14. Silas
Silas
Leave one corner of the hearth unswept. A demon trusts a tidy house too much.
Ramiel’s summons had arrived at midnight, which meant whatever waited inside the Convergence Hall was not good. He rarely sent for people at night when he could be in his bed with better company.
I’d considered ignoring it, but the four princes didn’t send summons.
They sent consequences with a warning attached, and I’d learned the difference between the two the hard way, centuries ago, in a room not unlike the one I was walking toward now.
There were boundaries I could push, and boundaries I didn’t dare. No one would like the outcome.
Dez fell into step beside me without being asked, hands in his pockets, that easy grin fixed in place.
A woman passed, carrying flowers that bloomed and wilted in her palm.
Barely enough magic to change their color.
Dez’s eyes tracked her, then shifted to the man behind her coaxing fire through his knuckles.
“Evening,” he called to both of them. “Beautiful work.”
The woman blushed. The man tipped an imaginary hat.
“Could you keep the flirting to a minimum for a single day?” I asked.
“I’m friendly.” He nodded to a vendor, flashing that same grin. “Though I’ll admit, friendly works better when everyone’s attractive.”
“Everyone’s attractive to you.”
“Not true. I have standards.” A pause. “Low ones. But standards.”
Through the bond, I reached for Syneca. Still in the manor. Still safe. Still radiating the kind of anger that bit into my nerves every time she thought about me.
Good. Be pissed off, witch.
“You should tell her,” Dez said. The playfulness dropped out of his voice without warning.
“No.”
“Si.”
“You know I can’t do that.” I kept my eyes forward. Watching the street, the crowds, the vendor smoke curling toward stone archways. Anything but him. “People tend to want things they can’t have.”
“Every bargain has a loophole.” Dez stepped closer, avoiding a cluster of horned women selling runes. “Besides, it’s not like you bargained with a demon. You won’t have to claim a court if it breaks.”
“But I lose her. And that’s not an option I’m willing to entertain. She’s too powerful.”
Dez stopped walking. “Oh. Okay. So we’re lying to ourselves now. Got it.”
Always the meddling fucker. I turned to face him. “For once in your fated fucking life, mind your business.”
“I have many talents, but I’m not so great at that one.”
I shot him a glare. “It’s best she doesn’t know. Best she holds me at arm’s length and lets me be the villain. I’d rather she think of me as the monster than think of him at all.”
“You’re nailing the monster part, but if you told the truth…”
“No.” I lowered my voice. “Because if I did that, she might soften. Might look at me with something other than hatred. I know what I am. I know what I’d do.
If she relented at all, I’d fall at her feet and tell her everything.
Every truth I’ve been choking on. Every night I spent memorizing the sounds she makes in her sleep.
Every morning she reached for me with sleep-warm hands and I leaned into her touch like the pathetic bastard I am. ”
“That’s not—”
“But the truth would destroy us both.” I started walking again. I couldn’t stand still for this.
Dez was quiet for a long moment. “So you’re just going to suffer.”
“I’ve been suffering for years. What’s a few more?”
Seven years I’d watched her. By the fourth, I’d stopped pretending I didn’t live for the moments she smiled.
Ramiel approached us from a side street before Dez could respond, falling into step as though he’d been there the whole time.
His suit probably cost more than most demons made in a year or even a powerful Taking.
He looked entirely too pleased with himself, which meant something had already gone wrong somewhere and he was the only one who knew it.
“Brothers,” he said.
I was not in the mood for two cheerful assholes in one day. “We’re not your brothers.”
“Semantics.” He waved a hand. “I’m happy you knew better than to refuse my invitation. Expect pure entertainment this evening.”
“The answer is still no,” I said half a block later.
“I haven’t even asked yet.” Ramiel spread his hands wide. “Maybe I was going to compliment your coat. It’s nice, by the way. Wool?” He tilted his head. “Maybe I was going to inquire about your health. Tell you how devastatingly handsome you look when you brood.”
“You were going to ask me to join Ash Court.”
“Well, yes. Obviously.” That grin again. “But I was going to work up to it. With charm. You’re ruining my process.”
“Fuck your process. It’s never worked.”
He adjusted his cuffs. “One day, you’ll say yes. And when you do, the entire political landscape of the Underworld shifts.”
“I’m not that important.”
“You’re that important. You just don’t want to admit it.” He glanced at Dez. “Though I suppose having little Dezzie in our friendship is compensation enough. For now.”
Dez grinned. “Little is a strange thing to call me, coming from someone who’s had firsthand evidence to the contrary, but I am a delight, so I’ll let it pass.”
“You’re chaos wrapped in charm.”
“That’s basically what I said,” Dez quipped back.
We turned down a street that felt older than the rest of the city. The elegance gave way to something heavier. Stone that predated the veil, the courts, maybe the Underworld’s decision to organize itself at all.
The Convergence Hall rose ahead.
I’d stopped counting my visits. It hadn’t helped. The place still did something to the air in my lungs the moment it came into view. A slow, settling pressure. The way a room feels where too many people had died and the walls hadn’t forgotten.
As we got closer, music drifted from inside. A low melody with no resolution, curling through the arch of the entrance like shadows with nowhere to go. The doors were already open. Guards from all four courts lined both sides of the entrance, still as the stone columns they flanked.
Ramiel walked through first. I followed.
The music swelled and then settled as we entered, filling the circular space from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The enormous hall always felt like it took something from a person on entry.
Four thrones sat at cardinal points. Between them, the floor opened into a perfect circle of bare stone, stained with so much blood, I doubted there was a demon alive that knew its true color.
Alec sat with his fingers thrumming slowly against his throne, watching our entrance.
Darius lounged sideways across the arm of his, wearing a look of boredom that’d stopped being convincing centuries ago.
Ramiel moved to his seat and settled into it so casually, one might’ve thought we’d come for dinner and not a likely execution.
These were the moments to tread lightly. When all four had gathered. They called themselves brothers. Bullshit. Just four demons whose power was so equal and absolute the Underworld bent to accommodate them. Courts formed around that kind of strength whether you wanted them or not.
Evanoch stood beside his throne instead of occupying it.
He wasn’t alone.
Vitoria was at his left. Black hair pulled back, fire threading lazily through her fingers. The woman lived in Syneca’s apartment, had been hunted as the Phoenix, had called me a grumpy bastard more times than I’d bothered to count. And she had no idea who I was.
Calder Grimm stood at Evanoch’s right.
He was dressed in clothes that weren’t his, wearing an expression I’d never seen on him before. Emptiness.
But his gaze shifted and found mine across the circle.
And then I saw it. The recognition. The understanding. The moment everything clicked into place behind those dark eyes.
He knew.
He knew exactly who I was. What I was. And if he was under full compulsion to Evanoch, he wouldn’t have been able to hold that eye contact. Wouldn’t have been able to show that small flicker of awareness.
Something was wrong.
Or something was very, very right.
I shifted my gaze. Vitoria was still playing with fire along her fingers, completely oblivious. She’d never seen my face. Never heard my voice outside the griffin’s growls and huffs. I’d been careful about that.
But Calder… Calder was different. Calder had always looked at me like he suspected something more.
And now he knew for certain.
Through the bond, Syneca burned. She was safe in my manor with no idea I was staring at her best friend.
Alec spoke first. “Ramiel. Please explain why you brought a guest who belongs to no court. We’ve told you a thousand times, Silas should not be here.”
Ramiel pointed to the entourage gathered in the gallery. “No one questioned your choices. Besides, I bring allies. There’s a difference between boasting and winning.”
“Is there?” Darius sat forward slightly. All that deliberate boredom dropping into something sharper. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you’re flaunting power you have no claim to.”
Dez shot me a glance, but I ignored him.
They’d all tried. They knew I couldn’t be won.
Now they were fucking bitter about it. Which wasn’t my problem.
I stood with Ramiel because he was the only one I’d ever come close to giving my allegiance.
He’d earned my loyalty time and time again. The rest could fuck off.
“I’m demonstrating that power doesn’t require official allegiance.” Ramiel’s voice was light. Almost pleasant, and if I hadn’t been in such a shit mood, I might’ve smirked.
Evanoch cleared his throat, clearly hating he wasn’t the current center of attention.
A position he’d likely grown quite used to in his hidden city in Fuerlis.
“Unlike some of us, I don’t need every member of my court on display to make a point.
Though I will admit, I’ve brought something worth displaying tonight. ”
He looked at Calder.
One look. That was all it took.
Calder walked down into the damn circle.
Fuck.
He wasn’t dragged. Not visibly compelled.
He walked, measured and steady, and took his position at the center of that old stone floor.
I should have warned Dez. Not about Calder.
He knew the history there. More specifically about the lengths I was willing to go to keep him safe.
A million outcomes played through my mind in less than a second as I weighed my next moves. The music kept playing. It didn’t care.
“I’ve been away,” Evanoch said, finally lowering himself onto his throne. “I thought it appropriate to remind this Hall what they’ve been missing. And what happens when someone withholds things that belong to me.”
“What is he accused of?” Alec asked.
“The charidryn continues to place me in Dyssara when traveling through the veil,” Evanoch answered. “Not another region of Fuerlis. Dyssara, specifically. A city I cannot leave. A cage. I find that deliberate.”
That landed differently than Evanoch intended it to.
He’d said it to explain his grievance, to frame Calder as a problem to be corrected.
But all I heard was the part he’d buried inside it.
Evanoch was trapped. Whatever power he had, whatever reach, whatever fear he’d spent centuries cultivating, none of it could get him out of one city.
I kept that information exactly where it was and didn’t touch it.
Aside from those sitting on their thrones, their guards and maybe a handful of other people, no one in the Underworld knew the charidryn existed.
They knew very little about the world the Fury sisters had escaped to.
That had always been the way the princes intended to keep it.
Until they could find their path to vengeance.
“According to you, brother, the charidryn have always been difficult,” Darius said. “It’s their nature.”
“The charidryn are extinct.” Evanoch answered.
“With one exception.” He looked at Calder in the circle.
“I had them hunted. They had something of mine and they refused to surrender it. So, I took steps to acquire it. Most of them died cleanly. One child survived. Inconveniently. And the child consumed the heart stone before I could retrieve it.”
The hall was very quiet.
“It’s inside him,” Alec said, his smile growing before the chuckle.
“Untouchable while he lives.” Evanoch’s voice carried no particular frustration about this.
But it took all my control not to physically respond. No fists. No muscle flinches. Absolutely no indication I knew the man.
Evanoch continued. “He won’t take me where I want to go. I’ve asked many times. Admirable, really, how much a person can endure when they’ve decided to be stubborn about something.”
Calder didn’t move. Didn’t even blink.
“So you have a problem,” Darius said.
“I have options.” Evanoch gestured toward Calder’s chest. “I can remove the stone and test my theory that it functions without its host. I can breed him and wait for an heir that might be more cooperative. Or I can simply keep him until he decides that whatever he’s protecting is worth less than what I’m willing to do to him.
I haven’t decided which yet. Tonight was merely a demonstration of my patience wearing thin. ”
Two guards appeared at the edge of the circle and flanked Calder without touching him. He went with them. Still measured. Still steady. He didn’t look back.
I watched him go.
That was the cost of being what I was. The things I couldn’t do always outnumbered the things I could. The only choice I ever really had was which silence to swallow.
Evanoch settled back, finally deciding to look at me. “Once the remaining two Furies are dead, the veil falls. And everything that was taken from us comes home, an entire world, ripe and unguarded. Perhaps you’ll consider another hunt, Silas?”