Page 31

A FTER A WRETCHED NIGHT OF HALF SLEEP, SAFFRON AWOKE the next morning not knowing entirely what to expect from her brusque captor and his feral pet.

Would there be a formal debrief of the previous evening before a council of Bloodmoons, in which she had to relive everything that had transpired in the Jaded Saint—and subsequently on Dubias Row?

Were they as thorough as the Silvercloaks in such matters?

If she were still a hallowed detective, she would be doing a frankly unconscionable amount of paperwork at this very moment, only narrowly resisting the urge to feed herself through a meat grinder.

But there was no debrief. As it happened, she was largely ignored.

Not long after dawn there was a short rap on her door, but by the time she’d donned a robe and padded over to open it, there was only a tray of breakfast food left on the ground.

A note, scribbled on a scrap of parchment, had been curled up and slotted between a bowl of dragonberries and a clay pot of sugarcream.

Stay in your chambers. I’ll come for you later. —Levan

His handwriting was surprisingly neat, with swirling cursive letters and pin-straight margins. Saffron stabbed the note with her wand and muttered, “ Sen eriban, ” watching with satisfaction as the note shredded into ribbons. A waste of magic, certainly, but gratifying nonetheless.

She had nil qualms about recuperating in the privacy of her own bedroom all day, so she set the tray down on her bed and feasted—runny-yolked eggs and mapled bacon and sun-sweet tomatoes, toast with lashings of butter, and several helpings of the berries and cream.

Levan had also given her another pot of salve, which she applied generously to her searing brand.

The relief, however, was soon followed by a whip-crack of self-loathing. She didn’t deserve to have a full belly and a soothed wound. Not when Neatras had died at her hand. Not when his daughter had been consigned to a miserable eternity in that wretched gamehouse.

The mission demanded his death, she told herself. You thought through every possible outcome. It was the only way.

She thought of what Sebran had said with a soldier’s gruffness during the final assessment—that the acceptable number of civilian casualties was higher than zero—but felt little comfort.

She spent the rest of the day debating whether or not to establish contact with Aspar.

Her captain would want to know how the previous night had unfolded, yet Saff couldn’t reveal that she’d compromised Nissa.

Yes, she could share information on the Whitewings’ failed heist and their later attempt on Levan’s life—the Silvercloaks had likely found those corpses by now, one with its throat ripped out by a fallowwolf—but was that worth the risk of reaching out?

The Silvercloaks were already well aware of the enmity between the Whitewings and the Bloodmoons.

Without tangible evidence that Levan himself had murdered them, an arrest warrant would never stick.

No, it wasn’t worth making contact. Not yet.

Saffron napped on and off for hours, dreaming that she was a silkspider trapped in the center of a barbed-wire web, jolting in her blankets at every footstep echoing down the hallway.

Twilight came and went, but Levan never appeared.

Saffron grew restless.

Close to darknight, she lay staring at the gold ceiling rose above her four-poster bed, thinking of Lyrian Celadon and his fiendish memory.

The way he seemed to know every single citizen of Atherin, and the shimmering strands of love and kinship that connected them all.

His innate understanding of how to pluck those strands to hurt the most.

How long until the Bloodmoons touched every life in the city? How long before they poisoned every existence? The degrees of separation would not stay separate for much longer.

Saff also thought, incessantly and agonizingly, of Neatras’s daughter.

How long would she live in a tomb of glass, unable to move or speak? Most mages lived to be over a hundred. She still had so long left to suffer.

Unless …

So much of this assignment was out of Saffron’s control, and yet here lay a pocket of possibility. Of goodness, of redemption. A risk, but she was built for risk. To assess danger, to forge a route through it to the other side.

First, what were the threats?

She would likely get caught. Lyrian had eyes everywhere.

What would he do if he found her stomping on the roulette ball with the heel of her boot?

It wouldn’t be worth killing her over—they needed her to find Zares—but there were always the twin pillars of pain and fear to contend with.

Pain didn’t scare her. She’d take the brand all over again if it actually did some good.

Fear, on the other hand …

They wouldn’t threaten the Silvercloak cohort—whom they’d want in one piece, flipped and turned into assets one by one—but her uncles would be in danger. The Bloodmoons would want to send a message to Saffron, to let her know she couldn’t undermine them so brazenly.

So they would likely hurt her uncles, but surely they wouldn’t kill them over this. They needed Mal and Merin alive to keep her in line. They wouldn’t waste their ultimate bargaining chip on the destruction of a roulette ball.

In any case, she was sure either of her proudly good uncles would take a blow to end the suffering of an innocent girl. And they would want someone else to do the same for Saffron, if she ever found herself entombed in a glass case.

Satisfied that she’d thought through the likeliest outcome—and that the likeliest outcome was not too devastating—she dressed in her tunic, slacks, and scarlet cloak; reapplied salve to her burning wound; and left the bedroom to a deserted corridor.

She kept her hand tucked around her wand, preparing to throw up a spellshield at a moment’s notice.

To freeze time if she had to. She ran through the arsenal of offensive and defensive spells she’d had to master to pass through the Academy, ready to cast them in the split seconds between life and death.

But to her surprise, Saffron moved through the mansion like a warm knife through soft butter.

There were only a few servants around, dipping their heads in acknowledgment and continuing with their duties.

The scarlet cloak afforded her an immediate respect, a kind of inherent power, and she supposed none of the underlings knew the truth of how she came to be here.

None of them had heard her scream or plead as the hot poker melted her skin and flesh.

They simply saw the cloak and bowed.

Snaking back through the warded tunnels—she’d memorized the route on the way to and from the Jaded Saint—Saffron kept peering over her shoulder, expecting to see Levan or Segal or Vogolan on her tail, but nobody followed.

So much blind faith in the loyalty brand.

The arrogance.

Several minutes later, Saffron entered the gamehouse the same way she’d left it: through the smoky haze of the Achullah Terrace.

As she moved through the domed atrium, the other patrons cleared a path, parting like water around a rock.

They nodded their heads, giving tight, fearful smiles.

One even curtseyed, as though she were royalty.

It was a curious, almost intoxicating feeling, to be so powerful.

Because fear was a kind of power, far easier to wield than magic. A well with no bottom.

No wonder the kingpin found it so irresistible.

Even in the dead of the night, the gamehouse was still in full swing, but there was a looseness to it Saffron didn’t like.

Slack faces, empty eyes, veins pulsing darkly in throats.

That same hunger and thirst had returned to her too: a draw toward the blackcherry sours, toward the pure, raw pleasure, the heightened euphoria.

At the roulette table where she’d gambled the previous evening, Neatras had been replaced by a young mage with olive skin, an upturned nose, and an Irisian griffin necklace dangling around her neck. Her name badge read Venda.

Venda set the wheel spinning and tossed in the ball, watching as it clacked and clattered in a silvery blur. As it slowed, a slate-gray iris took shape, narrowing hatefully as it spotted Saffron. The eye was glazed over, dizzy. Saffron felt the nausea secondhand, writhing and curdling in her belly.

As Venda swept the chips from the felted table, Saffron approached. The croupier purposefully didn’t look at the scarlet cloak or the mage who wore it, but the visible pulse in her neck betrayed her fear.

Saffron aimed her wand at the roulette ball. “ Ans convoqan. ”

A simple summoning spell. The roulette ball sailed through the air and landed in Saff’s palm. For a single shocked moment, Venda locked gazes with Saffron.

“Speak of this to no one,” Saffron muttered, tucking it into her cloak pocket.

The croupier gave a single petrified nod, her fingers clutching the silver-and-sapphire griffin resting on her collarbone.

Saffron strode off without a backward glance, heart thumping against the cage of her ribs. Was Lyrian watching through the roulette ball? Or was it late enough that he’d be asleep?

She’d almost made it to the Achullah Terrace when a hulking figure stepped out from behind the slots.

Levan stared straight at her with an impenetrable look on his face, those blue eyes cold and cadaverous.

At the sight of him, Saffron thought of searing flesh and bloody wrist stumps, pleading croupiers and wolves tearing vocal cords from pale throats.

Her mother and father, dead at her young feet, corpses spread on the faded rug her father had once charmed into flying.

“Subtle.” Levan glanced pointedly down at her pocket, then meaningfully back at the roulette tables.

Loathing bolted through Saffron like white lightning.

“There’s no need for her to suffer anymore.” She spoke in a low, hateful snap. “Her father is dead, and there’s nobody else you need to keep in line. Leaving her here is just cruel . ”