Page 25

Saffron took a sip of the transmuted cocoa, discovering with mild annoyance that it was delicious.

Mercifully, her stomach did not reject it.

She swallowed down several mouthfuls, and some of the feeling returned to her extremities.

With the replenishing of her well came a rush of pleasure, a kind of heat flooding to her core, and she sighed into it.

The pain of the branding had given the power more potency, and now it coursed gorgeously through her, simmering, fizzing, begging to be spent.

And yet she had to keep it close for now. Saints knew when she might need to call upon it.

“Why did you kill that Brewer in the alley?” she asked, as though they were equals, colleagues, and she were merely curious.

“Seemed like he genuinely didn’t know anything.

And I think you knew that too. You said he’d taken an antidote to the truth elixir, but why wouldn’t you just take him prisoner until the antidote had worn off?

The only reason to kill him would be if he was genuinely no use to you. ”

“Very perceptive,” Levan grunted, stroking Rasso’s head absently. “Yes, I soon realized that Segal brought me the wrong mage.” He had a flat manner of speaking, free from inflection or sentiment.

“So why didn’t you let him go?”

“He was evidence.”

“Not very strong evidence. It would’ve been his word against yours.”

“And the Silvercloaks would believe he magically amputated and reattached his own hand?” He shrugged, as though the situation irked him but didn’t particularly pain him.

Merely a set of unfortunate circumstances.

“All magic leaves a trace, and the Silvercloaks are getting better at following said trace. You of all people should know that.”

Saff reached for a strawberry, and the hot stroke of pain across her chest was so harsh and sudden that it bleached her vision white, so visceral that the salve couldn’t touch it. The magic in her well brightened, sharpened.

Sucking in her breath, she dug her nails into the bedspread, trying not to cry out.

“Are you alright?” Levan asked, almost like a reflex he couldn’t control. There was little warmth behind the question, but it was still surprising to be asked it at all.

“Fine.”

She loathed the idea of the kingpin’s son witnessing her like this, branded and hurt.

Her pride bucked against the very idea. She’d come into this assignment feeling that she had the undeniable upper hand, and that if she could just grit her teeth through the branding, she’d be in full control of the situation, their defenses breached, their downfall inevitable; but everything that had happened since she entered the kingpin’s chambers had put her squarely on the back foot.

To show the kingpin’s son her pain was to offer him a certain power over her.

And she could not afford to lose any more power.

Yet her detective’s instincts still snagged on something.

He had asked if she was alright—as if he knew what it felt like?

What had Levan said as Segal restrained her?

It’s one thing to consent, and quite another to feel the pain.

“Do you have a brand?”

It was a little bolshy, perhaps. Too direct, too personal.

Yet she got the sense this was a man who appreciated frankness.

Conversation free from the usual trappings and obfuscations of most human interactions.

The type who wanted you to say what you meant, without bells or whistles.

He’d answered her questions about Neatras’s daughter, after all, and about the Brewer in the alley.

Because she’d asked him explicitly? Or because he saw no reason to withhold the information?

But this time, dark shutters dropped behind his eyes. A muscle twitched in his jaw, and she knew she had gone too far, too soon.

“I’m the kingpin’s son.” He stood abruptly, as did Rasso. “What do you think?”

Saffron’s first instinct was I suppose not, but Lyrian seemed the sort to mutilate his son, just in case.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “That’s why I asked.”

The brief silence that spread between them was like a crypt, echoing and cavernous and cold. Rasso, the fallowwolf, glared at her, as though to say How dare you ask insulting questions of my master?

Levan crossed to the door. “Let’s go.”

Saffron blinked at him. “Where?”

“To find Auria Marriosan.”

“Right now?”

“I’m not an especially patient man.”

“But I can picture you doing needlework. Or knitting a long and complicated scarf.”

She didn’t know why her father’s impish humor was rearing its head now.

Perhaps she was using quick wit as a way to establish herself as an intellectual equal, as she had in the alley.

Or perhaps she was trying desperately hard to prove to this man that she was not afraid of him. Pride was a stubborn beast.

Levan sighed, resting a palm on the doorknob. “The truth elixir should still be in your system. Do you know where Marriosan is?”

Saints. Another corner of truth she’d been backed into. “What time is it?”

Levan looked down at a gold wristwatch with a black leather band. “Quarter to darknight.”

Auria would be drinking blossombeer with Nissa and Tiernan right now. Nissa had told her as much.

Saff swallowed. “The Jaded Saint. A tavern on Arollan Mile.”

“Alright. I’ll wait outside while you freshen up.” He gestured to a small washbasin in the corner of the room—and to a scarlet cloak laid out on a trunk at the end of her bed. “We’ll go together.”

“Why?”

“Just in case things get out of hand.”

“Pun intended?”

The joke landed flat. Levan and Rasso left the room without looking back.

Their absence rang in her ears like a bell fallen quiet.

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Saffron studied her wand in its holder for a moment.

Should she mutter et vocos, try and make contact with Aspar?

Let the captain know her position was secured?

No. Some instinct told her to hold off until she knew how closely the Bloodmoons were observing, listening.

I see everything, Filthcloak.

Besides, she didn’t have any real intelligence yet. She could warn Aspar that Lyrian knew everything about their cohort, but what good would that do? Aspar wasn’t the type of captain to place detectives in safe houses so readily. She needed cloaks on the streets.

Saff shoved her feet into her boots and headed over to the small washbasin.

She scrubbed her face and neck with the same lemon-mint soap she’d smelled on Levan, then lifted her tunic at the waist and dabbed her armpits with a cloth, but she couldn’t bring herself to wash the rest of her body yet.

That would mean confronting the brand, and she was nowhere near ready to do that.

Once she was dry, she grabbed the crimson cloak from the top of the trunk. It was light and silky, gliding through her fingers like ink. She shrugged it over her shoulders—wincing as the fresh brand tugged at her chest—and secured it at the neck with the ruby brooch.

Then, turning slowly on her heel, she eyed herself in the tall, wall-mounted mirror.

At the sight of herself in the infamous Bloodmoon scarlet, she felt a kind of profound disturbance in the very fabric of herself.

Her silver-blond curls corkscrewed in all directions—her mother’s curls. The last time Saff had seen them on another mage, they had haloed Mellora’s dead face like a mourning wreath. Now the very same curls fell onto the shoulders of a Bloodmoon cloak.

It felt like dancing on a grave with the person who had dug it.

As Saffron strode to the door, she felt the thread tying her to her old life shiver and snap.