Page 49 of Silvercloak

Saff hurled the second flamebrandy down her throat, the cinnamon-clove searing her gullet. “To my immense shame, she’s already involved. I invoked her name under duress.”

“Hells.” Nissa raked a finger through her sleek black hair. “In what sense?”

“My newcolleagueneeds information. I thought Auria could get it, but she won’t cooperate.”

“What kind of information?”

“A person’s whereabouts.” Saff ran the tip of her forefinger around the rim of the empty glass. “I watched a Bloodmoon torture and execute an innocent in the name of finding this person. So nowIneed to find them, or they’ll …”

Nissa’s gaze was hot as a dawning sun. “Torture and execute you.”

“I might be useful to them in other ways, but if I can’t help them manipulate the Silvercloaks, they might decide I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”

Nissa drained her own drink without wincing. “So not only are you working the Bloodmoons for the Silvercloaks, you’re now working the Silvercloaks for the Bloodmoons?”

Saff laughed bitterly. “A fantastic situation, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

And yet one she had worked toward for decades.

Several months into her year at the Academy, her uncles had sat her down over dinner and said they were worried about her. She didn’t paint anymore, and she certainly didn’t spend hours rereading those chunkyLost Dragonbornnovels she used to love. Whenever she visited Mal and Merin at the Cloakery, she arrived late and left early, always muttering about coursework and case files, and even when she was present, they knew her mind wasn’t in the room with them. She no longer went to watch the chariot races with her velvet pouch of coins and that hungry gleam in her eye. They’d never quite approved of the way she gambled on the winner week after week, but at least it had shown passion for something other than the Bloodmoons, the Bloodmoons, theBloodmoons.

But if relentless singularity is what she needed to avenge her parents, to ensure no other child went through what she went through, it was a series of sacrifices she was all too willing to make.

Nissa sighed, the outward breath a billow of scorching steam. “I don’t like this, Killor.”

The bard struck up a new tune. Spores drifted in front of Saff’s face, and she realized how exhausted she was. “Really? I get off on the danger.”

“Well, yes, it’s undeniably hot.”

Saff laughed again, grateful, as she always was, for Nissa’s solidity. For how unflinching she was in the face of trouble, for how Saff’s hurt and grief passed right through her without ever leaving a mark. It was as though Nissa was born with a series of emotional culverts, draining any kind of sorrow or trauma before it could fester. She rarely spoke of her own anguished past, not because she was suppressing her unprocessed grief but because the loss of her sisters and everything that followed had long since bled away. Saffron, on the other hand, let pain pool and rot inside her, a body of stagnant water growing more mephitic with every passing year.

Not Nissa.

Nissa was indomitable. Dauntless, and bold, and unshakeable.

Saints, SaffronmissedNissa, and what they’d had. She missed having a person, one she could melt into at the end of a long day, one with whom she had private jokes and secret dreams, a sense of hope on the horizon.

The best Silvercloaks cut off sentimentality at the root.

Yet from the way Nissa was looking at her—through thick, fluffy lashes, her eyes rimmed in white and gold kohl, her lip piercing catching the light—Saffron suspected she missed her too. If Nissa was indeed capable of such emotions.

Then again, perhaps she just wanted to fuck.

All at once, Saffron remembered how it felt to have Nissa’s forked tongue drawing neat circles between her thighs.Desire pooled low in her stomach. Her body made the decision before her mind caught up, and she tilted toward her dragonesque former lover, heat shimmering between them in waves.

Nissa drew her face closer, and as their lips met in a fiery-sweet clash of flamebrandy and lust, her claws pierced holes in Saff’s trousers. There was nothing sweet or tender about it; pointed teeth dragged at Saff’s lower lip, all the blood rushing to the surface of Saffron’s skin at the touch.

Saff understood it then, the reason soldiers made love in the trenches of the last major war. Facing death and triumphing over it brought with it a rush of relief, of desire, of existential hurt.

It took everything she had not to melt into Nissa.

“We can’t,” she muttered against Nissa’s parted lips. “I’m compromised. Cavorting with me puts you in grave danger.”

And it was true. If Levan saw Nissa and Saffron kissing … Nissa would become his clear target. She’d already let slip that Nissa had failed the torture trials the first time—they’d played a cruel trick involving an illusion of her dead twin sisters—and so she was already in the kingpin’s son’s sights. She would become just another innocent to threaten—although Saffron suspected Nissa would abhor the wordinnocentaltogether.

“Cavorting?” Nissa snorted. “Is that what you call letting me drip hot wax all over your body until you beg for mercy?”

Saffron’s cheeks pinkened, although nobody would bat an eyelid if they overheard. Almost everyone in Ascenfall was attracted to all genders, and almost everyone was kinky as all hells.