Chapter 44
Syneca
I was born knowing the taste of ash and the weight of rebirth. Remember: the flame that births you will one day consume you, and this is not tragedy. This is the bargain we made with eternity.
My room was smaller than I expected, but that might have been because Wickett filled most of the space just by existing. He stood slightly inside the door, letting it close softly behind him, the sound muffled by the heavy, red velvet drapes and layers upon layers of linens on the overstuffed bed.
I moved to the opposite wall, running my hand along the emerald wallpaper. Needing distance, needing to think my way past a heart still racing from that look he gave me in the hallway.
There was no easy way to ask this, no subtlety that could be laced within questions I was terrified to hear the answers to.
“If I asked you to see reason,” I started, then stopped, trying to find the right words.
“Beyond the hunt. Beyond the blood oath and everything we’re supposed to want.
” I turned to face him. “If we could break the oath without killing her. Find another way. Would you consider it?”
His jaw tightened. “Syn.”
“If I asked you to.” My voice came out quieter than intended. “Because it mattered to me. Would that be enough?”
The silence was so fucking loud I couldn’t breathe through it.
“You’re asking if I’d choose you over everything I was raised to be.” Not a question. A statement of what we both knew I was really asking.
“I’m asking if you’d consider that maybe we’re hunting an innocent person. That maybe there’s more to this than we know.”
Wickett moved further into the room. “Every instinct I have says the Phoenix is dangerous. That she needs to be stopped.” He took a step closer.
“That’s what I was raised to believe. What I’ve been trained for my entire life.
And that logic isn’t wrong. It doesn’t matter to me if she tried to kill the fury-born.
It doesn’t even matter to me if she was framed for the death of the Mistress of Blades.
If she burns the world, everything is gone.
People without Life Runes die. Cities fall. ”
I could hear the lingering word in the way his voice dropped. “But?”
“But nothing I was raised to believe has felt right for a very long time.” Another step. “And the only thing that feels right is you.”
My breath caught in my throat. I was not expecting that.
“You asked if it would be enough.” His hand came up, fingers brushing my jaw with devastating gentleness.
“If your asking mattered. And the answer is yes, Syn. If you asked me to walk away from everything I’ve ever known, I’d do it.
If you asked me to question every truth I was taught, I’d do that too.
” His thumb traced my cheekbone. “Because whatever I thought I knew about duty and honor and justice doesn’t compare to what I know now. ”
“What do you know now?” I asked, completely swept away in his confession.
“That you make me want to be better than I was made to be.” He stepped closer still, crowding me against the wall. “That nothing in my life has ever felt as real as you in my arms. That I’d turn away from everything I’ve built if it meant keeping you safe.”
“You can’t just—”
“Can’t what? Tell you the truth?” His other hand found my waist, pulling me against him, reaching for my hand and sliding his fingers over the mark he’d placed on my palm. His promise that my life was his. “You asked for honesty. This is as honest as I know how to be.”
Silas made a sound from the corner, half cough, half gag, the unmistakable noise of a griffin about to hack up something unpleasant.
“Cor Meum,” I whispered, dismissing him.
The griffin huffed his disapproval but shrank to a shadow and vanished.
And then we were alone.
“After this is all over,” Wickett said, “we’ll be free.
The oath will be broken one way or another.
We won’t have to go back. We could find the witches in Noreya.
Build something there.” His forehead pressed against mine, his breath warm against my lips.
“Or we could go south to Solaire, where no one knows our names. We could go anywhere, be anything that isn’t this, isn’t hunters and witches and blood oaths forcing us together. ”
“You’re talking about running away.”
“I’m talking about choosing you.” His hands tightened on my waist. “Every day. Deliberately. Not because magic forces me to, but because I want to.”
The words should have terrified me. Should have made me push him away, reminded us both why this was impossible. Remind him that the rest of the world was just as brutal as the city we’d found each other in.
Instead, I fisted my hands in his shirt and pulled him closer.
“You can’t promise me forever when we might not survive the next couple of weeks.”
“Then I’ll promise you now.” His mouth was so close to mine I could feel the shape of the words. “Right now, at this moment, you’re the only thing that matters. Not the hunt. Not my father’s legacy. Not whatever destiny everyone thinks we’re supposed to fulfill. Just you.”
He would do it. He was going to let Vitoria walk. For me. For us.
I kissed him like I could make those promises real through sheer force of will. He responded immediately, one hand sliding into my hair, the other pressing against the small of my back.
This wasn’t the desperate panic of the cave. This was deliberate. Intentional. A choice we were both making with clear minds and open eyes.
His teeth caught my lower lip, and I gasped, feeling him smile against my mouth before he deepened the kiss. “Tell me this is a terrible idea.”
“It is.” My hands found his hair, holding him close instead of pushing away. “The worst idea we’ve ever had.”
“Good.” He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes, and the heat in his gaze made my knees weak. “Because I’m done pretending I don’t want this. Want you. In every way that matters and several that probably don’t.”
The confession broke something inside me. Some last wall I’d been maintaining between us. I reached up to lock my fingers behind his neck as I kissed him like it were my final hour and he, my last rite.
His hands were rough and eager as he gripped the clasp of my cloak and tore it away.
His fingers found the buttons of my coat, one by one, peeling it open with an agonizing slowness that made my breath stagger.
It joined the cloak on the floor, and within seconds, all of my clothing had followed.
Never in my life had I been more grateful that the Phoenix mark was only a crescent scar on my left shoulder blade.
He stepped back for a moment, his chest rising and falling as he drank me in, every inch of my naked, trembling body. My nipples hardened against the cool air, and I pressed my thighs together in a futile attempt to hide the slickness already soaking my core.
“Absolutely no hiding now, little witch,” he said, pushing my legs apart.
He wanted me bare, raw, trembling under his gaze, and Furies help me, I was.
“Now, watch.”
It wasn’t a request; it was an order, and I wanted to obey.
My gaze snapped to his hands as they moved to the buttons of his jacket, slow and deliberate, each movement calculated to draw my attention, to stoke the fire burning low in my belly.
The buttons came undone one by one. With a flick of his wrists, he shrugged the jacket off his broad shoulders, letting it fall to the floor in a heap of black fabric.
My pulse throbbed between my legs as he pulled his shirt over his head, revealing the expanse of his chest. It was a battlefield, every inch of it. Between the silver scars and most recent wound, now pink, but healing.
“Eyes here,” he growled, snapping my attention back to his face. His lips curled into a smirk, cruel and knowing.
His hands moved to the front of his trousers, and again my gaze fell.
My breath hitched, my chest rising and falling rapidly as he unfastened his belt, the leather sliding free with a hiss that made my legs tremble.
The button popped open next, a sound impossibly loud in the silence.
He hooked his thumbs into the waistband, and my mouth went dry, my tongue darting out to wet my lips as anticipation coiled tight in my gut.
He didn’t rush, the bastard. No, he dragged it out, letting the fabric inch down his hips agonizingly slow, revealing the thick, pulsing length of his cock.
When he wrapped his hand around his cock, I whimpered, the sound escaping before I could stop it.
He smirked, his fist tightening around the base as he gave himself a slow stroke, the skin sliding smoothly over the hard ridge of his shaft.
“This is what you want, isn’t it? You want to feel this inside you, stretching you open, fucking you until you scream? ”
I nodded, my mouth opening to respond, but he cut me off with a sharp, “Quiet.”
Then he dropped to his knees, hands gripping my hips with possessive intensity.
His breath was hot against my inner thigh, and I whimpered, my legs parting involuntarily.
He wasted no time. His mouth found my pussy, his tongue sliding over me as he moaned.
My head fell back against the wall, my fingers tangling in his hair as he devoured me like a man starved.
His tongue was relentless, sliding down my core with practiced ease that had my knees buckling.
He lifted my leg over his shoulder and worked my clit with a fervor that bordered on obscene, flicking against the sensitive nub in rapid, teasing strokes.
I cried out, my hips grinding against him as he fucked me with his tongue, delving deep into my cunt with a hunger that left me gasping.