Page 63 of Silvercloak

You have to earn your place over and over again, like watering a plant. You can’t feed it once and expect it to thrive forever.

“You seemed particularly compelled by the plight of Neatras’s daughter. A cruel fate, indeed.” Lyrian paused, and Saffron waited for an indication that the kingpin knew what she and Levan had done to free Tenea, but none came. “Perhaps eyes … yes. Eyes could work.”

With the toe of his boot, Lyrian rustled through the detritus that had flown from Kasan’s desk. “I could teach you the spell, of course, for removing an eye. But there’s something so visceral, so satisfying about doing it the old-fashioned way.” The glint of something sharp and silver caught his eye. He stabbed his wand at it. “Sen convoqan.”

The instrument leapt from the floor into his palm, and he held it out to Saffron.

A letteropener. Long, pointed, with two parallel grooves on the narrow handle.

“Carve out the eye, and I’ll show you how to bind a person’s consciousness to it. Then we’ll end the body and leave the mind entombed.”

Saffron’s stomach roiled. She couldn’t carve out a person’s eye with a Saints-damned letteropener.

She had to think her way out of this.

As it had in the final assessment over a year ago, her mind skirted around the reality in front of her and went straight for thewhy.Lyrian claimed that he didn’t want to commit such heinous deeds—he just wanted to reach the desired outcome as quickly as possible, to know who had pilfered the lox from the shipment.

In theory, anyway.

“Why can’t we just use truth elixir?” Saff suggested blandly, as though her heart was not skittering like a snare drum inside her chest.

To her surprise, it was Kasan who answered her question.

“Because truth elixir does not spread panic the same way torture does.” His voice quivered but did not break. “Because their empire does not run on information, but on fear. They don’t just need loose lips, they need willing bodies. My mutilated corpse will keep my workers in line for years to come. Is that about right?”

Levan gave a flat nod, and Saffron knew then that it was a lost cause.

For several long, terrible moments, she stood rooted to the ground. Levan’s eyes were fixed upon hers, burning with the same warning he’d leveled at her earlier:And for the love of hells, if he tells you to kill someone—do it.

She had to do this. She could not appear weak, uncompliant. She had to make it seem as though the brand had unyielding power over her.

She approached Kasan, her stomach a stone fist as she pressed the pointed metal to Kasan’s face. He flinched away from it, a tear beading on his lower lashes, his whole body shaking.

Just get through this,Saffron told herself.Get through this, and you can tell Aspar all about the loxlure, all about the Rezaran bloodline. Getthrough this, and you’ll be one step closer to tearing the whole rotten empire down.

Unless the Bloodmoons’ unfaltering faith in the brand was justified, and she’d die horribly before she could ever open her mouth.

Kasan jutted his jaw high. Resolute, as though picturing the worker he was protecting.

The letteropener dug into the outer corner of his socket with a grotesque squelch, and he let out a scream so visceral Saffron felt it reverberate in her ribs, in the hollow chambers of her heart.

She kept waiting for her mind to detach itself from reality, the way it always did during moments of horrific violence, kept waiting to float out of her own body and watch the scene from afar, but she remained agonizingly rooted inside herself.

She drove the instrument in farther, working around the socket, trying very hard not to retch at the wet snap of tendons, the pop of fluid, the scream so raw it sawed through her torso. Finally, with a roar of world-ending hurt, the eyeball was severed at the root.

Trembling, she picked it up with her bare hand and passed it to Lyrian. Kasan’s wails echoed around the deepest recesses of her psyche.

If she breathed, she would unravel, and so she did not breathe.

The kingpin pulled an empty roulette ball casing from his cloak pocket, placing the ruined eyeball inside and uttering a seething incantation. Kasan’s soul drew from his body in a misty whorl of ocean blue—the color his gemstone would’ve been, if he’d been properly mourned—and seeped into the roulette ball. Lyrian swiftly issued a killing curse. The wailing stopped abruptly, leaving the air ringing with its absence.

Lyrian held the eye up to the light.

“Shoddy execution, Filthcloak. Nowhere close to a clean cut. And all those burst blood vessels.” Hetsked, then shook it like a snowglobe. “Levan, Segal, parade the corpse through the docks, then take it to the incinerator. Oh, and Vogolan?”

“Yes?”

In a flash, Lyrian raised his ring-decked palm and slapped Vogolan backhandedly across the cheek. The gold rings around his knucklespeeled Vogolan’s skin open like ripe fruit, drawing streaks of poppy-red blood. “I’ll handle all lox shipments going forward.”