I ran through the wild Hemmlok Forest. The gnarled trees were woven together with ivy, and thick black vines strangled the forest's upper reaches. Motes floated in the slender shafts of moonlight slicing through the leafy canopy above, which shifted and ruffled with a light breeze. Yet down here along the gloomy forest floor, the trees groaned and swayed and bent as if vicious storm winds blustered through them.

I was the storm.

I'd brought the storm with me.

Violent, black-tipped wind raked through my long hair and whipped slender branches to slap at my face as I burst through the ancient forest at a near-impossible speed. I bellowed and roared at the injustice of what was expected of me and my twin. What tore from my throat were more sounds than words, more animal than human. I was a blur of speed and wrath and pain as I charged through the forest, hacking through flailing branches with spinning blades in either hand—slicing through anything that was in my path. Spindly branches and draping ivy were cleaved in half and sent soaring as I ran on and on.

Earlier, I'd sought out Valarie as soon as I felt her misery vibrating through the twin-link.

My sister wouldn't come out of her room. She wouldn't answer my panicked knocks on the door that separated our two guest bedrooms. She'd refused to answer my demand to know what had happened, only choking out one name—Laurena.

And Byron, for the fucking life of me, actually presented himself. Soon after my sister had barricaded herself in her room, he'd inquired after her. He was polite in his request to speak with her, while I stood in the hallway in front of her guest bedroom, my arms crossed over my chest, my stance braced like a bouncer ready to kick his ass out of the club. Yet there'd been a frayed edge to Byron's demeanor. He'd stood there, his jaw sawing, and the veil came down just briefly for me to see the shot of anguish scoring through his gaze when I told him Valarie wasn't well enough to attend the dance. He'd been respectful of her decision to be left in peace, although his position in our life meant he very well could have ordered me to step aside and Valarie to show herself.

Instead, he inclined his head and left.

Valarie didn't need to beg me not to tell our father that she wasn't going to surface tonight and spend time with Byron. I'd known to keep her secret. Jeroen had already left several messages for me to get back to him. Which I did, as much as I fucking didn't want to.

I knew in my gut my sister would marry Byron Wychthorn if he chose her as his bride. Even with Laurena as a viperish sister-in-law, Valarie would go through with it to appease our father. But if my sensitive twin with the soul of an artist was forced to spend her days in the toxic Wychthorn household, she would wither away, her spirit crushed as easily as a new sapling beneath an inconsiderate heavy boot. She'd fade into a shadow of the living...or worse, become bitter and cruel.

Both of us were caught in an impossible situation—trading happiness for House advancement.

And so later this evening, I'd found myself standing next to Irma as we attended the Servants' Dance, awaiting the arrival of Sirro. The vibrant music and the flushed, smiling faces of those dancing, the laughter, and singing, were at complete odds with how I felt—the black crushing despair that swallowed me whole.

Irma had sidled up, knowing that, with those gathered around us, I wouldn't cause a scene. She was smart enough not to fucking touch me, yet she'd cleverly smiled and murmured as if we spoke and spun the illusion we were still together.

I'd stared down at Irma. My truesight had stripped her face free from the enhancement of glamour spells: wide-set eyes, catlike and framed by long curled lashes and the gentle arch of eyebrows I'd once traced with my fingers; the slender nose above full lips I'd kissed a thousand times; and the high, round cheekbones I'd cupped as I'd drank her in. Beautiful, sleek, gorgeous. She stared back up at me with hazel eyes of rich blues and greens and browns that shone with cold ambition and want, the gold flecks around her irises blazing with victory as if she'd already won me as a prize.

Yet, even with such raw machinations swimming in her gaze, her eyes were empty like a stone carving without a soul.

And all I had echoing in my head was Jeroen's gruff voice when I'd finally phoned him back, his words crackling down the phone line saying one thing, one curt command—Announce the engagement.

I'd left the dance, shoving away from Irma and the rest of the privileged fuckers as soon as Sirro released us, and stormed across the lawns with a desperate need to release the rage and impotence that billowed in festering clouds within my chest.

I'd torn my jacket off, snatching out the twin wyrmblades, before tossing it away on the edge of the lawn with its long, wild grasses. Then I'd plunged through the treeline and into darkness to burn off my fury and the desperation at being trapped. Though it wasn't exactly ideal, running in fancy fucking dress shoes and a suit, I didn't give a shit. My footing slipped on damp moss, and jutting roots jarred my pace, but on I ran, my frantic heartbeat pounding in my ears.

Valarie's wretchedness sluiced through my veins and edged everything with a shroud of gray-tinged sadness.

She was trapped like I was.

Her torment matched mine, heartbeat for heartbeat.

As much as I railed against it, I was going to marry Irma Szarvas.

And there was nothing either of us could do.

I ran, dodging and weaving and swerving, leaping over gouges and pitted earth, spinning around with my blades. An ice storm with cruel and bitterly cold winds blustered through the forest, whipping up leaves and loose twigs into the air.

Early this morning, before the sun had risen, I'd gone running, skirting the Deniaud estate and purposely keeping inside the ever-expanding treeline where the forest had a more innocent feel to it. The Szarvases' estate was set deeper, near the heart of the Hemmlok Forest, where it was denser and wilder and fog blanketed the forest like a thick shroud. Sickly looking moss and lichen carpeted entire trees, their branches twisted and gnarled and looking more like sinister creatures. A place where the exact age of the trees were forgotten, where lesser creatures and Horned Gods resided. A place even I wouldn't dare enter.

But this time of night, the further I ran, the deeper I traveled, the more knotted and overgrown the forest became. Guilt polluted the miasma bubbling in my chest and panic compressed my ribs like a tight fist.

Gratian.

A new sensation spiked my blood like a fever.

I hungered for retribution of some kind.

Some sort of payback.

Six months ago I hadn't saved Gratian.

I'd made a conscious choice as soon as I'd seen that thing moving in the shadow, rearing up and looming over him.

Through the red haze of rage—at being used and played; at the surety of Irma and Gratian had laughed at my idiocy at not figuring out they'd been sneaking around my back; and that godsawful feeling I wasn't good enough to be loved back the way I'd loved her—I had made no move to warn my brother.

In a split second—a heartbeat, a blink—I'd hesitated. In my fury and anguish, my mind had whispered...Let it have him!...before I'd returned to my senses.

My brother was skilled with the blade, but both of us, swaying and spitting blood, my knuckles scuffed and bleeding—Gratian caught up in fury and me, my heartache—neither of us had realized we'd become the prey.

And somehow...

Somehow I'd circled around, lost in the treacherous maze of my own thoughts, and found myself bursting through the treeline and out once more onto the Deniauds' lawn—the bright lights of the dance and bonfire a distance away.

I collapsed to my knees, my fingers tightening around the handles of my hunting daggers, and loosened one last sound of raw devastation that blended with the pounding drums rolling across the lawn.

Snarling, I slammed my daggers through the tussock grass and into the soft earth. Moonlight cast an eerie glow over the bone-white hilts. I leaned back, bracing my hands on my knees, and gulped down ragged, panting breaths to ease the fire burning in my lungs.

Two breaths later...I felt vast power thrumming through the air and heard something brushing through the long tussock grass before I heard the echo of dual footsteps, as Master Sirro approached, shadowed by his Familiar.

Oh, fuck.

"Varen."

I rose, turned to face him, and bowed deeply. "Master Sirro."

The Horned God's amber eyes glowed otherworldly in the dark, the pupils fuller in their golden setting. His power drifted around his form, shimmering and pulsing. Sirro eyed the hilts of my daggers protruding from the ground. One eyebrow rose slowly, the bronze flecks in his eyes twinkling with an amusement that I didn't feel. "Needing to get something out of your system?"

"Something like that," I replied, shoving that toxic powerlessness roiling in my veins aside. There was nothing I could do. My fate lay ahead of me, courtesy of my father.

I half-bent over to brush away loose grass, leaves, and dirt from my suit pants, quickly straightening, as silver rushed forward like an ocean surging up a rocky shore and rolled over the hilt of one of the daggers. Strands of power slid around the curved handle, tightened, and in a smooth, fast move, flicked a dagger from the earth and set it soaring toward Sirro. The Horned God snatched it from the air. He lay the blade across the back of one hand. "Wyrmbone," he said, inspecting the curved and serrated blade. Moonlight glanced along the mottled-white bone as he tilted it back and forth. "Draxxon's."

The greatest wyrm ever. My ancestor Hamon had fought alongside the wyrm in the Final War. "The Horned Gods forged them for my family."

"I know," Sirro replied, his sharp teeth shining bright in the dim light. "I was the one who assisted the Blacksmith... Well," he said, scratching the jawline of his short beard with his free hand, "probably more right to say I kept the forge hot enough for the Blacksmith to craft his work. Despite what he said—I was of some use."

It was a reminder of just how old Sirro was. The Final War was an age ago. And an age before that our God Zrenyth had birthed the Horned Gods with his last breath—yet my family knew that Sirro had been around even before then, during the time our gods and goddess had walked the earth.

Sirro's burgundy shoes crushed damp grass as he shifted his position to face the forest. He was staring into the shifting shadows, the shades of ash and silver, the greens so dark they were almost black, and deeper still into a fathomless abyss. Darkness was nothing to a Crowther and seemingly to Sirro too. I watched his eyes track a small animal scuttling across the forest floor and up a tree. "Such a savage place, the Hemmlok Forest," he said softly as if speaking to himself. He turned his face my way, meeting my gaze. "I stalk this forest on occasion. I like to go hunting here too." I returned an odd glance. I had never thought of him as a hunter, couldn't imagine him in anything other than the sharp business suits he always wore.

I thought back to those times I'd been in his private residences. He lived in an enormous penthouse at the top of a high-rise overlooking the city skyline of Ascendria. I'd always been intrigued with the hallway that led from his vast atrium, where the Horned God on occasion held meetings with the Houses, to his personal rooms—his solar, and the bedrooms where he kept his harem. The hallway walls were lined with bones, mottled and aged. Each bone was different from the other, and the way they were set into the walls, curving around the ceiling too, made it look like the belly of an enormous beast.

A trophy case, perhaps.

Sirro handed my hunting knife back to me. "You know what it's like to have your blade coated in blood. To hunt something that could tear you to shreds. When you become the hunter, not the prey."

I arched a brow as my fingers latched around the warm handle of the blade. I fucking doubted that anything could take down a Horned God. But then why would they need the Houses to serve and protect them, if they weren't fallible? And the Final War had proven that too.

Sirro shifted his weight to one leg and slid a hand into the pocket of his pants, turning his gaze once more to the forest. His amber eyes seemed to dull to bronze as he stared into the darkness. "I've seen and encountered many strange things in there," he murmured. "Jurgana and her sisters slumber here between Witches Balls." This we all knew. They were just names to us, the Horned Gods whose power derived from an ancient language infused with magic. 'Witches' we commonly called them, but each of them were as different to one another as every single Horned God was to the other. Most of the witches were unknown to us, for they were notoriously reclusive and only gathered every seven years in one spot. Jurgana was one of the few witches that showed herself before the event, often gorging herself at the Emporium. And this year the Witches Ball wasn't far away.

Sirro continued with his softly spoken musing. "There are lesser creatures who barter; and Horned Gods that hunt one another; holes in the ground filled with lingering afterlife; and trees that only survive on melancholy and blood; but what I find most strange is what the Houses do to one another in there."

I shot him a curious glance.

"There's an old well by a derelict cottage that is filled with bones," he said.

I frowned. None but the Houses lived within this forest. "Mortals?"

He shook his head, his mouth pressed into a thin line. "I've always assumed they were the remains of servants who had forgotten their place, crossed the line between classes, and were removed."

They'd been murdered. And it filled me with a strange sensation of how wrong that was. But our world was harsh, we were living proof of that—we stole souls, mortals, for the Horned Gods at their whim. But the servants...