Page 78 of Silvercloak

“It’s Levan. I have someone for you. Lox.”

The sound of a bedspread being shoved off a body. “Where?”

Levan didn’t even have to look up at the street sign. “Lancen Place. By the apothecary with the yellow awning.”

“On my way.”

“Is Kelassan a Bloodmoon?” Saffron asked, guts twisting at the thought of involving this woman with the scarlet cloaks.

“No. He helped me when I … was sick.” A grinding of his teeth, an aversion of the gaze. “We should go. Your contact has already been waiting too long.”

Saffron nodded, squeezing the woman’s frigid hand. “Help is coming, sweetling.”

The lox-addled mage only moaned in response, but a moan meant she was still alive.

“Will she live?” Saff asked quietly, once they were out of earshot. “Or is she too far gone?”

“I don’t know,” Levan admitted.

“That’s what happened to you—when you were sick?” She framed this question not as an accusation but as a gentle nudge toward the truth—one that implied she already knew the answer. The simplest way to slip the knowledge Harrow had gifted her onto the public record between her and Levan.

Levan looked up at the sky, the narrow moon draping pale light over the hard lines of his face. “Indeed. Lox nearly killed me.”

Something like sadness sank into Saffron’s lungs, but it quickly dissipated. “And yet you subject countless others to the same fate. How can it not make you sick? When you think about what lox is doing to the city?”

“Lox wasn’t my idea,” he replied evenly, but it had to trouble him.

“You also didn’t stop it.” She chose her next words carefully. “I don’t get it, Levan. Unlike Vogolan, you seem to need a reason for the evil in order to make peace with it. So why—”

“You play fast and loose with the wordevil.”

“How else would you describe it?”

“Well, would you use the wordevilto describe what the Vallish soldiers did on the battlefield during the War of Eight Mountains? They killed. Slaughtered.” When she did not respond, he added,“Would you use the wordevilto describe Aymar inLost Dragonborn? He takes lives for the greater good.”

They slipped from Lancen Place onto Arollan Mile. “And you believe you do the same?”

“Most of the time. There are missteps. The Brewer in the alley, the night we met—that was a misstep.”

“And the Whitewings?”

“Only ever killed in retaliation.”

This didn’t ring entirely true. She thought of what he’d said to her that night in the alley:If I find out this is all a trick, I will not kill you. I will hunt down everyone you have ever loved and bleed them dry in front of you. And when you beg me to kill you, I won’t. I will force you to live with the pain until your heart eventually dies in your chest. And I willenjoyit.

She knew the threats were not empty, but when she looked back on them, she thought there might have been an element of performance to them. He’d just been trying to scare her, to keep her in line, but the pleasure he claimed he’d derive from destroying her … that was wholly at odds with the mage she was coming to know. He didn’t seem to derive any satisfaction from fear or violence, the way his father did. He just believed the end justified the means—whatever thatendmay be.

And wasn’t she doing the exact same thing? Hadn’t she killed Neatras and maimed Kasan in the pursuit of her own goals?

“Are you going to force your contact’s hand?” Levan asked, changing the subject somewhat. “Over the tracing charm my father asked for.”

Saffron had almost forgotten what Lyrian had ordered her to do.

She grimaced. “I suppose I’ll have to. Your father will torture or execute my loved ones if I don’t.”

Just then, her wand tip crackled, and her uncle Mal’s familiar voice sang through the tip. “Et vocos, Saffron Killoran.”

Saff stared down at her wand, cursing the woeful timing. He’d tried to reach her half a dozen times since her release from Duncarzus, and she still hadn’t mustered the courage to respond.