Page 28

S AFF TRAIPSED BACK TO THE BOOTH, BOOTS DRAGGING, ANOTHER grim plan forming in her mind. She slid Nissa the flamebrandy tumbler and folded herself onto the bench.

“Killor, please.” There was no actual pleading in Nissa’s tone, but there was a trace of kindness. This was significant, as Nissa was the sort of person who usually found kindness patronizing. “Tell me what’s happening.”

Saff shook her head vehemently, but it was all for show. “I can’t involve you in this.”

Of course, she would have to.

She loved—or had loved—Nissa. But there was nothing she would not do to bring down the Bloodmoons. If that made her an irredeemable wretch, so be it.

Nissa looked offended. “But you were willing to involve Auria?”

Saff hurled the second flamebrandy down her throat, the cinnamon-clove searing her gullet. “To my immense shame, she’s already involved. I invoked her name under duress.”

“Hells.” Nissa raked a finger through her sleek black hair. “In what sense?”

“My new colleague needs information. I thought Auria could get it, but she won’t cooperate.”

“What kind of information?”

“A person’s whereabouts.” Saff ran the tip of her forefinger around the rim of the empty glass. “I watched a Bloodmoon torture and execute an innocent in the name of finding this person. So now I need to find them, or they’ll …”

Nissa’s gaze was hot as a dawning sun. “Torture and execute you.”

“I might be useful to them in other ways, but if I can’t help them manipulate the Silvercloaks, they might decide I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”

Nissa drained her own drink without wincing. “So not only are you working the Bloodmoons for the Silvercloaks, you’re now working the Silvercloaks for the Bloodmoons?”

Saff laughed bitterly. “A fantastic situation, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

And yet one she had worked toward for decades.

Several months into her year at the Academy, her uncles had sat her down over dinner and said they were worried about her.

She didn’t paint anymore, and she certainly didn’t spend hours rereading those chunky Lost Dragonborn novels she used to love.

Whenever she visited Mal and Merin at the Cloakery, she arrived late and left early, always muttering about coursework and case files, and even when she was present, they knew her mind wasn’t in the room with them.

She no longer went to watch the chariot races with her velvet pouch of coins and that hungry gleam in her eye.

They’d never quite approved of the way she gambled on the winner week after week, but at least it had shown passion for something other than the Bloodmoons, the Bloodmoons, the Bloodmoons .

But if relentless singularity is what she needed to avenge her parents, to ensure no other child went through what she went through, it was a series of sacrifices she was all too willing to make.

Nissa sighed, the outward breath a billow of scorching steam. “I don’t like this, Killor.”

The bard struck up a new tune. Spores drifted in front of Saff’s face, and she realized how exhausted she was. “Really? I get off on the danger.”

“Well, yes, it’s undeniably hot.”

Saff laughed again, grateful, as she always was, for Nissa’s solidity.

For how unflinching she was in the face of trouble, for how Saff’s hurt and grief passed right through her without ever leaving a mark.

It was as though Nissa was born with a series of emotional culverts, draining any kind of sorrow or trauma before it could fester.

She rarely spoke of her own anguished past, not because she was suppressing her unprocessed grief but because the loss of her sisters and everything that followed had long since bled away.

Saffron, on the other hand, let pain pool and rot inside her, a body of stagnant water growing more mephitic with every passing year.

Not Nissa.

Nissa was indomitable. Dauntless, and bold, and unshakeable.

Saints, Saffron missed Nissa, and what they’d had. She missed having a person, one she could melt into at the end of a long day, one with whom she had private jokes and secret dreams, a sense of hope on the horizon.

The best Silvercloaks cut off sentimentality at the root.

Yet from the way Nissa was looking at her—through thick, fluffy lashes, her eyes rimmed in white and gold kohl, her lip piercing catching the light—Saffron suspected she missed her too. If Nissa was indeed capable of such emotions.

Then again, perhaps she just wanted to fuck.

All at once, Saffron remembered how it felt to have Nissa’s forked tongue drawing neat circles between her thighs . Desire pooled low in her stomach. Her body made the decision before her mind caught up, and she tilted toward her dragonesque former lover, heat shimmering between them in waves.

Nissa drew her face closer, and as their lips met in a fiery-sweet clash of flamebrandy and lust, her claws pierced holes in Saff’s trousers. There was nothing sweet or tender about it; pointed teeth dragged at Saff’s lower lip, all the blood rushing to the surface of Saffron’s skin at the touch.

Saff understood it then, the reason soldiers made love in the trenches of the last major war. Facing death and triumphing over it brought with it a rush of relief, of desire, of existential hurt.

It took everything she had not to melt into Nissa.

“We can’t,” she muttered against Nissa’s parted lips. “I’m compromised. Cavorting with me puts you in grave danger.”

And it was true. If Levan saw Nissa and Saffron kissing …

Nissa would become his clear target. She’d already let slip that Nissa had failed the torture trials the first time—they’d played a cruel trick involving an illusion of her dead twin sisters—and so she was already in the kingpin’s son’s sights.

She would become just another innocent to threaten—although Saffron suspected Nissa would abhor the word innocent altogether.

“Cavorting?” Nissa snorted. “Is that what you call letting me drip hot wax all over your body until you beg for mercy?”

Saffron’s cheeks pinkened, although nobody would bat an eyelid if they overheard. Almost everyone in Ascenfall was attracted to all genders, and almost everyone was kinky as all hells.

Blame the magic; it was something of an aphrodisiac.

“I’m already in this, Killor. Might as well have some fun with it.”

Hells, Saffron thought. She could die tomorrow. They both could.

That nihilistic fearlessness swelled and crested, and she ceded to it.

Their mouths met again, hot and wanting, pointed teeth and the hard gold of the piercing, a forked tongue flicking over hers, a palmful of claws digging into the narrow of her waist.

The nearest walls of the Jaded Saint folded into a pocket, a private nook, until there was a mere sliver of space through which the rest of the tavern could be seen.

Their alcove was twined with ivy and hazy with spores, candlelight flickering, the bard’s music both distant and immediate, the twang of strings rippling across the surface of Saff’s skin.

Nissa’s kissing intensified into hungry bites, digging into Saff’s lower lip before tracing a path across her jawbone, her neck, her collarbone.

Saff laced her hands through the silken sheets of Nissa’s hair, a rough moan escaping before she could snatch it back, that bright, burning power from the brand surging and curling inside her.

Reaching for her magic, Saff whispered, “ Ans omnivolan. ”

The pleasure spell pressed hard at all the tender places in Nissa’s body: the throat and the nipples and the inner thighs; the soft pulsing peak and somewhere deep, deep inside; all of it met with a sudden intense pressure.

Nissa gasped, breath hooking sharply inward, eyes widening.

“Saints, are you hurt?” Saffron muttered, pulling away. She realized too late that the searing agony of the brand had churned her well into something ferocious, something monstrous. Her magical well was overflowing, and the spell had been cast far too strongly.

But judging from the dilated pupils and the parted lips, Nissa had enjoyed the added potency.

“ Ans omnivolan, ” Saff murmured again, twice more, raw magic pressing over and over against Nissa’s most tender places.

After everything that had been done to Saffron in the last few hours, it felt good to take control .

She and Nissa were perpetually caught in this ravenous push-pull, a grapple of reins, a tug-of-war, neither of them naturally submissive, both of them hungry for power.

Nissa usually won this tussle, but Saff still tried to assert herself anyway.

Saff pressed her mouth to Nissa’s neck, feeling the frantic pulse against her lips, then pressed the tip of her wand between Nissa’s legs. “ Ans vorticaloran. ”

Swirling heat.

Another gasp loosed from Nissa’s throat, golden eyes fluttering closed for a moment, losing herself in the spell. The swirling heat still pulsing over her—Saffron wouldn’t let the enchantment drop until it peaked and cascaded—Nissa pressed her own wand between Saffron’s legs.

“ Sen laceran, ” Nissa purred, drawing a slit down the central seam of Saffron’s trousers—and slicing clean through her underwear.

With her other hand, Nissa traced a claw downward, a stark line drawn over Saffron’s want, both soft and hard, both painful and good, and a tremor rippled through Saff, more power rushing into her well with alarming force .

Slender fingers circled and pressed, and their mouths met once more, Nissa breathing raggedly from the swirling magical heat between her legs.

Saffron’s pleasure towered and deepened, something vital inside herself coming back to life, a pool refilled, a humanity restored.

All at once, Saff was glad Nissa knew the truth about her immunity to magic, glad she could relinquish herself to the simple thrill of a hand between her legs, of knuckles pressed against her inner thigh, of a sharp claw probing the place where everything throbbed.

“ Et ascevolo, ” Nissa incanted, flicking the table upward with her wand until it pressed flat against the ceiling, tumblers shattering around them like rain.

Then she sank to her knees on the shard-covered floor, kneeling in front of the bench and looping Saffron’s legs over her shoulders.

Through the slit in Saff’s underwear, Nissa gave a single forked lick, every inch of Saffron shuddering and gasping.

Nissa clasped Saff’s hips, tugging her closer as she drew flickering circles with her tongue, soft and wet and reverent, and Saffron leaned her head back against the wall, surrendering herself to the pleasure, trying not to think about searing pokers and wrists shackled apart, trying not to think at all. Trying only to feel.

The pleasure peaked with a shattering moan, and the table came clattering back to the ground, narrowly missing Nissa’s head.

Nissa maneuvered herself back onto the bench, her lips red and swollen, the kohl around her eyes smudged. “Hells,” she muttered. “Who knew being compromised could feel so good?”

Skin still on fire, Saffron repaired the tear in her trousers. “ Ans annetan .”

Then she sighed deeply, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes.

Though the feeling of a replenished well was a welcome relief, she felt a kind of creeping sadness as reality edged back in.

She would not be returning to Nissa’s bed tonight, falling asleep with exhausted limbs entwined, embers and coal crackling in a grate.

She would be going to face the Bloodmoons, face fear and torture and death.

As the walls of the Jaded Saint folded outward and the clamor of the tavern rushed back to greet them, Nissa read the dread on Saffron’s face.

“Who do you need to find?” Nissa said carefully, arranging her disheveled robes. “Now that we’ve established I’m already in this, and it’s rather hot.”

Saff wanted to protest, wanted to insist Nissa shouldn’t get involved any further than she had to. But of all the choices sprawling out in front of her, all the potential prongs in the fork, none of them seemed good.

If she wanted to stay alive, she had to find Zares.

And if Auria wouldn’t help her do that …

Guilt soured in her stomach. She was making dark choice after dark choice, all in the name of self-preservation. No different than the royal houses, no different than the Bloodmoons.

“Nalezen Zares,” she muttered. “That’s all I have.”

Nissa nodded once, stoic, then rose to her feet. “Meet me back here at the same time next week. I’ll see what I can do.”