Though Sirro's angered features lost their deep grooves, he raked intense eyes over my face. He spoke thoughtfully, more a statement than a question. "And you went down into that hole and found nothing."

Clearly, the Kinslayer had breached its prison. "Only bones. Animal bones." So many bones had filled the bottom of the pit, I'd sank through them like it was quicksand hoping to suffocate and claim me. "How would it become more than lingering afterlife?" A thought took hold of me. Sirro had warned me not to speak to it, to have someone with me when I went to check the hole in the ground. "It couldn't possess someone could it?"

Sirro's mouth flattened. "That's what I fear."

"Someone with power? An other?"

He dropped his gaze to his booted feet, tapping one of them against the gray pebbles. His square jaw sawed as he considered it. Probably had considered it already. "Possibly. I'm inclined to think so since what I'd earlier detected of its scent was melded with something else."

"Human," I replied. That's what I'd suspected too.

"Yes. But I imagine that it would easily burn through that kind of insipid power. If it has, I'd be inclined to think it would need to jump from other to other gathering strength that way." He lifted his gaze back to mine and then it glided away, and I turned around to see what he was looking at. The Deniauds' mansion with its peaked roof lines and gables, the Juliette balconies, and towers. "Right now, whatever form it's taken, if, indeed it has possessed someone, clinging to them like a parasite, it is diminished. That's what I felt when I sensed its unwelcome presence the morning after the Servants' Dance. But it also stole a bite out of my power."

Holy shit.

I jerked around to face him.

"Not enough to regain what it once was," he was quick to reassure me, raising a placating hand, "but certainly enough to push it onward."

In all my memories, we knew nothing of this Horned God. "Why didn't we know of this Kinslayer?" I asked, then clarified, "The Houses, I mean."

For a lengthy moment, silence reigned with only the coursing gusts of wind rattling leaves and panes of glass, as he weighed up how much to tell me. He arched an eyebrow. "And let you know of the existence of a beast that hunts its own kind? For us, it wasn't so long ago that we'd almost been wiped out by the Children of the Harbinger and their legions of mortals and others." He shook his head, his mouth a grim line. "We didn't want another uprising. Especially from those that served us."

Sirro rested a hand on a hip, a finger tapping near a dark dagger tucked into a belt, the deadly blade wisping with mist and shadow. "If we do not find and destroy the Kinslayer before it comes into its full might, this time the Houses will be used as our shields. Because it will come for us once more."

I frowned. "You trapped it before."

"It very nearly destroyed me the last time I fought it. The Kinslayer is something I never wanted to face again."

I suppressed the icy dread that wanted to shudder down my spine. If Sirro, a Horned God, was fearful of the Kinslayer, the Houses were fucked.

Sirro suddenly became all business, his tone brusque. "I want you to keep circling the perimeter while I hunt through the mansion."

I brushed a hand over my chest, my heart rapping a panicked beat beneath the suit. "Shouldn't I be wearing armor? At least be armed?" With every single weapon I possessed?

"I'm sure you'll be fine."

I fucking highly doubted that now I knew more about the Kingslayer.

"What if I do find it? How will you find me?" I asked.

"From your screams."

My mouth went dry. He was fucking kidding, wasn't he?

The bronze in his eyes lightened to amber and his mouth twisted with amusement. "All I need you to do is keep it in sight, block its escape." He unsheathed a pair of long daggers strapped to his thighs and offered them to me. Zrenyth's. The hilts hummed in my fists, the magic skittering against my skin. I felt better gripping them, and I twirled them about, fast, testing their weight and feel. "What exactly does the Kinslayer look like?"

The Horned God's eyes flared wide with exaggeration. "Enormous. Yet it could warp into liquid inkiness and creep through slender crevasses. Be mindful of its stinger, Varen, it paralyzes the body and mind," he warned.

Okay, cool, duly noted.

Sirro pushed into motion, and his Familiar and I matched his hurried stride as he carried on talking. "It would scuttle through the forest's canopy and was rather partial to biting one's head off and draining their blood and life force that way."

I came to a stumbling stop.

My heart thudded in my throat. Black dots wavered in front of my vision as my mind collapsed into dizziness. The words wheezed from me weakly. "Spider-like? Many-eyes?"

Sirro halted, perplexion nudging his eyebrows together. "Yes, I've always thought it seemed rather spider-like."

My eyes fell shut and my body swayed as the pebbled path seemed to disappear beneath my feet like shifting sand.

Holy...hells...

"Have you seen..." I heard his words break apart, and I assumed he'd taken in my wretched expression. "Ah, your brother."

I pried my eyes open and nodded. The startling revelation rendered my voice to a low rasping whisper. "Something killed my brother that exact way. Something that came out of the darkness, from above, with many eyes."

"Why didn't you say something at the time?"

Because I was in shock. Because Irma had twisted the truth. I was too far gone with grief and guilt, and my family had easily believed it was a hunt that went wrong. That whatever had killed my brother was some beast he'd encountered while trying to bring down a wraith-wolf. At its worst, it had been a Horned God. Something we could never retaliate against.

"I didn't connect it."

Sirro's voice gentled. "Why should you? It could have been a lesser creature or any one of my brethren if you'd traveled too close to the Heart of the Forest."

I bent forward with my fists on my knees, dragging air into my lungs. Sirro stood silently beside me, until I straightened, flicking my head in an attempt to shake myself free from the disorientation. I transferred a dagger to my other hand. Beads of clammy sweat slicked against my trembling fingers as I scrubbed my face. I dropped my hand away and clenched my jaw hard as I tipped my chin up, silently saying to the Horned God, I'd gotten my shit together.

Sirro glanced at the mansion, his gaze hardening. "So it's lurking somewhere in there, or perhaps my presence drew it from the forest. Either way, I need to be sure." Golden eyes sliced to mine. "I want you sweeping the outside while I search inside the mansion."

I gave a jerky nod, not trusting my voice.

"My sweet, are you ready for this?" the Horned God asked his Familiar.

She smiled back, a dull glassy look to her brown eyes, as she inclined her head.

Their quicksilver armor shimmered with their graceful movement as they made their way along the path. The double-headed battle ax spat cursed magic, a whitish hue that shivered across the savage weapon. Sirro strode back up the steps, his dark magic rippling around him, twitching, reaching, searching, as he stalked across the terrace and disappeared inside the mansion.

I shoved forward. A blustering gust of speed. I thundered across the lawns and gardens faster than the streaking wind as I circled the mansion and kept circling it. I threw my senses out as far as I could. With twin daggers clenched in my fists, my mood reflected the black sky with scudded clouds driven across the horizon by squalling winds. I was dark and wrathful, and I ignored the bleak sunlight, slender shafts of hope spearing through the churning clouds. My mind fell into razor-sharp focus. My bloodstream raged with ice-cold fury. My mind was fixated on this new revelation. The Kinslayer had murdered my brother.

A Horned God.

Only this Horned God I had every right to kill. And I was going to. I was going to hunt it down and slash its fucking head from its shoulders.

An hour later Sirro emerged from the Banquet Hall. Its doors had been cast open to air out the room. Servants were busily at work cleaning and restoring it back to its stately manner after the wedding last night.

At the foot of the steps, I met him, my chest heaving for breath, my body hot and sweaty. "It's not out here," I reported, handing back his daggers.

He sheathed them at his sides. "Nor inside the mansion. We are in trouble."

"What do we do now?" I stripped the jacket from my body, folding it over an arm, and unbuttoned my shirt sleeves, rolling them up one at a time.

"It could be anywhere, but more than likely in there," he angled his square chin to the Hemmlok Forest. "However, right now, there are other matters to attend to."

Sirro walked along the pebbled path and I strode beside him, both of us rounding the mansion back to the cul-de-sac.

His driver opened up the car door, and Sirro ducked inside, seating himself on the luxurious leather seat. The driver shut the sleek door and then slid behind the steering wheel, igniting the engine, the sound purring across the curved area of cobblestones.

The passenger window rolled down with a whir, and Sirro spoke to me from inside the vehicle. "I've called all the hunting Houses together. And you as heir will be present, along with your father. The meeting is set to commence in three hours' time at my residence. There are things we must move on for the Pelans and this scheme of Aldert's."

I nodded. I was definitely more than curious to learn more about this experiment of that tosser Aldert's.

Sirro liked beautiful things and his Personal Assistant was exactly that. Beautiful. The Horned God crossed a leg over the other, relaxed back into his seat, and addressed her. "Get hold of House Malan. I want to speak with their Head, Sonita, before the meeting, so request she comes to my residence earlier. I want her to bring someone with her that can tell me about one of their enforcers. He died several decades ago. Jasper Catt."

Shock jolted my heart.

His assistant inclined her head. "Of course, Master Sirro."

Sirro caught my inquisitive glance.

I couldn't let on that I knew Tabitha, but we had spoken about her earlier, and that was my way in with my next question. I pretended to think about it, drumming my fingers across my mouth. "Wasn't Jasper Catt the father of that girl, Tabitha, who lost her mother all those years ago?"

The limousine began to slowly glide forward. Sirro's mouth curved upwards. Dread slithered along my bones at his wolfish smile. "Bloodlines are fascinating, as you should know, Crowther."

The Horned God disappeared from sight when the elegant limousine rolled across the cobblestones, turning away to speed down the long, straight driveway, while I stood there wondering what in Nine Hells was the Horned God wanting to know about Tabitha's father.

***

A strange scent of leather tickled my nostrils as I blinked awake. My eyes met a dark butterscotch light. My hair hung like a sheet over my face, and the exhalation of my breath teased errant strands to waver and dance. My sleep-dusted mind slowly roused to the fact I wasn't in my bedroom and set my body to lock tight.

Where am I?

Images and sensations from last night cartwheeled through my mind. Varen's weight pressed me down onto silk sheets with a lusty roll of his hips. Pain whiplashing across my cheek—a strike of rage and accusation. My scalp burned as I was shamefully dragged from the mansion. Aunt Ellena's wide fearful eyes as she reached for me. The terrified cry of my name cleaving apart the cold night air.

My aunt! My aunt!

My fingertips dug into textured softness as I rushed to push upright. My cheek, pressed against leather, had gone sticky with my breath, and as I unpeeled my skin from the warm fabric it made a sound much like Velcro.

I sat up, twisting around to face a window fogged with condensation.

I'd awoken in the backseat of a parked car.

Pain abruptly flashed across my skull when my fingers snagged on a knot as I shoved the wild tresses away from my eyes. I remembered pounding on the back window, crying for my aunt as the town car drove away from Deniauds'...and then?

Then I'd passed out.

How long ago had that been?

It was well past midnight when I'd slunk from Varen's bedroom, and with the insipid daylight bleeding into the car, I guessed perhaps five or six hours had gone by. Maybe longer.

I quickly inspected myself, holding my arms wide and turning my wrists over. My palms were covered in dried blood, but at least it hid the fact that beneath the crusted crimson the skin had already healed. My fingers hastily flowed over the evening dress. It was frayed in patches, ripped in others, and there was a long tear from the skirt's hem right up to mid-thigh.

And then a cold feeling coiled around my neck like a cord of rope. A noose that cinched tighter when I caught the driver's reflection in the rearview mirror—narrowed eyes set within porcelain skin that was thickly peppered with dark freckles.

"Mr. Volkov?" I croaked.

I was greeted by nothing but silence.

The only sound was my heart thudding in my ears.

What was he doing here?

A moment later, I heard the click and the metallic yawn of the driver's door as he thrust it open. Ducking out of the vehicle, he straightened and rounded the town car to where I peered at his distorted image through the clouded window.

"Get out," was all he said to me.

My pulse spiked at a faster pace.

I wasn't sure if I should.

A timid part of me wanted to swivel around, make a dash for the opposite side of the car, and run. My muscles bunched, readying to spring back.

But despondency, heavy and hopeless, turned my blood to lead.

There was no point. I wouldn't make it very far.

I had no idea at all where we were. We could have traveled anywhere within the time I'd left the Deniauds'.

A dull glitter of sequins twinkled in the corner of my eye. Nestled on a car mat near my feet, swathed in the long length of my skirt, was my black clutch. I scooped it up with shaky fingers. Relief soothed the pressure in my lungs, and I pressed the clutch to my chest, thankful that I still had Varen's wyrmblood with me.

I drew in a deep breath, latched my fingers around the sleek door handle, and pushed open the car door.

Swinging my feet onto the ground, dewy grass and freezing dirt curled between my toes. That's when I realized I wasn't wearing any shoes. I'd lost my high heels in the fit of murderous rage Sanela had dealt me. And much worse, beneath my dress I wore nothing, not a single scrap of underwear.

I rose to my full height, bracing my figure. The evening gown's skirt swept to the grassy ground and turned a darker shade of rose gold with the dewdrops that dampened the hem of its fine silk. A chill shivered down my spine. My flesh erupted violently into goose prickles as a gusty breeze raked icy nails across my skin, rustling my dress and lifting my loose hair into swirling tendrils that flicked my neck and shoulders.

Mr. Volkov had driven us into a copse and the car was parked beneath a tree with widespread limbs dripping with blood-red leaves. Ahead of me, it was thickly knotted with a treeline cloaked in hues of smoldering embers, and a wild wind twisted through the higher reaches of its canopy to bend crooked branches and flail spindly limbs.

I tentatively brought my gaze back to Mr. Volkov and swallowed back despairing fear. His expression was as severe and unyielding as his stately suited uniform. Even the wind didn't dare mess with his smoothed hair, slicked back and set in place with gel.

I lifted a hand, trying to appeal to the Head Housekeeper. "Mr. Volkov, it's all a terrible misunder—"

He cut me off, his voice as hard as iron. "You've shamed us all with your slatternly behavior." The utter disgust with which he regarded me felt like leather flaying my skin. Burning shame scorched my insides. Shame I shouldn't feel because I'd done nothing wrong.

"I want to go home." My voice came out almost as a wail. I wanted my aunt and our cozy little bedroom that was our home. I wanted the warmth of her arms folding around me, shielding me, protecting me, and her gentle voice telling me that everything was going to be alright. I wanted Varen too. But he wouldn't know what had befallen me. He was probably still asleep under the effect of the sleeping potion.

The amber flecks in Mr. Volkov's irises sparked with indignation and fury. "You will never set foot on the Deniauds' estate again."

The verdict clanged through me as loud as a solemn toll.

I bit my quivering lip, steeling myself against the hot tears stinging the backs of my eyes, and the trembling in my hands. Would I ever see Aunt Ellena again?

"Where is your propriety?" he sneered, dragging his gaze over my tattered figure. He took a menacing step forward and I shuffled back. All the tiny hair on my body prickled with imminent danger.

His voice lowered to a lethal hiss and he raised a fist. "I won't let this get out. I won't allow you to tarnish Mrs. Deniaud's high standing with the other Matriarchs. I won't let her be humiliated by your lewd betrayal!"

Terror iced the heat in my blood.

What the hells was he going to do to me?

End me?

Maybe that's why we were here.

Perhaps Sanela had entrusted Mr. Volkov to get rid of me permanently. Maybe my grave would soon be somewhere amongst this copse of trees.