Page 33

S AFFRON SPENT THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS IN THE FOLDS OF her four-poster bed, slipping in and out of sleep.

It was not a restful sleep, but rather a hostile, imprisoning one.

She felt as though her mind were at the bottom of a lake, the surface glistening just beyond her bodiless reach.

Like she had died and reincarnated as algae—an entity that did live and breathe, technically speaking, and yet lacked agency in any real sense.

When she did wake for a few moments, lifting her groggy head from the pillow, the room around her swayed and eddied. The brand left her weakened, feverish. Not herself.

Levan and Rasso appeared several times a day, at precisely punctual times, to proffer food.

She didn’t know why Levan felt the need to deliver the meals personally, rather than having a servant do it, but it was likely a means of intimidation, of surveillance.

No matter. She barely had the strength to register his arrival, let alone interact with him in any meaningful way.

On the third morning, however, after bringing breakfast at precisely eight a.m., Levan announced that he had run her bath, on account of the fact she smelled like a reekhog’s posterior.

With an immense surge of effort, she traipsed obligingly behind him down the corridor and into a private bathing chamber.

The air in the chamber was opaque with steam, and the bath was sunken into the turquoise mosaicked floor, its contents scented with a rich rosehip oil.

All the fittings were solid gold: the taps, the grates, the little wall hooks upon which a fresh cotton towel hung waiting for her.

Next to the towel was a clean set of plain clothes—a black tunic, matching slacks, and new undergarments.

“I’ll wait outside,” Levan said.

Saffron rolled her eyes. “It’s not like I’m going to make a run for it.”

“I’ll wait anyway.” Rasso lay at his feet by means of confirmation.

As Saffron was about to cross the threshold into the bathing chamber, she hesitated. Her hand went to the tender burn on her chest.

“What’s it going to look like?”

She still hadn’t laid eyes upon it. Whenever she reapplied the salve, she stared resolutely at the ceiling.

He didn’t have to ask what she meant. Didn’t even seem surprised at the question.

“Like a dark, angry crust.” He swallowed, not meeting her eye. “It’ll fade.”

The bath chamber was dimly lit with evercandles, and the clouds of steam mercifully obscured the brand, somewhat.

She shrugged out of her clothes and hung them on the hook, and as she lowered her aching body into the bath, there was a fresh lick of fire, another poker sizzling against her skin, a pain so fierce and bright that a scream tore loose from her throat.

In an instant she was back at the mercy of Lyrian Celadon, wrists bound and flesh burning—

The door opened with a crash, and Levan’s outline appeared through the steam.

“Are you alright?” he asked, voice gruff.

Saff went to hastily cover up her intimate parts. Shame filled her belly, like she’d been caught masturbating. “Fine.”

“The brand?”

She nodded, fiercely blinking away the tears beading along her waterline. “The heat against it.”

Saints, it throbbed. She had to focus on keeping her breathing steady, on not whimpering like a kicked wolf cub. Levan had already seen her at her weakest, her most broken. She had to maintain some semblance of pride .

Yet she was naked and in pain in front of him, and he made no effort to leave. Instead, he pulled the wand from his cloak pocket and dipped its tip into the bathwater.

“Don corzaquiss.”

The water sizzled and cooled. It wasn’t cold, but it also was not quite so scorching, so reminiscent of the brand. A long breath rattled out of Saffron, and the intense sear of her crusted brand ebbed slightly.

“Better?” Levan asked, the word rough.

“Yes,” she muttered. “Thanks.”

He nodded once and left. She stared after him, trying to reconcile this random act of compassion with the man she’d seen torturing an innocent Brewer and murdering … well, not innocent Whitewings. But he’d mutilated some and slaughtered others without a hint of remorse.

The kingpin’s son seemed to have a weak spot for her brand.

He’d been rattled when she first suggested it in the alley, and he’d looked away while it was happening, offering her a tiny shred of dignity and privacy.

In the aftermath, he’d brought her salve and asked if she was alright, and now …

this. All signs pointed to the fact that he too had been branded—perhaps young, perhaps against his will.

Why else would he show such relative sympathy for her pain, when everything else he said and did was so unrelentingly cold?

I am what most would consider a monster, but I have a code.

Aspar had ordered her to uncover the Bloodmoons’ elusive motive, the big why behind their pursuit of power and fortune. Saff would have to establish herself as a valuable confidante to both Levan and Lyrian if she wanted the answer. And of the two, Levan was much more accessible to her.

The rough edges of a plan sharpened, solidified.

When she was done bathing, Levan and Rasso escorted her wordlessly back to her room. Rasso glowered at her from the threshold, those unnerving white eyes as bottomless as they were blank.

“How do you have a fallowwolf?” she asked Levan, sitting cross-legged on the bed. “I thought they only bonded with Timeweavers, and since the Timeweavers were eradicated, the fallowwolves went feral.”

He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “You know a lot about fallowwolf lore.”

“My old commanding officer was an Augurest.”

Levan tensed like an arrow nocked in a bow, pulled back and quivering with the effort of staying still. “I have a fallowwolf because I have Rezaran blood.”

All the blood rushed to Saffron’s head.

“Impossible,” she breathed. “The whole house was slaughtered a hundred years ago.”

Levan shook his head grimly. “Not the whole house. There was a bastard son nobody knew about.”

Saffron reeled at the revelation.

His ancestors had once sat the throne of Vallin.

House Rezaran’s fifty-year Dreadreign had almost unmade the world.

The royal house had written and unwritten time so frequently and indiscriminately that the very fabric of the world wore thin.

Careless rewinds and redoes created paradoxical knots, and it took an immense amount of ascenite to smooth them out again.

Entire days and weeks went missing from time, fraying and disintegrating, while others repeated in frantic loops.

Mages vanished between the cracks of then and now, never to be seen again.

As the Augurests had predicted.

The dragons—the longest-standing allies of Timeweavers—scorned this cavalier manipulation of time, and so they deserted House Rezaran, fleeing north to the ice-capped mountains of northeastern Nyr?th.

House Veliron, who were proud Augurests, used this weakening of House Rezaran to take the throne, executing over a hundred Timeweavers outside the Palace.

House Rezaran was eradicated in its entirety—or so the world believed.

Not that they had been mourned.

And now there stood a mage before her with their blood running through his veins.

The fourth prophecy from Augur Emalin said that the Augurests would emerge triumphant, but a few Timeweavers would slip through the cracks, and the Augurests would have to remain vigilant for centuries after their initial conquest, awaiting the second uprising, making sure to slaughter every last one.

Saff struggled to process the magnitude. The prospect of a time-wielding kingpin was almost too hideous to comprehend.

“So the Bloodmoons are Timeweavers?” she asked, throat dry.

Levan shook his head. “My mother had a trace of it, but barely enough to roll back a few minutes, and even that would drain her for weeks. Rasso was hers. After she died, he stuck with me, though I don’t have a single weaving muscle in my body.

Not for lack of trying. My father was obsessed with learning the lost art, for a while, even though the Rezaran bloodline was on my mother’s side.

He still uses my mother’s weaverwick wand in the vague hope a dormant power will eventually show itself. ”

Saff’s mouth fell open. Levan’s mother had been the notorious Lorissa Celadon. Her bloody ambition and ruthless genius had raised the Bloodmoons from a lowly street gang to the most feared criminal organization Vallin had ever seen. When she died, her husband, Lyrian, had taken the reins.

Lorissa Rezaran.

“Why are you telling me this?” Saff asked, breathless. “It’s not common knowledge that you have Rezaran blood. It could see you hunted by Augurests the world over.”

Levan’s jaw clenched. “Because I see no reason to hide. If they want to hunt me, let them come. I fear no one. And as for why I told you so freely …” He tapped two fingers over his heart to symbolize the brand. “You can’t share it any further.”

Oh, but I can.

Aspar would salivate at the knowledge that the Bloodmoons were descendants of House Rezaran.

As an Augurest, she supported the eradication of all Timeweavers.

This revelation would not only solidify her motivations for bringing them down, but it would pay credence to the fourth prophecy she had devoted her life to.

How she would love to be the one to end the Timeweaver bloodline once and for all. Not only would she be named commissioner, but she would also fulfill her own religious mandate.

And as for Levan fearing no one …

Well. His killer was sitting right in front of him. He was wrong not to be afraid, and his arrogance would be his downfall.

“Eat your breakfast.” Levan gestured to the pile of almond pastry cones and the mug of hot chocolate on her bedside table. “I know the first kill is rough, and the brand hurts like all hells, but you’ve wallowed enough. Time to earn your place.”

“I thought finding Nalezen Zares was earning my place.”