Chapter Forty Sylas
Tilda, effective immediately, you are dismissed from your position as dean of Gorhail. You will be reassigned to the Grimm task force, reporting to Overseer Paltro.
forty | sylas
The Poisoned Stairwell is toying with me.
I’ve been in here for what feels like hours, and the corridors bleed into one another.
The lights seem broken, and I have to rely on their faintest glow to make out my path.
Even my aspiers are confused. Raiku hisses at Railesza, and she turns her head away from him, eyes focused ahead as we walk.
But Raiku’s restlessness stirs a sense of unease within me. What does he know that I don’t?
Railesza’s head jerks to the left toward a dark, narrow hallway with deep red walls and three faint basket lights floating at the top.
I follow her lead, every step heavy with a cursed possibility.
Soon after, she lets her body drop to the ground, slithering away faster than I can run.
Raiku tightens himself around my wrist, his fangs out.
At the end of the hallway, I notice the silhouette of a body.
One step forward, and I curse myself for wishing this is anyone but Viola.
My second step splits my soul in two.
Viola lies face up on the floor, her beautiful hair matted with blood, her eyes swollen and closed.
I search for the slightest movement in her chest. It remains still.
I glance at her arm and can almost see the ivory of her bone through the gash that’s still oozing blood. A few inches above, her cuff is gone.
No. She can’t be… I refuse to think about the word.
Railesza violently hisses at me before wrapping herself around Viola’s neck, as if she’s chastising me for even considering the possibility of her dying.
I still don’t move, paralyzed by a fear that slowly seeped into my veins until its tendrils wrapped around my heart. The fear of losing her.
Raiku nudges me with his nose, and I lower myself to the ground. My fingers are cold, shaking, and my heart beats in my ears. It’s so loud that it’s all I can hear.
My movement is almost mechanical; I gather Viola against me, resting her head on my knees. Her body’s still warm. As I brush her hair away from her face, Railesza continues to heal her, but Viola doesn’t respond.
It’s over. I’m too late. She’s dead.
It cannot be.
Raiku glances at me in question, then at Railesza, but she doesn’t look worried at all; in fact, she switches between veins methodically. There’s no frantic movement, nothing like when she was trying to heal Dad or Beau. It almost seems like when it comes to Viola, Railesza heals with certainty.
The seconds bleed one into the next, and I don’t know if we’re here for a minute or an hour, but Viola’s eyelids flicker, and my breath hitches.
I blink hard, peering at her eyes in case I’ve gone mad. Placing two fingers at her wrist, her pulse beats against my touch, slowly at first, then faster.
She’s alive. If the God of Death had a name, I would worship him to eternity.
Viola groans in agony, and I pull her closer, placing a soft kiss on her forehead. She’s alive. I breathe out. And she’s with me.
“Not real,” she mumbles.
“Shhh—” I whisper. “I have you, Vi. I’ll always have you.”
“The cuff.” She forces the word out. “Not real…”
The sound of Viola’s shaky breathing haunts me until I cross the threshold of Founder’s Room with her in my arms. Railesza latches on to her arm, and I thank the Gods for Beau’s defiance to Paltro in retrieving his own aspier earlier.
If he still had Railesza, Viola would’ve been dead.
My chest constricts again. She’s not dead.
That’s all that matters. Finally, her breathing eases into a steadiness that releases my lungs.
“Lyria,” I call out. No answer. “Beau?” Nothing. I begin to panic. It’s night, and they’ve been gone for a while now. Lyria should’ve been back from the House of Death, and Beau should’ve returned from meeting up with Grayson.
Once more, Raiku hisses at me, and I carry Viola to my bedroom. The door welcomes me with an eerie creak. I head straight to the bathroom, and Raiku slithers to the bathtub, pulling the tap. The steam is a warm welcome to the knotted muscles in my back while I wait.
After a minute, the gentle sound of lapping water stirs Viola awake.
Her eyes flare, but when she notices it’s me holding her, her body sags in my arms and she lets out a painfully slow exhale. With all the care in the world, I set her down on the counter between the double sinks. She places both hands at her sides to brace herself and eases herself away from me.
“I changed the cuffs,” she says.
“When? How?” I ask as I stare at her, taking in all the new bruises on her face and neck. Haal, she’s alive. I can’t believe she’s alive.
“When I went to see Scar in your safe downstairs, I swapped my cuff with one of the spare ones you keep.” She pauses. “I just… I had a horrible feeling about the lockdown. Delaney has the wrong cuff.”
It takes me a moment, my mind still reeling from almost losing her.
Delaney has the wrong cuff. I blink. Delaney will come back for her.
Haal, I hate that my first thought goes there, because Viola is a genius for swapping the cuffs.
But this time, I’m not leaving her out of my sight—Paltro, Firstline, and DOTS be damned. No one is touching her.
“You’re brilliant.” I clasp her hands between mine, placing a kiss on the tip of her fingers, and she sighs, shaking her head.
“She killed all of them, Sylas. To think all this started because of the stupid Founder’s Book… if I hadn’t unpacked it—”
“Shhh.” I step between her legs, pressing my forehead against hers, my hands on either side of her on the counter.
I’m not letting her wallow in self-pity again.
Delaney’s bloodlust wasn’t her fault. “She’s been set on revenge for decades now.
No one saw it coming. I didn’t realize it was her until this morning in Paltro’s office. ”
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispers, and I pull back. Her head is lowered again; she’s wrestling with guilt that shouldn’t be hers. I wish she could see herself through my eyes, wish she could see how she makes me whole. She’s the calm to my storm, the ember to my fire, the life to my heart.
“Can you manage—” I glance at the bathtub then back to her. “Or do you need help… I can…”
“I can manage.” Her cheeks flush, but she doesn’t look at me.
As I prepare to turn away, she calls my name. “Sylas.” She pauses. “My arms hurt when I lift them. Can you cut the shirt?”
I suck in a breath. I’m blinking at her like she’s speaking a language I cannot comprehend. Without a word, I unsheathe my dagger and grip it tightly to mask the slight shake of my hand. I help her off the counter, willing my breath to steady.
“Turn around,” I mumble. It’ll be easier if she’s not looking at me.
Viola’s soft gaze meets mine, then falls to my lips.
She lingers for a moment before giving me her back.
Her hair is still stiff with blood when I brush it over her shoulder.
Inch by inch, I peel the shirt away from her skin.
Gathering the cold, wet cloth in my hand, I make a single vertical cut and tear the rest.
The fabric drops, and I gasp.
Her back is a canvas of old and new scars. Mindlessly, my fingers trace along the longest one from her shoulder blade to her waist. I don’t need to ask. I know each of these scars like the back of my hand. Because I healed the wounds, every single one of them.
“How bad is it?”
“It’s bad.”
“Sylas…” She turns to me, and I stop breathing.
My mouth goes dry, and I forget my words, forget my own name. My gaze trails from the sharpness of her collarbone to the curves of her breasts. The warmth blooming at the nape of my neck spreads to my cheeks. And my heart races, every beat awakening an ache deep within me.
I step back. This is a line I cannot cross. Not here. Not now, when our emotions are heightened by the fragility of life. “I… I have to find Beau.”
I leave before she has time to answer.
“Does Viola need anything?” Lyria asks as I walk into Founder’s Room.
“I… I figured she was here from the blood trail.” She’s collecting stray sheets of paper from the coffee table and shoving them into her bag.
I glance at the clock. It’s eight in the evening, and Gorhail is on lockdown, so why does it look like my sister’s about to head out again?
I run a hand over my face, shaking my head, a futile attempt to clear the thoughts of Viola. What has become of me? Paltro says young love is ephemeral, but there’s nothing transitory about the sheer terror I felt when I thought she was dead.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Got my clearance pass,” she says. “I’ll be holed up in the library the whole night. Lorne gave me some insights as I was collecting my pass— I have two equations wrong, and I’m approaching lifedrain from the wrong angle, but I’m so close, Sy, I can feel it.”
“Don’t overwork yourself, Lyr, please.”
She waves me off, then raises her eyebrows. “Beau won’t be back tonight… so you can use his room.”
When I frown in question, she replies, “Yes… with Gray. Gryff sent me an express courier an hour ago.”
“Haal…” Beau and Grayson have had a tumultuous relationship that ended in their not speaking for over a year. Family gatherings were impossible, and they even avoided each other at Dad’s funeral five months ago. “I wonder what changed.”
“Gryff and I are staying out of it.”
“So am I.”
She shakes her head and smiles, then picks up a book from the coffee table, and I recognize it as the one Viola took from her house in Albion; Olivia’s favorite book of fairy tales. “I found this on the study desk and figured Viola would want it closer.”