Page 91 of Silvercloak

“Necromancer.” His voice was silk-smooth, as though he hadn’t almost been overpowered, as though the chandelier hadn’t almost shattered his spine. As though his colleague did not hang suspended three feet to his left, all the life sucked clean from his lungs.

Zares spat at Levan’s face, but he tilted his head and the globule missed its mark.

“We have someone we’d like you to bring back,” he said blandly.

“I’d rather die,” snarled Zares, her voice accented, grains of sand between each syllable.

Levan ran a palm over the smooth ascenite island. “So this is where it happens. Where you bring your victims to kill and revive, over and over again.” He tapped the manacles. “Deminite.Very clever. Prevents any sort of struggle. Particularly if you have the misfortune of accidentally abducting a Compeller.”

Compellers often didn’t require wands to cast their magic. Only deminite could tamp down their raw power.

Zares glared at Levan hatefully. She thrashed her head back, and her skull cracked on the ascenite, but if she was trying to knock herself unconscious, she failed.

Levan pressed the tip of his wand to her exposed wrist. “We’re going to exercise a littlepersuasionupon you, and then you’re going to revive Segal.”

Saff’s stomach lurched.

Zares was about to lose her hands.

And Segal was about to become Risen.

“I cannot revive in manacles,” snapped Zares. She stared straight up at the ceiling, cracked and crumbling where the chandelier had wrenched loose. “And if you give me back my wand, I’ll kill you. You will not win, Bloodmoon.”

“I always win, necromancer.Sen perruntas.”

The hand fell from her wrist, all the tension leaving its snarled fingers. Zares screamed like a beast at the abattoir. She thrashed her handless arm against the counter, magic already knitting the stump closed.

“Ans annetan.”

The wound reopened with a bloody spurt, and the limp hand stitched itself back onto the stump.

Segal still dangled lifelessly from the ceiling, suspended in an invisible membrane like a moth preserved in amber.

This is a scene straight out of hell,Saff thought, grateful for the many years of hardening on the streetwatch. There was the echo of horror somewhere deep in her psyche, but not the full force of it, and she understood why the Academy mandated the five years for all candidates. She might not have emotionally survived situations like this otherwise.

Levan repeated the process three more times, until Zares whimpered like a child. Saffron could not reconcile how cold and callous he was, how at odds it was with the quiet, studious child she knew was at the heart of him.

“Will you cooperate now?” Levan asked, as though this was all very boring.

“Za’t,” sobbed Zares.

Yes.

Levan unclasped the manacles one by one, then magically bent Zares at the waist so she sat bolt upright. Levan pointed his wand at one of the flickering sconces bolted to the wall.

“Don incendras.”

The white-hot flame leapt toward his wand in a strand of brilliant light, and he guided it to Zares, scorching a black hole through her filthy brown tunic.

She screamed a wholly new scream.

Saffron stared in disbelief.

Not only was he a gifted Healer, not only was he the finest Enchanter she’d seen in years, not only could he transmute one object into another … he could alsowield.

The elements were temperamental, disobedient, incredibly draining on the magical well. And he’d just manipulated fire as though it were nothing.

Four mage classes.