38. Syneca
Syneca
Never apologize on a threshold. Half the words stay outside and half come in, and an apology split in two becomes a lie by dawn.
The smart thing would have been to stay at the Falls. But I’d spent most of my life making careful decisions, and it hadn’t saved a single person I loved. So, we carried on, following the pull toward a very foolish summons from a strange, old woman.
The light faded as we walked, the gold from the waterfall growing distant behind us, and by the time the cottage was close enough to make out the details, the sky had gone fully dark. No moon. Just the faint glow at our backs throwing long shadows through the canopy overhead.
The rocking chair on the porch was moving.
Empty, but pitching back and forth, steady and slow, like someone had just stood up from it or like something wanted us to think they had.
The cottage looked worse up close than it had in the painting.
The roof sagged at the center. The wood of the porch steps had gone soft with age. Every window was dark.
“Someone should knock,” Dez said pleasantly, stopping a full three paces back from the steps.
Nobody moved.
“I’m just saying. Knocking seems like the right call. Someone should do it.” He looked around the group. “Anyone. Genuinely, I’m open to any volunteer.”
“You’re a demon,” Calder said.
“And you’re the Heartless One. Everyone says so.”
Calder’s dark gaze slid to the demon. “Who’s everyone?”
“Well Silas said it once.” Dez gestured toward the door. “After you.”
Calder looked at him with a flat expression, then started up the steps. Silas moved at the same moment, one step forward and slightly left, putting himself between me and the door without any pretense of subtlety.
Calder raised his fist to knock but before he connected, the door swung open.
Warm air rushed out carrying the smell of something rich and savory, herbs and something slow-cooked, completely at odds with the dark, the empty rocking chair, the idea of a creepy cottage in the woods.
In the doorway, stood a woman hunched so far forward she had to tilt her head up to see us.
She was probably the most ancient person I had ever seen.
She said nothing. Just looked at us from beneath brows so white and heavy they nearly covered her eyes, her gaze moving from face to face with an unhurried thoroughness.
She turned and shuffled back into the cottage, still without speaking.
We shared a wary glance before following.
Dez’s easy humor melted into hard lines and sharp eyes, the demon underneath the charm sitting closer to the surface now. I’d watched him become a warrior in the span of a footstep and I was glad for it. Because Calder’s expression matched his. Silas changed nothing, simply walked forward.
The inside of the cottage stopped me.
It was three times the size it had any right to be, the ceiling high and the walls a marbled white.
The home was beautifully decorated with small, bright things everywhere, amber bottles, gilded frames, a chandelier that threw warm points of light across the polished floor.
Not a speck of dust. No sign at all that we’d just stepped through a door that had been rotting on its hinges.
The woman made her way to an immaculate dining table by degrees, each step so small it required genuine patience just to watch her slowly cross the room.
The table was already set. Six places, each one with a bowl, spoon and wine glass.
The copper pot at the center steamed and the smell of it up close was extraordinary, rich and herbed and not at all what I expected to find here.
“Sit,” the woman said, without turning around. “It’s ready.”
Pip, who'd been invisible since the falls, poked her head out.
Then she saw it.
At the sixth place setting, sized perfectly for her, sat a goblet no larger than a salt shaker. It was encrusted with tiny gold beads around the rim, a golden snake around the exterior, and filled to the top with honey that caught the glistening chandelier light and glowed amber.
“That one’s yours, little messenger,” the woman said.
Pip didn’t wait. She was across the room before the rest of us had taken a step, landing at her place setting with both hands wrapped around the tiny goblet.
The rest of us sat, though Silas moved his chair obnoxiously close to me. Then Calder did the same on the other side… As if I couldn’t have brought this cottage down with a single spell. Ridiculous.
And yet, I didn’t move away from Si. I told myself it was strategy. It had nothing to do with the way the heat of him bled through my sleeve, or that some traitorous part of me had started measuring safety by how close he was.
“How’d you know how many of us were coming?” I asked.
The woman settled into her chair at the head of the table with those same impossibly small steps and reached for the ladle. “Let’s not bother with unproductive questions.”
Calder’s eyes hadn’t left the knife at his place setting. “Who are you?”
“I’m the Keeper of the Falls… and other stories.” She served herself without hurry. “But surely you knew that.”
Dez sat forward. “From the book? You’re real?”
Her gray eyes slid to him. “Who do you think wrote that book in your pocket?”
Pip looked up from her goblet, honey on her upper lip, eyes wide with the dawning recognition. “The nipple book?” Both hands flew to her mouth the second she realized what she’d said.
“Have you finished the story?” she asked Dez.
“Yes.” The word came out flat and certain, with none of his warmth. The demon underneath the charm on full display. “The ending pissed me off.”
“Good.” She set the ladle down and folded her hands on the table. “Then you’ll have a strong basis for the only story you’ve come to hear. Let’s discuss the massacre.”
I tried to keep my curiosity hidden. I needed to know about the dragon, but if she wanted a price for her knowledge, I had no intention of letting her know how desperate we were. “You know about it?”
“I know everything about it. That’s why you were summoned here. Though, I would like to know what happened to Virella Ashby when we’re done.” She gestured to a wall of beautifully framed art, each painting showing the interior of a home. “Of all my paintings, she kept the best company.”
Pip abandoned her seat to fly over to the wall, examining the art, her hands tucked behind her back. “Are you a chronicler?”
“Furies, no.”
“A witch?” Calder asked.
Her head snapped toward Calder, eyes hardening as she moved faster than she had since we arrived. “Did you come for a story or a family tree?”
I looked at her and made a decision. She was suspicious.
Everything about this cottage, this woman, this summons through a painting in a dead witch’s house was suspicious, and I hadn’t survived twenty-seven years of being the most hunted thing in Fuerlis by ignoring that instinct.
But my life depended on what she knew. Whatever discomfort lived in my chest about the how and why of this woman’s existence was a problem for after.
“Servia,” I said quietly, and the stew ladled itself into each bowl in turn, neat and unhurried.
The woman watched me do it without comment.
“I’m sorry for the questions,” I said. “I just don’t understand how we’ve never heard of you. So few speak of the massacre, but you’ve clearly been here a long time. How is it possible no one knows you exist?”
The Keeper settled back in her chair. “Have you heard of The Grimweaver? The Stone Forger?”
“No.”
“The Singer of Last Rites? The Threadbare Saint?”
I shook my head.
“There is no reason to know of us until you need us. The Keepers exist outside the stories everyone tells. We hold the ones no one is supposed to find but everyone should know.” She picked up her spoon. “You found me when you were meant to. Not before.”
Calder’s words were slow. “I know of the Forger.”
“Indeed you do,” the Keeper said, and her voice carried an edge that didn’t invite a follow up question.
I moved on because I had to, dipping my spoon into the soup. A shot of anger ripped down my spine.
Silas.
My eyes flashed to him as he quickly took a bite before me, matching the pace of Dez. Calder hadn’t moved, but then I guessed if the demons fell to their death, then the logic was that Calder would be the assassin and Pip and I could still get out.
I stirred the stew, eyes moving back to the old crone. “How long ago was the massacre? I couldn’t find a specific time in Virella’s book.”
The woman took a careful bite of her stew. “You know of the everlasting war between the nymph and lycan races, of course.”
I nodded, again swirling my spoon. “Everyone knows they’ve been at war for ages.”
“One hundred and seventy-four years ago the nymph Matriarch and the lycan Alpha did something neither of their peoples had done in living memory. They sat across a table from one another and did not immediately reach for a blade.”
Dez sat further forward, locking in on the story.
“What began as politics became something else. As it often does, when two people are clever enough to recognize what they have in common and foolish enough to act on it.” The Keeper’s eyes moved around the table.
“They were negotiating against the hunters who were growing in numbers by the day. Both races were losing ground. They needed each other. In many ways.”
“They fell in love,” Dez said.
Silas’s glare fell upon the demon at his side.
Dez lifted a shoulder. “I told you the book was for research.”