whatever I'd just spotted disappeared from sight.

A wintry sensation iced the blood in my veins.

I swore I'd seen something on her skin. A tattoo of sorts, but not.

It had been silvery.

It looked like letters had been engraved into her flesh.

And there was scarification too.

Penn balled the filthy strip of material and tossed it into a waste bin beside the dresser.

Not thinking, purely acting on instinct, I lurched forward and grabbed hold of her arm pulling it long. "What is this?"

Penn startled, rising up from the stool and rearing back. The stool tipped over. Wood hit wood as it struck the dresser behind it. She slapped my hand away and a crack of pain flashed across my skin. "Let go of me!"

I was worried, reasonably so. "Someone's hurt you." I knew someone else who had been hurt—Evvie. Her fiancé had taken great pleasure in causing her pain. He liked to make bruises bloom on her arms and Evvie had hidden it from me, from Lise, from all of us, with long-sleeved dresses.

Blazing anger slashed through my veins, hot and furious. Could the same thing be happening to Penn? Was someone close to her hurting her? It could be one of the brothers. The eldest one. "Was it Kenton? Did he do this to you?"

She scoffed. "Of course not. No one's hurt me—"

"But someone has." I lashed out once more. This time I grabbed her wrist and yanked her forward. She stumbled against me with the violent motion. I moved fast and rough, twisting her arm around and shoving up her sleeve to get a better look at it. She let out a shriek of "Stop! Stop!" and tried to wrench herself free.

I saw it.

A girl's name had been carved onto Penn's forearm. Not with ink, but with the tip of a blade so when the skin healed the name was written on her skin with a silvery sheen of a scar.

There was more too. Someone had scarified leaves of ivy into her flesh and the writhing stems were wrapped around another name. Up further, where the shirt sleeve was shoved, I could see more scars. Penn jerked back and prised her arm free. "Don't," she cried. Shame tinted her cheeks a deeper red. She whirled away, tugging the sleeve down and buttoning the cuff with shaking fingers.

My eyes widened as a bewildered thought occurred to me. Maybe she'd done it herself. Maybe it was an innocent tattoo—the name of a loved one lost to death, someone she wanted to remember. And now I'd ruined it.

But with one look at her, at the unease and the sea of emotion washing through those sapphire eyes gone darker, I knew it wasn't. There was grief, not new and fresh, but old and festering. Guilt too. Deeply seated, terrible guilt. I had an awful feeling that there was more to this, and I reminded myself that there'd been more than one name scarring her body.

This was why she was suffering in this sweltering heat. Why she'd refused to change out of the old-fashioned uniform. She didn't even dare roll up the long sleeves of her crisp shirt either. My horrified gaze raked over her arms. Had I ever seen her in anything but long-sleeved shirts? Her entire upper body could be covered in scars.

"Who did that to you?" I asked, drawing myself straight and imperious.

"That's my business and no one else's," Penn shot back, edging away. I stalked closer. Her eyes which had seen far too much of the world for her age shone with a sheen of liquid. Not with fear nor sorrow, but anger. She was so angry she was smarting with tears. She swiped at them with the back of her wrist. "How dare you! This belongs to me and no one else!"

I softened my voice, reaching toward her, imploring her to confess. I was still fixated on the similarity to my sister and that I might be able to help her. "Penn, please...is it someone at the Keep? Did they do this to you?"

Her mouth thinned and she held herself stiffly. I'd noticed that about her before. There'd been moments she'd attended me up in the tower when she'd remained so still I had to check to see if her chest rose and fell with breath.

"I don't want to talk about it." It was the first time I'd ever heard her soft voice cold and edged like a blade. "Not that you'd believe me, but the Crowthers saved me. I'm safe with them."

I almost scoffed and rolled my eyes. They'd certainly proved themselves the opposite of that statement in regard to me. My gaze narrowed as I scanned her fine features trying to discover her secret. What had happened to her before she'd come to live with the Crowthers? If it wasn't Kenton, nor one of their servants, someone from Penn's past had hurt her.

Penn wasn't from the Houses, she was a mortal.

A mortal.

I went rigid, my eyes widening slowly as I took in the other girl. The words whispered from me. "How long have you been living with the Crowthers?"

Her mouth twitched with a smile and there was a glint of admiration in her gaze. I'd finally asked the right question. "Seven years," she replied.

This time she gave me the same look she'd shared with me up in the tower last week while Graysen fitfully slumbered. Her gaze at the time had held a quality in it that I couldn't quite grasp. A secret she was willing to share but not yet ready to divulge. As if she was waiting for me to sift through a mess of keys on a table and find the right one before she'd confirm what I'd already discovered on my own.

I did. I mentally reached for the right key, and I turned the lock, hearing an echo of a click inside the chamber of my mind as her secret opened right up. "You're the Crowther's first offering to the Witches Ball, aren't you?" I breathed.

She dipped her chin. "Yes."

The Crowthers had faltered at the last Witches Ball. Graysen had been purposely vague when I'd asked whom it had been. He revealed that though his family couldn't go through with the attempt to obtain an invite, it wouldn't have mattered anyway, because later on they discovered that only an offering from the Houses could tempt the witches.

Which Penn wasn't.

She was a mortal.

And then, they'd turned their focus my way.

I gestured toward her arm. "Did the Crowthers steal you because of that?"

Her nose wrinkled before she blew out a heavy breath from her pursed mouth as if she were struggling to think of a way to answer me. "Yes... No... It's a little more complicated than that."

I swallowed. "But that's what they hoped would entice an invitation to the Witches Ball."

She hitched a shoulder in agreement, but I was already barrelling onward, my thoughts racing ahead to the inevitable conclusion. My gaze sharpened on her and I whispered in astonishment, "That's why you have such faith in them. Why you believe they won't go through with auctioning me off at the Witches Ball."

A grim smile kicked up one side of her mouth. "I do."

I shook my head slowly. I wished I'd had her faith. But, no, I didn't. The Crowthers faltered and failed the last time. They weren't going to be doing that a second time. Valarie would make sure of that.

There came a rattling sound of the door handle being opened. Penn lurched forward, grabbing my hand and squeezing in reassurance. Her expression was fierce when she whispered urgently, "It's one thing to plan for it, another thing altogether to actually do it."

The door opened and Penn snatched her hand from mine and took several hasty steps toward the steam trunk. My gaze swung wide and I watched Valarie walk inside the dressing room, tall and regal and elegantly attired.

She stopped in front of me and raked her gaze up and down my body, a pleased smile blossoming on her lips. She murmured under her breath. "Moonlight, indeed."

I frowned at what was clasped in her hand. Her fingers were clenched around a long length of rope that was coiled up. Two lengths of rope, I realized.

"Well done, Penn," Valarie praised the servant.

Penn inclined her head that she'd heard the compliment but kept at her task, quietly packing up the steam trunk.

"Just one more thing," Valarie said enigmatically to me and then ordered, "Stand still and don't move." I froze as she stepped behind me. I couldn't see what she was doing. Nor could I see her expression, but I felt it. Hunger. She was hungry for something.

My breath tightened in my throat.

Hellsgate, did she know about the mites?

She took a step closer. One more step and her body heat washed against mine. Not heat, I realized. It was a bone-biting chill as if she and the glaciers up in the north were the same. It reminded me of Graysen. There were many occasions in the past when he'd acted coldly toward me because he dared not let me in, he couldn't allow himself to feel anything for me. And it had manifested physically. He'd projected a coldness that nipped my skin.

Much like Valarie, right now.

She stood behind me and fussed with the ends of the rope tied around my neck. I realized she was adding length by twisting the frayed ends with the two lengths she'd arrived with onto the collar.

The air trapped inside my throat expanded, burned, and hurt. I feared she'd catch me out with the mites, but she didn't stop weaving, nor poke at the knot. She kept shifting her hands, crisscrossing, and looping one length around the other, tightening and tugging.

There came a moment of stillness and I knew Valarie had finished her creation. She released her grip on the rope and stepped away.

I felt the whoosh of air before something heavy slapped my back.

It was the sound of Penn's gasp of horror that had my gaze slicing sidelong to hers and I watched all the color drain from her face. I turned my head to peer over my shoulder, my gaze slicing to the mirror, to the same place Penn was staring with big wide eyes, at the thing that lay in line with my spine.

My stomach lurched and freefell.

My gaze dragged along the rope draped down my back. The merciless coils were thick and savage, heartless in their distinctive shape. My hair was up. My make-up was pale and muted. The dress was seductively beautiful yet simple. Everything about me had been designed to direct everyone's attention to the message wrapped around my neck. There was nothing subtle about this message. It was blatant and loud and aggressive.

Valarie had extended the rope around my throat into a hangman's noose. A full Hangman's Noose.