Page 21

S AFFRON’S HEART CANTERED UNEVENLY IN HER CHEST AS LEVAN Celadon led her through a series of warded tunnels.

Dark stone walls dripped with a nameless black liquid.

Inkmice scuttled, and lanterns flickered, and somewhere in the bowels of the building there was a marrow-curdling scream.

Saff felt the reverberations of it in her ribs, in her spine, in the back of her own throat.

She was fated to kiss—and to kill—the kingpin’s son.

And at that moment, she didn’t know which part was more horrifying.

How could she ever lay her lips on this monster? He had mutilated and slaughtered an innocent mage in front of her. He represented everything she loathed in the world. A fatal knock on a beloved doorway, crescent moons burned into her parents’ cheeks. Six years of silence, a lifetime of grief.

But there was also the fact that killing the kingpin’s son represented a failed mission.

She was here to take them all alive, and if she slayed him where he stood, a wealth of information would die with him.

Not to mention that killing him would put an enormous target on her back—the Bloodmoons would hunt her down for the rest of eternity until they could avenge the death of Levan Celadon.

Yet there was still that unsettling thrill somewhere in her belly. She’d spent twenty-one years thinking about bringing down the Bloodmoons, and now she was finally acting. Despite the roil of fear in her gut, the prospect was rather exhilarating.

Levan strode ahead of her in silence, both wands clutched in his palm, while gargoyle-faced Segal took up the rear, his gait loping and uneven, as though he wore a wooden leg.

There was an oppressive tamping sensation from the wards, a kind of muffled gravitational pressure.

Saffron dimly wondered how she’d been able to enter the tunnels at all without the brand.

Perhaps Levan had lowered them enough to let her pass.

The stone walls were etched with unusual carvings.

At first, Saffron thought the markings were simple runes, or perhaps untranslated glyphs from the pangea below theirs, until she realized they told a story, like the cave paintings found by miners in the Mountains of Promise.

To her chagrin, they were moving too quickly for her to make sense of them.

Too soon, they took a sharp left at a crossroads in the tunnels, and a narrow stone staircase lay at the end of the passage.

At the top was a squat wooden door, and as they crossed over its threshold, Saff felt a curious force press in on her from all angles, then heard a distinct popping sound as the ward gave way.

The atrium beyond the doorway was grand enough for an emperor of old.

An intricately coffered ceiling depicted a legendary dragonback battle, gilded chandeliers dripped in teardrop crystals, and hunks of black marble formed the walls and floor.

A pearly staircase swept into the center of the room, hewn from raw ascenite .

Huge hulking blocks of it more than likely sat in the royal vaults.

A staggering display of wealth and power.

We’re so rich we walk all over our money.

Saffron scanned the room for threats and exit points, as was deeply ingrained in her by the Academy.

Countless Bloodmoons bustled through the atrium, scarlet cloaks swishing ominously, but few paid her any mind.

Perhaps they were quite used to the kingpin’s son hauling street urchins into their lair.

None of the servants or Bloodmoons wore shaven heads or eyelid tattoos, which seemed an unlikely thing to happen by chance— Augurests made up a third of the general population, after all.

Did the Bloodmoons have a policy against hiring them?

Why? Augurest beliefs weren’t inherently oppositional to the Bloodmoons’ pursuit of ascens.

Perhaps the Bloodmoons didn’t want to recruit anyone with a staunch belief system—someone whose loyalties would always belong first and foremost to five fabled prophets who lived a thousand years ago.

Were Patrons similarly shunned? Was atheism a prerequisite? Did the Bloodmoons consider themselves a religion unto themselves? They were fascinating questions—and not ones Saffron had ever considered in much depth.

As Saffron followed Levan up the sweeping staircase, which shimmered with power beneath her shabby boots, something enormous and black dived at her head.

She ducked so fast she almost sent Segal careening backward.

Looking up in astonishment, she saw a pair of huge ridge-backed dragons chasing each other around the atrium.

“Not real,” muttered Levan, without so much as casting a look back. “One of my father’s favorite illusions. He likes to make them fight each other. We’re introducing sweepstakes into the gamehouse.”

Something in Saffron curdled at the idea that Lyrian Celadon shared her gift for illusions. Her father’s gift. Mattermancy had always felt so sacred to her. Any kind of link between her and the Bloodmoon kingpin felt damning, somehow.

After climbing several more staircases, winding through more opulent corridors into the quietest heights of the headquarters, Levan stopped outside a vast set of black double doors with ruby-jeweled handles. He raised a fist and knocked, knuckles clenched white.

“Whomst?” came an amplified voice from beyond the threshold.

“Levan. Fair featherroot. ”

Saffron’s attention snagged on the watchword. She made a mental note of it for Aspar, though it likely changed regularly.

The doors swung open, and Segal shoved her forward.

The kingpin’s office was so lavish that it crossed firmly into gauche.

The walls were paneled black, and almost everything else was either gold, crystal, or ascenite—the cauldron simmering in the far corner, the ornate candelabras, the gold-leafed book spines in the coved shelv ing, the tiles of the fireplace and the dragon statues on its mantelpiece.

It was stiflingly warm, with heavy velvet drapes pulled over the windows.

Two emerald-green dragon illusions—smaller than those in the atrium—wrestled midair above a stiff leather couch.

Behind a squat mahogany desk, Lyrian Celadon sat in a wing-backed armchair, flicking his wand back and forth to maneuver the dragons.

He was thin as a spire, his spine hunched and crooked, his crop of once dark hair now a shock of pure white.

There were simple enchantments to fix such things, but he must have liked the white, the way it contrasted so starkly with the bloodred cloak, the way it made his dark, hooded eyes even sharper.

Loathing licked through Saffron like a naked flame.

This was the man who had ordered her parents’ deaths.

Strangely, there were no clear sources of pleasure in the room. No grand artwork; no bowls of sweet, ripe fruit; no music or scent; no velvines stalking the rafters. Not even a concubine languishing on the fire-warmed rug.

Where did Lyrian Celadon draw his pleasure from?

The kingpin barely looked up as they entered, so entranced was he by the dragons of his own creation. Instead he simply asked, cool and disinterested, “Who is this?”

“A former Silvercloak,” grunted Levan. He stiffened like a soldier standing to attention. “Says she can bring us Zares.”

Lyrian’s left eyebrow quirked upward as one fake dragon tore a chunk out of the other’s scaly shoulder. The wounded dragon gave a convincing roar of pain. “ Former Silvercloak?”

Levan shrugged. “We need elixir to be sure.”

The dragons blinked out of existence as the kingpin’s attention latched onto Saffron, and while she prided herself on her ability to square her shoulders in the face of evil, there was something so oily and rancid in his gaze that she had to look away.

Instead, she visually scoured the desk, which was topped with a bowl of shiny peppermint humbugs; a detailed drawing of a racing steed covered in razor-sharp blades; a handwritten letter signed by the Steel King of Nyr?th, which surely had to be a forgery; and a jeweled ashtray filled with the kind of entombed eyes Saffron had seen on the roulette wheel.

All of them looked very much conscious, aware, the whites of them spidered with blood vessels, the pupils dilated and afraid.

“Vogolan,” Lyrian said coolly.

At first Saffron thought this was some sort of curse, until one of the velvet drapes rearranged itself into the shape of a mage in a scarlet cloak. Saffron blinked in surprise as a pale, hook-nosed face materialized in the fabric—then stepped clean out of it.

“Yes?” replied the mage Saffron presumed to be Vogolan.

“Truth elixir, if you please.”

Vogolan drew his moon-embroidered cloak to one side, revealing a leather Brewer’s belt at his slender waist. He plucked out a vial of pale yellow potion, then crossed to where Saffron stood and held the vial up to her lips.

She obligingly opened her mouth and swallowed.

It tasted sickly sweet—far more so than Auria’s.

“Your name.” Lyrian leaned back in his armchair, steepling his gnarled fingers the same way Aspar always did.

Saffron steadied her breathing, leveled her gaze, and spoke. “Saffron Killoran.”

There was something petrifying about the blankness of the kingpin’s stare—so similar to his son’s. As though his humanity had long since died.

“Are you still a Silvercloak?” Lyrian asked.

“No. I never truly was. I didn’t pass the final assessment.” Saffron added this last part to make the Bloodmoons think the elixir was uncovering lies.

Levan’s cerulean eyes narrowed. “That’s not what you told me in the alley.”

She shrugged. “I wanted to seem useful to you.”

“I already know about your fraudulence and imprisonment,” said the kingpin, with a blasé wave of his hand. “It was all over the Gazette. What I want to know is why such an incompetent wretch could be useful to us.”