The feminine voice snapped through the rain and murmurs. Lucette Varrow was already moving, her long legs eating up the platform steps. The sister of the murdered Nexus star.Strange, considering she wasn’t even from our country of Vestra. She lived north, in Noreya. But her face held the kind of determination that came from having something to prove. And the Phoenix was a problem for the entire world, not just a single country.
Two more shifters joined her. One transformed as he walked, his body expanding into something between wolf and bear, muscle and fur and violence. The dragon Guardian moved slightly, placing himself between the beast of a man and the Oracle. A warning as clear as spoken words.
The sphere spun one last time.
I held my breath. I knew what it would say. It wouldn’t be the lycan, not the nymphs or Guardians or another fury-born. It wouldn’t be a siren from the sea or any other creature that moved through this world. They needed someone with true power. Someone with the ability to seal the oath. And there was only one race that qualified. The race they loathed but needed.
WITCH.
Blackbriar’s Square went silent.
“Witches,” Tiberius called. “Send forth your three.”
No one moved. Not a breath. Not a whisper. Every witch in this square knew what volunteering meant. It meant scrutiny. Investigation. It meant they’d dig through your life with ruthless fingers until they found something, anything, to condemn you. It meant certain death as soon as they were done with you.
“Witches,” Tiberius repeated, and now there was amusement in his tone. “Your race has been chosen. Send forth your champions.”
Still nothing.
I could feel Calder’s eyes on me from the platform. Burning into me. Begging me not to move.
And then, from somewhere else, another gaze. Wickett. The Ripper. Watching. Waiting. His stare was a weight on my skin,like he knew what I was about to do before I did. Like he was willing me to do it.
The thought should have terrified me. Instead, it warmed the fire in my veins.
This was insane.
This was the worst possible choice.
This went against twenty-seven years of hiding, of careful lies, of destiny denied.
But the alternative was letting Vitoria die for what I was born to be. Letting her burn while I hid in the shadows like the coward Gran had intended me to become. The math was brutal. Simple. Unforgivable.
You swore you’d protect her,I reminded myself.You swore you’d never let anything happen to her again.
Some promises were worth burning the world for.
My feet and mouth moved before my brain could catch up.
“My name is Syneca Black, and I volunteer to join the Mortalis.”
I swept my hood back and stepped into the open space the crowd had left. The silence was deafening. Every eye in the Square turned to me, but I only felt two gazes that mattered. Calder’s, full of betrayal and terror. And Wickett’s, sharp with something that might have been satisfaction. He would be my death, and I knew it with every step I took. I knew it from the time he touched me in the Bloodwood. I knew it like I knew how to breathe. How to burn. How to hide.
As I moved, I whispered the words Gran had taught me, the ones that turned water into weapons and shields and statements. “Aquaris tutela.”
The rain above me stopped. Not frozen, but held, creating a perfect sphere of dry air that moved with me as I walked. Water magic. Clear, obvious, undeniable. I was a water witch steppingforward to hunt the Phoenix. Simply that. A Rune Weaver to some, but nothing more.
The irony would have been funny if it hadn’t tasted like blood.
Silas’s scream ripped through the night. Not a call. Not a warning. Pure fury, echoing off stone and the horrified faces of everyone watching. My familiar’s rage was a physical thing, pressing against my bones, begging me to stop. To run. To be anything other than this fool walking toward her own doom.
But I kept walking.
I climbed the platform steps.
Calder wouldn’t look at me. His jaw was clenched so tight I thought his teeth might crack. His hands were fists at his sides, and I could see the tremor in his shoulders. The effort it took not to grab me, not to throw me back into the crowd where I belonged. Not to scream at me for destroying everything we’d built.
When I reached the top, he finally turned. The look in his eyes was pure devastation. Like I’d reached into his chest and torn his heart out with my bare hands.
