41. Syneca
Syneca
A coin found face-down is luck someone else dropped while running from it. Pick it up only if you’re faster than they were.
The Nightfall Forest earned its reputation from the ground up, and I’d spent the entire flight trying not to think about it.
Blood and fear. That was the part the stories never let you forget.
A forest that didn’t just kill you but wanted to, that grew fat on the terror of everything foolish enough to wander in unclaimed.
And here I was, descending into it with a heartbeat I couldn’t quite slow and a demon I was trying very hard not to be afraid of for entirely different reasons.
This was the only place in Fuerlis where the trees grew tall and thick enough to kill the sun completely, which was exactly why the nymphs had been fighting for this land since before anyone alive could remember.
Sunlight didn’t just weaken a nymph. Prolonged exposure killed them.
The Nightfall Forest wasn’t just their home.
It was the only reason they were still breathing.
And the lycan never stopped trying to take it from them, claiming the deadly forest was theirs first.
Calm. I had to be calm. The one thing I couldn’t afford to bring into a place like this was the fear crawling up my throat.
Silas dropped through the canopy in a slow spiral, layers of green swallowing the last of the sky, and by the time his talons found the ground, the dark had closed over us.
I felt it notice me. A pressure against my skin, a shift in the air, the sense of something vast turning its attention toward the warm, frightened thing that had just landed in its mouth.
I pressed the panic down hard and breathed through it, picturing the fire that could bring this place down and made myself nothing the forest would find interesting. The pressure eased. Barely. But it eased.
I climbed from Si’s back, more aware than I wanted to be of every movement and breath beneath me, and through the bond I felt the annoying satisfaction of a beast who knew exactly what I was thinking simply because we shared everything that mattered. Unfortunately, he felt my fear as well.
He shifted, bronze skin and devastating features rising out of the griffin’s shape. His eyes found me in the dark. “You’re afraid.”
“I know the history here. I’d be foolish not to be.”
“The fear’s the part that gets you killed here.” He stepped close, close enough that I had to tip my head back. “So you’re going to give it to me instead.”
“It’s fear, Silas, not a coat.”
“It travels the same road everything else does.” His hand came up between us, palm open, like the bond were something he could hold in it. “You’ve been shoving it down since we landed, and the forest can still feel it at the edges. You need to send it away. To me.”
“It won’t hurt you?”
His eyes seemed to deepen. “I’m a demon. Your fear is the least frightening thing that’s ever lived in me.”
So I stopped fighting it.
I let the fear I’d been crushing come up loose, and instead of clamping down I pushed, the way I’d shove a door against a storm except in reverse, opening it, letting the wind through. It poured down the bond in a cold rush. I felt it leave me and felt him take it. The forest noticed immediately.
The pressure drew back, finding nothing worth keeping where the frightened thing had been. There was only a demon now, calm and unbothered. I could breathe. For the first time since we’d landed, I could actually breathe. And once again, Silas had been the reason.
“Better,” Silas said. It wasn’t a question, but he was watching me like he wanted the answer anyway.
“Better,” I whispered.
He held my gaze a beat longer, then he turned to the trees.
“Path’s north but we’ll have to walk through,” he said, already scanning the dark. “Keep on your toes. As you know, the forest is a moody bitch.”
The trees pressed in from every side, seeming to breathe.
There was no path that I could see. No light source beyond the faint luminescence of something growing along the bark of the trees, pale orange and slow-pulsing, giving just enough light to see.
It looked almost like glowing embers within the trunks, but I knew better. Fire was the enemy of this place.
Silas walked through with ease and I followed, watching his back, watching the way he moved through spaces that were barely wide enough for his shoulders, ducking beneath branches that I only noticed after he’d already pushed them aside.
“How far?” I asked.
“Depends on whether she wants to be found.” He moved to the nearest tree line and crouched, reading the ground. “Stay close. The roots run shallow and the ground drops without warning. But everything changes quickly as well.”
I fell into step behind him. He held a branch back without looking, waiting for me to pass.
I did, close enough that the back of my hand brushed his. Neither of us commented on it. Neither of us moved faster.
“You’re quiet,” he said.
“I’m thinking.”
“About?”
I looked at the back of his head, at the line of his shoulders, at the way he moved with so much confidence, it was clear the predator within him was hunting his way through.
“Nothing useful,” I said.
With a slight turn of his head, I could almost see his smile.
There was a soft sound behind us. The wet shift of something growing where nothing had been. I turned and the way we’d come was gone, not overgrown, gone, the gap between two trees I’d walked through a breath ago knitted shut with new green, the bark still beading sap where it had sealed.
“Silas.”
“I see it. Don’t look back again. It likes when you look back.”
“Comforting.” I moved closer to him. “How long are we giving this forest to dish up a Matriarch before we change our minds and fly out?”
He shook his head. “The trees won’t let us leave if the leader doesn’t allow it. The forest serves her.”
“Okay, well, for the record, I will absolutely burn this fucking place down. I refuse to be taken prisoner by hostile foliage.”
“Oh, good. I was beginning to worry you were taking this well.”
“Because I’m practical?”
He huffed. “Because your first solution to every problem is a little bit of arson.”
“At least I’m reliable.”
He started to say something but was cut off by the thunderous rumble of trees completely moving in front of us, cutting off the path. Silas stepped closer, nudging me to turn with that same level of calm he’d had. I followed his lead, catching movement out of the corner of my eye.
“The nymphs know we’re here,” I whispered.
“They’ve known since we landed.”
I looked up into the canopy with the orange, glowing pulse. The branches were braiding themselves above us, locking us in.
“I’m sure you’ve gathered this, but they don’t allow witches here.”
I looked at the trees pressing in on every side and wondered how long it took them to grow back after a Burning. How long the nymphs had to retreat into the mountain range the lycan claimed as their own.
“I can’t imagine why,” I said.
He looked back at me over his shoulder and smiled.
I’d seen him smirk. I’d seen the controlled almost-curve of his mouth when he thought he’d won something. I had not seen this, and I wasn’t prepared for it, the way it changed his whole face. And suddenly the only thing that mattered was that I wanted him to do it again.
I watched where I was walking instead. “So do we have a plan here, or are we just wandering until we’re captured?”
He turned back to whatever path he was following that I couldn’t see. “A nymph has to claim you to enter their city. Without it, the forest keeps you. You think you’re making progress and really you’re just walking in circles. I’ve heard some people have been lost in these trees for years.”
“Why would anyone want to get into the nymph’s territory that badly?” I asked, swiping away another branch that kept reaching for me.
Silas went quiet beside me.
I frowned and looked over at him. “What?”
“Remember how it felt when Dez took from you?”
My steps almost faltered.
I remembered standing there and feeling something crash through me all at once, every nerve in my body suddenly awake.
I remembered that sharp dizzy rush of need that had hit so fast it stole my breath, the awful certainty that I needed something, release, relief, anything to make it stop, and an ache to hope it never would.
I remembered hating how immediate it had been. And how Silas had walked away.
My mouth went a little dry. “Yes.”
He watched the understanding settle over my face, then he stepped closer.
“People can’t always help what they desire, Syneca.
” His eyes flicked to my temple and his hand lifted.
My pulse betrayed me instantly, jumping before he’d even touched me.
His fingers brushed lightly through my hair, pulling a small leaf free from the copper curls.
He spun it between his fingers. “The nymph’s bite is more than a demon’s Taking. If one of them bites you...” His gaze dropped briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes. “You won’t care about finding your way out of the forest.”
“And you have an open invitation?” I managed, stepping back, if only to breathe.
“I had one.”
I watched the line of his jaw. “From the Matriarch?”
He paused a beat too long. “Yes. Try not to read too much into what you see inside, Ith Noem.”
I swallowed, nodding. “Take your pleasure wherever you can get it, Silas.”
He let out a small huff. “I’ll take no pleasure from anything that’s about to happen, I can promise you that. Just control that face. Don’t look like a threat.”
“My face isn’t the issue. I’m a witch with a demon escort.”
“Then, when they come, let me do the talking.”
“Gladly.” I took another step away, gesturing him forward. “I can’t wait to watch you work.”
The demon beside me continued on, our hands brushing more than necessary as we continued. The path widened. He glanced down at me, and for a moment the orange light from the bark caught his face at an angle I felt in my gut.
“You’re doing it again,” he said.
“Walking?”
“Staring.”
I looked away. “It’s dark. I’m making sure I don’t lose you.”
“Mm.” His mouth curved slightly. “Funny.”
I frowned up at him. “What is?”
His eyes dropped to mine, lingering there. “I was doing the same thing.”
“Do not flirt with me, Silas Whatever-your-last-name-is.”
Another fucking smile. “I would never.”
A thorny root crossed the path and Silas stopped. His hand found my arm before I’d registered the obstacle, steadying me, fingers wrapping around my elbow to stop me. It stayed there.
Not long. But something new in me wanted him to tighten his grip just slightly, to turn toward me, to hold on past the point where holding on made sense. He didn’t, of course. His grip released and he stepped over the root, turning back, offering help across the pulsing obstacle.
My hand was nearly swallowed by his as I took it, and he pulled me forward.
The momentum brought me one step closer than the root required and for a single breath we were standing close enough that I could see the exact shade of his eyes in the dark, and I thought about the smile, the real one, and wanted it again.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Well if you weren’t so clumsy,” he said back, but it was far too soft, none of his usual heat thrown behind it.
I fell into step beside him. The warmth of his hand was still on my palm. I walked with it and said nothing and watched the trees open ahead of us and told myself that wanting things was not the same as asking for them.
The path ahead cleared. Roots flattened. Branches drew back by degrees, slow and deliberate, like a door opening. A nymph stepped out of the trees. She was tall with dark hair falling past her waist in a sheet so black it absorbed the light from the bark rather than reflected it.
Her features were sharp enough to cut, though her violet eyes only took in Silas.
“Lover.” The word rolled out of her mouth like something she’d said a hundred times and intended to say a hundred more.
She didn’t wait for an answer. She crossed to him in three steps and pressed herself against his chest.
She kissed him.
He reached for her face, pulling her closer, letting his hand slide down her back, holding her as she went limp in his damn arms.
I watched the whole thing. I made myself.
Kept my face arranged into something neutral, something unbothered, something that said I was a grown woman who had absolutely no feelings about what was happening directly in front of me.
I was fine. This was fine. I had known, walking through these trees, that something like this was waiting, and I was completely, entirely fine.
Still, I reached for Silas through the bond.
Nothing. A near silence where his presence usually lived, dampened down. I couldn’t tell if he’d done that deliberately or if she had, and I wasn’t sure which answer was worse.
When they broke apart she turned to look at me for the first time. Her beautiful eyes moved from my face to my boots and back up. She took Silas’s hand.
“Now,” she said as hundreds more nymphs stepped out from behind the trees, “tell me why you’ve brought a witch to my wood.”