Chapter 25 Syneca #2
The blood, sweat, and tears of my own kind woven into stone. The sight of it made my stomach turn.
Tiberius had taken over this city with promises of safety and order.
But the sheer volume of records here, the amount of money moving through these transactions, the payments and transfers that filled cabinet after cabinet made a lot more sense when one suspected corruption.
He wasn’t feeding the poor or strengthening defenses. He certainly wasn’t championing peace.
He was building an empire. And I’d helped him make it indestructible.
“What are we looking for?” Wickett asked, positioning himself by the door to keep watch.
“Everything.” I moved toward the central podium, where a massive book sat open. The Index. “Anything on DEC.”
The system was brilliant in its simplicity. You touched the rune corresponding to what you wanted information about, spoke your query aloud, and the files would then summon themselves. Any clerk could do it. Any scorched with a drop of magic could activate the sequence.
I pressed my finger to the financial records rune, feeling it warm under my touch. “DEC. All references.”
The rune flared blue. Throughout the massive room, filing cabinets began to glow in response. Drawers slid open on invisible tracks. Files lifted themselves into the air like birds taking flight.
They spiraled toward me in a coordinated dance, hundreds of folders arranging themselves on the podium in perfect order.
I opened the first one. The second. The third as more and more dropped in front of me.
Nothing. No payments under those initials. No transfers. No contracts. No names. No mentions anywhere in the financial records. Unfortunately, everything mentioning December in an abbreviated form had been pulled.
I sighed. “Fuck.”
I placed my hand back over the glowing blue rune. “Remove all files pulled for referencing December.”
The towers of files shot to the ceiling before returning to their homes in swift, single file order. There was nothing left. Not a single thing.
“It’s not in accounting.”
“Try something else,” Wickett suggested quietly from the door. “Check for initials. Personal files.”
The Registry of Magical Persons.
I touched a different rune, this one carved with the symbol for identification and registration.
“Geneva Kirr.” Vitoria’s real name.
New files began their flight toward me, arriving before spreading themselves across the podium.
No Geneva Kirr.
But I plucked out the one labeled: Kirr, Malachi and Sera. Her parents. Deceased five years ago. Cause of death: murder.
I’d known Vitoria for five years, lived with her for three. The timeline matched.
Except according to the registry, Malachi and Sera Kirr never had a daughter. No children listed. No offspring recorded.
“That’s not possible,” I breathed. “The registry records every magical birth. It’s required by law within twenty-four hours.”
“Unless someone removed the entry,” Wickett said, moving to read over my shoulder. His presence was warm at my back, distracting in ways I couldn’t afford.
Or unless Vitoria had found a way to erase herself completely.
My eyes scanned the form, catching on an address in the corner. Faded but legible.
The Ruby District. Seventeenth street.
“Most witches live in the Crook or stay close to the Tangles. The Ruby District is for merchants, higher government, people with money and status.”
“Or people pretending to have both,” Wickett replied. “But you live in the Ruby District. So, it can’t be a hard and fast rule.”
“I live with Calder. He has no rules.”
A section at the bottom of the form caught my attention: ‘Known Associates: Subject to Monitoring.’
Two families listed. I committed them to memory, fingers tracing over each one. Then another thought struck me. If everything was being monitored, if every witch had a file tracking their movements and associations, then I had one too.
How much did they really know?
I touched the rune again. “Syneca Black.”
The files returned themselves. New ones should have come.
Nothing arrived.
I waited, counting heartbeats. Still nothing.
My file wasn’t here.
Which had to mean it’d been pulled recently. Probably sitting in the Magistrate’s office right now, being studied, analyzed, used to build whatever case he was constructing against me.
Where Vitoria’s daggers also waited.
... I needed both.
“We should go,” Wickett said quietly, reading the determination on my face. “You’ve got a lead.”
“In a minute.” I moved toward the door, toward the connecting corridor that led to Tiberius’s private office.
Wickett caught my arm. “Syn—”
“I’m not quite done yet.”
“You’re going to get us both killed.”
I met his eyes. “Then you should probably leave.”
He didn’t.
We moved through the connecting corridors in silence. The Magistrate’s office loomed at the end—massive oak door, more runes, more of my own magic turned against me.
“Have you lost your mind?” Wickett demanded and grabbed my wrist when I reached for the door handle.
“Probably.” I jerked away, twisting the knob. It wasn’t even locked. “You coming or not?”
He followed, muttering what sounded like prayers to gods he probably didn’t believe in. Inside, Tiberius’s office was as intimidating as it was this afternoon. Massive desk. Bloodwood furniture. Windows that stared over the city like a throne room surveying its kingdom.
I went straight for the desk, trying to open locked drawers with increasingly desperate pulls.
Locked. All of them. Of course.
“Here,” Wickett said, moving beside me. He gripped the center drawer and pulled with hunter’s strength.
Wood splintered. The lock broke and gave way.
Inside, silver gleamed. Both of Vitoria’s daggers lying crossed, like an offering.
I reached for them, fingers closing around familiar hilts. These weapons had been her constant companions, extensions of her will. Seeing them here, taken as trophies or evidence, made rage burn in my chest.
The daggers disappeared into my cloak.
“Now we go,” Wickett said urgently.
But I was already shuffling through the stack of papers within the drawer. “My file. I need to see it.”
“Why—”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Heavy. Deliberate.
Wickett stiffened the same time I did. His hand found mine, yanking me away from the desk. We moved fast, his body steering mine toward heavy curtains that flanked the tall windows. He pulled me behind them. The fabric fell closed around us with barely a whisper.
Darkness swallowed us whole.
Sandwiched between the thick velvet curtain and the wall, I couldn’t see my hands, couldn’t see Wickett pressed against my back, could only feel him, the solid wall of his chest, the heat radiating from his body, the way his breath stirred my hair.
His arm locked around my waist, pulling me tighter against him. Not gentle. Desperate. The kind of hold that said: don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t exist. I could feel his heartbeat against my spine. Racing. Wild. As terrified as mine.
The office door swung open.
Wickett’s hand came up to cover my mouth, not violently, but firmly enough I couldn’t have made a sound even if I’d wanted to. His palm was warm against my lips, his fingers rough where they curved along my jaw.
We were too close. Impossibly close. Every breath he took pressed his chest harder against my back. Every slight shift of his weight made me hyperaware of just how much of him was touching so much of me.
The footsteps moved deeper into the office.
Wickett’s thumb brushed along my cheekbone, deliberate or accident, I couldn’t tell. His other arm tightened around my waist, and I felt him lean down, his mouth near my ear.
“No magic,” he breathed. So quiet I barely heard it. “I’ve got you.”
The words ghosted across my skin, raising goosebumps that had nothing to do with fear. Despite his clear command, my magic stirred. For the first time in a long time, I let a trickle of panic race down the bond to Silas.
In the darkness, pressed this close to Wickett, I couldn’t separate the hammering of his heart from mine.
Couldn’t think past the warmth of his hand still covering my mouth, the strength of his arm holding me steady, the way his breath had changed, shorter, shallower, like he was as affected by our proximity as I was.
A chair scraped across the floor.
The person, whoever they were, had settled in. Was staying.
We were trapped. Completely, utterly trapped.
And all I could focus on was the way Wickett’s fingers trembled slightly against my jaw, the way his chest rose and fell against my back with increasing urgency, the way this felt less like hiding and more like something I didn’t have words for.
Something dangerous.
Something that had nothing to do with getting caught.