Gran found us the night the hunters came. She’d felt it somehow, the way the old magic always recognized its own. One look at my back, and her face had crumbled.
“They’ll kill her,” she’d whispered to my mother as I pretended to sleep. But love makes people do impossible things.
I was seven when she laid me face-down on her kitchen table, my parents’ blood still wet on the floor around us. The blade had been so sharp I’d barely felt it at first. Just pressure. Then pain that turned the world white as she carved the mark from my skin with surgical precision.
The scar remained. A pale crescent that told the story of what I’d been born to be.
What I still was, mark or no mark. The Phoenix, born with tragedy in my blood and destined to burn this world to ash.
Chapter 6
Syneca
When the Furies walk among mortals, note the ash in the air and the trouble brewing in the dark.
We moved through the Crook like people who had business that wouldn’t bear scrutiny. The morning crowd was thinner than usual, but the heretics were out in force, a growing mob of people that most sane citizens gave a wide berth to, their ramblings about the end times having long since crossed from concerning into unhinged. They camped on street corners like diseased birds, their voices raised in desperation. “The Burning comes!” one shrieked as we passed, his eyes wild with fervor. “Seek sanctuary in Dyssara!” Another grabbed at Vitoria’s sleeve, babbling about signs and portents until she shook him off with disgust. We paid them no mind. Madmen had been predicting the world’s end since the last Burning, and they’d be predicting it long after we were gone.
Real danger walked quieter paths.
Eda Mire’s summons had come at dawn, delivered by the charming little sprite whose wings shook with nerves when he looked at the Heartless One. Every time. She wanted to see us. Immediately. That kind of urgency usually meant someone was dead, someone needed to be dead, or someone was about to make both those things happen to us. Odd that I’d been included in the summons, though. Typically, she kept her business with me separate from her other, darker deeds.
She’d been the bridge between Calder, Vitoria and I, linking us together to keep her business strong. I provided runework, and the others provided the hand of death. It worked out. Mostly. Because together, we’d become friends, and somewhere along the way, family. One grump, one snarky little rebel, and me, a little afraid of the world, a lot guarded, and defiant only when it came to my truth. Otherwise, I stayed in line. Kept secrets that needed keeping and made no waves.
“Think she heard about last night?” Vitoria asked, stepping around a puddle that steamed in the cold air.
“Eda Mire hears about everything,” Calder replied. “Question is what she wants to do about it.”
Above us, Silas wheeled through the gray morning sky, a black shape against darker clouds. My anchor. The only creature alive who knew what I truly was, bound to me by blood magic so old it might’ve predated the Furies’ Ascension. Through him, I could touch water magic—his gift becoming mine through the binding my grandmother had forged in desperation and love.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I spent my days at the Chancellery carving runes in perfect isolation, surrounded by people who’d die before letting me touch their deepest secrets. But the biggest secret of all sat in my own chest, locked away where even my closest friends couldn’t find it.
Not Vitoria, who’d die for me without question.
Nor Calder, who’d already killed for me.
Not even Eda Mire, who’d given us shelter and helped raise me beside Gran when we had nowhere else to go. Somehow Gran had known her, and from that friendship came unquestioned protection from the dark and depraved.
None of them knew the Phoenix they feared carved their protection runes and shared their meals and laughed at their jokes while carrying the power to burn it all down.
Only Silas knew Gran’s knife had carved destiny from my flesh, leaving behind a scar that told the story of what I was meant to be. He’d become a lifeline to a broken young woman who needed an anchor more than she needed breath.
He’d never judged me for it. But lately, in the quiet moments when I thought no one was watching, I caught him studying me with those icy blue eyes. Like he was waiting for something. Like he knew something I didn’t.
Inside the Gilded Pestle, Eda Mire stood behind her counter, but she wasn’t working. No grinding herbs, no sorting stones. Just standing there with her hands flat on the wood, staring at nothing. She looked up when we entered, and I saw something I’d never seen before in those dark eyes.
Uncertainty.
“Shut the door,” she said. “Lock it.”
Calder obeyed without question. The lock clicked home with the finality of a coffin lid.
Eda Mire moved to the kettle behind the counter, but her hands shook slightly as she poured. Just enough for me to notice. “The city’s been... active since last night. My contacts are buzzing like disturbed wasps. Everyone knows something’s changed, but no one can agree on what.”
She set four cups on the counter, steam rising from the dark liquid. Not her usual healing tea. Something stronger.Something that smelled of mint and steel and things that only bloomed when shadows crossed the moon.
“Drink,” she commanded.
The liquid burned going down, but it cleared my head in ways that had nothing to do with exhaustion. Magic sharpened. Colors brightened. The edge of the world became as crisp as winter air.
