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T HE REST OF THE DAY WAS SPENT PARADING KASAN’S MUTILATED corpse through the docks, then hauling the body to the incinerator to destroy all evidence of the event, which was a very normal and not at all miserable way to spend an afternoon.

As Saffron and Levan traipsed back to their respective chambers, she pulled her cloak tighter around herself.

It reeked of the smoke, ash, and human remains chuffed out by the incinerator, and she could still hear the wet snap of Kasan’s tendons, feel the gruesome squelch of the socket beneath her hands.

She longed for another bath—to wash away the greasy shame coating her from head to toe—and yet she knew, somehow, that it would not help.

She was dirty now. She would be dirty forever.

They drew level with Levan’s chambers, and as his hand went to the doorknob, Saffron remembered what she’d resolved to do.

She swallowed hard, allowing the smallest crack of emotion into her voice. “I don’t know how you do this all day every day. The torturing, the killing. You must be frighteningly detached from your emotions.”

“I don’t do it all day every day,” he answered flatly. “And my emotions are essentially scar tissue, at this point.”

“I just don’t understand what it’s all for .

” She wanted to grab him by the lapels and shake the answer loose, but this would require a softer touch.

“All the violence, the death, the addiction. The horrors inflicted on innocent people. You have all the ascens you’ll ever need.

You could retire now and never be poor again. ”

An impassive smile. “Don’t Silvercloaks believe that some people are just born evil?”

“Some do. I don’t. There’s always a reason. A formative event that warped their worldview. Nobody is born bad. Did Lost Dragonborn never teach you that?”

A calculated reference to their common ground. A chisel hovering over the chink in his armor.

“You’ve read—?”

His eyes lit up almost imperceptibly, and for a split second, it was nearly possible to forget that this was the man who’d amputated and reattached a hand several times before her very eyes. He was just an awkward kid who loved a book.

“I lived and breathed it.” Saffron tamped down the bittersweet memories of curling up on Mal’s patchwork bedspread, head resting on his barrel-like chest as he read the story to her night after night. After the books had finally broken her spell of silence, he’d wanted to enjoy them with her too.

Levan looked as though he desperately wanted to follow this up with a thousand detailed questions, and then suddenly remembered who and where he was. When he spoke again, he’d lowered his pitch, as though trying to remind himself he was a grown man.

“ Lost Dragonborn is just a story. You’ll have to let go of childish concepts of good and evil if you’re going to survive this life.”

“‘There is no good or evil, only evil and greater evil. And you still have to choose a side.’” As she quoted the villain from the series, Saffron rolled her eyes. “Got it.”

There was a stiff silence as Levan’s gaze flickered over her face. The intensity of it, the way he studied her like an ancient language when he was usually so averse to eye contact, sent warmth prickling up her neck.

“Do you know what I don’t understand?” he asked, and the keen narrowing of his stare set Saffron’s teeth on edge.

“There was a moment in my father’s study, before you were branded, in which you could have killed him.

For a moment I thought I’d made an error in bringing you there, that the whole thing had been a ploy to get to him. ”

Saffron shrugged. “My well was empty, and I was vastly outnumbered. To kill him would’ve been to kill myself, and I don’t want to die.”

“But if it were me … We took your family. ”

“No need to remind me.” Saff tapped two fingers to her brand, the way she’d seen him do. “In any case, I’ve lost my chance for revenge, haven’t I?”

He pushed a dark wave of hair from his face, and something odd darted over his features. Was it … suspicion? Realization? As though he were just now figuring out that it was unlikely for her to be here, cooperating, bantering, without an ulterior motive?

“Do you still grieve them?” he asked, genuinely curious. “Your parents.”

Saffron was surprised her Lost Dragonborn chisel had worked so quickly. Then again, she’d always been good at reading people. Finding their soft spots, pressing the advantage.

Still, the question wrought a sinking, plummeting feeling low in her belly. Grief wasn’t something she wanted to discuss with the very people who’d caused it, yet this felt like an important moment in which to build rapport with the kingpin’s son. A drawbridge lowered, a pot of tea shared.

“It feels like a brick lodged in my chest,” she admitted.

“I carry it with me everywhere, and I do so willingly, because it’s all I have left of them.

That brick proves that they existed, and that they made a mark, and that mark lives on in me.

As long as I’m alive to mourn them, they are alive, in some way, too.

And there’s also … I don’t know. Relief?

Relief in knowing that the worst has already happened.

That no other loss will ever feel as large or as heavy. ”

Levan nodded, slow, processing, and Saffron could’ve sworn she saw something like recognition on his face. Then, rather abruptly, he seemed to remember himself, and became at once very uncomfortable.

He pushed himself off the wall and opened the door to his chambers. “Goodnight.”

“Levan, wait.” She swallowed hard. “If I want to leave this place. Be alone in the outside world for a bit. Can I?”

Levan shrugged. “You’re not a prisoner.” He gestured to her heart. “The brand will know if you’re planning anything.”

HIS WORDS TROUBLED HER for hours.

She’d come into this assignment with the singular belief that the brand could not hurt her beyond the initial burn.

That she was immune to magic, all magic, and though terrible things could and would happen undercover, she would still be able to operate outside of the bounds of the seared curse.

She would not be bound to them, not truly.

Yet now that it was time to betray the Bloodmoons in earnest, doubt crept in.

They were unfalteringly trustful of the brand.

And these were intelligent mages—Levan with his powerful transmutation and gift for ancient tongues, Lyrian with his frightening omniscience and impenetrable memory—who would likely need evidence before believing so wholeheartedly in a curse.

True, Saffron had never met another mage like her, never found any reading material about magical immunity in the Academy’s vast library.

Her quirk was rare, possibly unique, and the Bloodmoons likely had not prepared for it.

But the way they had so brazenly shared their secrets within days of her arrival …

Was there a kind of magic that could bypass magical immunity?

That nobody, not even her, could escape?

As she left the compound through the warded tunnels, her pulse pounded in her throat like a Bokolani battle drum.

The instrument from the Nomarean capital was so powerful that hearing its beat would send a surge of raw adrenaline through any listener’s veins, compelling them to don their armor and march to the battlefield.

That’s how Saff felt now—as though her very heartbeat was driving her to bold and reckless action.

She half expected every footstep to be her last.

At what point would the brand act? Did it sense what she was about to do? Could it read her thoughts? Or was it only the action itself that would trigger her death? Would her heart stop the moment she opened her mouth to tell Aspar what she’d learned?

She spent the entire walk to Esmoldan’s Baths coiled with tension—and convinced she was being followed.

It was early evening, and the streets shone with the kind of low golden light that drove artists to their easels.

The slouching creamstone buildings were swathed in a honeyed glow, the twisting streets lined with fountains and forest-green shutters, the occasional peak of an obelisk or a purple temple dome towering at the end of each alley.

Every time Saffron rounded a corner, she checked over her shoulder, but there was no flash of another scarlet cloak in the crowd, no shrouded figure emerging from the shadows.

There was a certain heightened thrum to the city, an uneven canter, although it was possible Saffron was just projecting. Outside the Merchants’ Guild stood a Daejini delegation in long embroidered robes, muttering in a language of choppy waves.

“Oga dracaki ka sutinai. Inu Jakin-ori te-rukai.”

“Dika-ki fayu inu wogu?”

“Nik sashin i dracaki-mai.”

The only word Saffron picked out was dracaki.

Dragon.

Along Dubias Row marched a funeral procession dressed in mourning blue—for the fallen Whitewings, perhaps?

—and the sun seemed to hang suspended over the horizon for several moments too long.

Then, all at once, darkness fell like a curtain, the sky sprinkled with high, bright stars.

Time in Ascenfall often had a slippery, unpredictable quality to it, as though the mages who’d repaired it after the Dreadreign had never quite managed to iron out all the kinks.

Passing Torquil’s Tomes, the quadruple-storied bookstore on Sentry Street, Saffron saw an advertisement in the window for the Vallish Arts Festival.

The headliners included the illustrator behind a popular pulp about fallowwolves, the cast of a stage adaptation of the beloved Spectral Things novel, and the writer of the newest Promise War epic.

There was a contest for the best costume and the best fan art, as well as a trivia quiz held at the Jaded Saint after hours.