Page 168 of Silvercloak

If she didn’t, Mellora wouldn’t be distracted, and she’d bring back Joran, proving herself to be a necromancer. She would revive the queenpin. The Bloodmoons wouldn’t kill the Killorans for silence—having a necromancer in their cards was far too valuable. The Killorans would be branded, but they would all escape with their lives.

Saffron would not be so decimated with sadness that she spent six years in silence. Levan would never have to grow up inside that same grief, would never be tortured to within an inch of his life on his father’s order, would never be crippled by obsessive, cyclical thoughts.

And all the people who had died because of her would live. Neatras, Kasan, Papa Marriosan. Ronnow, Alirrol, Tas. Lyrian, Vogolan, for better or worse.

Captain Aspar.

Tiernan.

Her uncle.

This revenge mission had been an elaborate gamble, a desperate bet in the gamehouse of destiny, and the sunk cost was too high to turn back now. She had sacrificed too much to walk away.

But if she could keep going long enough to undo it all …

It would require an unholy amount of ascenite. More than existed in the crypt, in the whole of the mansion—hells, in the whole of the city. But the Bloodmoons had the means to accumulate more and more. For the next few months or years, her motivations would perfectly align with Levan’s.

They both wanted ascenite, and they both wanted to bring back their parents.

The prospect filled her with a deep, bright glow.

She could make this right, but she had to go all in.

Her enormous sunk cost could still pay off, in the grand gamble of fate.

She might have to keep torturing and killing, keep covering her tracks, fully invest herself in the Bloodmoons and in her goal. But it would all be worth it in the end, when she was back with her parents in that round, ramshackle house in Lunes, all the pain she’d caused vanishing between the cracks of rewritten time. Was it still killing, ifyou knew you would undo it later, and the victims would be none the wiser?

Then came the axis tilt, the perspective shift, the great pitching of the world beneath her feet.

A thunderclap of terrible understanding.

Oh,she thought, horrified and fascinated in equal measure.

This is how villains are born.

Epilogue

Levan

ELMING, 26 SABÁRIEL, YEAR 1174

It’s been three days since my father died, three days since I became kingpin, and three days since I learned what Silver truly is.

A Timeweaver.

One minute in that closet she was relatively calm, steady, with no wand in her hand. A split second later, she was weak, breathless, sobbing, with my father’s—or really, my mother’s—wand in her palm alongside her own.

Did she think it would escape me, what she had done? I remember enough of my mother’s lost art to spot those tiny inconsistencies, to recognize when the fabric of reality shifts from one moment to the next.

The truth is all too clear. The first time she made her decision, she chose to betray me. In another timeline, I died at her hand.

Saffron Killoran unmade my world.

And now I will unmake her.