Chapter 33 #2
Which meant one of two things would happen in the next three weeks: we’d find Vitoria and break the oath by killing her and fulfilling it, or I’d become exactly what they feared Vitoria was before the blood magic could take me.
The gods, or fates, or Furies, or whatever forces had marked me, didn’t get prophecies wrong.
Silas followed us, his claws clicking on stone.
Calder pulled me into a hug before ordering me to bed.
Once inside the room, my griffin stepped carefully around the piles of paperwork I’d been diligently ignoring, and began his nightly ritual, spinning in circles like he was trying to drill through the floor.
Once, twice, three times, continuing until he’d completed exactly fourteen rotations.
Every. Single. Night.
He finally plopped down on my bed with a satisfied grunt, taking up approximately seventy percent of the available space.
I reached down to pet him anyway, fingers sliding through the soft fur at his neck where the feathers faded away. He leaned into the touch, eyes half-closing with contentment.
Then jerked away like I’d burned him.
A low growl rumbled from his chest, his entire focus locked on the door with the kind of intensity that meant threat, danger, someone’s about to die.
Well, shit.
I was on my feet instantly. “What is it?”
The growl intensified.
I crossed to the door and yanked it open, magic ready, prepared for hunters or assassins or whatever fresh hell was coming for me now, because apparently, this day hadn’t been long enough.
Wickett stood in the hallway, leaning heavily against his own door like it was the only thing keeping him upright. One hand pressed to his side where blood had soaked through his Venatori uniform, spreading dark and wet across the black fabric.
His face was pale. Too pale. The kind of pale that meant stark blood loss. And when his eyes met mine, I saw something I’d never seen in them before.
Fear.
Oh, fuck.
“Syn,” he managed. “I need—”
His knees buckled.
I caught him before he hit the ground, barely, his weight driving me back a step and nearly taking us both down. Blood slicked my hands where I gripped his side, hot and too much, far too fucking much.
“I’ll get help,” I said, already debating where to go first. Calder? Lucette? Someone who knew what the hells to do with a hunter bleeding out in a hallway.
“Don’t.” His hand shot out, gripping my wrist with surprising strength for someone who looked half-dead. “My father will use it against me.”
He winced when he said father, the word itself seeming to cause him pain.
“Wickett—”
“Help me get down the hall.” His voice was strained but steady. “There’s a medical storage room downstairs. We can handle this ourselves.”
We. Like I had any idea how to patch up whatever had been done to him.
But I slid my arm around his waist anyway, taking as much of his weight as I could. He was heavy, all muscle and bone and stubbornness, but we managed to get moving.
Silas followed, offering absolutely no assistance whatsoever, just padding along behind us like this was a normal evening stroll.
Useless fucker.
We made it down the corridor, then the stairs, moving in painful increments. Wickett’s breathing got more ragged with each step, but he didn’t complain. Didn’t make a sound except for the occasional sharp intake of breath when the movement was too much.
The medical storage room smelled of every wound I’d ever tended, sharp alcohol, dried herbs, the metallic promise of pain. Leaving Silas in the hall, I kicked the door shut, and the sound was too final, too much like a decision we could never take back.
He bled against my side as I helped him to the table. Each drop of blood felt like borrowed time.
“Shirt.” The word scraped out of me.
“Such sweet bedside manners.” But his fingers were already working the buttons, trembling just enough to make him vulnerable.
I turned to gather supplies because watching felt like trespassing. Wolfsbane for infection, yarrow to slow the bleeding, comfrey root for the deeper tissue damage. Still, I heard fabric whisper away from skin, heard his sharp intake of breath, pain or relief, both maybe.
When I faced him, every smart thought I’d ever had abandoned me.
Silver scars wrote stories across his chest, a bibliography of violence.
The fresh wound wept along his ribs, but it was the older marks that made my chest tight.
Too precise. Too deliberate. Too many. Not just the marks from the countless witches he’d claimed to have killed, but more, beneath those.
“That bad?” His voice held an edge I recognized. The kind you develop when you learn young that showing hurt is showing weakness.
I shook my head, gathering water between my palms to clean the wound. “How many times have you had to use rooms like this?”
“Stopped counting.”
I stepped between his knees to reach the wound, and we both stopped breathing. The table height meant I had to look up at him, meant he had to look down at me, meant we were close enough that hiding vulnerability was nearly impossible.
“What happened?”
“My father happened.”
The water trembled in my hands. “He did this?”
“He had questions about the smuggling operation. About the ships.” Each word was careful, measured. “About where they were going after they left the bay.”
I moved water through the wound, and he hissed.
“Sorry,” I muttered, trying to be gentler even as my hands shook.
“You’ll need nightshade extract,” he said, his voice tight. “Blue bottle. Shelf behind you.”
I found it among the rows of tinctures, the glass cool against my palm. “This will probably hurt,” I warned.
“Everything hurts.”
Fair point.
I uncorked the bottle, and the sharp, acrid smell made my eyes water. The extract was thick, almost black, and when I dripped it onto the wound, Wickett’s entire body went rigid. His hands gripped the edge of the table hard enough that his knuckles went white.
“It has to sit,” he said through gritted teeth. “Five minutes. It’ll kill any infection and dull the pain enough to stitch.”
“Five minutes,” I repeated, setting the bottle aside. My hands hovered uselessly between us, not quite touching him, not quite pulling away.
The silence stretched. His breathing evened out slowly as whatever was in the nightshade extract began to work. The tension in his shoulders eased, just barely.
“Your father,” I said finally, because the quiet was worse than the words and he’d finally relaxed enough to seem okay. “Does he do this often?”
“Only when I disappoint him.” His eyes found mine, and the vulnerability made my chest ache.
I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know. “Did you tell him?”
When I tried to look away, his hand came up fast, clasping my jaw, forcing me to meet his eyes. Not gentle, but no one needed that.
“What do you think, little witch?”
The touch burned more than magic ever had. “I think you were bleeding because of a man who doesn’t deserve your loyalty. Even if he only has a fraction of it. People fear you because of his narrative.”
“They fear me because of my actions. Not his.” His thumb traced my cheekbone, a contradiction to his words. “I’m everything they warn their children about.”
“You’re really not.”
“Syn—”
“You’re not.” I leaned into his palm against my better judgment. “You’re the man who plays the perfect soldier so you can save the people you’re supposed to hunt.”
His breathing changed. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me like that.” His other hand found my waist, fingers spreading like he was trying to hold more of me than he should. “Like I’m something better than what my father built.”
“Maybe you are.”
“I’m exactly what he made. Weapon. Monster. The thing that goes bump in the night.”
“The thing that currently needs stitches.”
A sound caught between a laugh and groan escaped him. “Always so practical.”
“One of us has to be.”
His forehead dropped toward mine, stopping just short of touching. “This is such a bad idea.”
“The worst.” I needed an escape from this pull to him, but I also didn’t want it. Still, I tried. “How bad does it hurt?”
He managed a rare smile. “Nightshade’s kicked in. It’s better now. Not to worry, I’ve had worse.”
“That’s not as reassuring as you might think it is.”
Those endless gray eyes narrowed on me. “Are you worried, Syneca?”
I’d never heard my name sound like that before. Like pure desire. “No. Of course not.”
His fingers tightened on my waist. “Liar.”
“Prove it,” I breathed, the words coming out far too soft, far too wanting.
His thumb traced slow circles against my hip, burning through the fabric. The other hand lifted, brushing a curl back from my face, his fingers lingering against my jaw. “Tell me we’re nothing. Hunter and witch. Natural enemies. Tell me wanting you is just blood loss making me foolish.”
“Is it?”
“No.” Certain. Final. “I’ve wanted you since you stood in that crowd, removed your hood and stepped forward without fear.
Since you looked at my father with nothing but defiance and still played the perfect subservient.
” His thumb found my lower lip, barely touching.
“Since you trusted me at the docks when you had every reason not to.”
My hands had found his chest, palms flat against scarred skin that almost burned. “You know how this will end, Wickett. We can’t.”
“I know.” His lips were so close I could almost taste him. “Doesn’t stop the wanting.”
This was foolish. This was dangerous. I could not be reckless right now.
“The wound—”
“Can wait.”
“Wickett—”
“Do you know what I thought about?” His voice dropped. “When my father’s blade was in me?”
I couldn’t breathe.
“How you taste. What sounds you’d make if I touched you the way I want to.” His hand tightened at my waist. “Whether you’d push me away or pull me closer.”
Words. Find words, Syn.
“Both. Neither. I don’t—”
“I know.” His mouth inched closer, not quite a kiss, just shared breath and terrible possibilities. “This is as close as we get.”
“It has to be.”
He sighed. “But if we could...”
Neither of us moved. We stayed suspended in that thought, in that space between falling and flying. His hands trembled worse now, definitely not from blood loss.
“If I kiss you—” He started.
“Don’t do it,” I tried to say, but I’m not sure the sound came out.
“If I did, I know I couldn’t stop. That’s the problem,” he whispered, as if he were convincing himself more than me. “This is how every beautiful ruin begins. Most tragedies are born from a kiss that never should have happened.”
He winced.
“If you pass out right now, I’m going to kill you, Wickett Veyne.” I needed a breath. A moment. Several feet of distance. Because even in his delirium, he knew this couldn’t happen.
“Then maybe I’ll wait for you in the Underworld, and we can sort out our eternity there.” He paused, taking a shuddering breath. “If we lived in a world where I could have you—”
“We don’t.”
“I know.” He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes, and what I saw there, hunger and resignation and something that might have been grief, made my heart break. “We don’t.”
His hands released me with the kind of care usually reserved for broken things. The loss of contact felt like losing a little of myself.
“Let me stitch this.” I stepped back, needing distance, needing air that didn’t taste like him.
He threaded the needle himself, hands steadier now that we weren’t touching, and he was fully medicated. “I’ve got it.”
I shook my head. “You—”
“Need something to do that isn’t reaching for you.”
My entire heart dropped into my stomach as I did my best to ignore that statement. No good would come from regret.
I watched him work the needle through his own skin with practiced efficiency. No flinch, no hesitation. Just methodical self-repair while I stood close enough to touch, but far enough to pretend I didn’t want to.
“Almost done,” he said, his voice carefully neutral again.
“Take your time.”
He looked up at that, something dark flickering in his eyes. “Why?”
“Because when you’re done, I have to leave.”
“Yes.” He tied off the last stitch. “You do.”
Neither of us moved.
“But you should go.” The words were barely voiced, might have been shaped more than spoken.
I swallowed. “I—”
“Please.” He reached for his ruined shirt, not looking at me now. “If you don’t leave now, we’re going to do something we’ll both regret.”
I turned for the door, made it three steps.
“Syn?”
I looked back. He stood there, half-dressed and battle-scarred, looking at me like I was something he’d spend the rest of his life wanting and never having.
“This doesn’t happen again.”
“No,” I agreed, though it felt like an impossible promise. “It doesn’t.”
I left before my resolve could shatter. Before I could run back and damn us both.