Ashlyn POV

I scramble backwards across the rough cave floor, away from the strange man with the straggly hay-like hair that had been holding me. I'm breathing heavily, my heart beating like a drum in my chest. What the hell was I doing here, of all places? Again? And what had happened to you last time you came here, Ashlyn? Hmmm? You stupid, stupid girl. A thirteen year old should not be in more than three life-threatening situations in a year. I'm sure I've passed that mark

"What the hell?" I finally say, my voice cracking from dryness, "Who the hell are you why the hell am I here?" I rise to my feet and brush my self off with shaking hands.

He stands with me, raising his eyebrows, "And why don't you tell me that sweetheart, for that was really rude. It hit me hard in my cold, deserted, broken heart. Or gut, either or. I can ask my magic mirror why you're here," His tone was almost bored, and mostly sarcastic, "although looking in the mirror would be nice right now, I'm pretty sure I'm still the most gorgeous man anyone's ever seen," He- there was only one word for it- floofed his hair.

I beg to differ. Gorgeous my arse. He didn't seem so dangerous when combing his hair and pursing his lips, bending over to peer into a puddle of water formed from drips from the high cave ceiling. After confirming his 'gorgeousness' with a sigh of satisfaction and a flash of a needle sharp smile, he turns to me again.

"I have consulted my good looking self-" he gestures to the puddle, and the puddle, although he wasn't bending over it any more, nodded. I wasn't weirded out at this point, anyway, "- And he says it's most likely because of close family ties," there is a barely noticeable tremor to his sentence and he clasps his hands together in front of him.

"Family ties?"

"Yes. Very strange family ties. Closer than you think."

I don't need anymore surprise relatives than I already have.

"Who am I to you?" I ask.

"You're a twin. You have a twin sister, yes?" He dodges my question.

"No. A brother."

His brows furrows at that. "You are wrong, I am sure we had twin daughters," he mutters to himself, his hands twisting in front of him. "Derek told me-"

"Derek? My father?" My curiosity is more heightened now.

"No!" He whirls round to face me, face contorted in anger. I could tell it wasn't towards me. His words are soft when they leave his mouth next, so soft that if I didn't have my heightened senses I wouldn't have heard it at all.

"No, I'm your father."

Will POV

She can't keep running of like this. It had only been a few hours.

I was sitting in Sam's room, my sister herself sitting on Naomi's bed, cross-legged and facing me. She eyeballs me before speaking.

"We can't control her you know," she sighs. She says this every time. And every time it ends badly.

"We can't control her you know," I mock her. She ignores me.

"She barely knows anything. She's only thirteen this time. Shes not meant to meet you for at least another two years."

"I know that, but this time it's... different. I dunno... it just is."

I didn't want to tell my sister what was different yet. I didn't completely understand what was going on either. Ash certainly didn't.

Sam opens her mouth to speak again after I don't reply, but doesn't get to finish before there's a faint crash echoing through the room. It coming from down the stairs. Something huge must have happened for us to hear it all the way up here from the entrance hall.

We look at each other, alarmed. Our first assumptions are Ashlyn.

I hope we're wrong, I think as we dash down the stone steps, Sam for once not breathing heavily from exertion, but from fear of what's coming next.

Ashlyn POV

After calming me down and after learning his name, Cicero makes me air out the fumes of my boiling rage on the cold stone floor to steady myself after a dizzy spell. We didn't need me conking out again.

Apparently me entering this cave again broke the already weak and fading enchantment keeping Cicero here. He was as gleeful as he could be after telling me the life changing story of how he was my father and my family isn't really my family. Except my mother, of course.

"I have to go back." I state, standing and readying myself shift.

Instead of jumping to his feet and yelling an overprotective 'No!' He shrugs. I raise my eyebrows.

"As long as I go with you," ah, there it is.

I roll my shoulders, "Fine," and let the scales roll under my skin.

I'm shifted within ten seconds, taking my time. I feel no danger here. I swoop my neck round, but Cicero isn't shifted yet. I let out a huff.

"I'm not shifting," he says.

"Yea. You are."

My gravelly voice echoes through the cave. He only folds his arms. I snarl slightly, my gums peeling back to reveal my teeth. I was not carrying him like a swaddled baby on my back to scared to spread his wings. I'm about to say something when he smiles. It's radiating anger and malice like a bonfire.

"I'm saving my energy for my brother."

His laugh chills my spine. The laugh of a caged madman.

~~○~~

I was now carrying him on my back like a swaddled baby. But maybe he wasn't so afraid to spread his wings like a knife after all.

After further protesting from me, Cicero is gripping tightly onto the spikes on my back. I can practically hear the rage-fueled excitement oozing from every orifice in his body. He won't stop moving, muttering under his breath. I try to block him out and focus on the faint smudge on the dark horizon.

I really didn't want to go back there. The amount of lies woven in that castle was incredible. I wonder how many there had been before the ones involving me, what they were and who told them. whether they were an untruthful answer when their crush asked them who their crush was. 'I don't have one,' they would always reply. or if they were the types of lies that cut through you like a blade. Lies of betrayal and murder. How much blood had that castle bathed in? How many souls had it trapped within its walls? I suspected there would be more soon enough. I just hoped they weren't the ones of those I love.

It crept up on us faster than I would like, soon looming over me in the gothic pale moonlight, twisting in sharp angles, but still as beautiful at night as it was in the daytime, the golden glow casting shadows on the surrounding area from the brightly-lit windows.

I can hear Cicero inhale sharply from where he was now sitting upright on my back, and I look back at him after I land softly on the long grass outside the carved entry doors. in the brighter light, I see that he is gaunt, even skeletal looking. his sharp cheekbones stand out in knife-like focus against the abyss-like hollows of his cheeks.

I can see now how similar his sunken, but vibrant and slightly crazed ice-blue eyes are like mine. he looks so similar to my 'father', albeit Cicero being blonde and all sharp planes and angles, he is dark haired with darker eyes than my own, more like Caden's. I only realize with a violent jolt that Cade's not my twin, but most likely my cousin. Cicero said he had two girls. Then where was my real sister? Was she even alive.I wouldn't put it past Derek to have killed her.

Cicero slides from my back in one fluid, but stumbles when he lands with a thump. he was still weak from the enchantment that had been set upon him. I give him a soft question of a glance, and he nods at me, straightening and composing himself as best he can.

I ripple inwards in myself in an instant, and am left barefoot in the grass, my training uniform torn and stained, my hair scratching down my back, a shock of orange in front of my face.

Now that I was focusing on anything other than my thoughts, I could hear the commotion reverberating from behind the tightly closed doors. I panic, thinking of Nicole, even though I didn't want to face my family, I still loved her and I couldn't forget that.

I fling open the heavy doors with unusual ease, even for the supernatural. What greets me inside is chaos. I instantly begin to cough, a pungent smell of burning flesh binds itself to my nose, and my eyes sting and water from the thick smoke clouding the air, barely anything visible through it except stumbling people and shifters swimming in and out of my vision.

I feel someone grab onto my arm like a vice, and I whirl back around towards the direction of the doors, and see Cicero with a scrap of dirty linen tied around his mouth that he had obviously torn from his ruined clothes, and offering one to me. I nod at him thankfully. I tie it around my head in a sloppy knot before diving into the smoke, grabbing at my new-found father by the arm and pulling him along with me.

The closer we are to the centre of the hall, the more the screams and sobs intensify, roaring in my ears like waves. A flash of purple eyes flashes, and Molly Delgado is crashing into me. I stumble, falling back into Cicero, who steadies me quickly. I look up through the smoke to apologise to her, and now of all places but she just rushes past, giving Cicero a suspicious look before hurrying to the fresh air, her blackened sleeve against her mouth and nose.

Everything is making my head spin. I don't know where to go, or how to find my siblings. Cousins, I correct myself, and I wonder who their biological mother is.

A bloodcurdling scream rips through my senses, the scream of a small child, startling me towards the direction of the sound. I run towards the voice, still screaming like a siren. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a siren, really.

Suddenly I break out into fresh air, although we're nowhere near it. I instantly know its an enchantment of some sort. Before I can investigate any further, the air in my lungs is torn from me in vicious shock and imaginary pain rips through my guts.

In the middle of the air dome what we've found ourselves in are two overlapping circles that appear to have been burned into the ground by a tongue of flame, edges still red and smoking. gold liquid fills in the dips of the outline of the two circles, swirling in metallic patterns, flowing like a stream of molten metal until it meets in a pool in the centre of the pulsing symbol.

Lying in the pool, gold soaking into her dark hair spread around her in a perfectly curled halo, is my what I had come to call a friend, a silver arrow straight through her heart.