Page 154 of Silvercloak

Levan’s jaw clenched. “Who. Told. You?”

“Orders. Are. Orders.”

With an impatient sigh, Levan pulled up Jebat’s silver sleeve and pressed his wand tip to the veined stretch of wrist. “You’ll lose a hand.”

Jebat’s eyes blazed. “I don’tknow.”

Levan’s grip on Jebat’s forearm tightened, and he dug the wand tip even more harshly into the wrist, but the cruel words Saffron was waiting for—the cruel words she uttered herself two days ago—never came.

Instead, Levan looked down at his own golden hand, as though remembering the sheer agony of it, and his eyes pressed closed. His chest rose and fell, steeling himself, and Jebat watched with unbridled terror and hatred in his stare. Waiting for the pain.

But then Levan opened his eyes, and that dead expression was back behind them.

There was a wordless exchange between them, coiled with some unnamed force.

Then Jebat said, calmly, willingly, as though he had never resisted at all:

“Aspar has an undercover Silvercloak in the Bloodmoons. I don’t know who, but they’re close to you.”

What—?

No.

The thing that sucked all the air from the room was not that Jebat had all but confirmed Levan’s suspicion of her. It was not that he had essentially signed her death warrant.

It was that he had suddenly dropped all resistance entirely.

The world rearranged itself around a singular shattering realization.

Levan was a Compeller.

SAFFRON TURNED BACK TO THE TRAPDOOR AND RAN FOR HERlife.

Behind her were a few heavy footsteps, then a vicious lupine snarl and the squelch of teeth into flesh. Levan roared as Rasso hung from his forearm, face contorted with pain and fury, thrashing wildly to shake the fallowwolf off.

He knew now, beyond all doubt, that she was the undercover Silvercloak.

He knew now, beyond all doubt, that she had betrayed him the way Alucia had.

And there was no way he’d let her walk out of this alive.

Rasso unhinged his jaw and landed neatly on all four paws.

Both Saffron and the fallowwolf dropped to the bottom of the ladder just as Levan’s deathly face appeared in the square of light above. Rasso let out another hair-raising growl, and Saffron fled down the tunnel spoke.

Levan followed.

His magic worked on her. He could compel her to stop if he so wanted to, and yet he chose not to.

She reached the center of the wheel layout, Rasso panting at herheels. Indecision rooted her to the spot like thesen debilitancharm. She’d have to choose a tunnel spoke to hare down, but doing so would trap her on that path, since they were all dead ends. She would have no choice but to emerge into the shack she’d chosen, because Levan would be right behind.

If only she had a weaverwick wand. She could try each spoke in turn, then commit to the least tragic of them. The one with the best chance of escape.

Footsteps thundered toward her.

Saffron closed her eyes, reaching her instincts out in front of her like tendrils.

They pointed down one particular spoke, and so she ran, Rasso right behind, to the rope ladder at the end. She climbed up, trying not to think about what might be waiting for her in the shack above. The worst-case scenario was Lyrian, who had killed her uncle, who wantedherdead, because surely Levan would not leap to her defense now.