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“I’ve never claimed not to be cruel.”

Levan took another step toward her, so close she felt the heat of his body.

Even though the riotous gamehouse rattled and roared, it all faded into the background, her senses vignetting around him.

Half of his face was illuminated by the blinking lights of the slots, flashes of gold and blue and green and white dancing over his sharp cheekbones and scarred lip, the chiseled lines of his face, the penny dent of his chin, the gloss of his cocoa-dark hair.

Loathe as she was to admit it, she was terrified of this mage, of how fast and free he flung the killing curse, of how he severed appendages in the pursuit of information.

And yet the prophecy foretold that she would get the upper hand, eventually.

She would lay her lips on his, and he would let out a soft, rough moan, and she would fire a killing spell into his stomach. And it would feel good.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked, stamping the fear resolutely out of her voice.

“I have my ways.”

He glared at Saffron so harshly that she wanted to look away—he seemed either to not look at her at all, or to stare all the way down to her bones—yet her pride kept her gaze pinned to his. Smeared up the side of his throat was something dark and red.

Saff gestured to the unmistakable blood spray. “Busy day?”

“Empty your pockets,” he muttered, ignoring the question.

“No.” Saffron’s hand closed around the roulette ball, but she didn’t pull it out.

He scoffed. “This is not worth your life.”

“That’s for me to decide.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, impatient, and Saff felt a tiny glimmer of satisfaction. She rather enjoyed making his life difficult. He was used to getting what he wanted. He was not used to her stubbornness.

“Why would you do this?” he asked in a low timbre. “Why would you risk yourself for a girl you don’t even know?”

She shrugged. “Are you going to collar me again? Or shall we skip straight to the part where you threaten or maim my loved ones?”

“You calculated the risk to your loved ones and acted anyway?” Levan frowned, as though he’d just heard one of her uncle Mal’s impossible riddles.

“If I were trapped in that ball, they’d take any pain to free me. Neatras’s daughter deserves the same mercy.” Saff gestured to her chest. “And clearly the brand doesn’t believe this to be a betrayal of the Bloodmoons, because I’m still standing.”

It was bold, to invoke the brand, but the Bloodmoons’ faith in its potency seemed unwavering, and she saw no reason not to leverage it.

Once again Saffron wondered whether a matching brand lay beneath Levan’s tunic. If it did … she couldn’t imagine going through that at the hands of your own father. It wouldn’t be an excuse for the cruel killer Levan had become, but it would be a catalyst nonetheless.

Nobody was born evil, contrary to what Captain Aspar believed.

“How is your wound?” he asked gruffly.

“Fine,” Saffron lied, hot blood simmering beneath the surface of the awful scab. She pulled the silvered eyeball from her pocket. The whites were mottled with spidery pink blood vessels, as though Neatras’s daughter had been weeping. “Any threats you want to level at me before I do this anyway?”

More bolshiness. He could easily overpower her, if he so wanted to, but she was banking on the fact he wouldn’t want to cause a scene in the middle of the gamehouse.

There was also a kind of wariness, a latent distrust, in his expression—as though he was remembering her startlingly convincing illusions, and wondering what sort of trick she might play next.

Or maybe he just pitied her. But she wouldn’t let herself entertain that idea.

Levan looked down at the roulette ball, betraying no emotion. “Go ahead.”

Victory dipped in Saffron’s chest, and she set the roulette ball down on the floor. She lifted her foot and brought down her heel as hard as she could.

The glass casing didn’t give. Didn’t even splinter.

Instead, the ball skittered away in the direction of Levan’s own leather boots.

He knelt to pick it up, and Saffron desperately incanted, “ Ans convoqan .”

But Levan’s fist had already closed around it, and her summoning spell was not strong enough to wrench it from his grasp.

There was a long, sprawling silence as he studied the roulette ball, like a jeweler examining an ascenpearl for imperfections. Saffron’s breath hung suspended somewhere in her throat.

Eventually, Levan gave a stiff grunt. “You’re right. The daughter’s suffering serves no purpose. I am what most would consider a monster, but I have a code.”

Saffron frowned. “You’re going to free her?”

“She cannot be freed. Her body has long been incinerated. But I can end her suffering.”

Saff searched the words for a catch—she had spent a lot of time observing interrogations, and had come to recognize the tiny tics that betrayed a lie, or an ulterior motive, or a trap about to spring—but found none.

Still he stared down at the roulette ball, deep in thought. But he did not move to act.

“Do you remember her name?” Saffron asked tentatively.

A terse nod. “I remember every name. Tenea.”

Finally, his expression cemented itself, and he raised his wand.

The black elm hovered over Tenea’s dilated pupil, flared so wide her slate-gray iris was eclipsed. A horrible lurch went through Saffron’s belly, but the least she could do was bear witness to the girl’s final moments.

He tapped his wand to the entombed eye. “ Ans casulan libreran, ans niman vanesan .”

Saffron didn’t recognize Levan’s spellwork, but the cadence of it made her start. The precision, the mastery … it reminded her so viscerally of her father’s magic, the way he linked together complex charms to form a compound enchantment. He’d always had a gift for alloyed spells.

An intense ache of grief spread between her ribs, wrapping around her lungs, her heart.

She watched in half awe, half horror as the glass casing opened at an invisible seam. The eyeball didn’t squelch into Levan’s open palm, but rather melted away into thin air with a tangible, passing sigh.

As the last vestiges of Tenea vanished into nothing, Saffron’s brain scrambled to make sense of it. One of the cardinal rules of magic was that something could not be made nothing. Matter could not be made to disappear entirely, because it would upset the energy balance of the world.

“Where has she gone?” Saff breathed.

A simple shrug. “Elsewhere.”

What did that mean? How was there still so much Saffron was yet to understand about magic?

Levan closed his empty palm and whispered something so quietly Saffron almost didn’t catch it.

“Aterni se quiestae.”

Saff jolted at the expression. It was something she’d only ever heard her uncle Merin say, something she couldn’t remember how to translate precisely. It meant something like “eternal peace.”

She blinked in surprise. “You know Ancient Sarthi?”

Two thousand years ago, when explorers of old knew only of the continent—and not of the vast pangea that lay beneath it—there had been only two known lands: Nyr?th and Sarth.

Over time, the sprawling tundra nation of Nyr?th remained united as a whole, but bloody battles and terrible wars carved Sarth up into three separate territories: Vallin, Bellandry, and Eqora.

The ensuing centuries saw the lands splinter further still—Bellandry lost the three Eastern Republics of Laudon, Esvaine, and Tarsa to a violent rebellion for independence, while the islands of Mersina and Irisi each became city-states.

These countries’ modern languages all had roots in the Ancient Sarthi tongue, but the original language had mostly been forgotten over the course of millennia—with the occasional exception of a linguistics fanatic like her uncle.

“I know languages most people have never even heard of.” Levan shrugged, but something in Saffron told her he was inwardly proud of it—in a way he hadn’t been when she pointed out the astonishing power of his transmutation.

The pride of his languages gave him a subtle glow, a half smile, so at odds with his hard, stoic outline.

She found it oddly compelling, and wanted to ask him more about it, until she remembered who he was, everything he represented, and scoffed instead. “I wouldn’t think you’d have time to casually study ancient tongues, what with all the torture and killing.”

The half smile vanished as quickly as Tenea had, leaving behind an even darker, blanker expression than before. Levan turned on his heel, as though suddenly disgusted by the whole situation.

“We’re finished here, Silver.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “Speak of it to no one.”