Page 40 of Silvercloak

If she didn’t kill him herself, the croupier would still die. Only she’d be incinerated with him, and this rare opportunity to gather Bloodmoon evidence would be lost. The Silvercloaks would be further than ever from bringing a case against them.

Kill or be killed.

Maybe this was how most murderers became murderers—not because of some deep-rooted evil, some innate bloodlust, but because they had no other choice.

A heretical idea, for a Silvercloak.

There was always a choice.

She just had to make the wrong one.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Neatras, her tone almost pleading. “I’m so sorry.”

Neatras’s hand tightened around what remained of his daughter, raising his chin and closing his eyes.

Saffron unhooked her brain from her emotions and raised her wand, a hard stone lodged in her throat.

“Sen ammorten,” she whispered, distant even to her own ear, the incantation uttered for the first time—but certainly not the last.

Yet nothing happened.

No unmistakable forked killing spell shot from her wand—only a pathetic waft of colorless vapor. Deep inside her lay a bottomless hollow, the feeling of a vast and glistening lake dried to a desolate husk, her well wholly sapped after the alleyway skirmish with Levan.

Saints.Would the Bloodmoons think she’d failed on purpose? That the sheer force of will required for such a curse was absent, and thus the magic would not obey her command? Would they think her too weak to join them?

Panic started to jackhammer against her temples, but she drew on her almost arcane ability to focus under perilous circumstances.

There were other ways to take a life. Terrible, terrible ways. But ways nonetheless.

One of the first things Professor Vertillon had drilled into the cadets at the Silvercloak Academy: sometimes you had to do things the old-fashioned way.

Hand trembling wildly, she pulled a simple steel dagger from her innermost cloak pocket. Its walnut-and-leather handle was carved with a decorative pair of fallowwolf fangs, a gift from her father’s father.

Gritting her teeth, she crossed to Neatras, cupped the back of his head as a lover might, and swiped the blade cleanly across his throat.

His flesh opened like a bloody mouth.

As he fell, he let go of his daughter. The encased eye rolled to Saffron’s boots, gray iris wide with horror and grief, all of it smeared in her father’s blood.

Saff clutched her hand to the wooden pendant around her neck, the familiar grooves of her parents’ jewels biting into her palm. The grim reality of the assignment struck her then, sharp and raw as a killing spell. Even if she came back from this, she would nevertrulycome back. Not as she was, as she had been.

A whimper wracked her chest, and she could not silence it.

“How touching.” Lyrian’s voice was cold as the Tundra of Bones,and in that moment, she wanted to slaughter him where he stood. Evidence was more valuable than a corpse, of course. ButSaints,what she wouldn’t do to see him dead. “Vogolan, restrain her.”

She had almost forgotten what came next.

The edges of her vision starred and blackened.

“You don’t need to restrain me,” she said weakly, as Segal and Vogolan yanked her by the upper arms, hard enough to bruise. “I agreed to this.”

“It’s one thing to consent,” said Levan, “and quite another to feel the pain. We need to keep you still. If you buck, the brand won’t take, and we’ll have to repeat it until it does.” His gaze was not kind, nor was it hostile. It was just empty. “It’s for your own benefit.”

Saffron was struck once again by the desire to plead, but she knew it was no use. This was something that had to happen.

Besides, some part of her knew she deserved this pain. She deserved to writhe and scream for the life she had just taken.

Neatras’s unseeing corpse watched as Segal dragged her to the wall.