Page 129 of Silvercloak

“Maybe a solitary tear. For dramatic purposes.” Saff’s gaze went to his scarred mouth. “What happened to your lip?”

His free hand touched the silvery indent. “I fell out of a tree when I was a kid. Magic was in short supply where I grew up, so it didn’t heal smoothly.”

Saffron couldn’t fight the laughter. “So ordinary. I was expecting some kind of tragic backstory.”

But at the joke, his face darkened, shut down. “I’m nottragic.Don’t think of me like that.”

“My parents were murdered when I was six,” Saffron retorted. “I think I have the monopoly on tragic backstories. And you might not feel like you can show the world your pain, Levan, but you can showme.I won’t use it against you.”

His blue eyes had cooled, somewhat. “There’s no way of knowing that.”

And he was right, wasn’t he?

If she did what she came here to do, it would ruin him.

Yet she still found herself wanting to take that pain away.

And she most certainly did not want to leave. Being around him made every inch of her feel awake, alight. It felt like playing high-stakes polderdash, like the first sip of a blackcherry sour, something dark and rich and alluring, something you knew youshouldn’twant, but that made it all the more intoxicating.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” she whispered, fighting the treacherous urge to go to him. He looked so tired.

But he just grimaced, those walls thrown up higher than ever. “Obviously fucking not, Silver.”

“Sorry,” she muttered, feeling stung, red-cheeked. “I forgot about your anti-caring policy.” She pushed her heel off the wall. “Have a lovely night, Levan.”

This time, when she went to leave, he did not try to stop her.

SAFFRON WAITED IN THE JADED SAINT FOR SEVERAL HOURS, but none of her old cohort appeared.

Nursing a small goblet of honeywine, she sat at a table by the entrance, surrounded by vines and candles and statues of mournful Saints, willing her friends to walk in, heads thrown back in laughter, but they never did.

Her brain rifled through the very worst possibilities with a sort of terrible inevitability. Nissa hadn’t made it out of the raid, after all. Auria’s hideous airborne weapon had turned on her. Tiernan had died on the dock, drowned by the wall of water Castian conjured.

In this world, the worst always came to pass.

Still she drank, and she waited, and she ruminated on Levan’s words.

I see you, Silver. For all that you are.

From the way the conversation had evolved thereafter, it hadn’t seemed nefarious. Neither an insinuation that she was a rat, nor a Timeweaver. But still the comment had left her unsettled, uncertain of the terrain she was attempting to navigate.

Brave, in a way most would consider reckless. Afraid, though you’d never admit it.Good,though you’ve started to doubt it.

It was an intimate thing, to be seen so completely.

A little after darknight, once she had thoroughly decimated her own emotions, she finally admitted defeat and left the tavern.

“Saffron?” came a timid voice from the alley behind her, and she swung on her heel.

Tiernan.

His frenetic gaze darted behind her, looking for a second figure. “Are you alone?”

Of course. He was here for Levan.Orderedto be, most likely.

“I am,” she said, feeling uneasy. “Is everyone alright after the raid? Nissa? Auria?”

His face twisted. “They’re alive, but Ronnow … Ronnow drowned.” A thick swallow. “By the time Paliran and the other Healers got to him, it was too late to save him. He had a family. Two kids.”