16. Syneca
Syneca
Count the crows before you count your blessings. The crows will tell you how many of those blessings are borrowed.
The compulsion dragged me down the hall like I was on a damn leash.
My feet moved without permission. One step. Another. I tried to stop. Pain flared through my chest, sharp enough to make me gasp. The new bargain wanted completion. And something deep within me wanted vengeance. This was yet another betrayal. Silas was a monster.
“Syn!”
Pip appeared at my shoulder, wings beating frantically. “Are you okay?”
“No.” The word came out strangled. “I can’t stop.”
Lore caught up seconds later, slightly out of breath, slowing to match my pace. “For what it’s worth, I’d light him on fire next.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled. Almost.
“Can I—” I tried to turn around. The pain spiked, sharp enough to make my vision blur. “—break it?”
She shook her head as we continued down the corridor.
“Sorry, but bargains have rules. The terms have to be clear, all parties have to agree, and trying to go against a one-sided bargain like that only results in pain. Never make a one-sided bargain. If it’s a two-sided bargain, where you both agree to give and take, they have different consequences—whatever you agreed upon. Mostly. Demons love loopholes.”
My throat went tight. “So I’m just supposed to obey.”
“That is the lesson, yes.” Lore’s voice softened as she tucked her long black hair behind her ear. “Eventually he will release you. It’s so strange though. I’ve never seen Silas bargain with anyone.”
I rolled my eyes, shuffling toward the bath. “I’d believe you if he didn’t have a very damning track record and a shitty attitude.”
“Fair,” she said, staring down the hallway like she was trying to piece together a mystery.
The door to the baths swung open without anyone touching it. Fucking sentient house, I was sure of it. Stairs descended into warmth and steam. Pip darted in first. The compulsion pulled me forward until I stood in a room that was all stone and water and heat.
The pool sunk into the floor, large enough to swim in.
Steam rose from the surface, curling toward a ceiling lined with some kind of luminescent crystal that cast everything in soft blue light.
A fireplace crackled in the corner, flames dancing across logs and I couldn’t help but scoff at the fucking irony of it.
The second I stopped moving, the pain grew.
I sagged against the nearest wall, breathing hard.
“Okay.” Lore moved to stand in front of me. “Listen. You have maybe five minutes before that compulsion decides you haven’t bathed fast enough.”
“Great.”
“But while you’re here—” She reached into a pocket and pulled out several smooth stones. Black and unmarked. “Take these.”
I stared at them. “Runestones?”
“Blank runestones,” Pip said as she circled above the bath water.
Lore pressed them into my palm. “Use your magic as you always have. Don’t try to do what Silas said. Just trust yourself.”
Pip landed on my shoulder. “You’re not trying to do something you’ve never done. You only need to remember. It’s like writing with ink in a different color. Everything is the same, you just need a different inkpot. That’s simple enough.”
Lore’s expression softened. “Even though you feel like you’re in the dark, you’re a beacon of light. You just have to remember how to open your eyes. Once you figure out the small connection, you’ll be done with all of this and everyone will back off.”
Something in my chest loosened. “Thank you.” And I meant it because this was something I could do. I knew runes.
She nodded. “We’ll be in the study unless you burn the place down. Good luck.”
As they left, I set the runestones along the edge of the pool, watching them catch the warm light from the fireplace. But the flames were dying as if something were tampering with them.
Fucking Silas… or this house.
The compulsion pulled at me. I needed to bathe. That was the demand.
I stripped off the sweater, letting it fall to the stone floor.
The trousers and boots followed. Each piece of clothing felt like peeling off armor I’d been wearing too long.
The water was almost too hot when I stepped in.
But as I sank deeper, letting it rise to my shoulders, the heat seeped into muscles I hadn’t realized were tense.
My body unwound despite my anger. Despite everything.
The warmth was a gift. One I knew Silas hadn’t meant to give. He was too angry for that. Too damn selfish.
Except... was he?
He’d kept me safe. Consistently. Put himself between me and every threat before I even knew it existed. And now he was hiding me in his manor. Shielding my power with his own. Exhausting himself and Dez to camouflage what I was while I sulked.
Maybe I was the selfish one.
Every moment I refused to learn control, I put them all at risk. All because I was too angry, too hurt, too proud to fail in front of everyone again.
Si couldn’t see himself clearly. Couldn’t see how his control pushed me away instead of protecting me. But I could see myself. And I didn’t like what I saw.
I dragged a finger across the stones, tilting my head back, letting my curls sink into the water as the flames continued to fade away.
I could be selfish and wronged at the same time. But I had to stop dwelling.
My first instinct was a circle. The way I’d grounded every serious weaving since I was a girl, the craft drawn out around me and into a ring that held the magic close, giving it somewhere to live.
I didn’t need salt or chalk to cast one.
I never had. A circle answered to intention same as anything else, though it would’ve held stronger with the proper things laid down.
So I tried. Closed my eyes, reached for the power, and began to picture the magical ring weaving out around me the way I had a thousand times.
Nothing took.
The spell slid off the Underworld stone like water off glass, finding nothing to root into.
This wasn’t my ground. Wasn’t my realm. The circle had no earth here that would answer to a witch, and the harder I pushed, the more it scattered, until I let it go and opened my eyes to runestones and steam and the dawning understanding that the old ways weren’t going to save me here.
I let myself float for just a moment in the steam and silence. Magic was second nature to a witch. It’s who I was. I’d drawn on fire before. Not the way he’d described, pulling from my center, reaching for some nebulous internal well. I’d just... done it.
I didn’t need to pull it like Silas said.
I only needed to remember what it felt like to be myself.
Not what everyone imagined me to be. Not what I’d shown everyone I was.
Just... me.
I closed my eyes, sinking deeper than Gran’s warnings in my mind. Deeper than the lessons about hiding. Deeper than the fear that had lived in my bones since I was old enough to understand what the Phoenix mark meant.
I pictured my mother.
Her face came to me in fragments. Curly hair like mine. Eyes that crinkled when she smiled. Hands that were always warm. She used to whisper to me at night. Words I’d forgotten and comfort woven with fire that never burned, just warmed, just made me feel safe.
You are made of flame and fury, my love. Never let them make you small.
She’d brush my wild curls. Tie ribbons into my hair while I practiced spell work at the kitchen table. Watch me cast with patience that came from genuine love instead of obligation. With pride and not fear.
The kitchen always smelled of her work. Drying bundles of yarrow and mugwort strung above the window, jars of salt and crushed root lining the sill, her hands stained with whatever she’d been grinding that morning.
She’d taught me the way her own mother taught her.
Craft passed down through women’s hands, hers to mine, the way it always had been.
Not just in runes or whispered spells, but a connection to the earth that only the witches would ever understand.
I remembered my first spell circle. The way the fire had answered. Not because I’d pulled it or commanded it. Just because I’d asked, and it knew me, and it came. Furies, the look on her face. Pride. Joy. Everything I’d pushed away when Gran had forced me to hide it and forget it.
She’d done it to protect me. I knew that. But this disconnect was the cost. And that debt was paid now. I opened my eyes and picked up the first runestone. Then I started weaving. Not with tools. With magic. Letting fire etch the marks I knew by heart into the smooth surface.
I’d been weaving runes since meeting Eda Mire. But there had always been a connection with her. Something that reminded me of my mother. Of a bond that felt older than the years we’d known each other.
Thinking of Eda Mire made me think of Vitoria. The sister I’d thought I had. The friend who’d betrayed me. My hand moved to my stomach. Where there should have been a scar from Wickett’s blade. Where he’d stabbed me and smiled while doing it.
I thought of his betrayal. How I would have turned to Silas for comfort.
But that was gone too.
Because he’d betrayed my trust in different ways. Let me believe I knew him when I didn’t know him at all.
The runestone in my hand grew hot.
I kept weaving. Kept remembering. The hatred that followed me. The oppression of every witch in Fuerlis. The chants for death in the Nexus arena, the scowls, the guards that put their hands on me. The knife to my throat in the middle of my own home. I let the anger build instead of pushing it down.
Vitoria’s betrayal. Wickett’s blade. Silas’s lies. Gran’s death. Aureth’s sacrifice. Calder’s capture.
Every loss. Every wound. Every time I’d been told to be smaller, quieter, less.
The water started to boil but I couldn’t feel my own heat. Steam rose in thick clouds. The runestone turned red-hot in my palm, but it didn’t burn. Just pulsed with magic that matched the fury building in my chest.