When I opened my eyes, it wasn’t a me, but a we. Pale purple bedroom walls were the first indication of where we’d gone, where Aaron had taken me, but I felt nothing.

Not a sliver of sadness. Not a shred of guilt. I felt absolutely nothing as I took in my childhood room for the first time in almost seven years. Outside, the wind howled, beckoning me on to begin my hunt. I had unfinished business, though, and a mild interest in what the voices downstairs were.

The bed creaked, ever so slightly, when I shifted to sitting, but made no noise when I stood. Footsteps echoed from downstairs, and the smell of lilacs and smoke drifted through my bedroom window. My mother had grown lilac bushes with Li—my sister. They had been gentle souls, but now they were gone, and I would hunt in their stead.

I walked around the room, examining the bits of paper where I’d scratched out my homework in Latin, and left every ounce of innocence behind when I stepped out of this house for the last time. I’d been in that very bed, with the black paisley bedspread, when the news came that my parents had died.

Somehow, I didn’t believe that. I didn’t believe a car crash was even a factor in their deaths, but that was just another secret I’d need to dig up when I’d killed each and every one who’d wronged me. Starting with the Council.

Wind chimes. Wind chimes pealed downstairs, and I knew then that this wasn’t a dream. That while dreamland may have brought me here many times over the past month, I was here in the flesh this time. Hearing the wind chimes my father had created from the glass of the first window I’d shattered on command.

He’d been so proud of the little monster I was becoming.

What would he say if he could see me now?

I didn’t care. Not anymore.

I didn’t even need to flick my wrist to open the door silently, my mind loosening the hinges so they didn’t squeak. The element of surprise was in my favor, and I needed to use it to greet my guests, before I decided how I would slit their throats. How we would slit their throats.

Violet and I were so tightly interconnected now that none of my demons could reach me. None of my emotions could overcome me. She’d once told me that there was peace in control, and for the first time in my entire life, I was at peace in my apathy.

Voices floated up the stairs, so mortal in their emotions. So breakable.

“It’s only been twelve hours. No one’s going to come looking here, not yet,” Alexandra was insisting. There was a time when her voice would’ve made me weep for joy, but I wouldn’t weep again. Never again. Not even when I’d built a throne out of my enemies’ bones and slept soundly at night.

“We don’t have time. Anastasia will recover, and what’s left of the Council will side with her when she puts a bounty on our heads. If you want this place left in peace, we need to leave now,” said another voice. A voice that wasn’t entirely Supernatural, and tasted like the power of something that had left this earth long ago. I sniffed once, but only blood, dust, and smoke permeated the air.

“My sister is dead, and likely one of the Made by now. Selena is upstairs trapped in limbo, and I’m—”

Her voice broke off in a sob as she collapsed. From my place, four stairs from ground level, I could make out their reflections in the fireplace glass panels. My sister, an emotional heap on our dusty, old couch. Blair sat next to her, stroking her hair, her own eyes lost in something frigid and wrathful. I had no doubt that she would be useful in this quest for vengeance; I’d trained her that well.

Johanna paced, while Oliver sat on the floor nearby, watching her with guarded eyes. There were others of the nine here, though. I could smell them, even though they weren’t in the living room. My breath hissed between my teeth when I spotted Aaron brooding in the corner. He was going to be difficult, stubborn.

He seemed to be the only one who heard my hiss, and his eyes flashed to meet mine in the glass. He strode forward just as I rounded the corner, still dressed as the queen of death, my newly shorn hair brushing my chin.

I couldn’t imagine what they saw as they gaped at me now. Alexandra sat straight up, her mouth open in something almost like shock. But it was Aaron who got to me first—or at least tried to, only to be thrown back by an invisible shield that even he couldn’t penetrate.

“What the—”

“Selena, are you—”

“How did you do it?” Alexandra asked. She was the quietest of them all, but somehow her voice was the only one that stood out.

I eyed her as I strode further into the room, relishing my remade body and mind. Savoring our strength.

“Walk out of limbo?” I asked, unsmiling but not quite bored. These people still had a purpose, even if they no longer meant the same things to me.

“Because your sister’s not the only one with us,” Johanna answered slowly. Her voice was hard, and unflinching.

I smiled lazily, showing my lovely, sharp teeth. “How perceptive. You smell of the ancients. From whom did you spawn?” I asked, in a way the old Selena might’ve considered brash. Then again, she’d died from that sentimental heart. I’d been remade from the ashes.

“The dragon. And you? Mother lost to time?” she asked, yielding to me, but not in complete submission. She would also be a problem, if I let it get out of hand.

“I am death, and I’ve come for the blood of those who’ve wronged me,” I said, giving her credit for not shuddering underneath my otherworldly stare. I enjoyed the way it made the others flinch, as if something in them recognized that the girl they’d followed was no longer living.

A sharp knock rattled the front door of my parents’ home.

Several jumped to get it, but I was at the door before anyone could take a single step. I sniffed again, parting my lips to taste the air, but it was ash in my mouth. I unlocked it, despite the protests, and opened it wide.

Leaning against the doorframe was none other than Elizabeth.

The cousin who’d once betrayed me.

“What’s she doing here?” Blair snarled, and I suddenly found myself partially frozen as the doorway turned to ice.

A breath of fresh air wafted in with the autumn breeze as I took a very hard look at the girl who’d showed up on my doorstep. Elizabeth’s hair was matted to her head, and she smelled of sweat, and dirt, and ash. Not an ounce of her was untouched by whatever had happened back at Daizlei.

“That is an excellent question. Why are you here in my doorway, uninvited? I’m certain I promised to kill you if you ever spoke to me again,” I said.

Unlike Blair’s, though, my voice contained no rage. Instead, I spoke with the softest menace and the promise of death. My energy reached out to caress her, and the mortal liar shuddered, pushing back against my power as she stepped away from the door.

“I’ve come to deliver a message to you,” she said to me. Her voice shook like a leaf in the winter. She sweated like a sinner in hell.

“From who?” I asked, ripping my arm from the ice-covered doorway. I stepped out into the open air, tilting my head back to inhale the scent of life.

“From your mother.”

My head snapped up, and I grabbed her by the throat. I took two steps in her direction, and she backed up, going right over the edge of our porch. Sweat dotted her temple in the few moments I held her there, just long enough to let her think I would kill her. Just long enough to make her honest.

“My mother is dead,” I said flatly, not wasting my breath on the whys or hows.

“I—spe—speak—with the—” Her voice broke off.

“She can talk with the dead,” Blair said from behind me, making no move to save the girl. Her loyalty to me was going to make this so much easier. Provided the others proved compliant.

“Is she reliable?” I asked.

“That’s for you to decide,” Blair said, not moving from her spot in the doorway as I threw the other girl down.

She choked on air, taking great, rasping breaths. Her heart beat in overdrive to make up for the lack of oxygen, and I gave her a minute before I spoke.

“I’m only going to ask once, and your answer decides whether you live or die. Understood?” I said, raising an eyebrow and daring that taut mouth to spit on me. The wind whipped around me, but I didn’t shift an inch as she nodded.

Her eyes were burning, and I enjoyed watching the fire, because I would never again be burned.

“What’s your message?”

She looked me up and down, as if weighing whether death was worth it just to spite me.

I smiled slowly, reassuring her that if she tried anything funny I had no problem ending her here and now, on the porch of my dead parents’ house.

“Find the Crone with the third eye.”

I stared at her for a moment, debating the truth of her words. This girl was a coward, though, and had traded my life for hers. She wouldn’t lie to me when the price was her life. I grabbed her arm and pushed her through the doorway past Blair, who stared at me in shock for what she saw as a betrayal. What she didn’t realize, though, was that I had bigger plans than just surviving. No. I had plans to conquer. To kill.

The last words of my mother’s song played for me, as eerie as when I’d first heard them all those years ago.

Run, run, soul in pain,

So you can make them pay.

And pay.

Run, run, they will say.

You will take revenge one day.

I wouldn’t run anymore, because the time had come to make them pay. She’d known what would become of me, all those years ago.

But I’d had to die to see it.

And Li—my sister too.

I will avenge you, and when I’m done, there’ll be no Council, no Anastasia, and most of all, no Lucas.

I will kill them all.