The wind spoke many words in many different tongues and brought tidings from lands far beyond the skulking mist of the manor's moors—but all Darius heard was silence in the breeze's open maw. The silence offered no succor, no relief. It offered only uncertainty.

"Shit—."

Amoroth's voice and the clatter of heels sliding on wet shingles rose from the ramparts below. Darius waited as she leapt through the Realm again and landed properly upon the roof's top rail. Her balance was terrible, but the Sin managed to remain standing.

"I'll never understand the penchant you and Cuxiel have for tall, impossible places," Amoroth confessed as she tried holding her arms parallel to her body for balance, then gave up and crouched, lowering her center of gravity. "You don't have bloody wings anymore, you know."

"I am well aware." In times like this, knowledge of what he lacked was apparent, as if his deficiency could assume corporeal forms to taunt him. He was a Sin. His deficiencies were many.

Darius's fingers folded around the rail beneath his feet and began to bend the iron.

He recalled looking for her. He remembered taking the stairs one by one as he heard the barghest's growl and the vampire's howling. Roman had been there, blood seeping from his eyes, his nose, his ears, and scoured lip.

He had heard the words gone, she's gone—and the rest of his memory was steeped in red.

Next he was aware, Darius was atop the manor's roof.

"Roman and Gavin will heal," Amoroth told him as she flicked bits of dead leaves from her pant leg. "Eventually."

He remembered blood—the vampire's blood. He remembered throwing himself from the stairs and the snap of the creature's bones in his hands. The rest was a blur, a jumbled assortment of images that managed to rise through the crazed rage. Cuxiel's wolf changing, lunging at him as he throttled the leech. The mutt's whimpering howl, his furred body colliding with a wall. Smoke and embers, pain in his hands. Ravens screeching.

Then nothing.

"Gone, she's gone. Father made me do it, made me take her to him."

Darius didn't respond. He cared little if the dog or the bloodsucker survived. Gavin and his pack were responsible for the grounds' protection, and they'd failed. The vampire should have been put down years ago with the rest of his kind.

Sara was gone. Taken.

"Has Cuxiel learned anything?"

Amoroth shook her head, sending her curls bouncing about her face. "He doesn't know anything more than you at the moment. Though, we'd know more if Roman was conscious." She sniffed with disapproval—then began to slide from her perch on the rail. The Sin grabbed the decorative prongs for balance. "Then again, you may have done him a favor. Sethan isn't gentle with his toys and he left the leech's mind a wreck."

It began to rain again, and every drop of water that struck Darius's head seemed to beat with the same words. Gone, she's gone. Sethan isn't gentle with his toys.

He looked at his hands. They were clean now, washed of blood by the downpour of mist. Gone. Such a simple word to trigger such madness and desperation. Gone. Darius couldn't process the full extent of his own reaction. When the vampire had cried that Sethan had taken Sara, a concept had stirred in a section of his mind the selfish Sin hadn't examined in years. Like glossy scales glinting in the jet-black waters, the thought 'No. Not that. Why couldn't he have taken me instead?' had risen.

Darius shifted, restless. 

"It's been over a day," Pride muttered above the wind's voice and the rain's murmuring. "And I haven't felt anything."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

Reading a host's fear wasn't an exact art. It wasn't a beacon, or a light which shone with definition. It was an impression, a feather-light touch that could be missed with a moment's inattentiveness. Darius had been on the roof for hours, consumed by the silence, waiting for her fear, or for her death.

The silence had given him no answers, only more questions. That he persisted in this realm was the only indication of her life not yet being taken.

"You should return to the office," Amoroth said as she followed his gaze to the fog-clad horizon. Like ships idling on a gray tide, the grave markers seemed to drift through the morass and disappear beyond view as the breeze riled the creeping cloud. "Cuxiel may be able to help you find her."

May.

He returned to the insufferable heat of the manor and appeared perched upon the back of Sloth's couch, heedless of the rain dripping from his sodden attire. Peroth was behind his desk, his gaze as blank and vacuous as Darius's own. The other Sin cared for Sara, in spite of or because of how troublesome she could be.

The Sins lived very long and very boring lives devoted to the pursuit of normalcy. They were rarely challenged, and rarely came across humans like Sara Gaspard.

Amoroth appeared but said nothing. She remained in the shadows, an observer to a scene of absolute silence.

Though Cuxiel hadn't moved and his face remained expressionless, Tehgrair's unruly shade stirred beneath his flesh and superimposed his ghastly visage over Sloth's. Darius spared a thought for what Tehgrair would have done in this situation, then decided the Original Sin of Lust wouldn't have cared. Though he'd been the first among them to contract with the humans, Tehgrair had considered them little more than jabbering apes.

"I've felt nothing," Darius said aloud. "Wherever she is, she's not afraid." Or conscious. He didn't voice that opinion.

"Or she's simply not allowing herself to be afraid," Cuxiel hedged, shaking off Tehgrair's malaise as he steepled his fingers. "When Eduardo attacked, your shadeborn didn't relent to fear, though it would have been...prudent at several junctions in that event."

"This isn't Eduardo," Darius stormed. "And I'm not out hunting the weapon—!"

"No, this isn't Eduardo, but the situation could be similar!" Cuxiel insisted as his golden eyes met Darius's, pleading for patience. "Sethan could have taken her to Balthier. This could be a trap set for you, and your shadeborn knows it."

But I don't care, Darius didn't say. I don't give a fuck. You brave, stupid girl—summon me. Summon me to your side.

"He's not working for Balthier in this entanglement," Pride said as he let his feet drop to the floor. The muscles in his arms and chest drew themselves taut as he braced his hands against one another.

"How can you possibly know that?"

"Because—." Because Balthazar wouldn't let Sethan touch his host. Sethan's wording had been very precise out on the tundra. He was to find a way to her—but he wasn't supposed to touch her.

Darius had seen the truth of the matter some time ago. When he killed each member of the cult that had sacrificed Sara and her kin and Envy hadn't been forced back into the Realm of Sin, Darius had come to the inevitable conclusion that Sara, through no fault of her own, had become host to the Sin of Envy.

He had never heard of such a thing happening before, but Pride had sought precedence and had found it. Sara's soul had been a contingent factor within Balthier's contract. When every member of the Exordium present for her sacrifice had been killed, the contract had reverted to her as the only person who held Balthier's payment. She held the contract, but seeing as she wasn't the original contractor, she couldn't dissolve the arrangement. Too much had been done since then.

Darius had figured it out several months ago, though he was certain Sara didn't know. Nor did Peroth or Amoroth, and Pride wasn't about to enlighten them. Should they find out, he was certain one of them would kill her for what they perceived to be his own good.

Not that it matters now. She's gone.

The office door clattered open. The three Sins looked at the figure who stepped inside.

The Vytian.

Anzel Vyus stomped into Sloth's study with his long hair unbound and dripping upon the expensive rug. For a calculating man normally so in control of his appearance's every aspect, the denounced prince of Vyus was lacking all pretend civility today. His magic welled close to the surface, waiting just beyond his furious grasp.

He looked as if he wanted nothing more than to slaughter all three of them.

Danger, their instincts rankled in tandem. The snake rears and flares its hood. Danger.

"I haven't the time for you, Vytian," Peroth spat as Anzel stopped a yard or so from their gathering. "Be off."

He didn't leave. His dipped a hand into his water-streaked vest and threw something at Darius's feet.

Pride glared down at the object, and realized it was Sara's phone—the same phone she'd had at her ear when he'd last seen her. It was ruined by mud and rain, and scuffed as if it'd been dropped on the gravel.

Darius knelt to pick it up.

"I saw her," the man fumed through clenched teeth, gaze upon Pride. "She told me to tell you she was sorry."

Sorry.

"How do you know of what's happened?" Amoroth asked as she leaned upon the edge of Peroth's desk. Darius hadn't seen her come forward. "Because it's clear that you have heard."

Anzel looked at Amoroth with disdain. "It's common knowledge."

Pride didn't doubt that. Not after he thrashed both Roman and Gavin.

"And? So you saw Sara and did nothing? How very like you, Anzel," Cuxiel taunted. "The little prince who carries his name and does nothing to earn it."

The Vytian emitted a wordless, furious shout of rage. His hands were shaking with such ferocity his entire body was jarred by their motion. "I've stomached your taunts for more than four centuries. I've survived the jeering, the abuse—and I've tolerated it all in hopes of you sending me home, Sloth, though I understand now that you never were going to let me go. I think you enjoy the slow, demeaning torture too much—but this...."

Anzel swallowed and squared his shoulders. "That you sit there upon your throne in full view of the humans you have desecrated—." He gestured at the wall of dark, grinning skulls. "And make light of the situation, of her sacrifice, sickens me. She was a victim of your sloth and your pride!" The princeling snarled at Peroth and Darius respectively.

Darius rose to his full height as something snapped in his fist. Bits of the phone slipped between his fingers.

"In the end, isn't that how you view all humans?" Anzel continued as if he couldn't see the frank ire in Pride's eyes. "As victims and potential victims? As fodder for your despicable lives? Sara wasn't a pawn to be maneuvered in your wretched little game, and yet you let her become one. You let her think her life is worth less than yours!"

Darius lunged without thinking. Only an eruption of pain in his eyes stopped him short—coupled with Cuxiel's hand digging into his arm.

One of the constructs upon the Vytian's thin hands crumbled to ash. He hadn't balked or faltered an inch.

"Get out," Peroth exclaimed as he held Darius back from the Vytian. "Go find your death elsewhere, Helzin-natha."

Anzel turned a fraction toward the door but didn't depart. "I promise in all the names of all the Kings—the Dying, the Wild, the Ethereal, the Burning, the Silent, the High, and even the bastard Below—I will have retribution for myself, and for Sara. I could tolerate all that you have done to me, but I cannot tolerate what your kind has done to her."

The Vytian lifted a hand to his brow and tipped them a vulgar Valian salute. "Va-natha'lan, beasts."

The three Sins watched as Anzel Vyus left the office and the door slammed shut at his heels.

Cuxiel's fingers unhinged themselves from Darius's arm as he began to fire off a rapid slew of swears in Gehen about the Vytian being nothing more than a bitter infant Sloth had indulged for too long—but Darius didn't move from where he stood. He stared at the closed door.

Instinct told him the danger hadn't passed. Anzel Vyus wasn't a meek man. He was a creature who ruled rebellions happening worlds away. He was a man with a legion of faithful followers, and a man who had flouted death for decades beyond his expiration. He was a would-be king who had sworn retribution on them all.

Darius stared after him because he couldn't turn his back. The danger hasn't passed, his mind rebelled even as Peroth took his seat and Amoroth slunk back to the shadows. He has the look of vengeance in his stare.

The snake may have returned to the high grass, but if the Sins didn't step carefully, his rattle would toll and the fanged serpent would rise again. If they weren't wary, Anzel Vyus would strike.