I lift my eyes to the smooth golden scales of Raiek, linger on the purple bruise on Sylas’s bottom lip, and finally look him in the eyes again. My stomach drops. How much longer will I lie to myself?
“I’m sorry I drove Olivia away,” he whispers, searching my eyes. By Death, I wish he would stop looking at me like my answer holds his fate.
“It wasn’t your secret to share.” My reply has no bite.
His apology should make me feel better, but it only drives the blade of guilt farther inside my heart—of course, he shouldn’t have said anything to Sierra, but he didn’t kill my sister. And I told him to rot in the Underworld. He doesn’t need to apologize at all. I should be the one to apologize.
“I needed to be angry at someone. You didn’t kill her. She… the cuff was already the target. I—”I am sorry, I want to say.
“Be angry at me. Be angry all you need.” He takes my right hand, pressing it to his chest. “I needed Sierra’s help. I was desperate—they were accusing Beau of killing Victor. I’m sorry, Vi. I’m so sorry.”
I would’ve done the same in his position. “Sylas, I’m not angry.” I place my other hand on his chest, studying the sharp lines of his face. A faint bruise is blooming under his left eye, and he has a new scar on his jaw. Against all the warnings in my head, I reach for his face, running my thumb along the length of his scar.
His throat bobs. My heart stops.
For a stolen moment, I am not a Mortemagi, and he isn’t an Aspieri. We’re just man and woman, locked in the possibilities of what could be.
In the distance, hurried steps clap the floor, breaking this fragile moment. I push away from Sylas. He frowns, but I ignore it. I think of Overseer Paltro’s seething anger this morning. I shouldn’t even be entertaining this. Sylas is a distraction I do not need. “The ghost told me—”
“Viola, I—”
We speak at the same time. I avert my eyes. “Go ahead.”
“You first,” he says.
“The ghost said heirlooms can be used for personal collection, resurrection, entrapment, and reforging,” I explain.
Sylas bites his cheeks, mulling over the information. I don’t stop there. I explain what she told me about resurrection and how she thinks the murders are personal because the lines are being killed. “At first, I thought poachers were collecting heirlooms to release Grimm, but it’s not possible, is it? They would need the blood of all the people who sealed him.”
He slides against the shelves and takes a seat on the wooden floor, watching as Raiku coils and uncoils around his wrist. “We know that Azgar and Telam didn’t have any direct descendants, but have we considered that only one of them sealed him? Firstline has no lead on the copycat, and I have a hard time believing they’re burying everything.”
My hands fly to my mouth, thinking about what the ghost told me. This is entirely plausible, and if it is, we shouldn’t be worried about a copycat at all, but Grimm himself.
“The ghost saidThe blood that seals, and the relicare needed to release him, which implies only one. Is there… could he… be back?”
He looks up at me, and a thatch of hair falls over his brow. I pull my hand closer to my chest, fighting the urge to reach for him again. “I’ll scour reports, but if your ghost speaks true, then it’s a possibility. What else did she say?”
I repeat what the ghost told me only moments ago, “Dead lines tell no lies. Killing lines is personal.”
“Beau’s looking into the link between the dead family lines on the sixth floor.” He pauses, then looks away. “They… the poachers… they will come for your cuff, Viola. They have so many puppets. They are unlike anything I’ve ever fought against…”
This time, I’m the one who steps forward. I kneel in front of him, and his eyes find mine, the storm from earlier brewing anew. He sucks in his lower lip and gulps.
“Sylas,” I barely manage, pressing my forehead against his. We’re so close, I can smell the mint of his breath. “I’m not afraid,” I tell him honestly, my voice barely a whisper.I’m not afraid because I have you. The words die in my throat.
“They’re all dead because of me…” His voice is strained, his every breath cracking the invisible wall between us. Before I realize what I’m doing, my hands are around his neck and my fingers through his hair; he leans forward and buries his head into the crook of my neck. His shoulders shake against me, and I sit there quietly rubbing the back of his head. He doesn’t have to say a word; the same guilt follows me around, hovering around my neck like a cleaver.
“I defied orders.” He chokes up. “I… they were all dead. I could only save Gryff.”
“Sylas,” I whisper, holding him closer. It breaks something in me, knowing that he trusts me enough to take down his walls around me. “Don’t do this to yourself. You don’t know that things would’ve ended differently. We’ve all seen what they can do.”
“It was different, Vi.” He pulls away from me and leans back against the shelves, his eyes bloodshot and his ears red. He looks to the side, as if embarrassed he’s sharing something so personal. “It was like they knew me; they knew my history, taunted me with personal things. I think… I think the puppeteer is someone we know.”
We sit here for a moment, the silence charged with the unspoken understanding that something’s changed between us.
Finally, I let out a heavy breath, lingering on his brooding face for a few seconds. “We’re closer to solving this than we were two weeks ago.” I rise to my feet, giving him my hand. He frowns at it, then tilts his head at me. “It’s metaphorical, Archyr. I can’t lift you up.”
“Careful what you’re offering, Corvi.” He gets up on his own, then takes my hand. “I might not let go.”