Page 163 of Silvercloak

Aspar would die regardless, but Saff could incapacitate Auria instead of Lyrian, let the Bloodmoons flee, stay undercover until she knew whether Nissa would be able to vouch for her. Until she knew whether Jebat lived.

Doing so would win back Levan’s trust, and further down the line, there would surely be another chance to bring the Bloodmoons in. This time she would make sure the whole institution of the Silvercloaks knew what she was doing, so that no matter who died in the crossfire, her efforts would be recognized, and she’d be reinstated.

Of all the options, it was the only one that didn’t leave her decimated.

She reached deep inside herself and felt a meager smear of magic at the bottom of her well. She had to make it last—make it as potent as possible, so that it might do what she needed it to do.

And so she opened the internal box where she stored all her grief, and held it upside down, so that every last devastating piece came tumbling out.

The terror on Tiernan’s face as he had raised his own wand beneath his chin. The wet squelch of an eyeball beneath a letteropener. The mental image of her uncle’s fresh corpse, and of his widower weeping alone by a fire.

A killing curse leaping from her knobbly beech wand and into the body of the man she loved.

That fateful night in Lunes, kneeling over her dead parents, knowing that life as she knew it was over.

The grief was a mountain sitting on her chest. She could barely breathe through the weight of all she had lost. It hurt so much, all of it, but pain could always be used. That was the very foundation of their world.

Pain meant you were alive. Pain meant you still had a fighting chance.

Her grandfather’s words, slurred at her parents’ wake, came back to her.

Let me tell you something about loss, sweetling. You can either yield to grief, or you canuseit. Those are the only two choices, in the end.

Maybe pain was the only thing that could save her.

Yet now the emotional dam had fallen, throwing it back up felt like trying to best gravity.

Dad,the broken child at the heart of her wept.You can’t be gone.

Mama? Please. Please, I need you.

She was six years old and cleaved in two.

Looking down at her body, she was surprised to see long limbs, broad hips, the swell of breasts. Because at her very core, in every placethat mattered, she was still hiding in that pantry, staring through the keyhole at the corpses of her beloved parents. Some fundamental part of her would be anchored there forever.

She drew from that part of her now, a bucket lowered and then raised.

The solitary smear of magic left in her well glowed bright as ascenite.

Face salt-slick with tears, she pulled the hourglass from her cloak pocket and met Rasso’s piercing gaze. Turning the hourglass over and tapping the weaverwick wand to its new top, she threw every ounce of power she had left behind the word: “Tempavicissan.”

Then the world smudged around her. An almighty wrench, a backward yank, a star imploding, a fate unbraided, so profoundly wrong that ithurt,like all the tissue was being torn from her bones.

Time blurred and uncoiled. Her body scuttled backward of its own accord, across the room and back into the closet.

Levan was dead, and then he was alive.

She might have vomited, but it disappeared through the cracks of time unwritten.

Keeping the wand tip to the hourglass took everything from her, and when she could breathe no more, and her mind was on the brink of collapse, she let go.

THE WORLD BECAME A PALIMPSEST.

With a violent lurch, Saffron found that she was in the middle of talking.

“—makes you think I’ll do that?” Sweat dripped down her temples, every inch of her body shaking. Lyrian’s wand was clasped in her right hand alongside her own—two wands, when before she’d had none. She tucked them into her cloak pocket as subtly as she could, folding forward onto her knees as though buckling under the emotional weight of the situation.

There was a long, potent beat, in which Levan studied her like an ancient tome. Then he crawled toward her on his hands and knees, cupping her sweat-slicked face in his cool golden hand. His blazing blue eyes searched hers so deeply it was like he was mining for ascenite at the bottom.