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“You have to earn your place over and over again, like watering a plant. You can’t feed it once and expect it to thrive forever.”

“I knew you were a poetic sort.”

For some reason, the quip landed. There was a flash of something childlike on Levan’s face, and it was only then that Saffron noticed the black leather-bound book tucked beneath his arm.

He stuffed it awkwardly inside his cloak, but not before Saff caught sight of the novel’s title in embossed gold foil: The Great Adventures of the Lost Dragonborn.

All at once, Saffron’s memory was yanked back fifteen years.

She stood in front of the dressmaker’s mirror in her uncles’ Cloakery, willing herself to speak. It had been over half a decade since her parents were killed, and grief was no longer a blade-sharp shock; rather a hollow shaft had opened inside her, emptiness pressing against all her vital organs.

And still she had not been able to find her words—which meant she had not cast a lick of magic in that time either.

Her uncles had been warned that if she didn’t start casting soon, she’d have to be sent to a Ludder school on the outskirts of the city. The niece of Vallin’s finest cloakiers would not be permitted to wear a cloak at all. There was an elegant sort of irony to it.

Say something, she had begged herself, staring at her halo of silver- blond curls. Her pale blue scholar’s cloak was a luxurious, neatly pressed silk, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing it.

Say anything.

She could not remember what her voice even sounded like. The exact pitch had been lost to the dusty attic of time.

Watching her struggle, Uncle Mal had pulled something out of the top drawer.

“I picked something up for you last night, on my way past Torquil’s Tomes. The Great Adventures of the Lost Dragonborn. This is the first book, but there are five more published, and the sixth is being released in the spring.”

By spring, Saffron still had not spoken, but she had devoured all six of the available Lost Dragonborn tomes.

The sixth book ended on a massive cliffhanger, and there was still a year until the last installment, and she was dying to discuss it with someone.

She had burst into the living room where her uncles played chess, brandished the book in the air like a wand, and said, “Dragons are fucking awesome. ”

The words had been hoarse, painful, rasping.

Freeing.

There had been a moment of stunned silence, in which Merin’s pincered fingers hovered over a bishop. Give them their due, her uncles did not erupt in joy or surprise, did not make any great fanfare of the moment, but rather acted like she hadn’t been silent for the better part of six years.

“Language, Saffron,” Merin had admonished, peering over his monocle before going back to his chess game.

Now, in the Bloodmoon mansion, disbelief felled her for the second time in the span of a few minutes.

The kingpin’s son was a Lost Dragonborn nerd.

The revelation glittered with possibility. She could use this shared ground to her advantage, establish a rapport with Levan so that eventually, he would trust her with the Bloodmoons’ true motivations. He’d already shared with her his heritage. How much deeper could she go?

But before she could ask Levan about the book they both loved, he muttered, “I’ll wait for you outside.”

SAFFRON FOLLOWED LEVAN AND Rasso through the warded tunnels, discreetly studying the markings on the darkly lit walls. They told a story, albeit in the crude style of an ancient cave painting—the Divine Peaks of Kudano were filled with such art.

This sequence was as follows:

A figure walks through a forest.

A few steps later, they’re skewered by a bladebull’s furious horn.

The bull flees.

Another figure hunches over the corpse in grief.

From the folds of their cloak, they retrieve a miniature hourglass, like the one on Lyrian Celadon’s desk.

They turn it upside down, so the sand flows in a different direction.

Then, a single word: tempavicissan .

The second figure disappears again, and the bull reappears.

The original figure is unskewered.

The bull retreats.

The original figure is alone in the woods once more.

The hourglass-wielding figure approaches, takes the other figure by the hand, and leads them in another direction.

A simple depiction of timeweaving, Saff realized.

Heresy, according to the Augurests. But after what Levan had told Saff about his mother’s bloodline, it made all the more sense.

“What do you know about loxlure?” Levan asked, snapping her attention away from the carvings.

“Loxlure?” It wasn’t a familiar word, though she sensed that it should be, that her ignorance was an admission of failure.

“You mean the Silvercloaks don’t have a big fat case file on it?”

“Not that I know of, but my clearance level wasn’t high. They classify almost everything—streetwatchers and cadets walk around the city half-blindfolded, because the Order is so afraid of truth elixir.”

“Interesting.” Levan pursed his lips, the scar on the bottom puckering around the old wound.

“Why?” Saff asked, detective’s instincts firing up. “What is loxlure?”

“Lox is a … substance. It comes from a rare kind of nightpoppy that only grows in northeastern Laudon. It’s what gives blackcherry sours their color.” A heavy pause. “And it causes all-consuming addiction.”

Oh.

Saff’s experience in the gamehouse made sudden and terrible sense.

The way her fear had been eased by the drink, the way she’d immediately ordered another.

The rich, almost erotic pleasure of it. The heightened euphoria while playing roulette.

The bone aches and burrowing weakness when the effects wore off.

And then, when she’d returned for Tenea, the slack-jawed, dead-eyed stares of the patrons.

She’d been right—it was more than a potion, which wouldn’t affect her, and more than simple booze. It was a narcotic. And she was as vulnerable to those as anyone.

Was that the real reason she’d felt so rotten the last few days? Not feverish and dizzy and algae-like because of the brand, but because of lox withdrawal?

Saints. No wonder the citizens of Atherin couldn’t stay away from the gamehouse. Despite the violence and death and binding debts, despite mutilated bodies hurled from the rooftops, despite the naked dancers in glass jars … the loxlure was simply too powerful to resist.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, pulse thrumming.

This was major.

“You’re hardly going to be useful to us if you have no idea how the operation works.”

“Which is how?”

“Our supplier from Laudon sails the lox along the Sleepless Sea and into Port Ouran—though we’ve lost several ships to pirates around Mersina over the last few years.

Once the goods are safely in Vallish waters, our trader boats sail the freight east up the Corven and into the Royal Quay, where we’ve blackmailed several customs officers into not searching our holds.

But there was a crate missing from our last shipment, so today we’re going to interrogate the dock workers who handle our cargo. ”

Saff’s blood fizzed. Potential evidence had been handed to her on a platter.

There was no way the Grand Arbiter would be able to bury something like this.

Charges would have to be brought. Aspar would be named commissioner, and Saff would be formally reinstated into the Silvercloaks with Quintan’s Cross pinned to her lapel.

Yet she felt a little uneasy over how willingly Levan was sharing this information—and the information about his Rezaran bloodline.

He really did have blind faith in the brand’s dark power.

He really did believe she couldn’t relay this information without immediate and agonizing death.

And this was a smart mage, rigorous and cynical.

If he had faith in the brand, it was for good reason.

What if he was right?

What if even her strange immunity couldn’t stop such dark magic?

What if she was trapped in the Bloodmoons?