26. Syneca
Syneca
If your bread won't rise, a nymph has set her foot against your door.
His power hit like a shockwave.
The air recoiled, pulling back before slamming forward with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs. Silas didn’t speak. Didn’t lift his hands or draw a circle or whisper an incantation the way almost every spell I’d ever known had to be delivered.
He just willed it.
And the ground shook.
Not a tremor. An earthquake that split stone and shattered the foundation. The floor cracked open, fissures racing outward in jagged lines that tore through marble and wood and runes alike. The walls groaned. The ceiling bowed. There were only seconds to breathe before we were crushed.
I held Pip tighter against my chest as Silas’s magic fought against the building threatening to come apart around us.
Even the suppression magic, even the Aegis runes weren’t enough to contain Silas.
In one second, the Chancellery literally cracked in two.
Silas shifted.
The griffin erupted from where the man had been standing, massive and terrible and beautiful all at once.
Wings spread wide as the building collapsed inward.
He wrapped himself around our group, feathers and muscle and claws forming a barrier between each of us and the tons of stone raining down.
He’d break himself protecting us and there was nothing I could do to protest. There was no time at all.
Darkness swallowed us whole.
I could hear the destruction outside his wings. The crash of rubble. The groan of supports giving way. The shriek of metal twisting. But inside, pressed against his body with the others huddled close, there was only the sound of our breathing and the steady thrum of Silas’s unshakable heartbeat.
He held us until the noise stopped.
Then he drew his wings back.
We stood in the heart of the rubble. What had been the Chancellery was now a crater, stone and debris scattered across the courtyard in every direction. Dust hung thick in the air, making it hard to see more than a few feet ahead.
Silas shifted back to his demon form, bronze skin and sharp features emerging from the griffin’s shape, completely unharmed.
“We have to get out of Grimora. Now. There’s no way the hunters won’t come running after that.
” His eyes fell to my hands. To Pip, still curled against my chest. “It’s possible they’re already on their way.
I don’t know where they’ve been, but I’m fairly certain the Ripper might have some feelings about us crumbling his father’s legacy. ”
I looked down at the sprite in my arms. To the paleness of her skin and lack of luster in her wings.
Thank the Furies and every thread of fate, she was still breathing.
“I don’t give a shit about him. We can’t leave.
We need to take Pip to her family. Maybe there’s a sprite healer who can help her. ”
Silas shook his head, though his eyes were softer than I’d ever known them to be. “That’s the worst thing you could do for her right now.”
“Finding a way for her to heal is the only thing I can do for her right now.”
“Sprites are built mostly from magic. When the Aegis activated and tried to crush the power from everyone in the building, she was the first affected because she was the smallest. Her entire body is magic trying to hold itself together.” His voice was calm and logical.
“If you take her to the Tangles right now, you’re taking her into a district packed with sprites who are going to see what happened to her and panic.
And in that panic, someone’s going to try a healing spell that could make things worse, or we’re going to run into the sprite that was in this fucking building and he’s going to initiate the Circle network that could be reporting to Wickett Fucking Veyne and we’re going to have hunters on our ass by the time the sun comes up. ”
I stared at him.
“She’s okay,” he continued, softening. “But she’s going to need recovery time. And there’s no better guard for her than us. I don’t trust anyone else with her. And if we have to run? If she wakes up and we’re not there, she’ll be crushed differently. That’s not the right choice.”
Ramiel stepped forward, his voice cutting through the tension. “This isn’t the place to discuss next steps. I need to get away from here to get the disguises back up. Where can we lay low until we have a plan?”
“Not in this fucking city,” Dez said flatly. “I need to get to the scrivener’s shop so I can check her book inventory. Then we’re leaving.”
“Noted, but where are we going?” Ramiel asked.
Calder pulled the paper he’d taken from Eda Mire’s ledgers out of his pocket. “I might have an option, but we need to see if we can get there quickly.”
With Pip’s small body cradled in my arms, we began to run.
Night had settled fully over Grimora hours ago, and for some eerie reason, no one was out on the streets, as if the disappearance of their leader left the entire city standing on the edge of fear.
Glancing up at the banners still floating in the sky, I wondered how hard the hunters scoured the city once that fucker realized he hadn’t killed me.
What had they done to these people to make them all hide behind their closed doors?
A sliver of me found something just in the fact that they were finally living the way witches had for ages, afraid and hiding. But the part of me that hadn’t been completely shattered by betrayal just felt sad for them. They didn’t deserve this any more than we had.
“How long until you can get everyone’s illusions back up?” Silas asked Ramiel as we rushed through the damp streets, the only sound the cadence of our boots against the cobblestones.
“Give me distance from that damn building and ten minutes,” the demon prince answered.
We raced through the Ruby District, following Calder’s lead as he wound through familiar streets toward Thistle and Thorn.
The scrivener’s shop sat tucked between a tailor and a shop that sold what they claimed was preserved moonlight in tiny glass vials.
The gold sign above the door swung gently in the wind.
Calder pushed the door open and we stepped inside.
The shop was exactly as I remembered. Shelves stretched from floor to ceiling, packed so densely with books that they leaned inward, creating narrow corridors that invited exploration.
As we stepped inside, an old rune I’d made for Deliana years ago for Yule ignited the floating candles drifting through the air, their flames casting warm light that danced across leather spines and gilded titles.
The smell hit me immediately. Old paper and ink and a trace of our apartment up above that would never be home again.
As always, some books hummed softly from their place on the shelves.
If you got close enough, others whispered to one another in languages I didn’t recognize.
A ladder on wheels sat against one wall, enchanted to move on its own when someone needed a book from the upper shelves.
Near the back, a reading nook had been carved out of the chaos, complete with a worn armchair and a side table that always seemed to have a fresh cup of tea waiting, even when no one had made any.
I wondered if the tea would help Pip. But then I could no longer trust a single thing Mrs. Deliana had left behind.
Calder went immediately upstairs, no doubt heading for our old apartment. He was never one to waste time.
Dez looked around with a low whistle. “This place is incredible.”
“The book that she used,” he said, turning to me. “Do you remember what it looked like?”
My voice felt like it was somewhere else. A million miles away in a lifetime where a glittering sprite giggled as she cuddled up to a griffin that was only ever what he seemed to be. “It was fairly large, she threw it on the floor and it opened and we jumped in. Sorry, that’s not much to go on.”
My focus stayed locked on Pip. Her breathing seemed far more shallow now. Too shallow. Each tiny rise and fall of her chest took longer than the last, and panic clawed its way up my throat.
There had to be something. Mrs. Deliana must’ve kept healing texts somewhere in this shop. Or maybe just honey. Pip loved honey. Maybe that would help. Maybe—
I couldn’t trust anything in here. Couldn’t trust my own frantic thoughts.
With one hand, I gripped the edges of my cloak, feeling trapped in my own body. I needed to do something, anything, but I had no idea what.
“Syn,” Silas said quietly. “Let me take her. You can help Dez search.”
“No.” I carried Pip to the counter and carefully removed my cloak without jostling the sprite. Laying the fabric down gently, I set her on top of it and pressed my ear close to her chest, listening for her heartbeat.
I couldn’t hear anything.
No.
No no no.
The world tilted. My hands shook as I pressed closer, desperate to find even the faintest flutter of life. Nothing. Just silence where there should have been the steady rhythm of the most innocent soul I’d ever known.
This couldn’t be happening. Not Pip. Not her. She’d survived hunters and caves and demons and the fucking Underworld, and now she was dying because I’d made a foolish bargain to save my own life.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think past the roaring in my ears.
“Silas.” My voice broke completely. “Silas, we have to go back to the Underworld. I need to make another bar—”
He cut me off and I knew it was so Ramiel couldn’t overhear, placing his hands on both of my arms as he stared down at me with far too much calm, too much control.
In that single look, I felt the shatter of my heart.
The ache burned through my chest, raw and vicious. My throat closed up so tight I couldn’t swallow past it. Tears blurred my vision before I could stop them, hot and stinging and inevitable.
Pip had trusted me. Followed me into that building without question because she believed I’d keep her safe. And I hadn’t. I’d failed the one person who’d never asked me to be anything but myself.