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“Well,” said Levan, and there was a trace of genuine intrigue in his usually cold voice, “my reading on the subject tells me that the truly dragonblooded are bound not to speak of it, or said blood will freeze in their veins.”

Interesting. Saffron badly wanted to ask more questions, but the longer they discussed Nissa, the more dangerous the situation felt. So instead she said, very wisely and maturely, “I’m surprised a Bloodmoon grunt reads at all.”

Levan gave her an almost pitying look, and Saffron chastised herself for once again playing into his hands.

I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to prove you’re not afraid of me. You’re cracking big jokes so you won’t feel small.

How had he so quickly and wholly got the measure of her?

She had the impish desire to do something, anything, to surprise him. To catch him off guard. To prove that she was not predictable, and that she wasn’t afraid of him. But that was a flawed impulse, and she knew better than to indulge it. She was here for intelligence, not juvenile grudges.

“Anything else you want to know?” she said calmly, redonning her cool demeanor like a cloak she’d accidentally discarded. “Marriosan’s foot size? Flane’s favorite color? How many flamebrandies Naszi can sink without passing out?”

He shot her a sideways look. “Does—”

Three moon-white cloaks sailed down through the air.

They landed directly on top of Levan, who stumbled into Saffron, knocking the wind out of her belly. Her skull hit the cobbles with a blunt crack.

Everything became a blur of orange streetlights and pale fabric and pained grunts.

Spells flurried and sparked, overlapping and misfiring.

Saffron fumbled for her wand, though she wasn’t sure what she’d do with it. Confusion mired with fear, and she struggled to orient herself.

“ Sen ammorten, ” Levan incanted, sounding almost bored.

One of the assailants slumped dead next to Saffron.

Vision unstarring, she hauled her legs out from beneath Levan’s bulk and scrambled back on the cobbles like a beetle.

A white-cloaked assailant with raven-black hair stood above Saffron, jabbing her pine wand as her lips formed the word sen.

Before Saff could throw up a mattermantic shield, Rasso leapt onto the assailant’s chest and ripped the vocal cords clean out of her neck, both tumbling backward into the gutter.

Saffron stared at the throatless corpse in horror, trying to make sense of the scene.

White cloaks usually meant Silvercloak cadets, but these faces were unfamiliar.

A new cohort, perhaps? Unless—

Levan straddled the third assailant, who’d lost his wand in the skirmish. He was a pale-skinned, redheaded mage with a purple scar carved from forehead to jaw, bisecting an empty eye socket.

“You slaughtered my uncles, you vock !” the scarred mage spat.

“They tried to rob us,” Levan said quietly, coldly. “It’s not personal.”

“It’s always personal.” There was a hateful gleam in the assailant’s remaining eye, something that shone with grim satisfaction, even in the face of imminent death. “You of all people should know that.”

Levan’s hand gripped his wand so hard that his veins bulged dark and angry. “ Sen ammorten. ”

The killing spell forked into the assailant’s chest, and the scarred mage sagged limply to the ground.

Levan climbed off him, smoothing down his scarlet cloak, then resumed his long, quick strides down Dubias Row as though nothing had happened.

Rasso cantered beside him, silver-white fur stained dark red around the jowls.

His tail wagged merrily, as though grateful for a good feed and a chance to stretch his legs.

Saffron gave the white-clad corpses a final glance and then rushed to catch up with Levan, her heart hammering.

“What just happened?” she asked, studying the firm set of Levan’s jaw, the defiant square of his shoulders. The way his fist still clenched his wand.

He grunted his distaste. “Whitewings made an attempt on the gamehouse earlier tonight.”

Of course. The bodies she’d seen hurled from the roof.

And they hadn’t just been killed. They’d been maimed beyond recognition.

“They’ve upgraded their cloaks since I was on the streetwatch,” Saffron muttered, swallowing the acrid saliva pooling in her mouth. “Must be moving up in the world.”

Rounding a final corner onto Beakpeck Place, they reached Zamollan’s, an abandoned apothecary that had once specialized in dragon scales. Inside the old shop lay an entrance to the Bloodmoons’ warded tunnels, entirely unguarded and yet nonetheless impossible to penetrate.

The Silvercloaks had known of the entrance’s existence for years.

Did they have eyes on it right now? Were they watching as Saffron and Levan ducked beneath the saggy green awning, bloody-mouthed fallowwolf at their heels?

Did they spot Saffron’s stark silver-blond curls and recoil at the sight of her in scarlet?

She lifted her hood over her hair, just in case.

Inside the apothecary, the air was stale and musty.

Old, damp wood and brittle sawdust, dried feathers and something distinctly leathery.

Levan pushed a large barrel to one side and lifted the trapdoor disguised beneath it.

The steps below were pitch dark, but they shimmered with a strange translucent film—the wards themselves.

The wards the Silvercloaks had never been able to breach, until now.

Saffron paused before descending, studying the kingpin’s son for any sign that he was rattled by the Whitewings’ assault. For any sign of dismay that he’d just murdered twice in cold blood.

She found none.

But there was something.

Something tense and brittle in the hard line of his jaw. Something too straight in the steel of his spine.

“What did he mean, you of all people should know it’s always personal?” Saff asked, voice echoey and loud in the derelict shop.

But Levan only shot Saffron a closed stare—one she’d been on the receiving end of once before, back in Captain Aspar’s office.

One that told her the answer was above her pay grade.