Page 31 of Silvercloak

Night had fallen, the sky fading from lilac to indigo, and her eyes struggled to adjust. Tucking behind the nearest wall, she lifted the hood of her plain black cloak over her head, casting her face in shadow. Then she withdrew a palm-size mirror from her pocket, angling it so she could see around the corner without exposing herself. An analog trick—one she’d discovered because she couldn’t perform augmentation magic on her vision, like her counterparts could—but effective nonetheless.

The silvered glass showed three male figures hunched at the far end of the alley, illuminated only slightly by an almost burnt-out sconce. Two of the mages wore scarlet cloaks, the moon phases embroideredin black and gold. One of them held down the third figure—a reed-thin mage in a green Brewer’s cloak—while the other muttered spells under his breath.

“Sen perruntas,” incanted a tall, broad-shouldered Bloodmoon, his voice low, malignant.

The Brewer screamed as his hand was severed from his wrist. It fell lifelessly onto the ground in the alley, blood spattering across the pale creamstone.

“Ans annetan,” the same Bloodmoon called.

The hand leapt off the cobbles and clamped itself back onto the Brewer’s wrist, magically reattaching, the bone and flesh and skin fusing not quite seamlessly, but convincingly enough.

The Bloodmoon must be a talented Healer—albeit a terribly cruel one.

Tilting the mirror slightly, Saff studied the scene for any evidence of a siphoning device, but saw nothing. The Bloodmoon didn’t look to be stealing the victim’s pain-power for himself.

“I can do this all night,” he growled at his victim, who whimpered in the other Bloodmoon’s grasp. “We can cut it off and mend it as many times as it takes to get you to talk. And when you black out from the pain of it … well. We’ll be right here waiting for you to wake up. At which point you may find yourself missing certain other appendages.”

“P-please, I d-don’t know anything,” the Brewer stammered, curling his body futilely around his crotch. He had deep brown skin with a purplish undertone, almost certainly hailing from Nomarea. “Nibabayo,don’t you t-think if I did, I would end this? I—arrrrrghhhhhhhhhh.”

The Bloodmoon muttered another severing curse, and the hand fell raggedly to the ground.

“Where. Is. Nalezen. Zares?”

The name sparked no recognition in Saff’s mind, if indeed it was a name.

“You have the wrong person, I swear it,nibabayo,I have no—”

“Sen ammorten,” the spell caster snapped.

The screams and kicks stopped abruptly, though they echoed around the narrow walls for several haunting moments, an almostprayer-like quality to them, as though a whole congregation were murmuring a funeral prayer.

The Bloodmoon holding the Brewer in place dropped his limp body, and the spell caster kicked the errant hand so far down the alley that it rolled to a stop at Saff’s feet.

The cruel mage lifted his head until half of it was limned by the dim sconce.

At the sight of his face—the dark hair against pale skin, the chiseled jaw, the strong nose, the scar bisecting his lower lip—a deep chill scraped through Saff, peeling the marrow from her bones.

The Bloodmoon from the prophecy.

The one she was fated to kiss—and to kill.

And he was staring straight at her outstretched mirror.

THE BLOODMOON STRODE TOWARD SAFF, THE HEM OF HIS SCARLETcloak skimming along the blood-spattered cobbles, and a dark thrill hooked through her belly.

It washim.

A fate emerging from the shadows.

Now the games began in earnest.

The Bloodmoon barely looked at her as he reached the mouth of the alley, finding her crouched behind the nearest wall.

She should have run, perhaps. Should’ve drawn on a mattermantic illusion to shield herself. Yet a thrum was rising in her chest, like a roulette ball spinning around its wheel, and she found herself unable—or unwilling—to cower and hide.

As it happened, he did not even raise his wand.

“Kill the witness.” He spoke over his shoulder to his accomplice, calmly, casually, as though placing a tea order. “Take both bodies to the incinerator.”