Page 151 of Silvercloak

Lyrian waited a single agonizing beat. “Kill the uncle.”

It took a moment for the meaning to land.

“No!” screamed Saffron.

“Yessir,” replied Zirlit.

And then the wand went silent.

All the breath was knocked from Saffron’s lungs, and she fell to her knees. Pain, hot and bright, flogged her chest, her heart. The magic in her well shimmered with it, ameliorating into something raw and potent, responding to the agony as surely as if she’d been whipped.

Which uncle, which uncle, which uncle—

Her brain scrambled, trying to come up with an explanation for how her uncle might survive, how he might overpower Zirlit, how he might flee with his life intact, but she knew, hadalwaysknown, that in every situation where the worst could happen, it did.

“Stop,” Castian snarled at the kingpin once more. “The time for revenge will come. For now, we need to get out. How?”

Levan, breathing unevenly, looked from Saffron to his father, then around at the shacks, reality setting in. “Impossible to know how many cloaks are here.”

Uncle Mal, Uncle Merin, who was it, and how, and maybe he could have—

The grief was almost too much to bear. It was a fist banging against her sternum, a blade driven into her gut, a crescent moon carved into flesh. It hurt so fuckingmuch,and her magic responded accordingly. Yet without a wand, there was nowhere for this bright, searing power togo.It just burned her from the inside out.

Enough.

With immense force of will, Saff shoved the mental image of her dead uncle into a sealed box. Pain would not serve her now. It would muddy her instincts, warp her emotions. She needed to keep her wits about her to survive this—to execute the raid the way it should’ve been executed on the docks. There would be time to mourn when all the Bloodmoons were in manacles, and she was back in the Silvercloak common room, where she belonged.

Think.

Assess.

Reroute.

The Silvercloaks would have brought at least one tac team of six. Likely two, given how much the last confrontation had escalated. They’d also be able to hear every word the Bloodmoons were saying, so accurate and powerful were their amplifying charms.

Would they move in if they thought Saff’s life was in immediate danger?

No. Lyrian had been a single syllable away from killing her where she stood, and Aspar had not given the order to move. Much more important to take the Bloodmoons alive than to save Saffron. The captain was like Saff, good at honoring the big picture. But truthfully, it still stung.

The Bloodmoons swung into an oval formation, their backs to Levan, Lyrian, and Saffron, wands outstretched.

“Castian, set fire to the shacks,” ordered Lyrian, no longer spitting with rage but instead coiled with that dangerous, serpentine hatred. “Smoke them out.”

Castian nodded. “Don incend—”

“No,” bellowed Levan, not caring who heard. Castian stopped mid-enchantment. “We. Are. Not. Burning. The. Havenwood.” Levan bit out every word through clenched teeth, his gaze swinging around the settlement like a pendulum. “Why are they not moving in on us? Something isn’t right.”

Saffron had been wondering the same. There were countless ways the Silvercloaks could’ve approached this capture—they’d drilled so many different set pieces during tactical villages just like this one. So why was everything silent, taut with a pulsing tension?

A few moments later, the answer emerged.

Through the chimneys of every shack but the one they’d just left, a violet mist wafted up on magical air.

Saffron recognized the smell before her brain fully caught up. Pepper and ash and rotten rose petals—the airborne weapon they’d deployed at the docks. Whorls of it drifted around the shacks, through the trees, not breaching the perimeter dome but brushing right up against it, like a velvine against its master’s shins.

This time, though, Levan was prepared.

“Ans espirabullan,” he said, pointing his wand to his face. A small bubble, made from the same shimmering ephemera as a spellshield, formed around his nose and mouth. Just as the first hacking coughs rippled around the Bloodmoons, he tapped each of their faces in turn—starting with Saffron, she noted with a pang—so that each of them could breathe normally through the crude purple haze.