Chapter 19 Syneca
Syneca
To Honor The Dead: Light no candles in their dwelling. Disturb no books upon their shelves. Some knowledge dies with its keeper for good reason.
The silence after my revelation stretched taut as a bowstring. Rain streamed down Wickett’s face as he slowly approached, each movement controlled fury. He was terrifying, but I was clever. Fear was his weapon. Foresight was mine. That made me ready.
“You’ve been harboring the Phoenix? For three years?” he practically growled.
“Say that again.” Lucette’s voice cut through the rain. She hadn’t moved, but something in her stillness made everyone stop. “You lived with her? And we’re supposed to believe you never knew?”
“We didn’t know she was the Phoenix,” I said firmly, meeting her green eyes. She had every right to her suspicion. I never expected them to believe the innocence of a witch out of the gate. “She was just Vitoria. Another witch trying to survive in a city that hates our kind.”
“Just Vitoria.” She took a step closer also, but I didn’t flinch, hardly registered the fire building in my veins.
“I’ve heard the Mistress of Blades might know something of my brother’s death.
But now that she’s... gone—who should I go to for answers?
” She paused, drawing a blade from her thigh. “You?”
I’d been playing this game my entire life: sorting out lies and truths strategically placed on a battlefield. I could feel Wickett’s gaze burn into me, assessing, weighing.
Let him watch. Let him think he can intimidate me.
It wouldn’t last long. I didn’t step back from the accusation; I stepped into it, letting the rain soak my hood as I lied. “If you want real answers, you start with the way a killer works. Eda Mire didn’t take death work. Ever.”
People knew the whispers about Eda Mire, but whispers didn’t make proof. The ones who knew would be buried before they breathed a word, and the ones who only guessed couldn’t stake a life on rumor. That silence was her strongest ward, and I was banking on it to hold.
Lucette’s mouth pressed into a hard line, her knife held low, the posture of someone ready to strike but unwilling to be the first to move.
“She sold tools,” I said, forcing myself to lay it bare. “Wards. Warnings. Ways out. If someone came in asking for a kill, she marked their name down and shut the door on them forever.”
I tipped my forehead toward the dim shop crouched behind us, shadows clinging to its windows. “There’s a ledger under the counter. Black book, copper clasp. The ’refused’ marks are a ring of red she inks around the name. Ask anyone in the Crook, they’ll tell you the same.”
That ledger had been there for years and years. A planted prop and nothing more, but always her security blanket. She listed members of government, heretics, kings in other countries, people that supposedly lived in cities that didn’t exist. She was the smartest person I ever knew.
Lucette looked past my shoulder and into the shop where the Oracle had joined the Guardian. Where Eda Mire, the fury-born, lay dead.
I lowered my voice until the ache I’d buried came to the surface.
“I wouldn’t lie. This is the first time we’ve been alone.
Look, I’m grieving, and I still took the first opportunity to tell you the truth.
My life is on the line now, too. You know what it feels like to lose family.
If I were lying about her, you’d see it written on my face. ”
Though there was a long pause, though the rain had soaked Pip’s wings so much they sagged, Lucette finally nodded. “No other witches volunteered. It was suicide the moment you stepped forward. Why take the stage?”
Time to bait my trap.
“Because I had something to fight for even before Eda Mire was murdered,” I said, narrowing my eyes.
“Everyone wants to believe the witches are the problem. But Calder and I,” I jerked my chin toward him, steady at my side.
“We knew Vitoria better than most, I’d bet.
We worked beside her, listened to her, saw her come and go.
We may not know where she is now, but that doesn’t make us useless. It makes us the best lead we’ve got.”
“Or complicit in her crimes,” Wickett said.
I shot a glare at him. “If you’re suggesting—”
“You lived with the Phoenix. You found her next victim before anyone else. You both joined the Mortalis. I’m suggesting,” Lucette said softly, “that coincidences pile up like bodies, and eventually someone has to count them.”
“Then let’s count the only facts that matter.
” I stepped forward, letting real anger bleed through.
“Count the fact that we’re bound to hunt her and die in thirty days if we fail.
Count that I just lost the last person from my childhood to someone I thought I knew, if we’re to believe the crime scene.
I can’t stop you from wasting your own time suspecting me.
But do it while we search, because every second we stand here arguing is a second Vitoria is using to disappear. ”
Lucette studied me, rain dripping from her jawline, eyes as sharp as the blade still in her hand.
Then finally, she nodded, her voice sharp but not unkind.
“Elena Brightwater is a friend of mine. You’ve heard of her, I assume.
She plays Nexus. And if she’d been given the choice, I think she would’ve stood on that stage too.
I’ve always known witches to be brave.” The knife tilted, not in threat but in warning, and I felt more than I saw Wickett shift when Silas grew larger, agitated by the weapon.
Lucette continued. “Bravery doesn’t excuse recklessness.
If you mean to live through this, share everything you know. No secrets, no hesitation.”
My mouth curved, though I kept it small enough to pass as grim agreement. The teeth of the trap had closed.
“And you?” the hunter asked, turning the focus to Calder. “Did you simply forget to mention it to my father during the Mortalis? I’m positive people would have taken note.”
Calder grinned—actually fucking grinned—as he drew his own blade and swirled it around his fingers.
“The witch volunteered. She’s the one with a backbone.
I was forced to stand there. Forced into this blood oath.
And quite honestly, I don’t trust any of you enough to tell you shit.
Your leader? She’s right there,” he said, jutting his chin at me. “The rest of us are useless.”
I met Wickett’s stare, letting the tiniest smirk tease the corner of my lips. He was predictable. And easy to push.
Hope you like playing with fire.
“Your apartment. We search it now,” Wickett said, gesturing to the road.
“Search away,” Calder said. “We’ve got nothing to hide.”
But Lucette smiled, thin and knowing. “Everyone has something to hide. The question is whether your secrets matter to our hunt.”
The walk home was silent except for the rain on cobblestones and Pip’s occasional exhausted whimpers. When we reached our street, I gestured to the building with the black facade, gold lettering and flower boxes outside that hung just a little off kilter. “We live above Thistle and Thorn.”
“A bookstore?” Wickett’s tone annoyed me.
“A very old bookstore,” Lucette corrected, reading the ancient runes carved into the doorframe. “I think these protection marks predate most of the city.”
They sure did.
Interesting she would know that. But then again, I was beginning to realize the shifter knew a lot more than she said aloud. She was smart. Dangerously so. And perhaps that’s why she volunteered.
The door opened before we touched it. Mrs. Deliana, a scorched woman, stood there, her white hair wildly twisted up with a pencil. She pursed her lips as she studied each of us in turn.
“Venatori,” she said mildly, eyes glossing over me and Calder. “Looking for the fire girl? She used to come for the poetry section. Had a weakness for tragic endings. She hasn’t been here for days.”
“We need to search—” Wickett began.
“Search away.” She stepped aside. “Mind the third shelf. It bites.”
Thistle and Thorn had always felt alive to me in the way certain old places did, their shadows deeper than they should be, and the lingering smell of moldering paper with arcane secrets.
Candles flickered in sconces and lanterns, but the light seemed lazy, bending around the shelves instead of cutting through, letting corners sleep in darkness.
The main floor was crowded with stacks of books, some balanced in impossible towers, some spilling across tables with care amidst the chaos. In many ways, this was home, but in a thousand others, this was simply another place I was destined to burn one day.
Every book, every page, every ink stain and twisted spiderweb reminded me of the fragility of this world, of the ash it would become.
Wickett searched carefully, of course, while Lucette stood perfectly still in the center, just... observing. Pip waited beside Silas, mindlessly petting my familiar, who seemed very pleased with himself, for someone that hadn’t contributed a thing to my impromptu trial.
Calder stood in the corner by the stairs, arms crossed, waiting to move on because we both knew there would be nothing to find in Thistle and Thorn.
We’d agreed a long time ago: the bookstore was to be protected at all costs, which mostly meant avoiding it.
Sometimes I snuck down to steal books or the Grimora Gazette if I wanted to read the newspaper while Calder and Vitoria were working, but that was about it.
Wickett gave up long before he admitted it to the rest of us, but I didn’t think anyone else noticed.
He’d walked the shelves, examined the stairs, messed with a couple of floorboards, but there was no fire behind it.
He’d been going through the motions and had almost seemed bored in moments he thought no one was looking.