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Darien paced faster. “They did it while I was gone.” Stole Mortifer while Darien wasn’t there to stop them. He squeezed his hands into fists. Loosened them. Squeezed again. “Motherfucking cowards.”

He needed air. Needed to peel his own skin off his bones.

Roman was gone. Probably had the shit beat out of him by Donovan before Shay was able to get him out of that hellhole. Darien didn’t even want to consider what that prick had done to Paxton. If he let himself think about it, he might start a war with the House of Black. A war he was in no position to finish. They might’ve won a battle against the demons of the fog tonight, but they had been thrown straight into another fight against different, far worse monsters.

Story of his fucking life.

“Darien…,” Tanner tried. The room had fallen silent, everyone watching him with wary gazes.

With Loren in the room, perched on one of the chairs near Tanner, Darien worked hard to control himself.

He failed.

With a guttural roar that made multiple people jump in alarm, Loren included, he grabbed a free chair, lightning-fast. Whipped it across the room—

It hit the wall with an earsplitting smash and exploded into smithereens.

Nobody said anything.

He stalked out onto the back deck, slamming the door shut behind him, and sucked down breaths of icy air. Hours had passed since the fog had cleared, but ambulances were still hard at work throughout the city’s many districts, the sirens slicing through the night.

A couple minutes passed before the door opened behind him.

Darien whirled around, the bomb in his soul just waiting for one last spark before detonating—

Ivy stepped out onto the deck, tears glimmering in her eyes. Quietly—so quietly compared to the noise he’d caused in the room, she closed the door.

“Ivy,” Darien choked out, his blood boiling, heart pounding with pure, undiluted rage, “I need—”

She conquered the distance between them with several quick steps.

And threw her arms around him. “This,” she whispered, squeezing him tight. “This is what you need.”

Darien’s body was tense, but he felt himself gradually melt as his sister held him, defusing that bomb inside him like she used to when they were kids, trapped in the nightmare of their childhood.

The same sort of nightmare Roman and Paxton were still stuck in. The cage they couldn’t break out of.

His arms closed around her.

And he let the tears fall. All those emotions he’d bottled up since Loren had fallen into a coma…since he’d got her back only for her to not remember him, to still not remember him…he set them all free.

The tears turned into sobbing, each breath rattling through his chest.

It hurt. Everything hurt.

“We’ll get him back,” Ivy vowed, her own tears wetting his shirt.

“Yeah,” Darien agreed thickly. He squeezed her tight, unable to get that awful image out of his head—the one of Mortifer being stuffed into that bag. The Hob’s terrified face, no one around to help him, his family gone. The sight of that asshole punching the bag to stop Mortifer from thrashing.

The way the bag had fallen still afterward, either from Morty’s fear or because…

Darien didn’t want to think it. So instead, he vowed, “Fucking rights we will.”

“I promise I’m not an alcoholic,” Travis said as he crumpled another empty can of beer. He sat on the roof of Roman’s house, Jewels Delaney walking quietly across the peaks to join him. She placed one foot in front of the other, as if walking a tightrope, her hair blowing in the wind. Travis continued, “I just literally cannot afford to be sober right now, or I might do something stupid. Like try to kill my dad.”

She sat down beside him, swinging her sneakers over open air. “I’m in no position to judge,” she said, her hands gripping the frosted edge of the roof. “I turned to some pretty bad things back when my stepdad was around. Drugs, alcohol, vandalism, you name it. I was the definition of juvenile delinquent. I know how you feel…and thought you might want someone to talk to.” She peeked sidelong at him.

“Thanks,” he said, but he didn’t talk.