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Saffron came at it from a different angle. “Fine. Say it was a prophecy—are prophecies guaranteed to come true?”

The captain fixed her with a long, contemplative stare. Then, quietly, calmly, she said, “Whatever you saw in that temple will come to pass.”

Saffron disguised how unsettling she found the prospect.

She was going to kiss—and then kill—a Bloodmoon.

And if she was going to do that, it should be in service of a greater goal.

She leaned forward, forcing conviction into her tone.

“Captain, couldn’t it be a good thing that magic doesn’t work on me?

I can’t be struck with a killing spell. I can freeze the world for a few seconds and dodge through it unscathed—because I’m immune to the praegelos enchantment, like I am to everything else.

Surely that makes me an asset, not a liability. ”

“ Praegelos is an abomination,” Aspar snapped. “Cast it again and you’ll be kicked off the force faster than you can say Timeweaver. ”

Saff gritted her teeth. Her mother hadn’t been a hallowed Timeweaver, and neither was Saff. She was just, for some Saintsforsaken reason, immune to magic.

Then her attention snagged on what Aspar had really said.

“I’m not being kicked off the force anyway?”

There was a long bolt of silence as Aspar considered her next words.

Saff’s gaze went to the leather-bound spines on the nearest bookshelves.

Slightly apart from the others, as though recently reviewed, was The Elusive Fifth Element: A Study in Lightning by Philomena Driver.

There was a scorch mark on the bottom corner, the leather melted and warped around the blackened curve.

Finally, Aspar laid down her wand and said, “You might have noticed that there were only five job postings pinned last week.”

“Noticed? We were all half-demented over it.” Saff smiled, but it died on her mouth as she intuited her captain’s meaning. “There’s a sixth?”

“A deep undercover assignment. And I mean deep, not just gathering intelligence from Pons Aelii, like Cadet Villar will be.”

So Gaian had got the posting. Sebran and Nissa would be livid .

Could that mean Gaian was the Compeller, after all?

Aspar grimaced as she went on. “Cutting-all-ties-to-the-Silvercloaks deep. Agonizingly, life-alteringly deep.”

Everything inside Saff went still.

“As I’m sure you know, we’ve been building a case against Lyrian Celadon for many years. Decades.”

The Bloodmoon kingpin.

Saff’s heart tightened in her chest.

“Every Silvercloak in Atherin knows that the Bloodmoons are the fount of most violent crime in this city, but their tendrils spread so far into our various institutions that bringing a case against them has been almost impossible. We were close last year, with evidence gathered by Marcel Vales—who sadly died in action—but Grand Arbiter Dematus refused to bring charges on behalf of the Crown.”

Frowning, Saff replied, “The Grand Arbiter is corrupt? Or just afraid for her life?”

“Again, that’s above your pay grade.”

“It’s what you’re implying.”

A meaningful stare. “You can interpret my words as you wish.”

If it was true, it was the scandal to end all scandals.

Grand Arbiter was arguably the most important position of power in Vallin—in comparison, the monarchs were mere figureheads.

Voted in by several high-profile councils and governing bodies, the Grand Arbiter was responsible for the writing and abolishing of laws, the shaping of public policy, prosecuting major criminal cases on behalf of the state, and providing legal counsel to the royal family and the Vallish military.

And now Aspar was insinuating that the Grand Arbiter was in the Bloodmoons’ palm.

Was that why Dematus so staunchly resisted the introduction of truth elixir into the courts?

Saff’s mind was a beehive. She’d known for a long time that trying to secure Bloodmoon evidence was like trying to pin a dragonfly by its wing.

Her parents’ murderers had never been found, despite the crude crescents charred into their cheeks.

The Silvercloaks knew Bloodmoons were to blame, but not which ones or why.

Forensic sorcerers were developing techniques to trace killing spells back to their casters, but progress was nowhere near fast or conclusive enough.

Slowly, everything slotted into place.

The prophecy—if that was indeed what it was—had shown Saff in a cloak of scarlet. A cloak of scarlet she would always associate with the smell of charred flesh, with the feeling of grief so raw and sharp she thought she’d die from the pain of it.

There was no other situation in which Saff would wear such a cloak.

“You want me to infiltrate the Bloodmoons.”

“Truthfully, I was on the fence.” Aspar massaged her own temple. “Your incomplete grasp on magic could well make you a liability. But, as you rightly pointed out, it could also make you an immense asset.”

“How so?”

Another grimace. “Do you know what the Bloodmoon initiation entails?”

“Plentiful torture, I’d imagine.”

Aspar nodded bleakly. “Torture, truth elixir—which we have established you’re immune to—and finally a loyalty brand. A round stamp burned right over your heart. It sears the flesh dark red, resembling a Bloodmoon. It’s how they got their name.”

Fear cut through Saff like a scythe through wheatgrass.

“The advanced dark magic causes the beholder to perish the moment they betray the Bloodmoons. Once upon a time they’d brand any civilian who fell into their debt, hoping to amass an army, but mages recruited by force usually took their own lives—and the dead are not profitable to an organization like theirs.

So now they only brand those who enter their service willingly, in exchange for the wiping of debt.

Every Bloodmoon who walks the streets in a scarlet cloak has a brand on their chest.

“With you … the burn would take, but the enchantment would not. These measures—the truth elixir and the loyalty brand—are the reason we’ve never been able to successfully send Silvercloaks undercover into the Bloodmoons.

It’s why our evidence has always been peripheral, secondhand, easy to dismiss.

We need evidence that nobody, not even a compromised Grand Arbiter, can sweep under the carpet. ”

Enter Saff. The mage with broken magic and an old grudge.

“What kind of evidence?”

“Nothing that can be contained to one or two bad apples. It needs to be the whole tree, and it needs to be tied to the kingpin at the root if we’re going to rip the whole thing from the ground.

And we also want to know why. Why they’re so hell-bent on money and power, on vaults upon vaults of ascenite. What their end goal is.”

A wry smile tugged at Saffron’s lips. “I heard you had eyes on the commissioner role, when Dillans retires. Being the captain who brought down the Bloodmoons would seal the deal.”

Aspar said nothing to refute the idea.

Dillans was a shriveled old mage who’d been in the Silvercloak commissioner post for longer than Saffron’s parents were alive.

His biggest legacy was spearheading the campaign to outlaw portari, the teleportation spell, since it had scuppered a number of critical arrests during his tenure.

Saffron had spent a not insignificant amount of time wondering what would’ve happened if it had remained lawful.

Would her parents have been able to portari out of their house the moment the front door turned black?

Saffron took a deep, steadying breath. “In the Bloodmoons … would I still be Saffron Killoran?”

“Yes. We’d keep your own identity intact, to minimize the risk of being caught in a lie.”

“So they’d know I trained to be a Silvercloak?”

Aspar gave Saffron a look that bordered on sympathy.

“A spectacle will be made of you. You’ll be kicked out of the Academy and publicly denounced for your lies and forgery.

Charged with fraud, and sentenced to some Duncarzus time, to avoid suspicion.

Upon your release, you will enter a Bloodmoon gamehouse and gamble away everything.

And then you will borrow more, and lose more, until nothing can save you except offering your soul and your service to the Bloodmoons. ”

Saints. “Will anyone else know the truth?”

Aspar shook her head. “Nobody outside this room. You will be a Silvercloak, yes, but in my eyes and my eyes alone.”

A sour taste tanged at the back of Saffron’s throat. She hated the idea that the friends she was supposed to graduate with would think her a crook, a fraud, an embarrassment. Nissa, Auria, Tiernan … she’d lose all respect, all dignity. She’d spend weeks or months in the filthy gutters of Duncarzus.

And on the other side, she’d face the most dangerous mission imaginable.

Yet bringing down the Bloodmoons was the reason she’d lied her way into the Silvercloaks in the first place.

They had destroyed everything that had ever made her feel warm and safe and loved.

They had robbed her of a childhood. They had sentenced her to life in a nightmare she’d spent twenty years trying to wake up from.

And Saffron knew her decision was already made, because the relic wand had shown her as much.

Her future was written—had perhaps been written the very day she turned that doorknob—and it could not be unwritten now.

Captain Aspar offered a ring-decked hand, and Saffron shook it.