Silas turned his head to regard Calder, then, impossibly, leaned into Pip’s touch. The little sprite gasped with delight.
“He likes me!” She spun in the air and then dropped into an elaborate curtsy that would have been at home in a royal court. “Thank you, noble Heartless One, for defending the kitty-bird’s honor!”
Pink spread across her cheeks as she held the curtsy a beat too long, and even Calder looked momentarily thrown by her theatrical gratitude.
“It’s... just a griffin,” he managed.
“A magnificent griffin,” Pip corrected, already reaching for Silas again.
The Oracle cleared her throat softly, and we all turned as she shifted away from a hunter with a clipboard, escorting us. In daylight, without the drama of prophecy and accusation, she looked younger. Fragile, almost.
“Please,” she said, gesturing toward the door with one thin hand. “We should go inside.”
Had she really been attacked, like she had told everyone in Blackbriar’s Square?
The ivy covering Chancellery House moved wrong. Not by wind, but strangely, its tendrils reaching toward us as we approached before recoiling like a child’s guilty fingers. One vine stretched toward Lucette, and she sidestepped without breaking stride, yanking her blonde braid from its grasp. We all knew better than to let strange plants touch us after today.
The entrance was ironbound oak studded with more runestones. This was where they housed dangerous assets. Valuable problems. And now it would house us.
The Fury’s raven cawed once from her shoulder, head swiveling to track something none of us could see. Her fingers found its feathers, stroking in a rhythm that looked like comfort. Or warning.
“I tried to arrange more comfortable housing,” she said as we entered, her voice carrying genuine regret and a slight accent I hadn’t noticed before, lilting and lovely. “Somewhere with windows that actually opened, perhaps with a view that wasn’t just stone and more stone. But the Magistrate insisted you stay close by. For your protection, he said.”
The Guardian snorted behind us; the first sound I’d heard him make the entire journey over. When the Oracle tilted her head toward him, something passed between them. Not words. Something older.
“Play nicely, Riot,” the fury-born told him.
“Riot? That’s your name? That’s a nice name.” Pip flew closer to him, studying his face. “Do you live with the Oracle?”
The Guardian smiled, warm and beaming at the sprite. “When she travels, I am her companion. It’s my job to make sure all Furies, sisters or otherwise, are safe.”
“Oh,” Pip answered, her wings dropping. “It’s sad that we need that when the Furies are so special.” She zipped over to the Oracle, hovering in front of her, even though the woman couldn’t see the sprite. “You’re like a goddess. I’ve never met a goddess before.”
The Oracle laughed. “Not quite, little one.”
Inside, the building was worse. Not decrepit. The Magistrate would never house people in what he regarded as squalor, but still the space was oppressive in its cheerlessness. The walls were the color of old bones. Portraits lined the entrance hall, but the faces had all been burned away, every single one. Now there were just empty frames holding shadows where people used to be.
“Former Phoenix hunters,” the hunter with the clipboard said with pride, staring down his pointy nose at me. “Their faces have been forgotten.”
I didn’t bother pointing out how shitty they’d been at their job.
Water dripped somewhere deeper in the building, each drop echoing. The ceiling was too high, disappearing into darkness the light couldn’t quite reach, and I swore I could hear scratching somewhere up there.
“Your temporary quarters are on the third floor,” the Oracle continued, leading us upstairs that groaned despite looking solid. Each step had a different rune carved into it, and they glowed faintly as we passed. “You’ll share a hallway. For convenience.”
Pip zipped ahead. “Dibs on the room with the best light!”
“They’re all the same,” the Guardian said flatly.
“Then dibs on making mine different!” She disappeared through the first door we reached, and half a second later her voice echoed back. “Oh. Oh no. This won’t do at all.”
She burst back into the hallway, hands on her tiny hips. “It’s so... brown. And empty. And there’s not a single mirror or sparkly thing anywhere!” Her enormous eyes found the hunter who’d been silently escorting us with a clipboard. “Can I get some things from home? Just a few bits? My lucky charms and maybe my lamp that looks like a constellation, and definitely my collection of shiny buttons because this room needs something that doesn’t look like sadness decided to redecorate.”
“No,” the man said without looking up from his papers.
Calder stepped forward, lowering his chin to look down on the man. “Why?”
The hunter—younger, probably newer to the ranks—shifted uncomfortably under Calder’s stare. “I... You’re only staying here until your homes are cleared. Those are the rules.”
