49. Syneca
Syneca
Do not mend a torn hem at midnight. You will sew the day shut before it is finished, and tomorrow will arrive missing an hour you needed.
The screeching in Brathen House this morning was my new favorite thing. Mostly because it accompanied demon misery.
Dez made a sound like a dying animal and buried his face deeper into his arms on the table. Ramiel, seated across from him, pressed both hands to his temples and stared at the wood in front of him, likely reconsidering every decision that had led him here.
I clapped obnoxiously loud at Pip’s newest endeavors.
“Please,” Dez said. It came out as a whine.
“Good morning boys,” I said cheerfully. “Such a lively bunch.”
A streak of blue shot past my head. Pip, wings an absolute blur, chasing something small and black and extremely fast around the upper perimeter of the sitting room.
“Come HERE!” she shrieked. “I just want to hold you!”
The grimmie, apparently, did not want to be held. It banked hard around the doorframe and disappeared into the kitchen with Pip in screaming pursuit.
I tracked her across the room, ready to follow, and stopped dead.
Silas stood at the far end of the sitting room.
Freshly showered, dark hair pushed back from his face and still slightly damp, suit jacket pulled tight across his shoulders. There should’ve been laws against a man looking like that before noon. Entire governments should’ve assembled and voted on it.
He adjusted his cufflinks with slow, absent movements, eyes lowered, completely untouched by the chaos around him. And of course he looked calm. Of course he looked composed.
I hated when he looked put together. Hated the strange little pull low in my stomach every time he looked like this, like some deeply embarrassing part of me immediately sat up and paid attention before the rest of me could stop it.
Because suddenly I was noticing ridiculous things. The dampness still clinging near his collar. The way his hands moved. The line of his throat.
I forgot what I’d been about to say.
Actually, I forgot my own name for a second there.
But then I supposed this was fair game, considering I’d been trying to drag secrets out of him last night when he was drunk. And I’d let him stay. And there was no part of me that regretted it, until I woke up this morning and he was already gone. Out of spite, I put on a yellow sweater.
As if he’d heard my thoughts, those eyes snapped to mine and left me fucking frozen in place. “Good morning, Syneca, darling. Sleep well? That’s a lovely color on you.”
He’d never called me that before. Why was he calling me that? What was happening? Our bond of shared feelings gave nothing away. Everything was silent on his end.
Pip streaked past, screaming something at the grimmie.
Dez made another dying animal sound.
Silas crossed the room, went into the kitchen, and came back with a cup of coffee and the newspaper, settling into the chair beside Dez with the unhurried ease of a man who had slept perfectly and felt wonderful about it. I was unreasonably annoyed.
I wanted to wipe the easy charm right off his face. “One true thing, Silas. Since you're so fond of them when it suits you. Why are you pretending last night didn't happen?”
He turned a page of the newspaper without looking up. “That’s not how the game works. I give the true things. You take them.” He shook the paper open and took a sip of probably bitter fucking tea. “Dez looks like death. Maybe you should take him into the city for some fresh air.”
I crossed my arms. “It’s not market day.”
“Then walk around.”
“I’m not going to walk around the city because you’ve decided Dez needs fresh air. He’s not a fucking hound.”
Silas looked up from the paper. His eyes met mine across the table and he smiled, slow and deliberate, and I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach because I knew that smile. “Syneca Talmyrien,” he said pleasantly. “Please take Dez into the city for some fresh air.”
The bargain snapped into place like a hand closing around my throat.
My feet were already moving toward the door before I’d finished processing it. I stopped them through sheer force of will and stood there, rigid with fury, while the immediate pain in my body argued with my mind about which one was in charge.
Silas looked back at his paper.
“You absolute—” I stopped. Breathed. “Fine. Dez. Go wash up. You smell like a stale whorehouse and apparently, we’re going out.”
Dez hadn’t moved. He was staring at Silas with a flat expression. “Don’t do this.”
Silas turned a page.
“Si.” Dez’s voice dropped. “I mean it. Don’t.”
Silas looked at him then. Not unkindly. Just certain. “It’s for the best.”
Dez stared at him for a long moment. Something passed between them.
“Go wash up, Dez,” I said flatly.
He pushed back from the table without another word and walked upstairs.
I looked at Silas one more time. He was reading. Completely, insufferably, reading his newspaper. And I couldn’t tell if I was more heartbroken or angry that he’d felt the need to use that fucking bargain against me again.
The light dusting of snow that’d been in the yard this morning was gone.
Dez appeared at the gate, looked at the bare wet ground, looked at me and said nothing for a moment. “You melted it?”
“I was waiting.”
“…all of it?”
“It took you too long.”
Dez looked at the yard again, at the steam still rising faintly from the edges. “Right.” He fell into step beside me as I pushed through the gate. “So. Silas.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You melted an entire yard.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.” I pulled my coat tighter and kept walking. The morning was cold and bright and I had nowhere specific to be, which was the entire problem with this errand. “I don’t understand what his problem is.”
“I think that’s somewhat the point,” Dez said carefully.
I looked at him sideways. Despite everything, despite the hangover he was clearly still working through and the fact that he’d been volunteered for this against his will, he’d shown up.
Buttoned his coat. Fallen into step beside me without complaint.
Even when he’d taken power from me in that hallway, he’d been as careful and respectful about it as something like that could possibly be, and I imagined that hadn’t been easy for him.
Dez was genuinely good. Complicated and demonic and occasionally infuriating, but genuinely good underneath all of it.
At least I liked him.
“Is he still watching?” Dez asked, his voice dropping slightly.
I glanced back toward the house without making it obvious. Silas stood at the door, coffee in hand, not even pretending he wasn’t looking. Ramiel watched over his shoulder.
“Yes,” I said.
Dez was quiet for a moment. Then he leaned slightly closer. “Then we need to give him the show he asked for.” He looked at me sideways. “Do you trust me?”
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“Take my hand, Syneca. I won’t take power from you, but I need you to pretend that’s what’s happening right now.”
I paused, narrowing my eyes. “Why did Silas send us out together?”
“Because he’s genuinely terrified of letting himself have what he really wants.” He held out his hand, patiently waiting.
I knew what he was implying. I’d known for a while, felt it every time Silas looked at me for a beat too long and then looked away. Every time the bond went deliberately silent. Every time he engineered reasons to put distance between us and called it the right thing.
And the worst part was that I wanted him too.
Not the careful, deniable version I’d been telling myself it was.
I wanted the demon who’d put himself between me and every blade in the room and then apologized for the one time he couldn’t.
I wanted the one person who’d never once needed me to be smaller, who’d looked at the most dangerous thing I was and desired it.
I’d spent my whole life being handled, hidden, made manageable.
Silas had only ever wanted me exactly as I came.
So no. I wasn’t mad at myself for wanting him.
I’d made peace with that somewhere in the depths of a very long bath.
What I was mad about was that he thought he got to make that choice for both of us.
That he could use a bargain to move me around like a piece on a board and call it doing the right thing, as if what I wanted didn’t factor into it at all.
I took Dez’s hand, tilted my head back the way it had in that hallway, let my eyes go soft and my lips part slightly and thought about hands on my arms and the pull of it moving through me like a current, warm and consuming.
Except in my mind it wasn’t Dez on the other end of it.
“Quite the actress,” the demon said, clearing his throat.
He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close as we continued down the street, and through the bond came the first crack in that perfect silence.
A deep rolling thrum of jealousy that beat against my ribs like a second pulse.
One step, two steps, three. Steady and furious and entirely satisfying.
I smiled at the cobblestones.
“I’m going to tell you something that could get me killed,” Dez said moments later, when we were confidently out of earshot.
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
Dez lifted his collar with his free hand to block the chilly wind. “I’m just as big of a pawn in his schemes today as you are, and as I can see no end in sight to this madness, and I’m still slightly hungover, I’m going for it. But you can’t tell him I told you. I don’t actually want to die.”
“I’m listening.”
“When Silas made that bargain with your grandmother, there was a contingency on your bond. He’s being a dick because he’s trying to keep himself bound to you.”
I stopped breathing. “Are you telling me there’s something that could break our connection?”
“Your grandmother was trying to protect you.”
“Just get to the fucking point, Dez. What were the terms?”
“Right, sorry,” he said, stepping away, blowing puffs of warmth into his fingers. “He’s bound to protect you no matter what. He gets to pull on your power as payment, making it so—”
“He doesn’t have to take from someone to refill his magic. I know this part. What’s the contingency?”
“If you fall in love with each other, the bargain breaks. That’s why he kept his griffin form for all that time. There’d be no chance.”
For a moment I didn’t feel anything at all.
I just stood there in the cold. Every locked-down silence.
Every time he’d made himself look away. Every wall he’d built.
It hadn’t been indifference. He wasn’t being a dick for sport.
He’d been holding himself at a distance because wanting me, letting himself want me, was the one thing that could sever the bond.
He hadn’t been pushing me away. He’d been choosing to keep me, the only way the bargain would let him.
All of these decisions were made about my life, my power, my future, by two people who had decided they knew what I needed better than I did. They’d looked at me and concluded that the choice wasn’t mine to make.
“She had no right,” I said. My voice came out very quiet. “Neither did he.”
Dez said nothing.
The anger built slowly, the way the worst kind always did, starting somewhere deep and rising with absolute certainty. “He decided hiding was safer.” I laughed, and it had nothing warm in it. “For who? For him? For her? Because it certainly wasn’t for me.”
“But she—”
I started walking. “Don’t tell me she loved me.
I know she did. That’s not the point.” My hands were shaking and I pressed them flat against my coat.
“The point is that I have spent my entire life having choices made for me. What I am. What I hide. Where I go. Who protects me and how and at what cost. And I am so tired.” My throat tightened.
“I am so tired of being the last person anyone consults about my own life.”
Dez walked beside me and said nothing, which was the kindest thing he could have done.
“I’ve just thought of the perfect thing to do today on our date,” I said.
“It’s not a date,” Dez said quietly.
“It absolutely is. How many banners have you seen in the city the last couple days?”
He glanced at me, then up at the empty space above us. He spun in a quick circle, studying the sky. “Wait a minute.”
“The answer is zero. And we’re going to find out why.” I kept walking, voice dangerously pleasant. “You don’t mind dropping in on a coven of witches, do you?”
Dez was quiet for a moment. “I might.”
“Well, we need to get into Aventh Gate without causing a scene and I think, if they don’t kill us, they might be able to help.
Admittedly, it took me a while to piece it together, but last night, before your fucking buddy walked into my room with midnight confessions, I worked it out.
Silas seems to be championing reckless decisions as of late,” I lifted a shoulder.
“I think I’ll match that fucking energy. ”
“Mm. That’s fun, but what if we don’t?”