39. Syneca
Syneca
To read the weather of a coming year, watch which way the smoke leans on the longest night. Toward you means lean harvests. Away means lean company. Straight up means the year hasn’t decided, and neither should you.
Ihit the ground rolling, ash in my mouth, the impact jarring enough to white out my vision for a half second. I came up on my knees and reached for Silas through the bond on pure instinct, pulling water from the lake the falls poured into.
“Dez.” Silas’s voice came from somewhere to my left.
“Working on it.” Dez’s shield went up around us, not that I could see it.
There was pressure in the air that pushed outward in every direction and bought us seconds. The beasts hit it, one from the left and one from directly ahead, hard enough that I stumbled backward into Calder’s chest.
“Pip?” I asked.
“Here.” Her voice came from Calder’s pocket, tight and small but present.
The shield buckled under a third hit and I knew it was because Dez was trying to preserve his power to get us out.
“Glacies vinculum.” Ice cracked outward in a ring. Something screamed to my left. I heard Silas go toward the sound in the dark. No spell. Just the controlled violence of a demon who didn’t need one.
Another came from the right. I turned toward it. “Aquaris tutela.”
The sound the Ash beast made, running directly into the boiling water wall, was shrill enough that I stopped trying to identify what we were fighting and focused only on how the hell we were going to get out of this.
Another snarled on impact and Dez’s shield broke entirely.
“Run,” Silas commanded. “Get back to the cabin.”
We ran. Because we’d never find each other quickly enough in the dark to use a book or even Calder’s power. We needed light. And if I set the damn forest on fire to provide it, every beast from here to the sea would descend and separate us.
The cottage materialized out of nothing, the one fixed point in all the chaos. We hit the door and piled through. Silas slammed it shut behind us.
The sounds outside continued. Then slowed. Then stopped.
We stood in the cottage staring. Not at the door holding back the threats.
Not at each other. At the fucking cottage.
Because the woman was gone. The table was gone.
The chairs, the chandelier, every amber bottle and gilded frame and gold thing that had caught the candlelight.
All of it, gone. The walls were bare. The floor was empty.
Only the fire remained, burning low in the hearth, throwing orange light across nothing but an abandoned cottage covered in dust and cobwebs.
“She’s just gone?” Dez asked, spinning in a circle. “What kind of weird ass magic… Was she even that dangerous? She wasn’t, was she?”
Calder nodded. “If she was what she claimed, she deposits stories through the world in different ways to lure people to her. She’s dangerous alright.
All the Keepers are. And it sounds like the witch that died was trying to gather the stories.
She wasn’t obsessed with the Falls, she was obsessed with the Keeper. ”
“Do you think that’s why the witch died?” I asked, still staring at the cottage in awe.
“Hard to say, but if she was preventing the Keeper from telling her stories, it’s possible. Doesn’t really explain the dead lycan outside though,” Calder said, staring into the empty cottage the same as I was.
Outside, something moved through the Ash. Then moved away.
I pressed my ear to the door and heard nothing beyond it.
“They stopped at the tree line,” Dez said from the window. “They won’t come closer.”
“Afraid of the cottage,” Calder said.
“Or whoever lives in it.” Dez turned from the glass. “Lived. Past tense.”
Pip emerged slowly from Calder’s pocket, wings fluttering, taking in the empty room.
Then she looked down at herself. Her hands went to her belt, her pockets, the folds of her coat.
“Hey! Wait a minute.” She went through each pocket again, more thoroughly, her expression shifting from confusion to anger. “It’s all gone.”
Dez looked at her. “Pip. Did you steal from the creepy story lady?”
“I prefer ‘borrowed’. Just a few very small things. She had so many.” She reached up and felt along one of her buns, frowning. “This isn’t—wait.” She pulled it free and held it toward the firelight. “I took a gold teacup. For Rami. He would have loved it. But this is just a stone.”
It was small and flat and a dull gray that caught no light at all. Not a runestone, not obsidian, not anything I recognized from years of handling precious materials.
“Keep it,” Silas said, already moving toward the door. “I’m going to go out on a limb and assume if it’s the only thing left, you’re going to need it.”
Silas had positioned himself at the window, his back to the room, one hand braced against the frame. The others had settled around the fire, their voices low. Pip was asleep against Calder’s arm already, the stone from her bun clutched in one hand.
I got up and crossed to the brooding demon at the window.
He didn’t turn when I stopped beside him, just kept his eyes on the ash outside, on the dark tree line and whatever moved through it that wasn’t coming any closer.
“The woman called you abandoned,” I whispered.
“One more true thing?”
The game had always been his to control, trivial truths doled out to keep me at arm’s length. That’s not what I wanted.
There was a long pause before he continued, giving me my first real glimpse into the man behind the griffin. “It’s what I am. What I was.”
“How old were you?”
“Young enough that I don’t remember what came before it.”
The fire crackled behind us. Dez said something quietly and Calder answered, and their voices were far enough away that the words didn’t reach.
“Two people took me in. It wasn’t—they weren’t obligated to. There was no bargain in it.” He paused on that, like the absence of a bargain still surprised him after all this time. “They loved me. In the way that people do when they choose something completely.”
I thought about what that meant for a demon. How rare it had to be, choosing without currency, without terms, without anything owed. How much worse it would be to lose.
“What happened to them?”
“They were torn apart. The Underworld doesn’t reward softness.” His jaw tightened. “I learned that too late to do anything about it.”
I didn’t say I was sorry. He wasn’t asking for that and we both knew it. I just stayed where I was, close enough that the cold between us had gone, close enough that his arm nearly touched mine.
“You know everything about me and I know almost nothing about you. Nothing that matters.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “I’d say you have the better end of that, but you’d argue with me about it.”
I smiled, even if he could barely see it in the dark. “I would.”
Then his eyes found mine.
Really found mine.
Silas was always looking at me. I knew that now. But he usually pulled away, put his walls back exactly where they belonged. This time he didn’t.
The firelight from behind us caught the line of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, and suddenly, from nowhere, I realized I wanted to know more. Not about the Underworld or the bargain or the people that’d abandoned him. About him.
“Tell me something else,” I said. “Something that has nothing to do with any of this.”
He looked at me for a long moment. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything.” I held his gaze. “Something that’s just yours.”
“That’s not a good idea,” he said quietly because he always knew exactly where the line was.
“Oh, come on.”
“Syneca.”
I didn’t look away. “I’m not asking you to do anything reckless. I just want—” I stopped myself, taking a deep breath. “I want to know you.”
He went perfectly still.
And for one terrible second I thought I’d pushed too far.
Then he looked at me like I’d reached inside him and wrapped my hand around something he hadn’t meant to give anyone.
“That,” he said quietly, “is the most dangerous thing you’ve ever said to me.”
I nudged him. “If you give me a little bit, I’m sure I can think of something worse.”
Silas didn’t really laugh but the sound he made was close enough that I felt a ridiculous amount of triumph over it.
He studied me for a moment before giving a bit more. “There was a piano in their house. He taught me to play.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “I was good. Better than good, once. He’d have accepted nothing less.”
“Never in a million years would I have pegged you as a demonic pianist.”
His eyes seemed to sparkle. “I’m surprisingly well-rounded.”
I couldn’t help my smile. “Do you still play?”
“No.”
I understood it then, what he wasn’t saying. Playing had belonged to the boy someone chose, and that boy had been buried with the people who’d chosen him. You couldn’t sit at a piano and stay armored. Music demanded softness, and he’d spent plenty of time making sure the soft thing stayed dead.
“Out of practice? What a shame. One day you’ll have to play badly for me. I’d enjoy watching you be less than perfect at something.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “You’d be disappointed. I don’t do anything poorly.”
But he’d heard what I actually said. One day.
And he didn’t argue with that part. Slowly, he pushed away from the window and turned toward me fully, folding his arms over his chest as he leaned one shoulder against the frame.
The demon was already difficult enough to look at when he was pretending not to pay attention to me.
When he was paying attention? It felt a little like standing too close to the edge of a steep cliff.
“You enjoy this.”
I frowned. “Enjoy what?”
“Pushing.” One brow lifted. “You do it constantly.”
“I do not.”
He gave me a look. “You poke dangerous things just to see if they bite.”
At least I didn’t have to hide from him. There wasn’t a single piece of me he didn’t already know, but Silas wasn’t looking at me like I was reckless. Because he knew I wasn’t. I might’ve made some foolish decisions lately, but I’d survived this long because I was careful and he knew that too.
I crossed my arms. “Funny. You don’t sound particularly worried about my bite.”
His eyes darkened. “I told you, I prefer your fire.”
“And what happens when the fire burns you?” I asked, unable to look away.
“I’m counting on it.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“And yet you walked over here to talk to me, curious little witch.”
I opened my mouth, ready with some denial, some argument, but nothing came out.
Silas noticed immediately. The amusement in his eyes deepened, subtle enough that anyone else would’ve missed it. “What happened? You were doing so well.”
I hated that fucking smirk on his beautiful face, the expression that I’d never seen him wear around anyone else. “I liked you better when you were brooding.”
“Mm, maybe.” He tilted his head slightly. “But you’re staring again.”
Heat crept into my face so fast I had to fight to keep from looking away. “I’m not staring.”
“You are.” His eyes held mine, entirely too calm. “You get this look.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What look?”
“That one.”
“That tells me absolutely nothing.”
“It tells me plenty.”
I held his gaze for one more second, then pushed off the window frame. “Then you’re welcome,” I said, and walked back to the fire before he could answer.
Behind me I heard nothing but the quiet of a demon with too much self control.
I laid down on the dusty floor, pulled my coat over my shoulders, and closed my eyes.
We had a dragon to hunt in the morning, and a debt that would put me on my knees again if I forgot it.
That was more than enough reason to get some sleep.
I refused to think about thirteen Moonborn hybrids. I refused to think about Silas.
I almost managed it.
“You’re sure this is a good idea?” Calder asked Silas one more time, the gray light of early morning surrounding us. “We could go north together. Then back to the lycan in Drennith.”
“No.” Silas pulled his coat straight. “There’s no need for all of us to hike through that fucking forest. Two is enough of a risk. Besides, I’ll have more luck with the Matriarch with less company. I’ve been granted an audience before.”
Pip gasped. “You made it out of the death forest? Alive?”
I looked at him carefully. Nymphs took audiences with beautiful men for one reason and one reason only, and if Silas had been granted that audience before, how close had they gotten?
I supposed, since he and I were the only ones going north, I was about to find out. Right after a small trip through the fucking forest that was rumored to feast on blood and fear.