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S TARING AT VOGOLAN’S LIFELESS CORPSE—A CRUMPLE OF scarlet silk, grayish skin, and oily hair—Saffron waited for the guilt to crash through her, waited to feel even the slightest ebb of remorse, but it never came.

The world was a better place without Porrol Vogolan.

She was glad she had not hesitated.

And yet … what did it mean, that she had not even blinked? That the decision had been made between one heartbeat and the next? Had it been borne from necessity, to keep her fatal secret, or from anger—a desire to avenge Auria’s grandfather?

Which motivation would be worse?

No matter. The simple fact was that it was done, and she felt nothing but relief.

And now she had a body to dispose of.

Not for the first time in recent days, she wished the portari charm hadn’t been stripped out of every wand in the land.

How simple it would be to transport them both out of the city, to head down to the coast and dump Vogolan over the cliffs of Sarosan into the Sleepless Sea.

Or even just down to the incinerator, so that she could turn his ashes into a gemstone and hand it to the first lox-addicted mage she came across.

Though she supposed that was precisely why the transportation spell had been outlawed to begin with. Corpses should not be so easy to hide.

Nor could she simply make the corpse disappear. One of the cardinal rules of magic was that something could not be turned to nothing. There was whatever Levan had done to usher Tenea’s spirit elsewhere, but Saffron didn’t understand that magic, let alone how to wield it.

She mentally rifled through her old stack of case files, trying to recall any particularly ingenious methods of corpse disposal, but none came to her.

There was one serial killer who’d used waneweed to shrink his victims down to palm-size, but he did that before ending their lives.

And besides, leaving the mansion to seek out waneweed would require leaving a dead body in her bedroom for anyone—namely Levan—to stumble upon.

Saffron pressed her eyes closed and did what she always did when she needed to channel brilliance: asked herself what Auria would do. Auria, with her encyclopedic knowledge of magic, with her love for rare spellwork and obscure charms whose uses had long become obsolete.

Auria.

Slowly, an idea came to her—drip by drip, then all at once.

She opened her eyes and raised her wand, aiming it at Vogolan’s gut. “ Sen effigias .”

She wasn’t wholly sure whether the curse would work on a cadaver, but sure enough, Vogolan turned from flesh and blood to pure stone.

“ Et ascevolo, ” she incanted, lifting her wand up, guiding Vogolan’s stone form to the high ceiling.

And then she let it drop.

He smashed into a few dozen pieces. Not quite small enough for her purposes, but enough to convince her that this would work. She just had to hope nobody in the servants’ quarters below would hear the thumps and come running.

She repeated the levitation and the drop several more times, until Vogolan was rubble so fine that no human features could be identified.

The chunks were larger than gravel, but not by much.

Sweeping them into her old black cloak, Saffron stuffed the bundle into the trunk at the foot of her bed.

Every time she ventured into the city, she’d take a few handfuls with her, scattering Vogolan all over Atherin.

Perhaps she’d frequent her old favorite gamehouse while she was at it.

The adrenaline, the sense of victory, had flooded her veins, and suddenly all she could think about was the heady release of gambling .

Of winning . Of how it felt to be so thoroughly outplaying your opponents that nothing short of tragedy could strike you down now.

As she lowered the lid of the trunk, a slow smile spread over her face.

THE NEXT MORNING, she approached her assignment with renewed vigor.

Her focus had narrowed, intensified, following Aspar’s order.

Uncovering details of the next lox shipment would be no mean feat, but when had anything ever been easy for Saffron?

She was used to taking the undulating path through the mountains while everyone else meandered along the riverfront.

She was used to adversity, to working twice as hard for twice as long.

Thanks to her father, she was used to unfavorable rolls of the dice.

The first problem she had to address upon waking was that her magical well had been thoroughly depleted.

The killing curse was infamous for its almighty drain, and all the subsequent spellwork she’d done to decimate the corpse had left her dry.

Having decided to head into the city—to replenish her power with food and music and art and possibly a visit to a pleasurehouse—she shoved a few palmfuls of Vogolan rubble into her cloak pockets, stuffed her feet into her boots, and left her bedroom.

Fate had other ideas, however.

She passed Levan’s chambers on the way down to the main atrium, and when she drew level with his door, she heard male murmurings behind it. He had company. Her detective’s instincts prickled.

“ Ans vocamplican, ” she muttered—one of the first spells they’d perfected at the Academy.

Two male voices talked in muffled, almost sleepy tones.

“—I see a bloody uprising.” The unfamiliar voice was as smooth as caramel. The words were a caress, despite their violent undertones. “The head of King Quintan on the Palace steps. Just as the pulps depicted.”

“A Bloodmoon boot at his throat?” asked Levan.

“I don’t know, darling. The prophecies are offered to me as gifts. I cannot maneuver them to my will.”

“When is it happening? This bloody uprising?” There was a latent hunger in Levan’s tone. “Can you discern a season?”

“Darkest winter, at a guess.”

“How accurate a guess?”

A buttery laugh. “Oh, not very. I’m rather addled with honeywine. And there’s no way of knowing what year.”

“Fine.”

Then came the distinct sound of a lingering kiss, followed by a subtle male groan.

“I can’t, you magnificent being,” murmured the stranger. “The king is expecting me any moment. Help me button up my doublet, won’t you? My hands don’t seem to be cooperating.”

“You drink too much. It’s not even noon.”

“I don’t think we should go down that path, darling. I still remember finding you in a pool of your own piss after a lox overd—”

“You’re right. Let’s not go down that path.”

Something curdled in Saffron’s stomach.

Levan had overdosed on lox?

Moreover, he was having an affair with a man she had discerned to be the King’s Prophet?

She didn’t know which was more shocking.

A few moments later, booted footsteps strode toward the door. Saffron dropped her vocamplican charm mere seconds before it swung open, raising her fist as though she had been about to knock.

The man on the other side of the threshold was exceedingly handsome. He was short and slight, with pale, freckled skin and dark red hair styled in perfect waves. Sure enough, he wore the recognizable navy doublet of House Arollan.

The King’s Prophet.

He did not seem at all surprised or perturbed by Saffron’s presence.

Had he known she would be there?

If so, what else did he know?

“You must be the fabled Silver.” He offered her a hand covered in jeweled rings, and she shook it. “Harrow Claver. Truly ensorcelled to meet you.”

“Saffron,” she replied. “Claver is a Bellandrian name, is it not?” Saffron’s father also hailed from Bellandry—from the northwestern town of Charlet, famous for pinewood liquors and romantic poets.

“Oh, yes.” A playful grin spread across his handsome face. “I’m a traitor to my home country. And my new one. All crowns, in fact. Thrones, conceptually. I have issues with authority.”

Levan appeared behind Harrow. His belt was undone, and he’d thrown on his black tunic so hastily that one side was raised above his hip, revealing a strip of pale, toned stomach—the very place she would eventually fire a killing spell.

Saffron chastised herself for the flutter of something it sent through her traitorous body.

“So you’re together?” she asked.

“ Hells, no.” Harrow clasped a hand to his chest as though mortally wounded by the suggestion. “I’ll never be tied to one vock . And besides, darling Levan here will never take another life partner. Not after what happened to—”

“Goodbye, Harrow.” Levan shoved Harrow over the threshold, and the prophet almost collided with Saffron.

“Oh, I see. I’ve served my purpose and now I’m dismissed?” Harrow tsk ed playfully. “Careful, darling. You wouldn’t want me to withhold on you, would you?”

And with that he strode down the corridor, humming a jaunty little tune before disappearing down the grand staircase that swept into the atrium.

“Fucking the King’s Prophet for information, are you?” Saffron smirked.

“The fucking is for pleasure. The information he gives freely.”

Levan finished buckling his belt, and Saffron had to swallow quite hard to banish the grooves of his hips from her mind.

Saints, she needed to get to a pleasurehouse, or she was in real danger of mounting any particularly phallic lampposts she saw streetside.

Magic—and the lack thereof—made all her various appetites swell and pulse.

“Why are you here?” Levan asked, neither irritated nor pleased at her presence.

At the question, Saff opened her mouth in the hope that a plausible excuse would fall out, but she never got the chance. From somewhere inside the room came Lyrian’s tinny voice through a wandtip.

“Et vocos, Levan Celadon.”

Levan disappeared back inside to grab his wand—Saffron dimly realized that he didn’t deem it necessary to be armed around her—then reappeared moments later. There was that scent again: leather and warm skin, lemon zest and peppermint leaves, plus the unmistakable underpinning of sex.

“Yes?” he spoke into the black elm tip, a single rough syllable.

“Vogolan’s missing.” Lyrian’s tone was strained, furious, but also … afraid? “I think he’s dead.”