61. Syneca #3
I turned toward the smoke, toward the place I’d last seen him.
He stood there on the rocky ground with the sunlight dragging across the old burns I’d given him, half his face melted smooth and shining, and he smiled at me like we were old friends meeting somewhere pleasant.
“There she is. I wondered how long it’d take.
I knew you’d come back to me, Syneca. One way or another. ”
I did not have it in me to make him last.
“Don’t say my fucking name.”
He chuckled. “Still angry. I always liked that about you. You never knew when to quit. But I’ll admit,” he said, pulling the blades from his back. “I didn’t plan for you to survive last time.”
“I’ll be the bitch that disappoints you once again. I’m not dying today either.”
“You know, for a while I almost felt guilty.”
I barked a laugh. “Almost?”
“Until I remembered you would’ve forgiven me.”
That did it.
Not because it hurt. Because he actually believed it. All this time, after everything he’d done, he still thought the girl he’d betrayed was standing in front of him.
My smile spread slowly. “That’s the problem, Wickett.”
His hand stilled.
“You still think I’m the woman you left bleeding.” I tilted my head. “She died. I buried her myself.”
The last trace of amusement vanished from his face.
“And then I came looking for you.”
He moved faster than he had any right to, magic rippling off him in a black lash that came straight for my throat, the same dark magic his witches carried because he’d likely taught it to them. It would have taken my head off a day ago.
It didn’t touch me now.
I caught it on Silas’s power, that cold precise dark rising to meet his and swallowing it whole. The smile fell off his face. That was the moment he understood that whatever I’d been when he’d fucked me, I wasn’t that anymore.
“That’s new,” he said. And there, on his melted face was something I’d never once seen on him. Real fear.
I didn’t touch my own fire. I left the Phoenix banked and starving where it was, because if I let her out for him I’d let it out for everyone, and he was not worth the world.
I reached for Silas’s power instead.
It was all in there, every element at once, water and stone and air and a fire that wasn’t the Phoenix’s, all of it answering like it had always been mine.
And under it, something else. Something vast and quiet I had no name for and no idea how to hold.
It turned away from me when I reached for it.
I left it alone. I didn’t have time to learn what I didn’t understand, and I didn’t need it.
I knew the elements. The elements were enough.
Without uttering a word, I broke the ground.
The rock split where he stood and his footing dropped out from under him.
Before he could catch himself, I hit him with air, slamming him down and back against the broken stone hard enough that the crack carried over the field.
The blades in his hands clattered uselessly beside him.
I crossed the distance before he could reach for them, snagging the closest from the ground.
Wickett’s eyes doubled. His face turned red as I set the point of his own blade against the soft hollow at the base of his throat.
I pushed just enough to make him understand I wasn’t deciding whether. Only when.
“Call them off. The witches. Release them. Now.”
He looked up, eyes trailing the length of the blade before landing on me.
The bastard laughed against the blade. “Release them? You think I’m holding them?
Look closer, witch. Nobody bound them. They’re here because they want to be.
” His eyes glittered up at me. “They came to put the world back the way it’s supposed to be.
To remove the demons from it and the Phoenix with him.
They’re not on a leash, Syneca. They’re volunteers.
You can open my throat right here and not one of them will lower their hands. ”
“Listening to a man’s words is how I learned to recognize betrayal.” And with that I shoved the sword down, his eyes going wide as the point broke through to the other side. He didn’t move again.
I spun, staring at the witches, the hunters closing in on Silas, every bit of panic I’d been holding back returning full force. I tried to go back, tried to rescue the man now on his knees. His fucking bargain wouldn’t let me go for him. I was forced to turn. To keep running away.
I collided with Dez at a dead run before I’d even recognized him in my frenzy.
“Oh, thank fuck. You have to go get Silas.”
His face was wrecked. “I can’t.” His hands closed around my wrists hard. “He… I swore—”
“I don’t care what you swore.”
“We have to go.” Dez was already moving, already pulling. “Syn. We have to go now. I have to get you to safety and then I can come back for him.”
I fought him the whole way. Screaming and clawing back toward the field, toward the ring closing around the man who’d given me every last thing he had and asked only that I leave.
But Dez held on, dragging me backward. The last I saw of Silas was him on his knees in the dirt, looking at me, only me, as Dez hauled me over his shoulder and jumped into a fucking book.