Except I wasn’t. And if he knew the truth, I’d lose the rest of my family.
I pushed away from the table and took Calder’s arm. “Walk me to my room, will you? I’m exhausted.”
I didn’t need his help, but he needed someone to save. So I’d give him this, and we’d hold on to our friendship for just a little while longer.
Because the math was simple, even if the truth was complicated. Twenty-two days was plain enough.
But I’d known how I was going to die since the day I learned what the mark on my skin meant. The prophecy, the promise, the curse, whatever you wanted to call it, had been absolute: I would burn this world to ash. That’s what the Phoenix mark meant. That’s what it had always meant.
Not death by blood oath. Not execution, or old age, or any peaceful fade into nothing.
Fire. Destruction. Chaos.
Which meant one of two things would happen in the next three weeks: we’d find Vitoria and break the oath by killing her and fulfilling it, or I’d become exactly what they feared Vitoria was before the blood magic could take me.
The gods, or fates, or Furies, or whatever forces had marked me, didn’t get prophecies wrong.
Silas followed us, his claws clicking on stone. Calder pulled me into a hug before ordering me to bed. Once inside the room, my griffin stepped carefully around the piles of paperwork I’d been diligently ignoring, and began his nightly ritual, spinning in circles like he was trying to drill through the floor. Once, twice, three times, continuing until he’d completed exactly fourteen rotations.
Every. Single. Night.
He finally plopped down on my bed with a satisfied grunt, taking up approximately seventy percent of the available space.
I reached down to pet him anyway, fingers sliding through the soft fur at his neck where the feathers faded away. He leaned into the touch, eyes half-closing with contentment.
Then jerked away like I’d burned him.
A low growl rumbled from his chest, his entire focus locked on the door with the kind of intensity that meant threat, danger, someone’s about to die.
Well, shit.
I was on my feet instantly. “What is it?”
The growl intensified.
I crossed to the door and yanked it open, magic ready, prepared for hunters or assassins or whatever fresh hell was coming for me now, because apparently, this day hadn’t been long enough.
Wickett stood in the hallway, leaning heavily against his own door like it was the only thing keeping him upright. One hand pressed to his side where blood had soaked through his Venatori uniform, spreading dark and wet across the black fabric.
His face was pale. Too pale. The kind of pale that meant stark blood loss. And when his eyes met mine, I saw something I’d never seen in them before.
Fear.
Oh, fuck.
“Syn,” he managed. “I need?—”
His knees buckled.
I caught him before he hit the ground, barely, his weight driving me back a step and nearly taking us both down. Blood slicked my hands where I gripped his side, hot and too much, far too fucking much.
“I’ll get help,” I said, already debating where to go first. Calder? Lucette? Someone who knew what the hells to do with a hunter bleeding out in a hallway.
“Don’t.” His hand shot out, gripping my wrist with surprising strength for someone who looked half-dead. “My father will use it against me.”
He winced when he said father, the word itself seeming to cause him pain.
“Wickett—”
