Chapter Forty-Two Sylas
Priya, Viola is Alyria’s daughter. Be warned that a Corvi relic even accidentally pulling magic from an aspier as powerful as Scar will kill her. I come to you in earnest—she must seal her Aspieri magic and return Scar to DOTS.
forty-two | sylas
I wake to an empty bed. Was last night a dream? I run my hand over the sheets. Still warm. Slowly, I come around. The shower is running. Viola is here. Viola is safe.
Not bothering to cover up, I make my way to the bathroom. She stands, her eyes closed, water running down her tangled hair, down her back, down her legs. I don’t think twice, and I walk in.
“Something doesn’t make sense,” she muses, washing the soap out of her hair. “If Willow brought back Rafael Grimm all these years ago, where is he?”
“Grimm?” I ask mindlessly. Why is she talking about Grimm when all I can think about is the arch of her body against mine and how much I want to press her against the cold marble of the shower.
“Grimm is gone, Vi. Willow might have released his ghost, but he could’ve been picked up by a conduit or even became a wandering ghost. I don’t think he’s involved,” I tell her, trailing my finger along the curve of her hip.
“Ysenia mentioned Willow released him, and Delaney confirmed it.” She doesn’t acknowledge my hand, washing the minty soap off her body. I pull my hand away. Maybe last night was the only one she was willing to give and today is a whole other story. Sylas, you idiot.
“Why’d you stop?” Viola glances at me over her shoulder.
“I thought…”
“Stop thinking.”
I wrap my hands around her waist, pulling her into me. She laces one hand with mine, throwing the other one around my neck. The water runs over both of us. I kiss along her shoulder to her neck, pressing my body into hers.
“Sylas,” she breathes out. My name belongs to her and only her.
“Sylas,” a different voice yells. Three loud bangs pull us apart. Viola frowns at the door, then reaches for a towel, handing me a second one.
“Sylas.” Beau’s voice is urgent, in my room.
“Sorry.” I kiss Viola, making quick work of the towel around my waist. I wonder if this is a glimpse into our lives together, always having to borrow time, always running to put out fires.
“Sylas, for Haal’s sake.” Beau raps on the door with an unusual impatience.
“What, Beau?” I shut the bathroom door behind me, stalking to my wardrobe with my brother tailing me. “Give me a minute.”
“I’ll wait for you outside,” he grumbles, walking out into the living room.
Raiku slithers up my leg, settling in his usual position around my wrist. Railesza takes her sweet time. By the time she coils around my forearm, I’m already dressed in uniform.
“Mrs. Carver…” Beau hesitates the moment I step out of my room, handing me two of my daggers as we walk past the sofas and cross over to the kitchen counter.
“What did you find?”
“Grayson brought a second reader, and they were able to detangle some of Mrs. Carver’s memories.
They were so hazy; the second reader said someone’s tried to reframe them multiple times.
It’s what has messed with her mind so much, the poor woman.
” Beau pours us two cups of tea, and I look between him and the teacup in surprise.
“But I did learn one important thing… Willow LaCroix was trying to resurrect your mother with Faro’s Cuff. ”
“What?” My head jerks toward him. That’s impossible. How would she have gotten Faro’s Cuff? Unless… unless Mom gave her the cuff before she died. At that time, she was the only one who’d have been able to, but why would Mom give Willow Faro’s Cuff when she knew how dangerous it was?
“Where’s Lyria?” I ask without waiting for him to answer. This could have been part of Mom’s lifedrain theory research, and only my sister will know how to make sense of it all.
“She briefly came back and left for the library again this morning.” Beau shrugs. “Willow was unsuccessful because your mother’s ghost had already crossed into the Underiver,” he finishes.
My thoughts are a jumble of theories, trying to piece together every single clue we have.
Behind us, my bedroom door softly clicks, and Viola joins us in the kitchen, dressed in Lyria’s clothes again.
Scar perches on her finger, her eyes drilling the Corvi cuff in Viola’s other hand; I’m still in disbelief that she let us bond with the cuff yesterday.
Beau slides a teacup toward her and catches her up on Victor’s mom, and she’s already grabbing a pen and the page with all our theories. As I watch her with my brother, my heart swells. That’s it about Viola, she completes us.
“My nan fragmented pieces of Willow’s soul across six relics—her friends’ relics—and Delaney is collecting them to resurrect her.
” Viola brings her arm next to mine, and Scar slithers from her forearm to mine, crawling over Railesza.
My healing aspier wakes up with an angry hiss, then Scar slithers to the other arm and settles above Raiku, resting her head close to his.
Seeing our aspiers together somehow makes the bond… tangible.
Viola clicks her cuff around her arm. “Delaney admitted to the killings. I’m certain she killed Beau’s parents, you”—she looks awkwardly at Beau— “then Ysenia said Willow released Rafael Grimm and Delaney confirmed it, but that’s not all…
When Willow released Grimm, his soul probably tethered to her body, like an anchored ghost. Don’t ask how I know, but someone as terrifying as Grimm wouldn’t simply become a wandering ghost.”
At the mention of his name, the air shifts. If there’s one thing we can all rally behind, it’s that Grimm needs to be dead. Dead dead. Not trapped, not imprisoned, not a wandering ghost, just dead.
I glance up at Beau, repeating Viola’s ghost’s words. “The blood that seals… what if Willow released Grimm while using the cuff to resurrect Mom? It’s the only way they would’ve gotten the blood of our ancestor.”
But Beau isn’t listening to me. He gapes at Viola. “You anchored to Ysenia Faro, the sixth founder of Gorhail?”
“Yes, but that’s not important right now.
” Viola takes a sip from her cup, and sighs.
“My question remains, where is Grimm if he’s been back for over two decades?
Surely, someone would’ve said or noticed something that would have given him away by now.
Although I suppose… Maybe there’s some truth to all the Daily Mage propaganda—”
Stairwell door. I hear a woman’s voice, faint, quiet.
Viola turns around at the same time I do, but my legs are already moving, with her and Beau close behind. I jerk open the door, and Lyria falls to the floor, eyes glassy, her body halfway between the Poisoned Stairwell and Founder’s Room.
“Sylas…”
I don’t hear what Viola says. My ears are ringing, my vision darkening at the sides, and heat flushing up my neck.
Railesza is already around Lyria’s arm, fangs in her veins, but she doesn’t look injured.
I kneel in front of my sister, my fingers feeling for a pulse.
It’s steady. So why is she lying on the floor, her eyes wide open toward the ceiling?
“She’s alive,” I say. Thank Haal, but what’s wrong with her? I need to take her to the infirmary.
Nyx hisses, drawing my eyes to a second body behind her. In the middle of that body’s chest, I notice Lyria’s dagger, blood pooling where the blade meets the flesh. “There’s someone else.”
“Sylas, don’t move,” Beau warns, but it’s already too late.
Puppet. I hear the voice clear as day now, youthful, firm, with a low rasp. Ysenia.
Right as Ysenia says the word, the body—a woman—sits up, the darkness of the Poisoned Stairwell enveloping her with eerieness.
Lyria’s dagger still extends from her chest; my sister must have killed her just before she fainted.
I don’t recognize the woman who is turning into a puppet before our eyes, but from the tattoo on her neck, she’s a poacher.
My hands are on my dagger, Raiku and Scar both alert, but the woman doesn’t move any closer.
“Take this as a warning. I only seek what was taken away from me.”
Haal, this is Delaney coming back for Viola’s cuff.
“What did you do to Lyria?” Viola asks as she steps closer to me.
“She fought till the very end, Lyria. What a beautiful name,” the puppet scoffs, lifting her head toward Viola.
The sinister depth in her voice grazes over my skin like a razor.
Her eyes morph from brown to green—the same green as all the puppets we faced.
“Believe it or not, I couldn’t bring myself to kill her after the poacher failed.
Her brilliant mind knew too much, like someone I knew centuries ago… alas, now it’s gone.”
Gods, oh Gods. Even as I think the worst, I refuse to acknowledge it.
“Grimm.” The words escape Viola’s lips so quietly. “Is it… did you hear that?”
No. Ysenia’s voice comes through again.
Viola lets out a gasp, and the puppet holds Viola’s stare, then the poacher’s neck snaps and her body thuds on the floor.
When I reach over to gather Lyria, my hand brushes against the poacher’s.
It all happens in a fraction of a second.
The complete chill of my skin. Time around me stopping, and the poacher’s fingers digging in my wrist. Only when the maiden and the crone die at the hands of the usurper will he be free.
I jerk my arm away, the ice-cold press of her fingers permeating through my body.
The furious rise and fall of my chest gradually settle, and I stare at the void with shaky breaths, reeling from the last few seconds.
It’s unmistakable, that feeling of complete emptiness and total surrender to Death.
Viola’s whisperer magic now flows through my veins.
“What did she say?” Viola asks, her hand rubbing my back.
“Only when the maiden and the crone die at the hands of the usurper will he be free,” I repeat, my eyes still on my sister’s limp body. “I… I have to…”