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A T THE APPEARANCE OF THE SMOLDERING SILVERCLOAK, A pavement display of leather-bound romance novels yelped and leapt to one side. A violet tome fanned itself, as though the surrounding air had grown far too hot.

Nissa resembled the vault of a wealthy aristocrat.

The gold of her eyes, the silver of her cloak, the sapphire of her brooch, the ruby of her lips, the Irisian emeralds on her fingers, all underpinned by the deep, earthen brown of her skin.

The gold stud piercing, notched in the bow of her upper lip—an Eqoran custom.

Eqoran culture was rich and pervasive despite its secularity, and the lip piercing was to symbolize that kissing an Eqoran was to kiss the entire land.

“Anything you want to tell me?” Nissa drawled, taking a drag on her achullah.

Saff stepped beneath the sunny orange awning of the bookshop, as though this would prevent them from being heard. “Aren’t you supposed to be burning the borders in Carduban?”

Nissa had been purportedly furious with her first posting out of the Academy—guarding the ascenite mines the Eqorans had lusted after for centuries—and had passed the time by scorching complex strings of ancient runes into the ground.

The Griffin Gazette had run a story on it, since a pair of mountain-dwelling farmers had believed the marks to be made by dragons—which hadn’t been seen on the continent since the Dreadreign.

Saff had read the story from her Duncarzus cell, after the guard had taken a liking to her quiet, unobtrusive presence and tossed her the paper each morning once he was finished with it.

“They transferred me.” Nissa shrugged. “Sebran’s there instead. A few skirmishes broke out on the border, and Aspar said she wanted someone with a military background there to get it under control. But I figure it’s also because I’m Eqoran, and she doesn’t wholly trust my loyalties.”

Nissa’s family were originally desertcombers from the remotest part of the Diqar, but when they’d lost Nissa’s young twin sisters to a brutal sandstorm, they’d relocated to the marble-fortified city of Zitra, on the northern border.

Once they’d arrived in the city, however, Nissa’s curious heritage attracted too much attention from a band of dragonseekers, and after multiple abduction attempts, her parents fled over the border into Vallin, where the Silvercloaks immediately offered special protection.

Now she searched Saffron’s face with a strange mix of emotion.

Saff knew she hadn’t imagined the flickering of the shadows, the spiced scent of achullah , the hair-raising sensation of being watched. It was often said of Wielders that those who brandish the flame may bend its shadow. Saff should have known, should have trusted her instincts.

“Fuck, Killor.” Nissa’s nickname for Saff made her toes curl. “I knew something was off.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Saffron replied cautiously. Thankfully she had a lot of experience lying through her teeth.

“Save it.” Nissa rolled her eyes. “I overheard your conversation with Aspar. You’re going undercover? Into the Bloodmoons ?”

“No.” A vehement head shake. “You misunderstood.”

Furious thunder broke across Nissa’s face. “Don’t patronize me.”

“Why would Aspar let me go undercover?” Saff argued. “The trial was true. I am a fraud. I forged my Enchanter certificate.”

Nissa mimicked, in an alarmingly accurate impression of the captain’s northern accent, “ Bide your time. Root yourself in the order of things. Then plot means of gathering evidence. ”

Saff sighed, breath gusting out like her lungs were bellows. “Fine. I’m going undercover. Happy?”

Nissa simply stared at her, as though it were a stranger standing before her in a shabby black cloak.

Saffron averted her gaze, looking instead at a rack of garish pulp magazines.

On one cover, King Quintan lay beheaded at the foot of an ogre-faced Bloodmoon.

Piles of ascens lay discarded around them, as though the monarch had been shaken loose prior to his execution.

The pulps always reflected public opinion, and public opinion of House Arollan had soured of late, thanks to the Crown’s lack of action against the Bloodmoons.

“But you did lie your way into the Academy.” Nissa refused to drop her glare. “You’re not an accredited Enchanter, are you?”

Saffron shook her head. “Just a lowly Mage Practer. I can cast enchantments—damn well, in fact—but magic doesn’t have an effect on me. I couldn’t enchant myself, so I fell short of specialization standard in mage school. I forged my certificate, then got through the Academy with illusionwork.”

Nissa’s expression darkened. “So when I used dragonbreath charms on you in bed … you faked it?”

Saff laughed roughly. “That’s where your mind goes first? Anyway, this quirk of mine means I’ll be immune to the sick and twisted loyalty measures inflicted by the Bloodmoons. Great silver lining, I know.”

Something fierce and protective passed over Nissa’s face, those golden eyes shining like lit torches in a dungeon. For a moment, Saff felt as though she had won the breakup—she might have been left, but here Nissa was, a year later, still caring.

“What are they going to do to you?”

Nissa clenched her fist so tightly that her claws appeared.

Long, sharp, obsidian talons that only paid credence to the rumor of Nissa’s dragonesque heritage.

Saffron had asked Nissa about her fabled ancestry a handful of times—her favorite book, The Lost Dragonborn, centered on a boy with dragonblood who was critical to a devastating war between mages and dragonkind—but her questions had always ended the same way: with Nissa giving her the cold shoulder for several days, and nothing even resembling an answer.

Not wanting her lover to feel like a zoo exhibit, Saffron had eventually stopped asking. But she never stopped wondering.

Blinking away the memory of those claws digging into the arched round of her hip, Saff grimaced. “I’m sure whatever your imagination can come up with is only the half of it.”

“Hells, Killor.” Nissa tucked a lock of sleek black hair behind her gold-studded ear, displaying the column of runes Saff had so often ran her tongue down. “Do you want to do this? Or was your hand forced?”

“I want to do this. I’ve always wanted to do this.”

Nissa’s jaw hardened as she drew again on her achullah. “Because they killed your parents.”

A memory rolled into Saff’s mind, clear and glistening as a marble.

She and Nissa talking in low voices, late at night by the fire in the common room, her head in Nissa’s lap.

Nissa sipping flamebrandy while Saff recounted, in painful detail, what happened the evening her parents died.

Nissa hadn’t said much, only stroked Saff’s silver-blond hair absently as she stared into the flames, but that night had been some of the best sex they’d had.

No longer just hands and lips and flicking tongues, but hearts and minds too.

No longer just a careless fling, but something deeper, more urgent, a new texture to their relationship.

Nissa ended things less than a week later. Saffron understood why she’d done it—self-preservation, or perhaps cowardice—but it still stung more than she cared to admit.

“They killed my parents,” Saff confirmed. “But Nissa, you can’t tell a soul, do you understand? If this secret leaks, then—”

“You’ll be dead. Got it.” A hard pause. “Are you scared?”

“No,” answered Saffron, and it was at least partly true.

She’d always possessed a kind of nihilistic fearlessness, a bravery born not from heroism or gallantry but from the fact the worst had already happened.

Yet she couldn’t deny the churn in her stomach when she thought of what might be about to happen to her—body and mind. “Are you angry? That I lied?”

“No. I’m jealous as all hells.” Nissa gave a grudgingly admiring smile as her claws receded. “Goodbye, Killor.”

“Wait. The captain told me there’s a Compeller in our cohort. I didn’t think it could be you, since your wielding is so strong. Do you have any idea …?”

Nissa’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t seem wholly surprised.

Perhaps she’d felt the guiding hand at her shoulder during the final assessment, the almost imperceptible voice in the back of her head saying No, do this instead .

“I don’t know. Gaian is in Pons Aelii and Sebran’s in Carduban, but I’ll keep an eye on the other two—we’re meeting for drinks at the Jaded Saint later.

” Loneliness panged in Saff’s chest. “Frankly I’ve always found Auria a little suspicious. ”

“Well, yes, but only because she’s always on time.”

Nissa nodded sagely. “Exactly. Suspicious.”

Something else occurred to Saff. “Oh, and back in the final assessment … what was the alternative information you received? I’ve always wondered.”

Nissa shrugged. “That the Bloodmoons were going to start killing hostages one by one, every minute on the minute.”

Saff snorted. “That explains why you got impatient with our bickering and took matters into your own hands. But why didn’t you just tell us?”

“And miss out on an opportunity to piss off Auria?”

Saff gave her a flat look. “Nissa.”

“I don’t know, Killor.” Nissa stared at a fixed point in the middle distance.

“I’m a private person. I learned early in life that once a secret is out there, it can never be taken back.

Once the rumor starts about your heritage, it’s hard to extinguish the fire.

In the final assessment, adrenaline got the better of me, and I reverted to what I knew.

Secrecy.” A smile quirked at her lips. “And maybe I just wanted to win.”

“Relatable.”