32. Syrus #3
The bottom of my stomach’s fallen out, but I cling to the idea that I must be misunderstanding the situation—jumping to the wrong conclusions.
And luckily enough, the man who can put my anxieties to rest has just walked through the dining room door, looking put together and handsome in his blue doublet and long cloak.
“Syrus,” I say, my voice coming our harsher than I’d like. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. I want that so badly. “When did you start suspecting I had ephilium heritage?” I ask.
He eyes me carefully as he sits down at the head of the table.
“I was suspicious you weren’t entirely human when you first kicked me out of your head in that dance hall in Malice,” he says gently.
“Stratans aren’t supposed to be able to do that.
You having ephilium heritage was always a possibility after that, though there was no way to be sure until Hathwell. ”
“So, suspecting that, why did you put those runes on me?” I say, holding up my wrist. “Were you trying to hide my heritage from me?”
I don’t think I’m imagining the discomfort in his eyes, and it’s doing nothing to ease the lurch in my gut.
“I thought—and to be clear, I was never fully sure—that if you were nephilim, you might not be aware of it,” he admits. “But believe me, those runes were to protect you.”
“From what, my own power?” I ask, my voice rising a few decibels.
A muscle in Syrus’s jaw clenches. “Yes, actually.”
That’s why I didn’t start feeling my magic again until after Kaliban’s blood had helped wipe them off.
“You deliberately suppressed my magic without telling me,” I say, every word tense with anger.
Viz’s papers rustle as he stacks them nervously. “Maybe we should wait to have this conversation after—”
“It was for the best,” Syrus says, his eyes narrowing slightly. “I thought that if I was right and we suppressed your magic, then your ephilium side might not develop, and everyone would be safer.”
I want to believe in his good intentions.
I really do. But all I can hear is him saying that he felt entitled to take my magic from me—to keep me from becoming my full self.
For the first time in my life, I have some real, genuine power, and he’s suggesting that’s too dangerous to be allowed?
And after everything—the training, pushing me to take what I’m owed.
I thought he wanted me to be stronger, both in body and will.
But was that only as long as it was convenient to him?
Now that I might have something—want something—he considers dangerous to him, it seems like he’s okay with shrinking me down again.
“Safer how?” I demand. “What’s so bad about me being part ephilium?”
He sighs, running his hand through his hair. “That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t have a problem with it in itself; I—”
“Safer how?” I repeat.
He looks frustrated, and there’s an edge to his voice when he replies.
“If the pale-bloods find out about you, they will want to claim you as one of their own. They will take you to Aradis and force you to become like them. You don’t know what their culture is like, Leah.
You’ve only ever seen them from a distance.
But they are cold and brutal, and becoming one of them would destroy you.
It could destroy—” he stops himself, looking like he’s searching for the right words.
“They turn their best and brightest into fighting machines who only love war. Is that what you want? Is that what you see in your future?”
I don’t understand the intensity of his anger. He looks afraid. But is that a fear of losing me? Or of not being able to control me anymore?
“I know you hate them,” I say. “But you can’t let what happened three hundred years ago dictate how you treat me now. What if I don’t want to suppress my power? Are you going to make me?”
Syrus seems lost for words, and Viz takes the opportunity to jump in.
“Syrus, we really must go,” he says tentatively. “If we’re late to this meeting, the lords may not be interested in hearing your side of the story.”
Conflicting emotions cross Syrus’s face as he looks from me to Viz. Then he pushes his chair back, having not eaten a bite, and rises to leave.
“Look, I have to leave now,” he says, his tone marginally softer, like he’s trying to make us part on a decent note. “But we can talk about this when I get back. The fact is, it’s just not safe for you to have your powers. You’ll realize that when you have some time to think it over.”
I want to tell him how betrayed I feel. I want to shout and curse at him and demand a better explanation. But he’s already walking out the door with Viz.
I sit there for a long time, trying to understand how I got everything so mixed up—how I missed that Syrus has always been okay with controlling me as long as he could convince himself he had a good reason.
Maybe I’m a damn fool blinded by her heart, but I really thought he was offering me a kind of freedom in Infernum, not just a slightly nicer set of shackles than the ones I had before.
Nicer, but not better—because this time, I’d be killing off a part of me before I ever even knew what it could become.
Syrus has at least taught me one thing—I’m not going to let anyone take that part of myself from me. I have a right to it. And what I need is someone who isn’t going to assume any part of me deserves to be locked away in a cage of runes.
I’d hoped that maybe this bond between us could be something good, but as long as he wants me in that cage, I can’t be here.
I get up, heading to my room as a plan starts to form in my mind.
I know Syrus won’t willingly let me go. Everything he said to me last night makes that clear. We’re bound too tightly, both by magic and our own doing, and I know him better than to think he would let something—someone—important to him slip away without a fight.
He has immense power and the resources of an entire domain at his disposal, so if I’m going to leave, I need to go somewhere he can’t follow.
Despite Ajax’s spell, that’s not Strata.
I already know he can possess me across the realms, and I can’t block him out forever, not as I am now.
As long as he could justify it to himself, he’d force me back to Infernum whether I liked it or not.
So I need to be stronger. More powerful.
I need to harness the magic that’s awakened in me and learn to use it so I can resist him if that day comes.
When I reach my room, the first thing I do is write Aster a note. I have to explain to someone, just so they know nothing terrible has happened to me. I couldn’t do that to them. Any of them.
I spend a long five minutes thinking about writing a second letter, but though my hand hovers above the paper, pencil poised, I can’t bring myself to do it.
There’s too much to say, and I’m afraid that if I start writing, I’ll never stop.
Or worse, that I’ll lose the will to leave entirely.
With a heavy weight of guilt on my chest, I slip the note under Aster’s door.
Back in my room, I pull out the knife Syrus gave me, beginning to scratch a set of runes into the frame of my bedroom door with it. Thanks to studying Viz, I know these markings by now and understand enough Cyrax to try this.
I wish I could say a proper goodbye—to Viz and Aster and Triya.
Even to Syrus. Especially to him.
It breaks my heart, but I know that’s not an option. I have to take my chance while I have it.
With every new line I etch, I’m adding a fresh crack to my heart, taking another step toward walking away from all of this—the small shred of peace I thought I found, the happiness I thought I could actually keep.
When the runes are at last finished, I drop the knife on my bed and light a match, holding the flame to the first mark, praying.
It starts to burn away from the doorframe, and a rip tears through the air, shimmering and flaring until I can see a narrow city alleyway beyond. I step through it.
In Strata, on a street in Pax bordering a huge, glowing rift, I watch a group of people with majestic white wings and gold-trimmed uniforms mill around the trade gate.
Taking a deep breath, I mutter a prayer to the goddess and walk up to them.
“Excuse me. I need to speak with Captain Pellery.”