Chapter Twenty-Two Sylas
Rodric, it is not a poacher uprising, I fear.
Talks of Grimm have been prevalent in poacher communities, and I wonder if they’re forging the next Grimm—I will explain in person.
Searches for the Deathbringer remain inconclusive.
I believe she is dead and her relic was stolen, as evidenced in my attached report.
twenty-two | sylas
The sun has long set when I wake. I stare at the domed wooden ceiling, counting my breaths like Mom taught me to do when I had nightmares as a child. Something doesn’t add up.
I read the Deathbringer’s reports from cover to cover until I fell asleep with them on my chest. She had spies in the deepest poacher camps—no one knew more about them than her—and there were no mentions of Grimm.
Picking up Dad’s reports from my nightstand, I flip through the pages and stumble upon a theory that the Deathbringer was killed and her relic stolen, stamped with the notorious red REJECTED of DOTS.
But on the last page, Dad’s neat handwriting underlines two paragraphs, and next to them are these words written in bold: DIFFERING PATTERN IN POACHER MOVEMENTS—ANOTHER GRIMM?
Dad’s notes date from five months ago, just a month before his death. I hadn’t considered that the poachers could be training someone to be the next Grimm. The endless propaganda from The Daily Mage must be emboldening them. But surely, if we’ve noticed this, DOTS and Firstline will have, too.
A timid knock breaks me out of my thoughts. I glance at the clock, and it reads ten. Haal, we were supposed to leave at nine. Am I late? I scramble to my feet and open the door to see Viola. She looks up at me, then averts her gaze almost immediately.
“I know you have a death wish since you decided to offer yourself as bait to the puppet who killed your sister and almost killed you, but please tell me you didn’t just go through the Poisoned Stairwell alone?
” My fingers clench the doorframe. I don’t know why I bother, especially when she made it clear she doesn’t want my help, and she seems to think I’m beguiling her to bring Beau’s body back.
“Beau came to get me. We’re late.” She shifts her weight, still not looking at me.
But I drink her in, from the black, Arkani-woven training pants that hug her curves to the long-sleeved shirt that exposes a sliver of skin.
I get the training pants—the stretch allows for movement.
But the training shirt? She needs a combat jacket and a protective harness underneath.
An image of her lying on that table the first time I saw her—skin torn, blood gushing out of her wounds—flashes across my mind. To this day, I don’t understand how Railesza healed her completely. If things go wrong tonight, will my aspier be able to bring her back from the brink again?
Without a word, I head to the dresser and open the second drawer. For once, I’m glad Lyria uses my room as an extension of her wardrobe, because I find one of her harnesses and a combat jacket with ease.
“Turn,” I order, forgetting that, in here, I am not a patrol leader.
Viola doesn’t argue. She gives me her back, mumbling a quick apology about how she should’ve asked if I was decent before knocking on the door.
I swallow a smile. “Arms out.”
Now she whirls, a scowl on her face. Her eyes drift from my bare chest to the harness I’m holding. “What is that?”
“This,” I say, motioning her to turn again, “will prevent Mara from ripping your body apart like last time.”
Her eyes widen, and I hold her gaze a moment longer than I should. “Okay.” She doesn’t protest and turns again. I thread her arms through the sleeveless harness, pulling on the strings like a corset. My fingers make quick work of the knots. Toward the end, I slip and brush against her bare skin.
She lets out a gasp, and my hand freezes. We’re both quiet, save for the low hum of her quickening breath. I can’t be this close to her. The bond is messing with my head again.
A few seconds later, I’m fastening the last of the knots, and she’s standing two steps away from me. I throw Lyria’s combat jacket, and Viola catches it against her chest.
“That thing nearly killed you, and now you’re offering yourself to her on a silver platter.” I lean against the doorframe, my arms crossed, watching her struggle with the zipper. “She won’t miss twice.”
“If I die”—she pauses, considering her next words—“promise me you’ll find the puppeteer.”
“You’ll find them yourself,” I mutter. She speaks of death so casually, as if she’s at peace with dying, as if she has nothing else to live for other than finding her sister’s killer. What happened to leaving Bale and starting anew?
“Take Raiku.” I hold out my hand.
Her gaze flicks to my aspier, then back to me.
“No,” she says, and Raiku hisses. I don’t know if he’s offended that she turned him down a second time, or that I suggested she take him in the first place.
“Let’s hope your wretched magic cooperates then.”
She scoffs. “You speak of my magic as if I don’t loathe every second I have to live with it. Magic ruined my life. The day it walked in was the day my sister walked out.”
How can she hate death magic more than me?
Hatred aside, how can she be so blind to the raw power oozing off her?
How can she hold on to a sister who took years of a life where she could’ve perfected her craft?
It’s horrifying, the things Viola could do with it.
Yet she chose to live in the shadow of a sister who pretended she didn’t exist.
“You’re allowed to hate your magic, but when it’s the only thing that can save your life, you don’t have a choice but to use it.
” I close the door on her because I don’t trust myself around her.
I don’t like how she makes me question something I’ve known my whole life.
Mom was killed by a Mortemagi. Their magic of the dead feeds off their soul, chipping away years of their lives, leaving behind a shell of villainy.
Once Viola tastes a drop of what her death magic can do, she will be drunk on the raw power.
Shaking away the thought, I pull a shirt from the nearby chair. Once Beau and Victor get their bodies back, Viola needs to leave. Perhaps the distance will ease the bond’s drive to keep her safe.
When I walk out of my room, Viola is gone but Lyria is sitting by the fireplace, her eyes narrowing at Beau.
She notices me and waves me over. “I’m still mad at you, but I don’t have a good feeling about Victor.
He seemed almost too eager for Viola to resurrect him.
Beau gave her a choice, but he didn’t even bother. ”
“I don’t trust him either.” I sigh, dropping Dad’s reports in her lap. “But maybe it’s because we don’t know him well yet.”
Lyria scrunches her nose like she always does when she disagrees with something but doesn’t want to voice it out. Then her eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, I went by Paltro’s office earlier, like you asked, but he was out. So I’ll try again tomorrow. Were the reports helpful at all?”
I nod. “Dad thought poachers were preparing for another Grimm.”
Beau and Lyria exchange a concerned look.
“So much for old purist Ronin to think his bloodline wouldn’t betray him.
Well, someone in his bloodline retrieved the cuff.
” Lyria rolls her eyes. It’s ironic how Sileas Ronin insisted that Faro’s Cuff be kept in his personal vault, and surprising how easily he managed to convince the Mortemagi that they couldn’t possibly trust their kind to safeguard the cuff.
As an act of goodwill, he even gave them the Imortalis to store in their catacombs.
“Did you know that Mom retrieved Raiek from the catacombs?”
“Yeah.” Lyria sighs. “Her last journal entry mentioned Raiek might have been a key piece to her lifedrain theory, but she—”
Lyria doesn’t need to continue. Mom never wrote another entry again, because she was ripped away from us by a Mortemagi.
“Are we really doing this?” Beau asks as he runs his hand through the coffee table. It’s odd seeing him here, even odder seeing him as a ghost. “How will we explain our resurrection to DOTS?”
“I doubt DOTS will suspect a brand-new Mortemagi.” Lyria shrugs. “Their arrogance won’t let them admit that a self-study could perform magic most Gorhail-trained Mortemagi cannot.”
“We can get around this, but I have a single condition.” Viola’s voice startles me.
She’s walking up the spiral staircase, clad in Lyria’s combat jacket, which falls right above her thighs.
The three dark red stripes on the left shoulder end right above our House crest—Viola wears it like it belongs to her.
“Pity she’s a Mortemagi,” Lyria whispers. “She wears our name well.”
It takes me a second too long to register what she means. I scowl at her, but she’s already across the room, hugging Viola like they’re best friends.
“Get on with it, Corvi,” I say while buckling my harness.
“After you regain your bodies and we catch the killer, you’ll help me leave Bale and seal my magic,” she demands matter-of-factly.
Her ask slaps me in the face.
Mages don’t simply discard their magic, especially not when they have a relic as powerful as the Corvi cuff. Does this woman not realize the power she possesses in that piece of metal? That she’s about to do the impossible because of the magic she despises so much?
“This life isn’t for me,” she says. Why does she sound so resigned?
I want to tell her that she is right, that she should seal her magic, that she should leave and go back to a mundane life.
It solves two of my biggest problems. One: we are rid of one of the most powerful heirloom relics.
Two: she will be safe. Somewhere deep inside my chest, it stings.
I shove that odd feeling deeper within, where hopefully it’ll never resurface.
She can’t stay, both for her safety and for my sanity.
But I can’t bring myself to tell her any of that.
“We’ve all had to come to terms with our lives, its dangers, and its losses. You choose what you want out of this life, not the other way around,” I say instead, heading to the door to the Poisoned Stairwell.
“Vi, you can’t leave,” Lyria drawls, wrapping her arms around Viola, who gives my sister the softest apologetic look.
“I…” Viola takes her hand. “I tried, I really tried for Olivia. Once we find the puppeteer and hand them over to DOTS, I’m done. I’d like to live out the rest of my life as a nonmagi.”
Beau chimes in, “Viola, please don’t.”
I hate how my siblings have grown so attached to her. Do they forget what she is?
“It’s time,” I interrupt them, clicking open the door like a coward afraid to face his feelings.
“It’s good that I’m staying behind in the end. In case someone has to explain your absence,” Lyria offers. Thank Haal, she’s come to her senses. Then she runs and gives me a tight hug. “Please don’t let her die,” she says so only I can hear.
Dread sours my mouth. That’s a promise I cannot make.