The instant I hit the asphalt, my knee slammed down hard and my vision went black, but I didn't care. I scrambled up and ran for the trees.

A wall of heat hit my face, scorching my eyebrows.

Darius had been burned by fire before.

It happened while they were on the run, when the old King's army trapped them with a wall of flame. He'd charged out through the fire, and it left huge burn scars across his back and arms. Lily told me he'd never gone near a flame since.

So he wouldn't follow me in.

I shut my eyes. My body already screamed with pain from the burns, but I kept walking deeper into the sea of fire.

Soon I'd get to see my mother.

But someone tackled me from behind, caught me around the waist, and shielded me from the worst of the flames. The air was thick with the smell of singed flesh.

Whoever held me crushed me against his chest, and I felt his whole body trembling, just slightly.

I went still.

He dragged me out of the fire, and only after stumbling back a dozen steps did he let go and push me down onto the grass by the road.

His back was a mess of charred skin, raw and bloody, his shoulders heaving, his breathing ragged.

I stared up at his face, gone strangely pale, and for a moment I said nothing.

He took a while to recover, then slowly turned and looked down at me.

“You just wanted our attention, didn't you?” His voice still wasn't quite steady. “If you really want to die, next time don't do it in front of me. Go find somewhere with no one around and do it yourself. Stop pulling this nonsense.”

I didn't answer. I just curled my lip.

He pulled me up off the ground, checked the knee I'd split open rolling out of the truck, frowned, and said nothing.

He put me back in the rear seat. This time he locked the doors.

By the time we reached the palace it was full dark. I'd barely gotten to my door when Daddy Orion came over.

He didn't say a word. He just raised his hand and backhanded me across the right shoulder, hard enough to send me flying into the big tree by the entrance.

The old whip wound on my back split open again, and blood soaked through the back of my T-shirt.

I bit back the pain and pressed myself against the trunk without making a sound.

Orion came over and crouched down, his voice pressed low and cold. “Emma, do you have any idea how badly Darius got burned just now? He already had old burns to begin with…”

I didn't look up.

Darius had walked into the Flame Forest.

He's more afraid of fire than anything. And he still went in.

Orion waited two seconds, and when I stayed silent his tone went colder. “That act of yours isn't fooling anyone.”

He straightened and said to Darius, “Don't let her play you.”

Darius leaned against the truck, his face calm, hands shoved in his pockets so I couldn't see his knuckles.

Orion turned back to me. “Emma, today's Vivian's birthday. Make your scene in front of the two of us if you have to, but don't go looking for trouble with Cormac and Rex. You know how those two—”

He didn't finish.

Because I suddenly lunged for the steel cabinet behind him.

I lived in his place for so many years. Of course I knew where he kept the deadliest things locked away.

I yanked the drawer open and saw it in the corner, a long thin syringe, the chamber filled with murky dark liquid. That was the concentrated snake venom Orion brewed himself. I'd once overheard him tell his assistant that injecting it straight into a vein meant certain death.

I pulled off the cap and aimed it at the inside of my arm.

“Emma!”

Orion crossed the distance in one stride, seized my wrist, and ripped the syringe away, hard enough to leave my hand numb.

“Do you even know what that is?”

He pried the syringe loose and shoved it onto the top of the cabinet, somewhere I couldn't reach, then kept his grip on my wrist and bent me down over the cabinet.

“Start talking. How did you know where I kept that?”

I said nothing.

Orion took a deep breath, pinned my wrist hard against the cabinet door, and with his free hand pulled a vial of antiserum from his kit. He uncapped it and drove it into the spot where I'd been about to inject, pushing it in just in case.

“All because we threw Vivian a birthday party? Was that worth this?”

Darius stood by the door, his color still off. By now he must have actually believed I was serious about dying, because his voice dropped low when he spoke. “Cut it out. The four of us talked it over with Vivian last night. She's willing to forgive you. Just behave today and celebrate her birthday with her, and tomorrow we'll take you to see the aurora with us. After that we'll treat you the same as before. All right?”

By the time he finished, the tears spilled right over.

My two daddies traded a look. They probably thought I was crying because I was happy.

But I was crying and begging.

“Daddy Orion, Daddy Darius, I'm begging you. Stop caring about me. Just let me die.”

Orion's face fell. “Emma, we laid it all out for you. You still want this?”

“I heard you.” There was no point hiding it anymore. “But I don't want to go back to how things were. I want to find my mother.”

I told them everything—the voice, the Moon Goddess, all of it. How my mother's soul had been watching over me, how I could see her once I died.

The two of them looked more and more wrong.

Finally Orion crouched and held me by both shoulders.

“Emma, listen to me. There's no such thing as a soul returning to the Moon Goddess.”

When they found my mother back then, she'd already been torn apart alive by the rogue wolves.

They tried everything. They brought in the most powerful witch in the world, hoping to piece my mother's body back together and call her soul home to revive her.

But the witch reached out with her magic for ten full days and couldn't catch even a thread of my mother's soul.

They were certain her soul had scattered completely.

Orion said the voice in my head was most likely a hallucination, the product of too much trauma.

It wasn't.

I knew it was real.

But no matter how I explained, neither of them believed me.

Orion sighed. “If you really can't stand to go to Vivian's party, then just stay in your room tonight. As long as you behave, no one will dare bully you again.”

I was about to shake my head.

Hurried footsteps came from outside, followed by a fist hammering on the door.

A few seconds later Cormac and Rex came storming in, both of them grim-faced.

“Darius, Orion, Vivian's missing!” Rex's voice was so loud the whole building shook.

The two men inside froze at the same time. “Isn't she getting ready for tonight's party?”

Cormac's brows were drawn tight, his voice heavy. “She went back to her room this afternoon, said she was changing into her party dress. But just now I went to find her and knocked and got nothing. I pushed the door open and she was gone. There was a note on the bed.”

He threw a crumpled scrap of paper onto the table.

I saw the words on it, the handwriting frantic.

“Emma. Kidnapped. Help me.”

All four of them turned at once and fixed their eyes on me.

I knew that look too well.

Before any of them said a word, I was already backing away.

“No, it wasn't me.”

“How is it not you?” Cormac crossed the room in one step, grabbed me by the throat, and shoved me against the wall. “You've been begging to die all day. Turns out it was guilt. Where did you take Vivian?”

His hand was brutal. I was already hurt, and pinned to the wall like that, my wounds started bleeding again.

But I still shook my head. “I don't know. I never even saw Vivian.”

“Still talking back.”

Cormac dragged me straight up to the rooftop terrace.

This building was twenty-eight stories, and the outer edge of the terrace had no railing.

He hauled me to the edge, holding me by the back of the collar with one hand, my body hanging over nothing.

My feet left the ground.

I looked down. Twenty-eight floors. The pavers were so small, so far away.

I'm afraid of heights.

Back when Vivian pushed me out of a third-floor window at home and I broke my leg, I told them the truth.

But Vivian looked at them with red, brimming eyes and said I'd hurt myself being careless during a game, that she'd clearly warned me not to climb somewhere so dangerous and I wouldn't listen.

They believed her, and on top of that they cursed me for being reckless, said I had it coming.

Ever since then, any time I'm up high, a numbness crawls up my spine until I can barely breathe.

My hands started to shake.

“I'll ask you one last time. Where is Vivian?”

That suffocating terror crept up from the soles of my feet and clogged my throat.

The words reached my lips, and I swallowed them back down.

Emma, don't you get it yet.

They'll never believe you.

Since they won't believe me anyway, I might as well push them a little harder.

Let them finish me off and be done with it.

I smiled, my voice light as air. “Vivian? I had the rogue wolves kill her.”

The blood drained from every face at once.

Darius's eyes shifted in an instant to the slitted golden pupils of his dragon form, blazing with light. “What did you say? Emma, how dare you—”

“How dare I?” I laughed out loud. “Her mother killed my mother. She stole your love and got me four years of torture in a silver prison. So I shouldn't kill her?”

I lifted my head and gave them a taunting smile.

“If you've got the nerve, then kill me and avenge her.”

“Since you want to die so badly, I'll grant it.” Darius forced down his rage, his face dark as he spoke.

He made one phone call and brought in two Dragon clan guards and a silver-forged whip.

Orion reached into his coat for a fine needle and slid it into a point at the back of my neck, so that no matter how much it hurt I couldn't black out. He withdrew the needle, his voice flat and even. “Hold her steady.”

The guards laid into my back with the silver whip, one stroke after another.

I bit down hard and didn't cry out. In my head, I counted.

Every stroke brought me one step closer to my mother.

None of the four had any patience to stand around watching me get whipped. They were going to look for Vivian. Rex went last, and without turning his head he tossed the guards an order. “Whip her till it kills her if you have to. Until she admits it.”

They'd barely stepped out when the radio crackled.

“Miss Vivian came back on her own. She says she went for a walk this afternoon and lost track of time, and her phone died. She didn't write the note. She knows nothing about it.”

Rex snatched the radio. “She wasn't kidnapped?”

“…No.”

Cormac whipped around to look back into the room, the color draining slowly from his face.

And just then, a scream that shredded the air tore out of the room.

All four of them rushed back in.

The instant the door flew open, blood sprayed across Darius's face.

The silver whip in the guard's hand had snapped one of my ribs, and the broken end had driven hard into my heart.

I couldn't see anything anymore. My ears were full of ringing.

But I felt someone press something hard against my chest. The texture of cloth, probably one of their coats. Someone was pushing a cold liquid into my body. Someone kicked the guard so hard he flew, and the walls shook.

The last one I felt was Cormac. He cupped my face. “Emma. Emma, look at me. Don't you close your eyes. Emma!”

His voice had completely cracked, nothing like his usual cold, commanding self.

It made me think of the days after I was kidnapped and brought home.

Back then I had nightmares every night and couldn't sleep alone. My four daddies took turns staying with me for two whole weeks.

Daddy Darius moved the couch from his office into my bedroom. Daddy Rex guarded the door at night, and the second I rolled over he'd push it open and come in. Daddy Orion brought a calming tonic every evening and sat by the bed watching until I drank it down.

Daddy Cormac was always the last to leave. He never said much. He just draped his wing over my headboard, and those feathers were impossibly soft, like a wall holding back the wind.

I remember his voice, soft and gentle. “Sleep. Nothing can get in.”

A pack of liars.

With the last of my strength I looked at the four faces one more time. Darius's was covered in blood, Rex's fist was still clenched, Orion's hands were shaking, and Cormac's eyes were so red they looked ready to spill over.

Goodbye.