Page 133 of Silvercloak

Couldit be possible, in a crypt of raw ascenite?

First things first, she had to revive Tiernan. Then she could worry about Lorissa Rezaran, about the Bloodmoons’ twisted mission, and about how to finally end it.

She would have to give her wand to Zares—the necromancer’s hadbeen confiscated long ago. Yet despite the knowledge that Zares had been branded, that she could not betray Saffron without losing a hand, something about handing over her own knobbly beech filled Saff with unease. It would be worth the risk, to bring back Tiernan, and yet—

—there was a slamming sensation against her head, an elbow hook to the temple, a starburst of agony across her vision, and she collapsed to the ground, everything bleached white.

Zares howled a lupine howl, her hand severed clean from her wrist, but instead of succumbing to the pain, instead of crumpling to the ground in agony and despair, the necromancer clambered inelegantly to her feet and ran for her life.

Vision still vignetted, Saff lifted her wand and aimlessly incanted after the disappearing figure, “Sen effigias.”

But Zares’s footsteps were already vanishing up the tunnel, and the spell fell dramatically short. The wards would let the necromancer pass too thanks to the brand on her chest.

Hope deserted Saffron with the sudden completeness of an eclipse. She could barely cling onto consciousness, let alone pursue her mark. Bleary-eyed, she stared up at the carved markings on the tunnel wall, the depictions of elegant timeweaving almost mocking her for what she could not do without a wick.

Her shoddily conceived plan had been a shambles. Rushed, poorly executed, an embarrassment to her Silvercloak training. She should’ve restrained Zares until the last possible minute. She should’ve been more alert for an attack, should’ve anticipated that the necromancer may have considered her hand a fair price for freedom. Saff had let desperation and impatience addle her judgment, let them undo years of hard-fought savvy.

It was clear now that Zares had been distracting her with stories of Lorissa Rezaran, but did that mean they were not true?

No. It had chimed the tuning fork in Saffron’s chest, plucked the instrument she had begun to recognize as her detective’s instinct.

Lorissa Rezaran, preserved in a crypt for twenty-one years.

Acrypt.

Saff sat bolt upright, heart pounding with realization, still dizzy, still nauseated. The tunnel tipped around her, and she tried not to lookat the necromancer’s snarled hand lying next to her best friend’s corpse. A museum of her failures.

Focus.Something Levan had said on the night of the raid, as he was usingportarito help them escape, came back to her:Cryptmouth Tunnel.

Cryptmouth.

Again came that chime, that tuning fork, her instincts clarion clear.

Dazed, she tentatively touched her fingers to the nearest tunnel wall.

The crypt was behind the markings. It had to be. What better way to honor a mother long gone than with art about what her blood had been able to do?

Climbing shakily to her feet, Saffron’s mind reeled. If she could just get into the crypt—a crypt so piled with ascenite that it had kept a corpse viable for over two decades—maybe she could leave Tiernan there until she found another necromancer.Oruntil she could find a weaverwick wand and rewind the clock to before she confronted him.

She slid a palm along the rough wall, hoping to find a seam of sorts.

Nothing.

Using her own wand and then Levan’s, she tapped at various spots on the markings—the words, the hourglass, the figures—and tried every password she could think of.Fair featherroot. Baudry’s bitch.Even, through absolute desperation,Dragontail.

Nothing.

She recited the timeweaving spell over and over.

Still nothing.

Just as she was about to give up—about to accept that the tuning fork in her chest might be off-pitch—a final idea came to her.

Maybe Lyrian kept an hourglass on his desk for a reason. Maybe it was a key, of sorts.

She pulled her own hourglass from her cloak pocket and tapped it with her wand.

“Tempavicissan,” she whispered, and the world did not turn itself around, but a section of the wall in front of her melted into the ground.