33. Silas #2
All this time, and I still hadn't broken the habit of finding her first in any room. She caught me looking. I looked at my wine.
“You’re staring,” Dez said pleasantly, from his chair by the fire, at a volume far too loud.
“I’m thinking.”
“Mmm.” He turned a page. “Intensely. In her direction.”
Syneca had gone back to her wine with a small smile she wasn’t trying very hard to hide. Her cheeks were flushed from the fire and whatever argument she’d just won against Ram, and she looked so completely, unreasonably alive that I could hardly breathe.
I stood, picked up my glass, and took it to the kitchen.
Dez followed me less than thirty seconds later. He didn’t say anything immediately, just leaned against the counter and looked at me with that expression that meant he knew I wasn’t above punching him and he didn’t seem to care.
“You’re not subtle,” he said finally.
“I’m aware.”
“You left because she smiled.”
I didn’t answer.
He waited until I looked at him. “You’re fucked. You know that?”
I knew. I’d known since I sealed a bargain seven years ago. Knowing had never once helped.
“I’ll cut your tongue out and feed it to an Ash beast, asshole.”
He nodded, grinning slowly, like I’d confirmed something he’d been tracking for a while. “Alright then.” He pushed off the counter and headed back toward the dining room. “Just making sure we’re on the same page about where this is going.”
I didn’t sleep worth a damn that night.
I lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and thought about a kitchen table in a city called Grimora seven years ago, and an old woman with ash stained fingers who’d looked at me like she already knew the outcome of this conversation.
I’d made two bargains in my entire existence.
Two. And the first I’d made for a Phoenix I hadn’t even met yet because Alessia Talmyrien had looked me dead in the eye and told me her granddaughter was going to need someone who couldn’t be tempted, bought, broken or turned.
I’d said yes.
I was a fucking idiot.
I caught Syneca before she even made it to the kitchen in the morning. “We need to talk about the books.”
She stopped. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I know you want to go to Staren Falls and we will.
But we don’t have a book for Esara yet. Dez has written for a handful of cities in Vestra, but not another country.
” I kept my voice even. “However, one of the books we took from Thistle and Thorn is for an Esaran city. He just hasn’t been able to identify which one yet. ”
“So we land somewhere in Esara and find our way to the falls from there. That’s fine.” She paused, eyes scanning my face. “What aren’t you telling me?”
The hallway was narrow enough that I had nowhere to look that wasn’t her. “Dez has been slowly draining his power and it’s not limitless. A demon in the Underworld needs rest, a bargain, or a Taking. But rest doesn’t seem to be working here. He’s not gaining back his power at all.”
Her eyes narrowed on me. “Does rest work on you in Fuerlis?”
I knew she’d ask. I fucking knew she would. “My bond with you prevents me from being drained.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s why you bargained with my grandmother?”
“The bargain was never about that.” I kept my voice level by choice, not because I was calm.
“Demons don’t become familiars. We become weapons, we become masters, we become things that people spend their entire lives trying not to cross.
I had no way of knowing what it would do to me when I agreed to it.
” I took one step forward. “And you’ve been pulling from my power since the second that bond snapped into place, seven years ago, every single day.
You’re my stability, Syneca. And I’m yours.
That works both ways whether you like it or not. There’s your one true thing.”
The fury that came through the bond was hot enough that I felt it like a brand in my chest. She was magnificent when she was this angry, and I had enough self-preservation left not to say so. She held it for a long moment, jaw tight, eyes bright. “Then tell me why you made the bargain, Silas.”
I moved closer still, mostly because I couldn’t fucking help the pull to her when she was like this. “You were marked to burn the world a demon prince wants to rule. If he was hunting you, I wanted you first.”
“But he wasn’t hunting me. He was hunting Calder. Maybe you should have bound yourself to him.”
I fought the demonic grin threatening to come forward. “I quite like where I landed.”
That heat of anger roared as she shoved me away.
“You are the most infuriating, presumptuous, self-serving—” She stopped herself, jaw tight.
“We’re fixing Dez’s problem, right now. I’m going to need you to stop being an asshole long enough to focus on that.
He needs to bargain to refill his power? That’s where we landed?”
I took a step back from her, fighting the urge to poke the beast, just to drown in her anger a little longer.
“Bargaining with someone in this world means they’re bound by our rules whether they understand that or not.
If the bargain breaks, their soul is forfeit to a demon.
No choice of realm, no purgatory. They’re claimed by the Underworld.
” I watched her process that. “We’d be handing an innocent person to demon law without their knowledge. ”
“So no bargain for power. He needs to just take it. Draw from someone.”
“He and Calder tried last night.”
She practically shrieked. “What?”
“There are only so many options in this house. Calder was the most logical choice.”
She shook her head. “That was a decision you all made without telling me.”
“No. It was a decision two grown men made that had nothing to do with you or me. It didn’t work anyway.”
Her eyes searched mine, that anger settling back into her bones like it was born there. “Why not?”
“Calder watched demons feed from every race in Dyssara. Every kind except one.” I held her stare. “He’s charidryn. The heart stone prevents it. That’s my best guess.”
She dragged a hand through her hair. “So it’ll be weeks for Dez to recover on his own.” She looked up at me. “Or you and I could just fly there.”
“We can’t go alone.”
“Why not, you’re perfectly capable of—”
“Because every hunter in the world is searching for you and if I even suggest that to Calder he’ll try to remove my skin, and then I’ll have to kill him, and neither outcome moves us forward.”
“Then what’s the damn solution, Silas? You’ve been beating around this since you stopped me in this hallway.”