1. Syneca
Syneca
When the halls of a demon’s home sing endlessly, listen with your eyes more than your ears. The walls have something to say.
Fire doesn’t care if you’re ready to burn.
Not the kind that danced in hearths or flickered on candles.
But the fire that lived beneath skin, that burned through bone and blood and every fragile thing holding a body together.
It screamed through my veins like liquid rage, destroying everything it touched, and for a moment—a blessed, terrible moment—I wanted to let it win.
I was so tired of fighting.
Gran was dead. Aureth was dead. Wickett had murdered them both while I bled out on the floor, and somewhere in the burning city I’d left behind, Calder was still trapped. Still suffering. Still waiting for rescue that might never come, because I’d failed him the same way I’d failed everyone else.
I would have let the fire have me. Let it burn until there was nothing left but ash and the faint memory of a woman who’d thought she could save anyone.
But anger was a stubborn companion, and mine had teeth.
Fury dragged me back toward consciousness like a fish on a hook, thrashing and desperate and too stubborn to die quietly.
“There she is.” A woman’s voice cut through the burning, cool as river stones. “You are dying, little one. Do you wish to die?”
The voice flowed like scalding honey, melting over my mind, filling my veins, consuming me. But no answer came.
“I can pull you back from the edge. Make the burning stop. Give you another chance to fail… Or succeed. I haven’t decided which you’ll do yet.”
Through the pain that was trying to split me open from the inside out, I forced words past my ruined throat. “Who—”
“Someone who understands what it means to lose everything and keep fighting anyway.” The voice wrapped around me like a promise, like a threat. “Someone who needs a witch desperate enough to make terrible bargains. Are you desperate, Syneca Talmyrien?”
The use of my full name, the one I’d buried along with my childhood, should have terrified me. Instead, it clarified everything into a single, simmering point of truth. Wickett wouldn’t be the end of me. He couldn’t turn my name, my destiny into his fucking victory.
“Yes.”
“Good. Then accept this: I will save your life, and you owe me a life in return. Not yours. Someone else’s. Someone trapped. Someone suffering. You’ll hunt for me. You’ll save him. Or I’ll take back what I’m about to give you.”
The words settled over me like chains. A life debt. The kind of bargain that owned you until the terms were met, binding you with magic older and darker than anything I’d ever touched. I’d be trading one prison for another, one master of death for a different kind of control.
But Calder was still trapped in Dyssara. Still suffering under whatever plans the demon prince had for him. And I’d made him a promise. One I couldn’t keep if I was dead.
“What life?” I forced the question through the burning. “Whose life?”
The woman’s voice held a sorrow I felt in my soul, like it was haunted. “Does it matter? You’re dying, little Phoenix. In approximately thirty seconds, you’ll be past the point where even I can pull you back. So choose: death or servitude.”
The pain intensified, though somewhere far away, my body didn’t move, didn’t writhe or gasp or wince, even as a thousand knives cut from the inside out, each one promising that soon, soon, there would be nothing left to hurt.
Somewhere in the fog of my mind I knew this was wrong.
I didn’t know her. Didn’t know her enemies.
Didn’t know what I'd be committing myself to. And in the back of my mind, I could hear Calder. Begging me to find peace in death rather than giving my life to a stranger. But he was trapped. Calder, loyal, steadfast Calder who’d never once abandoned me.
If I didn’t save myself, I couldn’t save him.
And I had to. However long it took. However much he suffered in the meantime.
There was only one path to saving him. Even if he’d hate me for it.
I’m sorry, Calder. I’m so sorry.
“I accept.”
“Then burn, little Phoenix. Burn from within first and rise.”
The fire surged. I screamed, or tried to, but the sound came out broken and someone else’s. My body convulsed, rejecting the healing and the hurting in equal measure, caught between dying and living and not sure which would be worse.
Flames didn’t consume me this time. They remade me.
Pain gave way to something sharp and clean, like lightning stitching bone back together, like breath flooding lungs that had long since surrendered.
The burning receded, leaving strength in its wake, power humming beneath my skin where weakness had once lived.
My heart kicked, steady and sure. No more darkness clawing at the edges of my existence.
I was whole. Healed in a way no magic should have been able to manage.
Every wound sealed, every inch mended, death itself turned away at the door.
No spell I’d ever learned could do this.
No rune, no weaving, nothing in all the craft Gran or Eda Mire had drilled into me.
Whatever this was, it was older than anything a witch was meant to touch.
A miracle, some might have called it. But I felt the truth settle deep in my bones like a brand. The bargain had been claimed, the debt inked into my soul, and whatever I’d been before had burned away with the fire.
Then something soft brushed my cheek. Feathers. Warm and familiar and safe.
My hand lifted without conscious thought, fingers tangling in the downy texture I’d known for years. The griffin. My griffin. The one constant in a world that kept shattering around me.
Relief hit so hard it stole what little breath I’d regained.
Safe. I’m safe.
The thought terrified me almost as much as the burning had.
I woke to beautiful walls and blissful silence.
My body ached in places I’d forgotten could hurt, and when I tried to move, every muscle screamed in protest.
But I was alive.
Shouldn’t have been. Wickett’s blade had opened my stomach, spilled my blood across stone as cold as the look in his eyes when he’d almost killed me. I’d felt myself dying, felt the world going dark.
Yet here I was. Breathing. Hurting. Alive with the lingering promise I’d given a stranger.
In the corner of the strange room, a massive griffin watched me with deep blue eyes that caught the moonlight. For a second, the relief was so violent it made my chest ache.
Then he shifted.
The transformation was slow. Feathers rippling into smooth skin, wings folding into broad shoulders, the powerful body compressing and reforming until a beautiful man stood where my familiar had been.
Bronze skin. Sharp features. Short, black hair perfectly combed back.
Those same blue eyes now set in a face that belonged in legends, in nightmares, in the darkest corners of stories whispered to frighten children.
Three vertical, jagged lines marked the side of his neck. Demon marks.
Silas. The name, if it even was his name, sparked something hotter than the fire trying to kill me. He’d lied. For years, he’d been at my side, silent and loyal and utterly pretending. My familiar. My protector.
My demon.
Lied just like Wickett fucking Veyne. Just like Vitoria fucking Nindle.
Memory crashed over me. The burning building. His hands lifting me. His voice promising my burning wasn’t meant for this world yet.
My heart cracked open all over again.
The relief curdled in my stomach, transforming into something that felt dangerously close to grief. Because I’d known him. Trusted him. Let him sleep in my bed and guard my secrets and be the one constant, knowing thing in my life. And he’d been lying the entire time.
“What are you?” The question came out before I could think twice about it. “Who are you?”
He tilted his head, a beautiful accent wrapping around his words. “Exactly what you needed me to be.”
The evasion made my hands curl into fists. “That’s not an answer.”
“No. But it’s what you’re getting.” His eyes tracked the movement of my hands, the tremor I couldn’t quite hide before slowly sweeping over me. “You died, Syneca. Or close enough the difference doesn’t matter. Your body needs—”
I dragged myself into a sitting position, taking in the room for the first time.
The beautiful dark wallpaper, a hint of low light pouring through the window, the four-poster bed with floral drapery.
It might’ve been nice, if not for the liar standing in the corner, crossing his arms as he glared at me.
I glared right back. “You don’t know shit about what my body needs. I want the fucking truth.”
“Then you’ll have to wait until you’re strong enough to not collapse when I give it to you.” He gestured to a table I hadn’t noticed, where bread and cheese and something that might have been fruit sat arranged on a simple plate. “You need to eat. There’s water. Drink it.”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed more. Not angry. Assessing. Like I was a problem he needed to solve through careful application of pressure. “I’ll make a bargain with you. For every answer I give, you take a bite.”
I should have refused. Should have told him to take his bargains and choke on them. But my stomach was eating itself, and I needed answers more than I needed pride. “Fine.” I grabbed the plate, tore off a piece of bread, and shoved it in my mouth. The taste didn’t even register. “Where are we?”
“My manor.”
I took another bite, chewing mechanically. “And where is your manor?”
“Kiamond.”
Another bite. “And where is Kiamond?”
“The Underworld.”
The bread stuck in my throat. I forced it down, forced myself to keep breathing, forced the next question past my lips. “How did we get here?”
“We walked.”
Heat flared in my chest. Not the killing fire from before, but something closer to rage. “That’s not what I meant.”
Pain bloomed behind my ribs. Small. Manageable. The kind of ache you could ignore if you were stubborn enough, and I’d built a life on being stubborn.
Silas lifted one dark brow. “Something wrong?”
“No.” The lie came easily but the pain sharpened, digging deeper. I locked my jaw and refused to flinch.
“Take a bite.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
He took a slow step forward, those eyes pinning me down as the moonlight kissed his jaw. “It’s only going to get worse the longer you resist. Take a bite.”
I pushed the plate away, ignoring the way the ache spread from my chest to my stomach. It wasn’t unbearable, but I was so fucking tired, I couldn’t ignore it.
“No.”
He moved again. One moment standing across the room, the next looming over me, all that inhuman grace compressed into a space too small to contain it. The air between us turned sharp and dangerous.
“Pay attention to what’s happening right now because bargaining with a demon is the biggest mistake you can make here.
” Silas’s voice dropped low, his accent even thicker than before.
“I promised you an answer, not the answer you wanted, not even the truth. And that pain you feel from our bargain is only going to get worse until you satisfy your end, or the pressure becomes too much and the bargain breaks. And while the darkness does look delicious on you, I’d advise against letting that happen.
Unless you desire becoming a member of the Underworld.
Be careful with your words, Syneca. Words are one of our many currencies. That’s your first lesson.”
The pain intensified. I could feel it trying to force my hand toward the plate, trying to make me submit, and the fury of it, the sheer audacity of him teaching me lessons after everything he’d done, made something in my chest splinter.
He straightened, and I felt the shift in the air. Felt something change in the bond that had connected us for years, that invisible thread I’d thought was trust and loyalty and companionship. In that small tether, he’d flinched.
“I release you from our bargain, Syneca.”
The words snapped the invisible chains trying to drag me toward compliance.
The pain faded.
The ache in my chest, the one that felt like mourning, like loss, like watching something precious between us die, did not.
“That’s the second bargain you’ve made since you’ve been in the Underworld.” Silas turned toward the door, his movements carrying that terrible grace I now recognized as something other than griffin. He turned the knob and pulled the door open before looking back. “Let it also be the last.”