Page 80 of Silvercloak

Saffron gave him a wry smile. “Is that the only reason?”

Levan’s eyes bore into hers so intensely it sent a shiver down herspine. “Fine. I meant what I said earlier. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now you’re caught up in all of this without deserving to be. My apology doesn’t mean much, but I can tell this does.”

The words flowed easily, coaxed out of him by the truth elixir. Not worth choking back.

And so Saffron replied, rather coarsely, “Alright.”

Levan withdrew his wand, laying the tip on the smooth oval, then furrowed his brow even deeper in concentration. He uttered a string of low, urgent enchantments all rolled into one, so quickly and expertly that Saffron could not even begin to parse them into separate commands. At the sound of the style of magic—so familiar, and yet she hadn’t heard it for decades—her heart ached like a wound, deeper and more primal than her prickling brand.

Slowly, beneath the assertive pulse of Levan’s wand, the wooden oval came back to life, flaring into a rainbow spectrum of colors before settling into a select few.

Some patches were a pale floral pink, while others were vibrant orange. There was a blotch of clover green, and right down the middle, cleaving the oval in two, was a streak of heart red.

Levan frowned down at it. “I’m not sure I did it right. It should only be one block color, shouldn’t it?”

Saffron nodded, but she could barely speak.

The hues were so perfect, so precise. It was an arrow through her chest.

“I think you did itbetter,” she whispered, a betrayal of her father. “His chose only the most dominant relationship dynamic. Yours seems to highlight all present ones.”

Clover green for an enemy.

Vibrant orange for someone trustworthy.

Pale pink for a blossoming relationship.

Heart red for a lover present, past, or future.

As Levan slotted those pieces into place, his gaze lifted from the necklace to her face, and a mottling of color spread above his collar. He exhaled slowly, searching her eyes for some clue as to howshefeltabout these conflicting connotations. In truth she was hot and cold all at once, both horrified and bewildered.

The prophecy came back to her unbidden: her lips on his, a firm palm in the small of her back.

A moan of pleasure. A wand pressed to his stomach. The killing curse.

Was there going to be something more to their relationship?

No. She wouldn’t allow that.

She had been letting herself get closer to him because it’s what the mission required—but the pendant mistook that closeness for something else. For a blossoming relationship. For a future lover.

Surely that was all it was. An error in the spellwork.

Levan cleared his throat and turned away.

“We should go,” he muttered, rearranging his cloak before striding off in the direction of the Jaded Saint.

VIOLIN MUSIC RANG OUT INTO THE STREET. THE PAVEMENTtables of the Jaded Saint were full of young mages doing raucous lines of lemon shots, and from their light-blue scholar cloaks and the collection of matching monocles, Saff suspected they were students from the University of Atherin.

She shrugged off her cloak and passed it to Levan. “Will you—?”

“Wait here. Yes.”

Swallowing the pitted stone of dread in her throat, Saffron entered the tavern. She spotted Nissa tucked into a quiet corner, her black hair a glossy sheet and her lips painted ruby red. The table was lined with empty tumblers—by the looks of things, Nissa had been drinking alotwhile she waited. She’d also sparked up a hand-rolled achullah, despite the many placards stating they were forbidden inside the vine-strung tavern due to fire risk.

At the sight of Saff, her bronze eyes lit up and she stubbed the achullah out into an old glass.

“You’re still alive,” Nissa slurred, as Saff took a seat beside her.