Page 35

Kieran

The key didn’t glow. It didn’t shimmer. It just clicked.

A plain brass thing on a weathered iron ring, turned by hand.

Silas opened the villa doors like a man with every right to be worshiped—shoulders back, smile lazy, eyes glinting like polished obsidian. But there was no magic in the gesture. No hum in the walls. Just good old-fashioned, soul-grinding ego.

“Welcome to the only place in Greece where you can sip wine beside a petrified goddess and read Cicero in the original bloodstains,” he said, pushing the door open with one palm.

Dahlia’s breath hitched audibly beside me.

The place was—unfortunately— breathtaking.

Vaulted ceilings. Mosaic floors that told stories older than memory. Sculptures and scrolls. Heavy golden light spilling through carved archways. The villa looked less like a house and more like the spoils of a thousand doomed empires, arranged by a man who’d lived too long and felt too little.

We stepped inside, and there it was.

The statue.

Nine Muses , carved from what could only be god-tier marble, arranged in an elegant spiral—arms upraised, gowns flowing, each face serene and impossibly perfect.

On top of them sat a lamp. A cheap, modern lamp.

And a coffee cup.

And—gods preserve me—a half-eaten biscotti.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I muttered.

Silas closed the door behind us and dropped the keys into a bowl shaped like Cerberus’s head. “What? It’s structurally sound. They’re very supportive.”

Dahlia stared in open-mouthed horror. “You’re using sacred divine art as a side table. ”

He shrugged, already sauntering deeper inside. “They don’t complain.”

“I might,” I said.

“You always do,” he called back.

Dahlia stepped around the statue like it might bite her. “This is insane. Is that a spear from the Greco-Persian wars?”

“It’s a replica,” Silas said, without looking. “The original’s in the hall closet. Near the cursed chess set.”

Dahlia leaned in, wide-eyed. “I think I just saw a chalice made of obsidian.”

“You did,” I muttered. “And it’s probably cursed.”

She grinned, sharp and delighted. “We should steal it.”

Gods help me, I was in love.

Silas threw himself onto a sun-bleached chaise like he hadn’t just dragged us halfway across the world. “Make yourselves at home. Everything’s authentic except the espresso machine and the fire suppression system. I’m not a complete savage.”

I scanned the room again—no wards, no sigils, no magical protections humming beneath the surface. Just stone, salt air, and history bought with centuries of boredom and too much coin.

“You’ve got no magic here,” I said aloud, voice flat.

“Not anymore,” Silas said, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Had to get creative. Money buys more than spells these days.”

Dahlia shot me a glance, brows raised. I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t. The sight of this place—of him —sitting smug in a palace of stolen divinity while our coven’s ashes were buried gods-know-where—it made my jaw ache.

“Which wing’s safe?” I asked, already walking.

“West wing’s fine. Avoid the cellar. Some things down there bite.”

Dahlia looked entirely too pleased. “I hope it’s a basilisk.”

“It’s probably a metaphor,” I muttered.

She turned to me, eyes bright. “Do you think there’s a library?”

“There’s always a library,” I said, sighing.

And, gods help me, I followed her.

Because as much as I hated this place, this marble crypt of pride and long-dead glory—I liked watching her walk through it. Like she might unravel it all. Like she might wake the dust and make it mean something again.

Even if Silas didn’t deserve it.

We wandered deeper into the villa.

The corridors grew quieter the farther we walked. No more glittering artifacts. No statues. Just long stone halls with tall, shuttered windows and the occasional painting that looked like it could whisper if you stared long enough.

Dahlia trailed her fingers along the smooth walls, silent for once, eyes alert.

It was her who found the door.

Not gilded. Not ornate. Just a tall wooden thing, slightly ajar, tucked between two marble busts I didn’t recognize.

She glanced at me. “Do we knock?”

I shrugged. “When has that ever stopped you?”

She pushed the door open.

The smell hit first—old paper, candle wax, something faintly metallic beneath. The lights buzzed overhead—modern ones, harsh and buzzing, a complete break from the aesthetic of the rest of the villa. This room didn’t belong to an immortal showman.

It belonged to someone desperate.

Long rectangular table. Dozens of chairs.

Papers stacked in unruly piles. Strings connected clippings on a corkboard that ran the entire back wall.

Notebooks. Maps. A hand-drawn diagram of the locket, annotated in Silas’s familiar, tight scrawl.

And in the corner, what looked like an old blackboard, covered in names.

Dahlia stepped inside first. I followed, slower.

This wasn’t decoration. It wasn’t part of the performance.

This was real.

I walked to the board and stared at it.

Names.

Each one from the coven. Some crossed out. Some circled. One underlined—twice.

Kieran.

Below it, in small, almost frantic writing: “Gone. Not dead. Bound. Location unknown. Locked. Locked. Locked. Locked.”

My breath left me.

Dahlia hovered near the corkboard, reading silently. Her eyes flicked from string to pin to paper—handwritten letters, newspaper clippings, sketches of magical sites. Everything led back to two things:

The Order of Alecto. The Locket.

One map was marked with a series of red dots. Greece. Rome. North Africa. Northern France. One in the Midwest United States.

Another was scorched at the edges, as though someone had nearly burned it in frustration—but then thought better of it.

“It’s like he was trying to track you,” Dahlia said quietly.

I turned toward a desk in the corner, papers stacked high beside an untouched mug of something long gone cold. At the top of the pile was a letter I recognized.

My handwriting. Or what was left of it.

A goodbye I’d written days before the Rite. Silas had kept it.

“I didn’t know he…” I swallowed. “He looked for me.”

Dahlia turned to me, something soft in her eyes. “You really thought he didn’t care.”

“I watched him walk away,” I said. “That night. At the circle. He stepped back. He chose to leave. ”

She said nothing. But her hand reached for mine.

I didn’t stop her.

The table was littered with diagrams—of runes, of binding circles, of reconstruction attempts. Failed rituals with scribbled corrections in red ink. Several had been slashed through. One page had the word "useless" scrawled across it five times in different directions.

Silas hadn’t just been collecting. He’d been grieving.

Not loud. Not weeping. But like a knife carving through centuries of silence.

There were candles burned down to nothing beside pages left open, circles drawn in the margins where his hand must have hovered. A page that read:

"If he's still in there, would he forgive me?"

I couldn’t look at it anymore.

“He was trying to fix it,” Dahlia said, voice nearly a whisper. “In his own... totally insane, chaotic way.”

“Too late,” I said, but my voice cracked on the second word.

She squeezed my hand.

“I need air,” I muttered, already turning for the door. But I paused, just once, to glance back at the board.

At my name.

Not crossed out.

Not erased.

Still there.

Still his brother.