Chapter 19 Syneca #2
At one point I saw him reach for a book in curiosity, but then, realizing what he was doing, had jerked his hand away. He was bored... and curious. I spent my life reading people, and this man spent most of his time acting. It was clear to me who he was when he thought no one was watching.
The hunter had drifted toward the philosophy section, his fingers hovering over a leather-bound spine before pulling back. I slipped between the shelves, approaching from his blind side.
“Roehrich?” I read the title he’d been reaching for. “Interesting choice for a hunter.”
He didn’t startle, but his shoulders tensed. “Just checking for hidden compartments.”
“Behind The Unbending Contract? How thorough of you.”
He turned, and suddenly the narrow aisle felt like a trap. “When did you last see her?”
The shift caught me off guard. “Vitoria? Two nights ago. Before she vanished.”
“Where do you think she went?”
“If I knew that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I would have told you.”
He moved closer, each step deliberate. He definitely thought he was getting closer to a truth he couldn’t have. “Did she have friends outside your circle? Places she went alone?”
“Sometimes she’d disappear at night. Never said where.” Truth, carefully selected in a nonchalant tone.
Another step. My back hit the shelves. “Any patterns to these disappearances?”
I pretended to think about it. “Always after midnight. Always alone. Almost always came back before dawn.” My voice stayed steady despite his proximity.
“You know,” he said, pulling something from his pocket, “I’ll be able to tell if you’re lying.”
A rune sat in his palm, obsidian with golden veins that pulsed with power. A truth stone. My stomach dropped. Not from fear, but from recognition.
“Where did you get that?”
His eyes narrowed. “Does it matter?”
I stared at the familiar weaving pattern. “Those were experimental. Commissioned by the Magistrate over a year ago. They never worked. Not for a single hunter who tested them.”
“This one works.” He stepped closer, swiping a tight wet curl from my face as he pressed the rune between us, the stone warm against my sternum. “Tell me you had no idea what she was planning.”
The stone shouldn’t work. I’d woven them for an experiment in species-specific runecraft that had failed spectacularly.
Every hunter who’d tried had gotten nothing but dead stone.
Thankfully. Even though I’d carefully built in one other feature, immunity for my bloodline, buried so deep in the weaving that even I had to look to find it. But I could manipulate it all the same.
“I had no idea what she was planning.” The words came out clearly, steadily. The stone pulsed green. Truth.
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Tell me you don’t know where she is.”
“How are you making it work?” I demanded instead. “Those stones were tested by so many. No one was able to—”
“Answer the question.”
“I don’t know where she is.” Another green pulse. “Now you answer mine. How?”
He studied me for a long moment. “Tell me you’re not hiding anything about her.”
I covered his hand with mine, keeping the stone pressed between us. “This will work both ways when you’re touching it too. So tell me, how did you get this to work? I had to work overtime for three months because your father was upset at my failure. I’m not surprised he’s a liar. But how?”
His jaw flexed. The stone flickered between us. He pressed on. “Did you care about her?”
“Yes.” Green. “Your turn.”
“I don’t have to—”
“But you want to know more, don’t you? So answer, or we’re done.”
For a moment, neither of us moved. Then, quieter: “Maybe it recognizes something in me that shouldn’t be there. It may surprise you to know I don’t know everything.”
The stone pulsed green. He was telling the truth, which was somehow worse than if he’d been lying.
“Do you still care about her?” he asked.
“I care about who I knew her to be.” The stone’s glow reflected in his eyes. “That person might never have actually existed, though.”
“At the Gilded Pestle you said it looked like a frame job, now you’re doubting your friendship with the Phoenix. Which is it?”
I sighed. “It’s both, hunter. We know she’s the Phoenix. We know she tried to kill the Oracle. But the crime scene was too clean. I can’t just ignore that. Even when she’s been lying to me for three years. I’m not her friend, but I’m going to find the truth instead of blindly following.”
Something shifted in his expression. The pressure of the stone eased, but he didn’t step back. Instead, he whispered, “I’m sorry. About the Mistress of Blades. I can see she mattered to you.”
The unexpected kindness hit harder than any threat would have.
I couldn’t stand this close, couldn’t look into those stormy gray eyes and see any kind of empathy.
Forcing myself to remember the way he looked at me when everyone was watching, I slipped sideways, breaking away from the cage of his body and the shelves, leaving him to stand there.
“Satisfied?” Mrs. Deliana called from her perch moments later.
Wickett’s eyes found mine, the truth stone disappearing back into his pocket. “No.” That answer had nothing to do with searching for evidence, though I was probably the only one who noticed as he shifted back to his detached manner. “The stairs to get to the apartments?”
“Through there,” the bookstore owner said, pointing at a narrow hall.
The stairs loomed ahead, steep as a gallow’s climb. When they saw me in Vitoria’s room, I’d let them believe it was revenge driving me. Because waiting for a private moment to search wasn’t an option. Not with her name already poisoned on every tongue.
So I took the first step, knowing the next one could ruin everything.