2. Syneca
Syneca
A house with a pulse has opinions. Walk its halls softly, and never let it overhear what you’d hate to lose.
Istood at the unlocked door, staring at the handle like it was a serpent ready to strike, like walking out into the demon’s lair would destroy me.
Let it.
I’d taken harder blows from hands I’d once trusted to hold me.
As if the home could sense my hesitation, the door swung open before I could touch the knob, giving way to a hallway bathed in twilight.
Someone had dressed me in soft, yellow pajamas, a loose top and flowy bottoms, the fabric draping past my wrists.
I had no idea whose they were, or who had put me in them, but I hoped it wasn’t Silas.
It probably fucking was. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d changed in front of my familiar.
He’d seen everything many, many times. Every insecurity, every naked spin in front of a mirror staring at freckled skin, every curse at my tangled, red curls.
He knew it all. And I hated him for the violation of it.
Magic lingered along the walls. Simple traces of light burning in deep violets bleeding into silver, amber shot through with green, trails of blue, of comfort and decadence.
Unfamiliar voices drifted from somewhere ahead.
I paused, the knot in my stomach growing as I realized I was about to face off with a race I knew so little about.
I’d trusted Silas to this point, but I’d trusted Vitoria too, and she’d ruined everything.
I followed the sound of the chattering voices, not angry but clearly having a friendly argument over something.
The hallway curved, and I passed an open doorway where music spilled out, something low and aching that made my chest tight.
No one sat at the piano carved with dragon scales.
There were no other instruments. Only a silver box, nestled on a side table of the room, humming to itself like it had been waiting centuries for someone to listen.
I kept walking, ignoring the click of the door behind me as if the house had somehow known I was done with that room.
The walls were papered in deep burgundy with raised gold patterns, smooth beneath my fingertips.
When I trailed my hand along them, lingering just to buy myself time, they were pulsing, as if this home had a heartbeat.
Or maybe it thrummed to the rhythm of the music box in the room I’d passed.
The scent of the fresh bread Silas had forced me to eat filled the entire corridor.
I hadn’t noticed the taste with him staring at me the way he had, demanding my compliance, but now I wondered if it truly was as rich as the manor smelled.
Still, I followed the voices, stopping just outside of a cracked door.
When I peeked in, the room, a study maybe, looked like someone had stolen a library from three different centuries and forced them to coexist. I’d never seen this many books in one place, not even in Thistle and Thorn.
But I supposed when you lived in a world where everything burned, there was no time for anything to feel ancient.
I should have turned around. Walked back into that room and locked the door and figured out what the fuck I was supposed to be doing.
I was in the Underworld. The actual Underworld.
I’d made a bargain with someone whose name I didn’t even know, bound myself to save a life I knew nothing about.
And the one constant I’d had for years, even longer than Calder, my griffin, my protector, had lost all my trust.
The betrayal sat in my chest like a stone. I’d lied too. To everyone else. I’d hid my nature. But that was survival. This? This was deceit. Manipulation. This was a fucking demon.
Something pulled at me through the bond I’d thought was wrapped with loyalty, tugging me toward where I could feel Silas like a compass point.
The bond hadn’t broken when he’d revealed himself.
If anything, it felt stronger now, more insistent, and I hated it.
Hated that my body wanted to go to him even while my mind screamed that he was a liar, a demon, something that had worn my griffin’s face and made me believe I was safe.
I could leave. Walk out of this manor and—
And go where?
My hands curled into fists.
Fine.
If I couldn’t leave, I could at least get some answers. Without a bargain.
Lesson learned, asshole.
I stepped inside the room like I owned it, chin high, eyes scanning anything I didn’t want near me.
A massive fireplace dominated one wall, carved from black marble and crowned with a mantel that held what must have been an altar of tapered candles.
And in the center of it all was a low table where two people, their demon marks casually gracing their necks in three jagged lines, bent over a mirror arguing with the passion of people who’d likely had this fight a hundred times before.
I let myself take in the marks, realizing I’d seen them for the first time on the neck of ‘the Master’ in Dyssara.
I’d jumped to the conclusion that he was a prince because of the way he’d been worshiped.
Because of the way he’d commanded the room.
But what if he wasn’t? What if every demon was like that? Collecting people…
“—telling you, Falstaff’s defense is collapsing,” the woman said, her accent rolling through the words. “Look at the formation.”
“That’s a feint.” The dark-haired man leaned closer, grinning. His accent matched hers, that same liquid warmth that turned syllables into something musical. “They’re baiting Corsair into overcommitting on the left flank. Watch—”
In the corner, nearly hidden in shadow, Silas sat in a wing-backed chair with a newspaper held high. He didn’t acknowledge my entrance. Didn’t even move. But I felt the bond tighten. Felt his awareness of me like a physical touch.
“Well,” the man said without looking away from the mirror, his grin widening. “Look who’s back from the dead, so to speak.”
My anger spiked. “Excuse me?”
He finally turned, and I got my first good look at him.
Broad-shouldered, warm skin, handsome in an easy way that probably got him out of trouble as often as it got him into it.
His black shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, just enough to show the tattoos crawling up his chest and curling along those three marks on his neck.
Small black horns peeked through his dark, curly hair, curving slightly back from his head.
“Dez,” he said by way of introduction, then gestured to his companion. “That's Lore.”
The woman looked up. She was stunning, with sharp features and gray eyes that assessed me in a single glance.
Her black hair was pulled back in a way that looked effortlessly elegant, and the leather she wore fit her like a second skin.
But there was warmth there too, in the slight curve of her mouth, the way she set down whatever she’d been holding to give me her full attention.
“Welcome back to the living,” Lore said, her accent softer than Dez’s but no less present. “We were starting to wonder if you’d need final rites soon.”
I ignored them both, shifting my glare to Silas.
He still hadn’t looked up from his newspaper.
The bond pulled like it wanted me to go to him the way I used to when he was just a grumpy griffin and everything made sense. I wanted to scream. And probably cry. I think I wanted to cry more than anything.
Instead, I stalked across the room until I was standing directly in front of his chair. “Who did I make that bargain with?”
The newspaper didn’t lower.
“The woman,” I pressed. “The one who saved my life. Who was she?”
“Wait.” Dez sat up straighter, the game in the mirror forgotten. “You made a bargain here? Already?”
I glared at the demon who thought he had a right to comment on my choices. “Mind your business, demon.”
His dark eyebrows shot up, but he held up his hands in surrender, though his easy grin never faltered.
I turned back to Silas. “Why did you lie to me?”
Nothing.
“Tell me who you really are.”
The newspaper rustled. That was all it took. Something snapped in my chest and I reached forward, yanking the newspaper from his hands, and throwing it into the fireplace. The fire devoured it instantly, edges curling black before the whole thing went up in a burst of flames.
Silas finally looked at me and I thought maybe, at that moment, my heart had stopped. Those blue eyes, the same ones I’d stared into a thousand times, didn’t hold anger or regret, but rather something that made the bond between us hum.
“Feel better?” His voice was calm and controlled. That same accent the others had, sounded like a fucking purr from him, though I’d bet the calm was forced.
“No.” I crossed my arms to keep my hands from shaking. “I feel like I’ve been lied to for years by something that pretended to be a damn cat. Or bird. Whichever offends you more.”
“I never pretended.” He stood, and I hated that I had to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. “Everything I did as your familiar, I did because I had to. The form I wore doesn’t change that.”
“The form you wore was a lie.”
“The form was convenient.” He took a step closer, and the connection flared hot between us.
I hoped that meant he could feel my anger and not the sadness I was hiding within it.
Silas slid his hands into his pockets as he stared down at me. “The protection was real. The loyalty was real. The years I spent keeping you alive were real.”
My voice rose despite my efforts to control it. “While you were what? Spying on me? Reporting back to whoever owns you? Waiting for the right moment to—”
He sighed, still far too calm. “No one owns me. And I have never…not once, betrayed your trust in anything that mattered.”
“I think someone owns you,” Dez said, his tone far too jovial.
I whipped around to glare at him just as Lore smacked him on the back of the head.
“Don’t talk to me,” I snapped before spinning back to Silas. “You’re a demon!”
“Yes.” No hesitation. No apology. “I am.”
Lore cleared her throat from across the room. “Perhaps we should give you two some privacy—”
“Stay.” Silas didn’t look away from me. “Syneca needs to understand where she is. What the rules are. And she won’t believe it if I’m the only one explaining.”
“Smart,” Dez muttered. “Given that she just set your newspaper on fire and I’m not allowed to talk to her.”
“I’m standing right here.”
“I noticed.” But his grin had softened into something almost sympathetic as he rested an arm on the back of the couch, shifting to face me. “Look, I get it. Waking up in the Underworld after your… wait. Did she just call you a cat?”
“She did,” Lore said, biting her bottom lip.
Dez’s nostrils flared as he tried to hide the grin. “Your kitty cat turns out to be a demon… that’s a rough morning. But Silas isn’t lying about keeping you safe. Everything that’s happened since you got here? That’s been about protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From being noticed,” Lore said quietly. She stood from the table, moving with a grace that had likely been practiced for centuries, though she didn’t look older than maybe twenty-five or thirty. “You’re powerful. In a realm where power is valuable. You’re drawing attention you don’t want.”
Silas’s voice dropped into something far more gentle, inching toward condescending. “Which is why you need to listen very carefully to what we’re about to tell you.”
The bond pulsed between us.
I turned back to the liar, staring up at his obnoxiously beautiful fucking face. “Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?” he asked like he was trying to force me to acknowledge just how deep our connection ran.
“I’m bound to you because of…” Shock hit me like a tidal wave. “You… you bargained with an old, helpless witch?”
“Alessia Talmyrien was many things, but helpless was never one of them.”
I could hardly breathe. Could barely hear myself ask the next question. “Did you know I was the phoenix when you bargained for a bond with me, Silas?”
His silence, the way his eyes shifted between mine as he looked down at me with a depth of pity I didn’t have the capability of acknowledging at the moment, said far more than any words would have.
I wanted to run. Wanted to storm out of this room and this manor and this entire cursed realm.
But I had nowhere to go.
So instead, I lifted my chin, met Silas’s eyes, and buried that fury so deep, I knew when I saw it again, everything would burn. His realm. Mine. Even the space between the two wasn’t safe from that kind of wrath.
“I need you to listen,” he said, reaching until his hands nearly touched me before he pulled them back.
“I am bound to protect you. There’s never been a lie between us.
You can be as angry as you need to be. And I’m sorry you feel misled.
But spare me the betrayed act for one second, because you, of all people, understand what it means to hide who you are from everyone.
To carry a secret so heavy it bends your spine.
You did it for your whole life. I did it for you.
Demons shouldn’t be in Fuerlis and you were being hunted by worse fates than whatever that piece of shit hunter had in store for you. ”
I said nothing. The sheer mention of hunters sent me into a numbness I wanted to let consume me.
He stepped away. “This realm has rules. Old ones. Ones that will kill you if you don’t understand them. So hate me. Yell at me. But you will let us explain how to survive here first. One conversation. And then you can burn it all down if you still want to. I couldn’t care less.”
I dragged a single breath into my lungs, and took three, careful steps toward a chair that matched one he’d been using, before sitting. “I’m listening.”