I paced around the empty drawing room, my fingers itching to destroy something. The magic burned a hole inside me, as if Daigh had thrown me on that fire instead of Corbin. The charred bookshelf leered at me, mocking me for my lack of self-control.

Fuck, what was wrong with me? Ryan was trying to help us, and I burned his stuff.

Blake made me so angry. He’d betrayed all of us by messing with Maeve’s dreams. Who knew what else he’d tinkered with inside her head. If he’d never followed us into the human realm, none of this—

Fresh fire sparked in my fingers. No. I needed to get out of here.

I slammed the drawing room door and made a beeline for the rear of the manor. French doors lined the back wall of an informal dining room. I shoved one open, and a fresh breeze blew across my face. I stepped outside and jogged across a paved patio and down a path between rows of parterres fanning out around a cracked fountain.

Ryan clearly wasn’t much of a green thumb. The back garden was in even worse shape than the front of the Hall. Turgid sludge choked the bottom of the empty fountain, and the formal flower beds were overgrown and choked with weeds. I figured our host wouldn’t mind if I did a little gardening for him, all in the name of burning off steam (literally).

I balled up all the rage inside me and unleashed it through my fingers, aiming a fireball at the nearest parterre. The dry weeds caught fire and smoldered, burning quickly and reducing the garden to embers.

Blake’s stupid face danced in front of my vision. It morphed into Daigh’s, the stupid fae playing games with Maeve like he was the cat and she was his mouse. His games killed Corbin, my oldest friend, my first friend.

Smoke curled toward the heavens. The fires crackled, bringing me back to last night, to the heat rolling off the bonfire as the flames burned Corbin’s skin.

My stomach lurched. Fire slammed from my fingers and consumed another garden, the air crackling with black smoke. My skin didn’t tingle as much, but the pain in my chest hadn’t eased.

A hose reel laid coiled up at the end of the garden path. I unrolled it and doused both of the fires. What a stupid idea. At least I’d managed to burn off some of the rage. I’d be less likely to torch Ryan’s house.

I went back inside to search for Maeve. She was probably still upset with me for confronting Blake. Good. It was time she knew the truth about him. I figured she’d have gone back to our bedroom, but halfway there I took a wrong turn and ended up in an unfamiliar wing. Loud sobs echoed from a bedroom at the end of the hall.

Corbin’s mother.

Of course. I’d seen his dad in the drawing room. He was hard to miss – he looked exactly the way I imagined Corbin would look in a few years, once he cut off all his hair and stopped liking cool music and became the book dork we knew he was inside. It was so weird to know Bree and Andrew were here, now, and Corbin wasn’t. The whole reason he’d searched out me and Flynn and Rowan in the first place was because they’d abandoned him at Briarwood. I hated them for it, the same way I hated my mother for leaving me with her shitty abusive husband. At the same time, my feet moved toward the sobs, drawn by a force I couldn’t describe.

I peered around the edge of the bedroom door. Corbin’s mother slumped in a sofa under the window, her head in her hands. Beside her, his father sat like a stone, his body rigid and his eyes a million miles away.

The grief on their faces tore at me. I didn’t hate them anymore.

I leaned closer. The pommel of my sword banged against the wall. Corbin’s dad glanced up. His eyes widened as he saw me.

“I’m Arthur,” I said, extending a hand. “I was a friend of your son.”

At my words Corbin’s mother – Bree, that was her name – burst into tears again, burying her head in her husband’s shoulder. Andrew patted Bree’s back and extended his other hand toward me. “Professor Andrew Harris. I wish we’d met under more pleasant circumstances. Ryan tells me you were the one who recovered Corbin’s body.”

I nodded. The feeling of his corpse – light and delicate, like a deflated balloon – remained a shadow on my shoulder. The sensation of it would stay with me for the rest of my life.

Andrew’s eyes – Corbin’s eyes – bore into me. “Thank you, Arthur. Thank you for being a friend to our son.”

“He was—” I shook my head. I couldn’t find the words.

“You don’t have to tell me. I know.” Andrew’s eyes darkened. I could see his pain turning inwards, his hatred of himself gnawing away at his flesh. Well, good. I wanted him to hate himself for all the minutes Corbin spent not hating him for abandoning Briarwood, because hatred was beyond Corbin. He was too good for that shit.

But I wasn’t.

“What will you do?” I asked him. I didn’t know what I meant by that, but I needed to fill the silence.

Andrew blinked. “We’ll stay here a few more days to organize the funeral. The girls – that’s Corbin’s younger sisters, Tess and Bianca – will join us with their aunt soon. After that, I don’t know. We’ll help Maeve speak with the lawyers, see what to do about Briarwood Castle.”

I nodded. It occurred to me that after everything that happened, Maeve may choose not to keep the castle. She could take the insurance money, walk away from the ruined castle, and start her life over if she wanted to. I didn’t think she’d do that, but the fact she could leave us would dangle over my head like the Sword of Damocles.

Andrew’s hand fell on my shoulder, startling me out of my thoughts. “Tell me, was my son happy?”

I nodded. “He had his books, and his mission, and people to care about who cared about him. Living at Briarwood was a lot of fun. It’s the best home I ever had.”

“Your parents didn’t mind you living in the castle with him? They didn’t mind you putting your life on hold to look after Maeve?”

“My parents are dead,” I said. The one I cared about, anyway.

“Then you’ve known too much of this pain in your life already,” Andrew said, his voice cracking. “There’s the family you’re born with, the family you marry into, and the family you choose. We’re blessed that our son chose his so wisely after his blood abandoned him. Don’t make the mistakes we made, Arthur. Don’t miss out because you’re angry or hurting.”

“Yeah, yeah, hate is just another side of love.” I wished that stupid line I’d given Maeve would stop coming back to bite my arse.

I left them, feeling like shit, but a calmer kind of shit. The fire inside me had faded to a dull roar, one I could ignore as long as I didn’t see Blake again.

I turned a couple of corners and found myself in another guest wing, this one decorated in lurid red Victorian wallpaper. At this rate, I’d starve before I found my way back to my own room. This house should be on Ash Tree Lane; it seemed to grow bigger on the inside with every turn.

My bladder stung. I shoved open the door at the end of the hall, hoping for a bathroom.

It was a bathroom, but it was occupied. Isadora stood in front of the bath, naked, wrapping her hair in a towel. My eyes immediately flew to her hip, where a dark shape stood out from her creamy skin – a green cross surrounded by words in Latin. The edges of the design were red and swollen, the skin around it puffed up in tiny lumps. It looked like a tattoo that had become infected.

“You need to get that seen to,” I said, by way of greeting. Even with so many other assets on display, I couldn’t take my eyes off that tattoo. With her designer clothing and haughty airs, Isadora didn’t seem the type to have a tattoo, especially not one so obviously shite.

“If you don’t mind,” Isadora snarled, whipping the towel across her body and slamming the door in my face. I stared at the white wood for several moments, then slumped away to find another bathroom, my bladder howling in protest.

If Isadora wanted her hip to go gangrenous and fall off, that was her own bloody fault.