Chapter 26 Syneca
Syneca
When a nymph asks to borrow your hairbrush, she asks permission to dream as you. Only say yes if you would trust her with your sleeping mind.
The chair creaked as its occupant shifted their weight, settling in like they had all the time in the world.
We were trapped.
No way out.
And no way of knowing how long they planned to stay.
My mind spun through the possibilities even as Wickett held me frozen against him. Who would be in the Magistrate’s office at this hour? A guard checking the premises? One of Tiberius’s advisors catching up on work?
Or—
Vitoria.
The thought hit like lightning, hope surging through my chest with painful intensity. What if she’d come for her daggers? What if she was sitting out there right now, bold and reckless as always, retrieving her weapons from under the Magistrate’s nose?
It had to be her. It made perfect sense. She’d risk anything for those blades.
My heart raced against the cage of Wickett’s arms. If it were Vitoria, I could talk to her. Finally, after days of wondering what had happened, I could just see her. Warn her. Help her escape.
But Wickett was here. Holding me still with that iron control.
Could I knock him out? Fast enough that he’d have no idea what hit him? Did I even want to knock him out? My magic stirred in response to the thought.
Okay, so maybe I did a little.
Water could choke, could even render someone unconscious in seconds if I were ruthless enough. If I didn’t hesitate. With the vial I’d brought for protection, it’d be one thought, one decision. That’s all it would take.
Behind me, Wickett’s breathing had become carefully controlled. Professional. His body coiled with readiness for violence if it came to that.
I gathered my magic tighter, preparing to—
Something dropped onto my shoulder.
The sensation made me pause. Just for a heartbeat. Just long enough for doubt to creep in.
What if it wasn’t Vitoria out there? What if I attacked Wickett, and it turned out to be Tiberius, and we were discovered because I’d acted on hope instead of reason?
The thing on my shoulder moved.
Crawled.
Eight legs walking with methodical, horrible precision toward my collarbone.
It was a spider.
Every muscle in my body went rigid. The magic I was gathering scattered as pure panic took over. All I could feel was the creature exploring my skin, each step magnified in my mind until it consumed everything else.
My mouth opened, an instinct I couldn’t control.
Wickett’s hand tightened on my face, palm warm against my lips. His other arm locked tighter around my waist, holding me so still I couldn’t even shake the spider off.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think past the crawling sensation and the desperate need to get it off. Get it off. Get it off!
It crept lower, across my collarbone. Down toward my chest with its patient, relentless movement.
Wickett shifted behind me, and I felt his sudden awareness of the spider. It was in the slight change in his breathing, the way his entire body tensed, reading my panic through touch alone.
His thumb moved against my jaw. Slowly. Deliberately. A small circle of pressure that said I know. I’m here. Hold on.
Too late now. Too late to act on my plan. The spider had stolen my chance, and whoever was out there was already moving again.
The spider reached my upper arm, moving steadily down toward my elbow.
Then a voice shattered the silence.
“Guards!”
The roar was so sudden, so violent, that I nearly jerked despite Wickett’s iron grip.
Tiberius.
Not Vitoria. Not my best friend come to reclaim what was hers. Just the Magistrate, discovering our theft, but in his mind, too late to catch the thieves.
The crack of wood splintering was met with the sound of the broken drawer being ripped completely from the desk and hurled across the room, crashing against the wall right beside us with devastating force.
“The Phoenix was here!” The Magistrate’s voice shook with a fury that rattled the walls. “The blades are gone! She took them!”
Footsteps pounded across the floor. More crashing. Papers scattering. Books tumbling. The violence of his rage made the entire office tremble.
“Hunters! Where the hells are you!”
Silence answered him. No footsteps rushed to help. Had they caught Silas? Were they preoccupied with my familiar?
A sound of pure rage tore from Tiberius’s throat.
Then came the groan of wood, the shriek of metal, the catastrophic crash of his massive desk being overturned.
Inkwells shattered. Glass exploded. The destruction was so complete I could picture it even without seeing. His own domain torn apart by his hands.
Then, coughing.
Deep, wet, wracking coughs that went on and on. The kind that sounded like they were tearing him apart from the inside.
The fucking spider had reached my wrist, creeping across the thin skin there. I bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood, using pain to anchor myself. I’d take a million spiders over Tiberius Veyne, but right now I had to remind myself of that on repeat.
Wickett’s forehead pressed against my hair, his breath coming in short, controlled bursts that matched my terror.
More coughing from Tiberius.
Worse now. Desperate. Like his body was betraying him.
And then finally, footsteps, unsteady ones, moving toward the door.
It slammed open. Slammed closed.
We didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Just stood frozen, counting heartbeats in the sudden silence.
The spider reached my hand.
In one swift motion Wickett brushed it into darkness, then turned me to face him, though we still couldn’t see a thing.
“Stay put,” he whispered.
He moved to the edge of the curtain, pulling it back just enough to peer through. I heard him exhale slowly.
“Clear.”
He stepped out into the destroyed office. The moonlight through the windows revealed the devastation. The desk was overturned, papers were everywhere, ink was splattered like blood. The broken drawer lay in pieces near the wall.
Wickett moved toward the door.
I grabbed his arm, yanking him toward the window instead.
“Have you gone mad?” he hissed. “Opening that window will trigger every ward in the building!”
“Not if you know how the runes work.” I moved to the window, studying the patterns.
My own handiwork. “I make these things. Which means I know exactly how to work with them. Don’t get your hopes up though.
I’m not immune. There’s just a delay while it recognizes me.
In case your father asks me to enhance them.
Which he occasionally does for security,” I lied.
I pressed my palm against a rune. The magic recognized my touch and went dormant. I laced my own back door into every fucking rune I ever made. None of the wards worked on me the way they did on others. I always had a plan. An escape. Thanks to Eda Mire.
I pushed the window open. Cold air rushed in. Silas, thank the Furies, landed on the grass outside, eyes bright with urgency.
Wickett stared, then followed me out. “Clever witch.”
“Occasionally.”
We climbed down using window ledges, stonework, anything that would hold. We landed, rolled, and came up running.
Not toward Chancellery House. Too obvious. We circled the compound’s perimeter, using shadows and taking the long way around.
When we paused between the buildings, both breathing hard, Wickett pressed his shoulder against the stone, and I mirrored him. Faint moonlight filtered through the clouds, just enough to see the yard and judge our final jaunt across the open expanse of yard.
He was staring at me. Not his typical calculating assessment, but something else entirely. Something that made my breath catch.
“What?” I whispered.
“You’re smiling.” He was using that quiet, calm tone he had. “After breaking into my father’s office, nearly getting caught, stealing evidence... you’re smiling.”
I hadn’t realized I was. But he was right. The adrenaline, the success, the sheer audacity of what we’d just done... it felt like being alive.
“So are you,” I pointed out, my gaze falling across his beautiful face.
His expression shifted. A quirk on his full lips, mischief in his eyes. “Reckless witch.”
“Terrible influence!”
The moment stretched between us, weighing us down with everything we weren’t saying, what we’d never say. Then Silas’s low growl reminded us we were still exposed in the shadows, still in danger.
Wickett looked away first. “We should move.”
As he turned away from me, I noticed something I’d never seen before.
A rune, twisted into his hair.
Hair that was always pulled back and likely hid the magical stone. But that was—
Why would Wickett have needed that rune specifically? Unless...
Someone darted across the open ground, catching my attention. I stared long enough to figure out it was Riot with his massive build. What was the Guardian doing out here? And specifically not with his charge.
He paused mid-stride, turned and walked straight toward us.
I stepped away from Wickett, and hissed toward Riot, who had almost reached us, “What are you doing sneaking out?”
“The Oracle sensed you might be in trouble. She sent me.”
Too smooth? Too convenient?
“How’d you find us?” I asked as casually as I could muster.
“Aureth sees many things.” His gaze moved between us, difficult to read. “What did you find?”
Wickett tensed. I felt his hesitation. We didn’t know Riot’s true loyalties. And I was carrying weapons meant to kill the Oracle. Supposedly.
“Records. Financial discrepancies,” I said carefully. “Nothing conclusive points toward the Phoenix. No hits on DEC.”
Riot’s eyes narrowed, and for a heartbeat I thought he’d press. Demand details. Reveal himself as whatever he really was, ally or enemy.
Instead, his expression shifted. Softened. As if he remembered what he was here to do. “The Oracle asked me to tell you something. She said you’d understand. The spider was a test you passed, and that trust is a bridge built from both sides.”
My breath caught. There was no way he could know about the spider unless—
“She saw it,” I whispered. “Before it happened?”
“She sees many things,” Riot repeated, but this time it felt like the truth instead of a deflection. “And she wanted you to know she’s not your enemy. Neither am I, but we should return before someone notices us. Separately would be wiser.”
“Fastest would be wisest,” Wickett corrected, grabbing my hand as he yanked me toward the House.
The hallways were blessedly empty. We split without a word, Riot heading toward the Oracle’s quarters, me toward my own room, exhaustion pulling back every step. Though the thought was there, I didn’t look back at the Ripper as I walked away.
I pushed open my door and froze.
Calder sat in my chair, eating an apple, looking entirely too comfortable for someone who’d broken into my room. “Silentii,” I whispered, and closed the door. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough.” He took another bite, chewing thoughtfully. “Wickett’s room was... educational.”
Was I prepared for the bad news? I’d lured Wickett to me in the yard before I broke in, but in the aftermath of the night’s events, I’d forgotten Calder’s part of our plan.
He gestured with the apple. “Our favorite hunter isn’t playing both sides. Turns out his room is full of training manuals and studies on Phoenix lore. Volumes of the stuff. But nothing suggests he’s working against us.”
“So can we trust him?”
“He’ll kill Vitoria on the spot. Based on those guides, it’s been beaten into the hunters practically since birth. They know how to take down the monsters. They have a little extra strength and speed, heightened senses for it. But page after page, their true task was always hunting the Phoenix.”
“But... wasn’t the Phoenix revered before the last Burning? She never used to be hunted.”
He lifted a shoulder. “All the manuals postdate the last Burning, obviously. Nothing survived. They made a hard right turn toward genocide five hundred years ago if that’s the case.”
“Any idea about why it’s been so long between the Burnings this time?” I asked casually, hoping he actually had a theory.
“Well, if we assume Vitoria isn’t the Phoenix, maybe they’ve already killed her some time back and just never knew it. Maybe this is all fearmongering.”
“Maybe,” I whispered.
“There was a journal.” Calder’s voice went quiet.
“Hidden under a floorboard. Most of it was notes, hunting strategies, that sort of thing. It focused on the Ash. Some of the train routes up by Needlepoint Passage. But there were pages torn out. Recent ones based on the other dates. And in the margin of one page, he’d written something.
Small. Like he didn’t mean to leave it there. ”
“What did it say?”
“‘Thirty-four years of performing loyalty. How many more until I forget what anything else feels like?’” Calder met my eyes. “Performing loyalty.”
I sank onto the bed, processing that.
“Sounds like he planted that to be found.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. Hunters are cocky. He wouldn’t think anyone would have the balls to enter his room. Plus, it was hidden. A standard search wouldn’t ever come up with that.”
“Doesn’t mean we can trust him.” I wanted that to be the end of it.
Wickett Veyne, son of the Magistrate, enemy and threat.
Neat. Simple. Safe. But thirty-four years of performing loyalty kept echoing in my head, and I hated that it made me wonder if the person I should fear most might be the one person who actually understood what it meant to hide who you really were.
“No. But it means he might not be the enemy we thought.” Calder tossed the apple core into the waste bin. “Now tell me what you found tonight.”
I pulled out the copied registry information, spreading it on the desk. “Two addresses. Known associates of Vitoria’s parents. If anyone knows where she might have gone, it could be them. Or they might know something about her we don’t.”
Calder studied the addresses, his expression darkening. “The Ruby District and the Tangles?”
“Strange, I know.”
“We can’t take the team,” he said.
“I know that too.” I rubbed my face, exhaustion making everything feel harder. “But we also can’t just disappear without them noticing. They’re not going to let us go out alone, not after what happened with Crimson. Not with twenty-six days left on the oath.”
“Then we need them occupied.” Calder leaned back, thinking. “Busy work that feels important enough they won’t question why we’re not with them.”
“And how exactly do we do that?”
“I have an idea.” His mouth curved slightly. “But it’s going to require patience.”
“Patience for what?”
His devilish grin widened. “You’ll see.”