𝐒𝐲𝐧 ┃𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞

98. 𝑆𝘩𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑

Syn

"I want something from you."

The fucking nerve.

"How about I don't kill you right now?"

"No." He smiled, shaking his head. "You need me. If you kill me, everything I know dies with me and oh, I promise you you're going to want to hear this."

I tensed, my hair standing on edge as the thought of whom I truly may have left Queen with began to wrack my head. "What do you want?"

"I want Stella's body," he said. "I know your girl killed her and I'm sure she had good reason, but I want to give her a proper burial," he admitted. "She was a bitch and she had stabbed me in the back more times than I could tell you, but she meant something to me. She was all I had and I didn't even get to say goodbye."

"Is that why you hate me so much?"

"Oh, please." He waved his hand. "She was an idiot, she probably got what was coming to her— I hated you long before I met her, and you'll know why one day."

I nodded. "Okay, whatever. Fine. Is that all?"

"For now." He nodded. "In addition to an 'I owe you'," he said. "One day I will come to you and ask you to do something for me that will probably kill you. I want you to tell me now that you'll do it."

I scoffed. "You want me to blindly agree to something like that without knowing what it is?"

"Well, yeah." He shrugged. "This guy is dangerous and if you're in cahoots with this guy then the luxury of time is not really something you have—"

"Fine!" I agreed. "I'll owe you, whatever. Tell me what you know."

"Gladly." He smiled, setting his glass down before walking to a bookshelf in his office. We looked at him curiously as he trailed his fingers along the spine of several books before pulling out one and coming back to us. "How much do you about your father's life right after Lilith left him?"

"Not much," I replied. "I was a kid—"

"No," he said, setting the book down with a slam and flipping through the pages. "I'm not talking about a few decades ago. I'm talking about the first time she left him- thousands of years ago."

I shrugged. "Not much, I've heard stories here and there."

He whistled. "Your father was quite the mad scientist back then, let me tell you," he said before flipping the book toward Paris and me. We looked down at the foreign script, a drawn image of a beast roaring up at the sun. "This book cost me a fucking fortune so please don't touch it."

"Keep talking," I snapped.

"Calm down," he raised a brow before pointing at the text. "It's written in Latin. And there's not much mention of this part of history- your father tried his best to erase it from all the books in the Underworld—"

"Then how did you get your hands on this?"

"This one— is probably one of the last ones...belonged to a library in Heaven a few hundred years ago. The place burned down during the war between Heaven and Hell and only a few books survived. I had someone acquire this one for me, I'm a collector."