Two girls. Two secrets.
Only one can survive.
Years before Nelle Wychthorn plans her escape, Tabitha Catt may unearth something in a Horned God's lair that is the key to freedom.
Desperate to save her beloved aunt from a dark curse, Tabitha is out t...
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I was so fucking over this shit. My brother wasn't even old enough to grow a proper mustache. Not that it stopped him from trying.
Spinning around, I stalked up to my father. The suit might have made him look like a respectable businessman, but he was a Crowther—a death-dealer like the rest of us. He met me halfway across the living room. I took after him. I had great height and was broad and muscular. We were toe to toe, eye to eye.
"Sander is sixteen," I ground out.
His violet eyes, light as heather, bored into mine. His voice was icy-calm when he replied, "Your brother needs to get his hands bloodied."
My jaw clenched, as well as both hands. "Not by walking into a nest of Yakuza." Besides the seasoned foot soldiers on guard, the room was rife with shateigashira and wakagashira-hosa, for fucks sake. They didn't get to the upper ranks by providing godsdamned manicures.
Behind me came the sound of groaning leather as Sander pushed up from the couch. He rounded both of us so he was in my side view. "I can handle myself," he said, slapping a hand across his chest. "You know I can. I train every day, just like you."
I half-twisted around to face my brother. "I don't need you covering my back. I did just fine by myself."
His top lip, with the baby fuzz he was trying to grow into a mustache, curled back from his teeth in a snarl. Rather than the typical Crowther features that ran in our family line, he had our mother's soft gray eyes and light brown hair, and her gentle disposition as well—no matter how hard our father tried to break it from him.
"You're my heir now," my father said. There was a slight pause before he said, heir. Our gazes clashed and locked as I swung back to face him. Heir to Lower House Crowther, a title I'd earned in the most heinous way. I didn't want it, especially not the way it had been handed to me.
"I don't want it."
"Tough. You don't get to decide. I do." He scrutinized my face like he was reading a battle report, but I gave him jack-shit. I just glared right back. "Valarie can't string a sentence together. Sander's too much like his mother. No offense," he said with a swift glance at my younger brother over his shoulder.
"None taken, Dad," my brother gritted out, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling and shaking his head.
"And Addison..."
My kid sister hadn't spoken a word since Gratian died. Her eyes, though, spoke plenty. They were as empty as this hollow thing I'd carried inside my chest ever since my brother died, but when she looked at me there was anger banked like coal embers, ready to ignite with the barest of breaths blown against it.
She hated me.
I couldn't blame her. I felt the same way too.
"Next time, your brother has your back," my father rumbled out as he stepped back and turned around to stride toward the wet bar to pick up the second bag he'd brought with him. He hurled it across the space and I caught it. "Go get ready," he ordered.
