Chapter 35
Syneca
The spaces between words hold more magic than the words themselves. Listen to what isn’t said, that’s where intention hides.
Pip was already flitting around the cottage, curiosity driving her to examine every shiny object, every interesting trinket Eda Mire had left behind. She picked up a crystal, turned it over in the light, then carefully set it back down.
I stood frozen in the center of the room, overwhelmed by the weight of being here again.
The cottage was small, just a few rooms connected by narrow archways with curtains instead of doors.
The furniture didn’t match in size or design, and the walls were rough-hewn wood, darkened by years of smoke from the stone fireplace that dominated one corner.
Pip fluttered past a shelf crammed so full that books leaned against jars, and jars pressed against half-melted candles, everything fighting for space.
She picked up another crystal wedged between a cracked teacup and what looked like a preserved moth, turned it over in the light, then carefully set it back down with a scrunch to her nose.
Bundles of dried herbs hung from the exposed rafters.
Lavender, I recognized. Wolfsbane. Others I didn’t want to name.
Shelves lined every available wall space, crammed with jars of preserved things, books with cracked spines, candles in various states of melting.
A worn rug covered the center of the floor; its pattern faded to nothing but suggestion.
Everything here felt close, intimate in a way that made breathing difficult.
I couldn’t look around. Couldn’t go into that back bedroom. Couldn’t let myself imagine the horrors this cottage had once seen. Then Silas slammed into my awareness.
Not physically. But our bond, unaffected by the change in distance, and usually a steady hum of connection, suddenly blazed like someone had thrown open floodgates no one knew were closed. It was overwhelming. Intense. Like going from hearing under water to crystal clarity in a single breath.
I gasped, pressing a hand to my chest as I summoned my familiar. “Cor Meum.”
“Syn?” Pip stopped mid-flight. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just—” I flexed my fingers, pushing down the feeling.
The cottage smelled like her. Not how I remembered it from my childhood with Gran, living amongst these walls, but more recent. Like Eda Mire since she’d taken it back over after... after Gran was killed here.
But I couldn’t think about that night. I refused to let myself remember the screaming. The trauma. The way I fought Silas, digging in dirt and ash to save her, when there was nothing to be done. He’d saved me that night. And every night since.
Now this place was only lavender and old books and the particular herb blend Eda Mire used for her strange teas.
A blanket still draped over the chair. Her notes still scattered across the workbench.
Like she’d just stepped out and would return any moment to find us invading her secret space.
She’d be so pissed, and I longed for that anger.
Except I’d never see it again. Because she was dead. And we were here because there was a chance my best friend had fucking killed her.
“Wait a minute. We got out,” I said quietly, the realization settling over me like cold water. “We actually got out of the city.”
Lucy looked up from where she was examining a shelf of preserved tinctures. “Welcome to the outside. Better make yourselves comfy because if we go back, we may never be able to leave again.”
She was right, but it didn’t bring me any hope knowing that part of our team was trapped on the other side of all those hunters.
We’d escaped. By accident, by desperation, by the grace of a scrivener who’d hidden her true nature for Furies knew how long.
But Calder couldn’t dream of getting that lucky. Wickett, maybe, but no one else.
“So we don’t go back,” Pip said, though her voice shook slightly.
Lucy had moved to Eda Mire’s desk, her sharp eyes cataloging everything with that particular intensity she was prone to. Hands running over the bottles of Nocturnal Essence and Thornberry Syrup. Dreameater Drops and Elfroot Paste. She opened a drawer and went very still.
I knew what she’d found before I crossed the room to look.
Life Runes. Dozens of them. All valuable enough that possessing that many could get you killed.
Only an assassin would keep so many. Trophies. Markers of contracts fulfilled. Evidence of kills. Even though I’d lied to her face about Eda Mire’s true nature before, if I doubled down, she’d never believe it now.
Lucy plucked one from the drawer, running her finger along the carved edge. Her voice went soft, almost fragile. “He was going to die anyway.”
I waited. Gave her space for whatever was building in her mind.
“My brother. Draven.” She stared at the rune like it held answers she’d been seeking for months. “This one is mine. Well, it was mine. Twin to the rune Draven wore. I gave it to Eda Mire as payment.”
I swallowed my gasp. “You hired her?”
Lucy’s thumb traced her rune’s pattern over and over.
“He was struggling to shift. Had been for months. It started small, a delay here, a moment of weakness there. But it was getting worse. We both knew what it meant. What was coming.” She finally looked up, her eyes dry, but haunted.
“His worst nightmare was dying on that field in front of everyone. Stuck mid-shift, screaming, unable to complete the change while thousands watched.”
Like what happened at the games.
“So you...” Pip’s voice was small, uncertain.
“So I hired Eda Mire, bought him dignity instead of horror.” Lucy set the rune down. “I requested it to be fast. Painless.”
“But it was murder,” Pip said.
“It was mercy,” I argued.
Lucy’s voice hardened. “And it was his choice. He asked me to arrange it. Begged me, actually. Near the end, when the fear got bad enough. My brother was the golden child. No matter how smart I was, how hard I trained, how many people I helped... to my parents, nothing mattered beyond him and his spotlight. He was their pride, their legacy.”
“So you escaped,” I said, understanding clicking into place.
“I had to. I knew I’d spend the rest of my life being compared to his memory, being invited to honor him by being less.
.. ambitious, less sharp, less everything that made me inconvenient.
I thought claiming to search for his killer would give me freedom.
A future of hunting a phantom while my parents left me alone. ”
“But they didn’t,” I guessed.
“They signed a contract for me to join the Silverbolts in his place the same day they learned of his death. Before his body was even cold.” Her hands clenched. “Take his spot. Carry his legacy. Die on the same field he was terrified of.”
“That’s why you joined the Venatori,” Pip breathed, her wings dropping as she flew closer to Lucy.
“Yes. Because even with a death sentence hanging over me, at least I have agency.” Lucy finally looked at us fully. “I’d rather die hunting something real than spend my life performing grief for someone I mercy-killed.”
The silence stretched. Not uncomfortable. Just... heavy with understanding.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally. “For all of it. For your brother asking that of you. For the choice you had to make. For your parents. For—”
“Don’t. I’m not. He got the death he wanted. I got my freedom, temporary as it is. That’s more than most people get.”
She was right.
“Everything Eda Mire owned is mine,” I said, pulling the key from where it sat beneath my jacket. “Keep your Life Rune. I have absolutely no use for it.”
Lucy nodded once, tucking the rune away with careful reverence.
“You need one too, Syn. Since you gave me yours,” Pip said, snatching another from the drawer with the speed of a practiced thief.
I took it without words, and moved to the center of the cottage, needing to do something productive. Needing to get away from the vat of emotions smothering us. If my bond with Silas had felt that intense just from arriving here, I needed to understand what else had changed.
I reached for the magic experimentally, pulling water from a puddle outside with barely a thought. It responded instantly, perfectly, like an extension of my will rather than something I had to coax. The water surged for the window.
I gasped at the ease of it.
“Something else?” Pip flew closer, concerned.
“Nothing’s wrong.” I stared out the window where water continued to move in intricate patterns I’d only dreamed of achieving before. “My magic. It’s so much stronger here.”
If things go badly, you know where the other place is?
That’s what Eda Mire had said to me. She’d wanted me to come here. Not because the cottage held answers or safety, but because...
I turned slowly, looking at the space with new eyes. At its distance from the city. At the Bloodwood surrounding us with faint deposits of purple Erelith, fire that never extinguished, nearby. The cottage was in a place that was wild and natural, free of people’s interference.
“She wanted me away from the runes,” I said quietly.
Lucy’s head snapped up. “Huh?”
“Eda Mire. She made sure I remembered where to go. That’s why she said what she said, why she left me her bequest.” My mind raced, connecting pieces I’d been too blind to see before. “She wanted me to know there was somewhere I could go where my magic would work properly.”
“But why would your magic—” Pip started, then stopped. Her eyes widened. “Oh.”
“Grimora,” Lucy breathed, eyes doubling in size. “The overload of runes is suppressing magic.”
Pip tapped her finger to her lips. “But wouldn’t you have realized you were muting your own magic?”