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“As long as I get a job at the end of all this …” Tiernan fiddled nervously with the strings of his tunic. “My father will decapitate me if I come home without a posting. Even Carduban would be preferable.”

“I’ll let Aspar know you volunteer,” smirked Nissa, stubbing out her achullah on the stone windowsill.

Deep down, Saff shared Tiernan’s sentiments. Though she’d rather not be a glorified border control officer, she’d still take that over missing out on a posting altogether.

After everything she’d done to claw herself here, she couldn’t fail now.

Twelve years of mage school. Four years at the Northern University of Novarin, earning her Knight’s Scroll in Modern History.

Five years of patrolling Atherin on the streetwatch, as all prospective Silvercloak candidates had to do, acting as first response to gory crime scenes, rounding up robbers and crooks and killers and hauling them off spitting and cursing to Duncarzus, accumulating injuries and trauma and hard-fought wisdom, knowing all the while that whatever innocence had survived her parents’ slaughter was being slowly eroded, maturing into the understanding that evil was everywhere, so commonplace it was banal, and now that she knew this, she could never unlearn it.

And then there was the simple fact that all this experience was built on a foundation of lies and illusions.

She only had to maintain the fallacy for one more day.

One more hour.

The six cadets stood outside the Grand Atrium, staring at the words levitating over the threshold.

Candidates only—assessment in progress.

Beneath the sign stood a pale, raven-haired professor who had drilled them endlessly in the art of combat, leaving their flesh bruised and their muscles sore.

When they’d protested that they wouldn’t have to use physical strength with a wand at their fingertips, Professor Vertillon had retorted that unless their wands were surgically attached to their palms, they had to be prepared to lose them.

A disarmament spell could be thrown at them at any moment, or in the heat of the skirmish, they might simply drop it out of sheer nerves and ineptitude.

Professor Vertillon gave Sebran a terse nod—the professor had trained him at the military college before accepting the teaching post at the Academy—then pressed his lips into a flat line to greet the others.

“The final assessment is upon us,” he decreed, in his low baritone.

“Though we can prepare for such events to the ends of the earth, we still must take into account the slippery element of chance. A wand snapped during a raid, a tincture belt shattered on the ground, compromising injuries, and conflicting information.”

He held up six cream-colored envelopes. “As such, you will each draw a different hand for this exercise. Three of you will have no disadvantages. One of you will lose your wand. One of you will have a limb temporarily frozen. And one of you will work on different information than your peers. Cards will be drawn in alphabetical order of surname.”

Vertillon fanned the envelopes in his weathered hands, then offered Sebran the first pick. Sebran pulled an envelope, opened it, and nodded woodenly. Tiernan drew next, then Saffron.

You have no disadvantages.

It wasn’t quite true—she had her own temperamental magic to contend with—but it was a relief nonetheless.

As Auria then Nissa drew the last two envelopes, Saff looked up at Tiernan, whose foot jittered uncontrollably. The sea-green tinge to his cheeks had only intensified. He’d clearly received a disadvantage.

And he was already terrified of letting his notoriously cruel father down.

Saffron would never forget their first week on the streetwatch.

A vicious gang of thieves called the Whitewings had cut the tongues out of the mouths of several children who’d accidentally witnessed a robbery, then burned said tongues with magical fire so they could not be reattached.

Saff, Tiernan, and Auria had been first on the scene, and Tiernan had spent the first twenty minutes vomiting into a gutter.

When word got back to Tiernan’s father about his son’s weak stomach, Kesven Flane had chained Tiernan to a chair and forced him to watch vivid reenactments of torture, animated with the kind of illusionary magic Saff used to hide her secret, every night for a month.

Then Kesven had brought home an inebriated Ludder—a person born without magic—and sliced their tongue out for real, forcing Tiernan to practice healing it.

Over and over and over again, until the Ludder blacked out from the pain and a small piece of Tiernan’s humanity died.

And now, during the final assessment, the last show of strength before jobs were assigned, Kesven would see his son weakened. An embarrassment to the family name, even though it was through random chance, no fault of his own. Kesven would not see it that way.

“Switch with me,” Saff whispered under her breath.

Tiernan twitched in her direction. “What?”

“Swap envelopes.”

After a split second of indecision—clearly trying to discern whether Saff was trying to pull one over on him—he slipped his envelope into her hand. She reciprocated. Professor Vertillon was none the wiser.

Saffron read her new fate.

Your leg will be frozen for the duration of the assessment.

“I have no disadvantages,” announced Auria.

“Me neither,” said Tiernan, shooting Saffron a grateful look.

“Nor me,” confirmed Gaian.

“No wand,” muttered Sebran. He rubbed at his cheek, as though checking he’d shaven well. “But I suppose I can keep these?” He patted his tincture belt, and Vertillon nodded confirmation.

“It’s a bit on-the-nose to give the foreigner false information,” muttered Nissa.

“Not false,” pointed out Saff. “The professor said different. ”

“And besides, it was drawn at random, Nissa,” said Auria hotly. She took any criticism of the Academy personally, though she had no familial ties to it, just a fundamental reverence for the rules and the establishment. A future Grand Arbiter to her bones.

“What’s the information?” Gaian asked.

“Don’t know. I assume I’ll be given it during the exercise?” Nissa asked.

Vertillon nodded again. “Indeed. Sebran—I mean, Cadet Aduran—will have his wand removed as he passes the threshold of the Grand Atrium. At which point Cadet Killoran’s leg will also freeze.” He took a step to the side. “You may enter.”

“This is it,” whispered Auria, patting her tincture belt for the thousandth time, eyes glowing with anticipation. She wholly and genuinely believed everything was going to work out. Saff envied her that easy faith. The world hadn’t yet beaten it out of her.

Saffron checked her own belt. She was no Brewer, so it wasn’t notched with vials but instead with an array of weapons and equipment they always took with them on the streetwatch: ropes, manacles, a tourniquet, a baton.

Matter could not be created from nothing, no matter how strong the mage, and so some things had to be analog.

She also carried a rune-engraved blisblade notched in a leather holster—daggers unique to the Silvercloaks, enchanted so that even a shallow self-inflicted wound provided an enormous full-body ripple of pain-pleasure.

A fast way to replenish the magical well in a pinch.

Not that it had ever worked for Saffron. Nor did velvine breath.

She had to seek pleasure the old-fashioned way.

On the other side of the enormous double doors, a muffled din of chatter swelled.

Who would be judging from the raised gallery on the southern side of the atrium?

Captain Aspar, of course, and their other superior officers, but Auria suspected higher-ups from the King’s Cabinet were here to cherry-pick the most sparkling candidates for House Arollan’s own court.

Not that Saffron would accept any other offer.

She was fated to be a Silvercloak.

That fate was her god, her faith, her church. That fate was the only reason she was still standing. It had been written in the defining moment of her life—she believed that with her whole being.

Saffron shoved open the high double doors and gasped at what lay beyond.