Page 104 of Silvercloak

Think.

Think.

Thinking is your superpower.

How could she get to Lyrian without raising suspicion? If Levan or Castian saw her surreptitiously fightingforthe Silvercloaks, and the raid didn’t go to plan … they would know beyond all doubt she was a traitor. That the loyalty brand hadn’t worked.

Hells, they’d likely know anyway.

Saffron lowered her shield as aneffigiascurse sailed over her head. With another whip-crack of lightning, a second docked boat caught ablaze. There was an echoing roar of anguish, but from who or where she could not discern.

From her position crouched on the ground, she had a clear line of vision toward Lyrian’s stomping boots.

Footsteps stormed up the gangway, echoing beneath her in the hold.

“Sen ammorten,” Lyrian incanted, over and over, a wildness to the words now, burning indiscriminately as brushfire, even though his own son was somewhere in the fray, and Saffron understood why he was the top of the hierarchy, why he’d been impossible to topple for so long—because there was nobody he would not kill to ensure his own survival. There were no threads to tug that would weaken his will.

The boat rocked violently as Castian continued to wield river water, hurling it down the gangways and surely flooding the hold. Aspar’s counter charms roared from ground level.

Crackcame the lightning.

With a heaving snap, the boat tore itself clean from its mooring, gliding downriver back toward Port Ouran. A few moments later, it was brutally hauled back to the dock by some invisible force. Saffron fought to keep her dinner in her stomach.

Where was Levan?

And why did shecare?

A wooden keg burst nearby, sending thick, sweet honeywine spreading all over the deck, sticky and cloying. The smell reminded Saffron of her mother, and her mother reminded her of …

Praegelos.

Was there something she could do with thepraegeloscharm?

It had worked back in Nalezen Zares’s house. If she could freeze time for a moment …

How would that help? She couldn’t very well restrain the Bloodmoons herself, in case it didn’t work and she somehow had to maintain her innocence.

Her father’s magic, on the other hand …

Maybe therewasa thread of Lyrian’s that could still be plucked.

She conjured an image from an old, dusty file she had perused endlessly during her time at the Academy. She called to mind every precise stroke of the myriad artist sketches, the parchment worn and thin, the charcoal pencils sharp and stringent. Every detail just so.

“Et lusio Lorissa Rezaran,” she muttered, grateful for her full magical well.

An illusion of the long dead queenpin sprung to life.

Lorissa was as tall as Levan, but spire-thin where he was broad. Chestnut hair plaited in a thick braid down her back, her face an orphic white against the bloody scarlet of her cloak. There was an awful blankness to her gaze—she wouldn’t fool anyone for long—but hopefully it would be enough to stun the kingpin for a moment or two, to make him believe, if only for a moment, that she had Risen. The mirage might spook him enough to stop errant killing curses from finding their marks.

Directing the illusion with the tip of her wand, Saffron glided Lorissa over the deck and into Lyrian’s line of sight.

He staggered back at the sight of her, his wand clattering to the deck.

Thunder bellowed overhead, and there was a shrill scream on the docks. Smoke fogged the air, but not so much that Saffron couldn’t see the look on Lyrian’s face, falling somewhere between horror and hope.

A firm hand grabbed her by the upper arm and hauled her upward.

Levan. His face contorted with fury and … something else.