6. Syneca
Syneca
Everything beautiful in the dark below is for sale, and everything for sale is bait. Admire nothing aloud. Aloud is how they learn the shape of you.
The pages had opened beneath us like a mouth, swallowing us whole, before spitting us out three feet above a glossy wooden floor. Dez was a Scrivener, the same as Ms. Deliana, only he was wearing the face of a cocky demon instead of an old bookshop owner. The same magic, but a different world.
Interesting.
I hit the ground hard. Lore landed beside me with easy grace. She’d done this a thousand times, it seemed. Dez landed last, straightening his coat like he’d just stepped down instead of plummeting through literature.
We’d left Silas to his own fate and run away like cowards.
We stood in a bookshop that smelled like old paper and dried inkpots.
Shelves stretched toward a ceiling, crammed with volumes that looked like they’d been there since the Underworld was young.
Some of the spines glowed faintly. Others whispered.
One hissed at me when I tried to read the spine.
It was so similar to the shop below our apartment, I wondered if that had anything to do with Scriveners, or if all bookshops had deranged books.
My experience had been mostly limited to Grimora.
In the corner, an old man sat in a chair that had to have molded itself to his shape over decades. He didn’t look up from his book. Didn’t acknowledge us at all until Dez dipped his chin in greeting.
The old man turned a page.
“Out,” Dez said quietly, gesturing to a door I hadn’t noticed. “Hood up. Stay close. I’ve got us shielded, but there are limits to my ability to shield you.”
I pulled the cloak tighter, burying my face in shadow, and followed him into the street with Lore close behind me. Kiamond. The reality hit me the second we stepped out of the bookshop and I couldn’t tell if I was curious enough to feel awed by it, or terrified of whatever was hunting me here.
The city was awake in a way Grimora had never been.
Music poured from doorways and windows, not one song but dozens layering over each other until the air seemed to pulse and breathe and move.
Strings and drums and piano poured over the bustling city.
The cobblestones thrummed with it, like the street had a heartbeat.
Like everything was alive in the Underworld. Not at all what I was expecting.
Vendors lined both sides of the narrow road, their stalls crammed so close together I couldn’t see where one ended and another began.
Steam rose from carts selling food I didn’t recognize, skewered meat that glistened in the lamplight, pastries that sparked when they were broken open, something that looked like fruit but I was pretty sure it moved.
The smells made my head spin. Roasted spices sharp enough to burn my nose mixed with something sweet and cloying.
Underneath it all, sulfur and smoke and the metallic tang of magic pulsing like I’d never felt it before.
Unbidden and alive and rich in the air, as if this was how magic was supposed to feel and whatever we had in Fuerlis was only a sliver of what it should feel like.
Demons filled the street. Just like Silas, Dez and Lore, where you could see the neck, three black lines marked every demon.
Some had horns like Dez, though they varied in size and color.
Some had wings. Others were more strange.
The majority of people that wandered through Dyssara had smiles too wide and nearly unblinking eyes.
Some were like that here too. And still just as unnerving as they had been in Fuerlis. I saw no marks on any of them.
“Creepy aren’t they?” Dez asked, clearly following my line of sight.
“Dez!” Lore snapped, swatting his arm.
“They’re called the Grinning Ones. Don’t let them get a hold of your bones. They need them for their runes,” he said, ignoring her.
I drew back, surprised. “You use runes in the Underworld?”
He dropped a heavy arm over my shoulder and whispered. “All the magic in your world was stolen from ours, Synful.”
Everything in me seized. The weight of his arm.
The closeness. The casual way he touched me like we were friends, like I was safe here, like I hadn’t just learned that almost everyone I’d ever trusted had lied to me, even my grandmother.
My skin crawled. My lungs forgot how to work.
Vitoria’s smile before the betrayal. Wickett’s hands on me.
And Silas, who I still wasn’t sure I could look at without screaming.
Which was marginally better than crying but that one burned most of all.
We were connected. Even now, walking through the streets of the Underworld, I could feel him. Bound to me.
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t stand here and let a stranger touch me like he had any right.
Trust no one. Don’t get hurt. That had to be my existence now.
That was how I would survive this. I ducked from under his arm and stepped closer to Lore, my voice steadier than I felt.
“First, never call me that again, and second, never fucking call me that again.”
His smile didn’t falter as he walked on. “Si warned us about the fire. I thought he was exaggerating.”
Silas had been talking about me. The unwelcomed thought curled through me, and I hated that I wanted to know what else he’d said. What difference did it make?
“Oh, Dez, whatever will you do with another woman that finds you atrocious?” Lore teased.
He swiped a hand through his thick curls, his hair slightly longer than Silas’s, I’d noticed. He grinned at another demon who passed us on the street. She blushed as she looked up at him and immediately stumbled, crashing into the man she was walking with.
“Somehow I think I’ll live,” Dez answered.
Lore grimaced. “You’re disgusting.”
A shadow swept low overhead. I flinched, stumbling back, and crashed right into Lore. A gargoyle had soared past, close enough that I could see the way its stone wings flexed like muscle, like something living wore a statue’s skin.
“Gotta watch out for them,” Dez said. “They’re friendly enough, but blind as bats half the time.”
Something darted past my head, and I ducked.
Lore caught my elbow, steadying me as the creature swooped up toward a lamppost. It was a puffball of black fur about the size of a dinner plate, with giant eyes that took up most of its face and tiny wings that shouldn’t have been able to carry it.
Aside from its notable black horns, a small bow tie adorned its neck.
“Grimmie,” Lore said quietly. “Messengers. Don’t touch their ties.”
“Pip is obsessed,” Dez said. “I think I want to get her one for Solstice.”
“How in the world does that little sprite manage to win every single man over in less than five minutes?” I asked.
“Don’t worry, Syn-der. You can win me over too,” he answered.
“I will actually kill you, demon,” I warned, moving to the side so another bumbling gargoyle could pass. Could I kill a demon? No idea. But I wasn’t above trying.
Another grimmie zipped past, this one carrying a scroll nearly as large as itself.
Then another. They were everywhere, weaving through the air with single-minded purpose, their little ties flapping as they flew.
Their presence was one of the many parallels to home.
They were like sprites and there was comfort in that, for some reason.
Our world was reborn from power stolen from this one. So it only made sense.
A vendor called out in a language I didn’t understand, holding up something that writhed in his hand. The demon next to him laughed and tossed a coin that rang when it hit the cobblestones.
We kept moving.
The buildings pressed close on both sides, their walls made of weathered stone and most had balconies of intricate wrought iron designs on higher floors so they could look out over the city.
Windows glowed from within several of the buildings, but I couldn’t see what was inside.
Just shapes moving behind colored glass that might have been stained or might have been something else entirely.
Music swelled from a doorway to my left.
Not welcoming but hungry. Like it wanted to pull me inside and make me part of whatever was happening in there.
That was what I expected of the Underworld.
Not Dez’s humor or Lore’s quiet awareness, but danger and magic so thick I could hardly breathe beyond it.
“Dez,” Lore warned, her voice low as she took another step toward me.
He moved in also, the two of them shielding me as I pulled my hood down so far, I couldn’t see in front of me.
I had no idea what they’d seen, but the warning was clear.
The streets were only safe until they weren’t.
The danger here wasn’t hidden. These weren’t people pretending to be civilized while hiding knives.
These were predators who didn’t bother with pretense.
And I was walking through the middle of them wearing a cloak and borrowed pajamas, hoping no one looked too close.
Dez pressed in, guiding me to turn down an even narrower street. The crowd thinned slightly.
“Clear,” he whispered. “You can look up again.”
I tried to ignore the fear as we hustled along.
Here, the vendors sold different things.
One man opened a book that screamed. Blades hummed lullabies as we passed.
A woman sat behind a table covered in vials, each one filled with liquid that glowed a different color. She watched us pass with narrowed eyes.
Dez stopped in front of a building that looked like all the others, but its door was arched and beautifully carved with seven figures.
Lore pointed. “The door tells the story of the day the Fury sisters found Celeste dead, went against their bargain with the four princes, and locked our world down. That’s the day we were all imprisoned.”