Page 13 of Silvercloak

No—two figures, mid-kiss.

One is Saffron.

The other is tall, pale, dark-haired, with a chiseled face and a scar bisecting his lower lip. His fingers are laced through the back of Saffron’s blond curls, every hard line of his body pressed against hers.

They both wear Bloodmoon cloaks: flowing folds of scarlet, moon phases embroidered in black and gold.

The kiss deepens, intensifies.

Saff digs one hand into the hollow of his hip, and the man lets out a soft, rough moan.

Her other hand presses her wand against the man’s stomach.

“Sen ammorten,” she says.

The killing spell leaps, a fork of lightning, a death kiss, and the man staggers back, eyes wide with horror.

He slumps to the ground, dead.

Something hard struck Saff in the face, and the mist dissipated. The worship chamber materialized. She was flat on her back, relic wand in hand, stars in her eyes, temple aching from where she’d hit the ground. The Bloodmoons above her struggled with their bonds. Auria lay in scattered stone shards all around her.

“Go,” murmured Saffron at the hostages, her voice distant and watery.

The hostages clambered to their feet, escaping past their captors into the spiral corridor.

Was it over?

What justhappened?

Saff wiped her sweating brow on the sleeve of her cloak, focusing on the final assessment and not the white-hot relic wand in her hand.She had saved more hostages than the others had killed, and taken three Bloodmoons alive. In a real scenario, they’d be invaluable sources of information to the Silvercloaks.

One of the Atherin postings was hers. It had to be.

Her cloak would soon be turned silver.

Saff looked blearily up at the viewing gallery, expecting a round of rapturous applause once her assessors had realized what she’d done.

But instead she was met with a cold, stony silence.

IT TOOK SEVERAL HOURS OF PAINSTAKING WORK TO PUT AURIAback together.

Tiernan and Saffron sat by her bedside in the hospital wing as a swarm of Healers and Enchanters tried—and failed—to reassemble her shattered parts. There was cursing and blaspheming, low mutters and furrowed brows, and a mounting sense of worry that the brightest mage to walk these halls in a decade would not leave this room in one piece.

Beyond the arched windows, the sun dipped over the horizon of Atherin, washing the purple domes and gold obelisks in a pink-peach light. Dust rose between the buildings, and there was the distant clang of bells, the roar of drunken crowds, the rapid clop of hooves.

A chariot race.

The streets would be shifting and reversing in order to trick riders into wild detours, and a crew of Wielders would be creating vicious hailstorms and torrential gales in a bid to unseat them from their steeds. The competitors rode wandless, to avoid the temptation to maim their rivals, though they were permitted to enchant their own horses prior to the race. Last year’s Vallish Grandstand had been won by a beast the approximate size of an Augur temple, with eyes thatcould see through walls. Several important government buildings had been trampled by its carriage-size hooves, but it was so entertaining that nobody seemed to mind.

Saff used to bet on such races every week, until the Academy consumed her life. At first, she had used gambling as a kind of exposure therapy for her fear of the unknown, hitting the gamehouses night after night, rolling the dice and learning to live with the outcome, however unfavorable. She used it to blow off steam, to allow herself a brief respite from careful planning and controlled execution.

She wasn’t expecting to be quite sogoodat it. Not necessarily at the simple bets, like the roulette wheel or the chariot races, but in the more intricate, skill-based games. Her tightly guarded emotions aided her nicely in the polderdash hall; her constant vigilance allowed her to read her competitors’ every muscle twitch—she was used to studying subjects closely, so that she might recreate them in an illusion—and her natural inclination toward nihilism led to big risks with big rewards. Her bank vault was suitably lined with the fruits of her frivolous labor.

She wrapped her hand around the ascen she’d won from Gaian only a few short hours ago. Everything was about to change. Everything hadalreadychanged.

“I’m annoyed the others aren’t here,” Tiernan admitted, as a broad-hipped Healer gently removed his hand from Auria’s stone wrist. “Thanks, Saff. For this, and for switching envelopes with me.”

Nissa, whose fury over the final assessment had caused literal smoke to billow from her nostrils, had taken herself away to the pleasurebaths to replenish her well. Sebran and Gaian were drowning their sorrows in the Glory’s Edge—a dimly lit, musk-scented tavern down the street from the Academy—while trying not to think about the fact that the job postings would be pinned to Captain Aspar’s bulletin board in mere hours.