Chapter 9 Syneca
Syneca
A smart witch hides while others seek the spotlight. But a wise witch never attends the gathering at all.
The rain tasted of ash.
Not real ash. Memory ash. The kind that coated my tongue when I dreamed of burning, when I woke up gasping from nightmares where I was the spark that burnt the world to cinders. I swallowed it down, that phantom taste, as the crowd pressed tighter around me.
The massive dragon circling the skies released a roar that shook the stones beneath our feet.
Its scales gleamed obsidian in the rain.
It swept lower, wings spanning wider than ten buildings, and opened its maw.
Fire erupted. Not the contained breath of performance, but a torrent of flame that screamed across the sky.
Heat washed over us even from this distance, making the rain sizzle into steam.
The dragon’s cry echoed off buildings, primal and devastating, a sound that said predator in a language older than words.
Then it dropped.
Plummeting toward the stage with speed that would have been hard to track, if not for its massive size.
The crowd gasped, surged backward. But just before impact, mere feet from the platform, scales rippled and reformed.
Wings became arms. Claws became hands. The dragon shifted mid-fall into a man, massive and powerful, landing behind the Oracle with enough force to crack the stage beneath his boots.
A child near us cried. His mother held him against her chest, her face blank with shock. She kept whispering the same words over and over: “We’re not here. We’re not here. We’re not here.”
But we were here. The Phoenix was here, according to the Oracle. According to the lies painted across the banner in the sky. According to leaders that knew no real truths.
“By ancient law,” Tiberius’s voice erupted across the Square, “when one with divine blood is threatened, the Mortalis may be called. For those unaware, the Mortalis is a competition so brutal that survival is the only measure of worth. Five races will be chosen at random from among you. If your race is called, three volunteers must step forward to compete. Only one from each race will survive to claim victory. These five victors will be declared Venatori—our chosen champions, bound by blood oath to track down the Phoenix who threatens our world. Fifteen will enter. Five will emerge for this sacred hunt.”
Sacred hunt.
Rage grew as I stared at the man who would ruin my world. This was wrong. They were lying. And no competition would draw out the truth.
The crowd’s energy shifted. Horror bleeding into something else. Disgusting anticipation. The Nexus championship would pause for this, and nothing had stopped the games in decades. Nothing could except the Magistrate’s law or another leader in another country demanding it so.
Tiberius raised his hand, gesturing to the witch standing at the back of the platform.
Though she kept her face down, she knew his demands of her.
She knew her role. She was his to command.
She mouthed a word and the rain above the platform began to move strangely, swirling into a sphere of water that hung suspended.
Inside it, the names of races appeared written in light.
“The die has been cast!” he announced. “Let fate choose our competitors.”
The sphere spun faster as we waited to learn which races would be selected. Light leaked from it in streams that painted the crowd’s upturned faces gold and silver and copper, then stopped.
A name blazed forward: HUNTER.
“Hunters, send forth your three.”
The Ripper stepped forward first. Of course he did. Two others flanked him, both young, both eager for glory they’d never taste. He stood between them like death given form, patient and certain.
Their names were called unceremoniously. “Darius Crane, Felix Steele, and Wickett Veyne.”
Wickett... The Ripper.
When his eyes swept the crowd, they found me again. Damnit. Something passed between us in that heartbeat of contact. Anger. Challenge. Even pride.
I looked away first. Had to.
The sphere spun again.
CHARIDRYN.
My stomach sank. Beside me, Calder had gone still as stone.
“Charidryn, send forth your three.”
Silence stretched. Everyone knew. Everyone in this fucking world knew there was only one.
“Calder Grimm,” Tiberius’s voice carried a note of satisfaction. “Approach.”
Calder turned to me. His eyes were flat, controlled, but underneath I saw the anger. Raw. Desperate. “Get out of here. Whatever senseless thing you’re thinking, don’t. Get the fuck out, Syneca. Now.”
He knew me. Knew where my mind was already racing. Knew the terrible math I was calculating.
“Calder—”
“Promise me.”
But I couldn’t. We both knew I couldn’t.
He pushed through the crowd without looking back, taking the platform steps with the controlled grace of someone walking to his family’s execution.
When he reached the top, Tiberius’s smile was fucking ridiculous.
“As the last of the charidryn, there will be no one for you to compete with. You will serve as witness to the Mortalis and our first victor.” The Magistrate spun on his heel to face the crowd.
“I give you your first Venatori, fated to be bound.”
Bound to hunt Vitoria. My stomach turned.
The crowd cheered.
The sphere spun.
SPRITE.
A blur of blue shot toward the platform before Tiberius even finished speaking.
Pip Willowbend. I’d seen her around the message circuits.
She wore a sword the size of a letter opener and enough jewelry to stock a shop.
Her wings sparkled with small bits of light, and her blue hair, tied back in a plethora of braids and twists, ended with two buns on the top of her head.
It also showed off the teal hue of her large eyes.
“Pip Willowbend volunteers!” she said with a giant smile.
Two more sprites were needed. The crowd waited. And waited.
But fear likely held them paralyzed. These tiny creatures survived by being fast and clever and forgettable but necessary. Why would they volunteer to hunt someone who could burn the world?
Eventually, two were coaxed forward. Their wings trembled so hard they could barely fly straight. One kept looking back at the crowd like he wanted to bolt. The other had gone pale as parchment.
They took their positions with visible reluctance, calling out their own names, though no one could hear them.
As they arranged themselves, my mind wandered. Vitoria was out there somewhere. Hidden or taken or worse. Someone had orchestrated this, painted a target on her back so large the entire city could see it. But who? Who gained from this?
I searched the Oracle’s covered face. She stood perfectly still, her creepy raven watching everything while she saw nothing.
Or pretended to see nothing. There was something wrong about her grief, something performed, I was sure.
I knew, because I recognized it in my own actions every single day. She was wrong about Vitoria.
My eyes tracked skyward, searching for a shadow against the dark clouds. Silas had crept away and was up there. I could feel him through our bond. His rage, a living thing, pressing against my consciousness. He wanted to dive. To tear. To protect what was his.
Not yet, I pushed back. Wait.
But for what, I wasn’t sure.
The sphere spun.
SHIFTER.
“I volunteer.”
The feminine voice snapped through the rain and murmurs.
Lucette Varrow was already moving, her long legs eating up the platform steps.
The sister of the murdered Nexus star. Strange, considering she wasn’t even from our country of Vestra.
She lived north, in Noreya. But her face held the kind of determination that came from having something to prove.
And the Phoenix was a problem for the entire world, not just a single country.
Two more shifters joined her. One transformed as he walked, his body expanding into something between wolf and bear, muscle and fur and violence. The dragon Guardian moved slightly, placing himself between the beast of a man and the Oracle. A warning as clear as spoken words.
The sphere spun one last time.
I held my breath. I knew what it would say.
It wouldn’t be the lycan, not the nymphs or Guardians or another fury-born.
It wouldn’t be a siren from the sea or any other creature that moved through this world.
They needed someone with true power. Someone with the ability to seal the oath.
And there was only one race that qualified. The race they loathed but needed.
WITCH.
Blackbriar’s Square went silent.
“Witches,” Tiberius called. “Send forth your three.”
No one moved. Not a breath. Not a whisper.
Every witch in this square knew what volunteering meant.
It meant scrutiny. Investigation. It meant they’d dig through your life with ruthless fingers until they found something, anything, to condemn you.
It meant certain death as soon as they were done with you.
“Witches,” Tiberius repeated, and now there was amusement in his tone. “Your race has been chosen. Send forth your champions.”
Still nothing.
I could feel Calder’s eyes on me from the platform. Burning into me. Begging me not to move.
And then, from somewhere else, another gaze. Wickett. The Ripper. Watching. Waiting. His stare was a weight on my skin, like he knew what I was about to do before I did. Like he was willing me to do it.
The thought should have terrified me. Instead, it warmed the fire in my veins.
This was insane.
This was the worst possible choice.
This went against twenty-seven years of hiding, of careful lies, of destiny denied.
But the alternative was letting Vitoria die for what I was born to be. Letting her burn while I hid in the shadows like the coward Gran had intended me to become. The math was brutal. Simple. Unforgivable.
You swore you’d protect her, I reminded myself. You swore you’d never let anything happen to her again.
Some promises were worth burning the world for.
My feet and mouth moved before my brain could catch up.
“My name is Syneca Black, and I volunteer to join the Mortalis.”
I swept my hood back and stepped into the open space the crowd had left.
The silence was deafening. Every eye in the Square turned to me, but I only felt two gazes that mattered.
Calder’s, full of betrayal and terror. And Wickett’s, sharp with something that might have been satisfaction.
He would be my death, and I knew it with every step I took.
I knew it from the time he touched me in the Bloodwood.
I knew it like I knew how to breathe. How to burn. How to hide.
As I moved, I whispered the words Gran had taught me, the ones that turned water into weapons and shields and statements. “Aquaris tutela.”
The rain above me stopped. Not frozen, but held, creating a perfect sphere of dry air that moved with me as I walked. Water magic. Clear, obvious, undeniable. I was a water witch stepping forward to hunt the Phoenix. Simply that. A Rune Weaver to some, but nothing more.
The irony would have been funny if it hadn’t tasted like blood.
Silas’s scream ripped through the night.
Not a call. Not a warning. Pure fury, echoing off stone and the horrified faces of everyone watching.
My familiar’s rage was a physical thing, pressing against my bones, begging me to stop.
To run. To be anything other than this fool walking toward her own doom.
But I kept walking.
I climbed the platform steps.
Calder wouldn’t look at me. His jaw was clenched so tight I thought his teeth might crack.
His hands were fists at his sides, and I could see the tremor in his shoulders.
The effort it took not to grab me, not to throw me back into the crowd where I belonged.
Not to scream at me for destroying everything we’d built.
When I reached the top, he finally turned. The look in his eyes was pure devastation. Like I’d reached into his chest and torn his heart out with my bare hands.
And fuck, was I sorry. Immediately and wholly sorry. But resolved all the same.
“You promised,” he whispered.
“I never promised.”
The words came out steadier than I felt. Because I hadn’t promised. I’d known, even as he’d demanded it, that I couldn’t make that vow. Some things mattered more than promises. Some things mattered more than safety.
Some things mattered more than my own life.
When no other witches stepped forward, because of course they didn’t, Tiberius spoke. “It seems our witches lack courage. Fortunately, we have alternatives.”
Two figures were dragged onto the platform. Prisoners. Their wrists bound.
The first I didn’t recognize. Young, maybe seventeen, with the hollow look of someone who’d seen their world end.
The second made my chest tighten.
Katarina.
Beaten. Bruised. One eye swollen shut. But when she passed me, she managed a look of pure disgust. Silent. Accusing. As if to say: You damn fool.
And she was right.
Wickett stepped closer. “Interesting choice, Syneca Black.”
The way he said it made my skin burn. Not like an insult. Like a promise.
Like he knew exactly what game we were about to play.