Page 43

T HE NIGHT WAS BITTEN WITH A CRISPER CHILL THAN THE previous week.

The inky sky was flecked with stars and the pleasurehouses were in full swing, the streets ringing with moans and music, clinking glasses and pops of laughter against a backdrop of jewel-toned awnings and gilded obelisks.

Woodsmoke hung on the air, and Saffron tried not to think of the incinerator, of the spark and whoosh Kasan’s body made as it caught.

Her mind focused instead on all the things she might ask Levan while he could not help but tell her the truth. She couldn’t ask outright about the lox shipment schedule—it would be far too suspicious—but she could chip away with seemingly innocuous conversation.

“Why do we go everywhere on foot?” Saffron asked, easing into matters. “Since there’s a portari gate at our disposal.”

They passed an Augurest temple, where evening worship was in full swing.

A low litany of chanting floated up through the domed purple ceiling, and Levan glanced at the eye-shaped building with thinly veiled loathing.

He had Timeweaver blood, after all, and the Augurests were praying for his eradication.

“My father’s insistence. He doesn’t trust that the gates aren’t being watched by the Silvercloaks. We only use it when we absolutely have to.”

Saffron didn’t think the Silvercloaks were watching. Aspar surely would’ve briefed her on the unregulated gate, if so, classification level be damned.

“Your father also said you hated Vogolan,” she said carefully, picturing the enormous case file she would eventually drop onto Aspar’s desk with a satisfied thud. “Why?”

Levan stared straight ahead. The towering marble and creamstone of Arollan Palace stood at the end of the Mile, lit from below and glowing pale in the moonlight.

Crenels stood out like teeth against the night.

A row of flags sat upright in the breeze: one rich purple for Vallin, one a gold chalice and laurel wreath against a burgundy backdrop for the patron saints, and one navy blue with a crown of silver stars for House Arollan.

At last, Levan replied, “He killed someone very important to me.”

Saffron’s heart skipped. “Your mother?”

Nobody outside the Bloodmoons knew how Lorissa Celadon had died.

“No.” The syllable was a hammer striking an anvil. A warning edge to it, as if to say If you keep pushing this, you won’t survive long enough to hear the truth.

She tried a gentler tack. “To me, Vogolan seems evil just for evil’s sake.” She was careful to use the present tense—she shouldn’t know for certain that he was dead.

“Yes,” he agreed, a thin line of steel in the word.

The silence between them hovered on a blade edge. Saff knew she had to press this advantage—how often would she see Levan even the slightest bit vulnerable?—but it felt treacherous. She couldn’t ask anything that would make her seem like a detective.

Yet they only had a few minutes until they reached the Jaded Saint, and by the time Saff reemerged from her meeting with Nissa, the elixir would be nowhere near as potent. His body would’ve already started to flush it out.

Oh, what the hells.

“Why are the Bloodmoons doing all of this?” The words were jagged, rushed. “What’s the end goal for all this torture and killing and amassing of wealth?”

The strangest thing happened, then. Levan made a sort of grunting noise, as though trying to strangle the words before they could make it out of his throat. His fists clenched at his sides, and a muscle twitched in his squared jaw.

He was fighting the truth elixir.

And he was winning .

Which had to mean there was something deeper to the Bloodmoons’ motivations. It was not just simple power, or he’d say as much. Had her earlier hunch been right? Did they have their eyes on the weakened Arollan throne?

Yet Saffron could barely think about that right now, because Levan was fighting the truth elixir and winning.

Just how powerful was this mage?

Fear curdled in her belly at the thought.

“I think it’s time,” Levan spat out, through gritted teeth, “that you stop asking questions.”

Saffron dug a thumbnail into her palm, inwardly chastising herself.

She had gone straight in with an axe when a subtler hand would’ve yielded more fruit.

Then again, if Levan was powerful enough to choke out the truth elixir …

would she have gleaned anything worthwhile?

She should’ve prioritized rapport-building, should’ve tried to establish another level of closeness between them, should’ve responded more warmly to what he’d said back in the warded tunnels: You’re not alone, Silver.

And if you’re anything like me, which I think you are, then that means something.

Was she losing her touch, her killer instincts, her nose for a good gamble versus a bad one? Or did the kingpin’s son rattle her, somehow?

They walked in jagged silence until they passed a section of creamstone wall folded in on itself like a pocket, creating not a pleasure nook but a resting spot for a weary passerby.

On the bench—tiled with blue and green and glittering star white—lay a mage in clear distress.

She was barely conscious, moaning like a dying animal.

Bones jutted through her thin, clammy skin.

Sweat pooled above her top lip and in the nook between her bladed collarbones.

Even in the dim light, her veins clearly ran black. They spidered over her white skin like spilled ink.

Muscle memory kicking in from her years on the streetwatch, Saff crossed to the woman, laying the back of her hand against a glistening forehead. It was like a furnace. She knelt to the ground beside the mage and spoke low and clear.

“Do you need help, sweetling?”

Sweetling: a southern term of endearment her mother always used with patients. It made Saffron’s heart swell to use it.

The woman groaned, eyes fluttering, limbs jerking.

Levan stopped to watch Saffron but did not kneel beside her. His face had darkened; he seemed lost in the shadowy corridors of his mind.

Saff gritted her teeth. “Does this look like lox to you?”

Levan nodded stiffly. “Overdose.”

Saffron remembered something Harrow had said: I still remember finding you in a pool of your own piss after a lox overdose.

Harrow had found Levan like this.

“How do we help her?” Saffron asked, clutching the woman’s hand in hers. It was ice cold, unlike the fevered forehead.

“We can’t,” Levan muttered, looking away. “That’s the vicious thing about lox. Once it’s in your system, no magic can pull it back out. She just has to wait and hope. And we’re already late.”

“We can’t leave her here,” Saffron argued, feeling the righteous, principled courage of her mother beating in her own chest. “We should call a Healer.”

“This is not something that can be healed.”

“Maybe not, but she still deserves a warm bed and someone to care for her.”

Levan looked at his leather-banded wristwatch, then at the moon hanging above the city. With a reluctant sigh, he brought his wand to his lips. “ Et vocos, Karal Kelassan .”

It took a few moments for the response to come. “Hello?” The voice was bleary with sleep.

“It’s Levan. I have someone for you. Lox.”

The sound of a bedspread being shoved off a body. “Where?”

Levan didn’t even have to look up at the street sign. “Lancen Place. By the apothecary with the yellow awning.”

“On my way.”

“Is Kelassan a Bloodmoon?” Saffron asked, guts twisting at the thought of involving this woman with the scarlet cloaks.

“No. He helped me when I … was sick.” A grinding of his teeth, an aversion of the gaze. “We should go. Your contact has already been waiting too long.”

Saffron nodded, squeezing the woman’s frigid hand. “Help is coming, sweetling.”

The lox-addled mage only moaned in response, but a moan meant she was still alive.

“Will she live?” Saff asked quietly, once they were out of earshot. “Or is she too far gone?”

“I don’t know,” Levan admitted.

“That’s what happened to you—when you were sick?” She framed this question not as an accusation but as a gentle nudge toward the truth—one that implied she already knew the answer. The simplest way to slip the knowledge Harrow had gifted her onto the public record between her and Levan.

Levan looked up at the sky, the narrow moon draping pale light over the hard lines of his face. “Indeed. Lox nearly killed me.”

Something like sadness sank into Saffron’s lungs, but it quickly dissipated. “And yet you subject countless others to the same fate. How can it not make you sick? When you think about what lox is doing to the city?”

“Lox wasn’t my idea,” he replied evenly, but it had to trouble him.

“You also didn’t stop it.” She chose her next words carefully. “I don’t get it, Levan. Unlike Vogolan, you seem to need a reason for the evil in order to make peace with it. So why—”

“You play fast and loose with the word evil. ”

“How else would you describe it?”

“Well, would you use the word evil to describe what the Vallish soldiers did on the battlefield during the War of Eight Mountains? They killed. Slaughtered.” When she did not respond, he added, “Would you use the word evil to describe Aymar in Lost Dragonborn ? He takes lives for the greater good.”

They slipped from Lancen Place onto Arollan Mile. “And you believe you do the same?”

“Most of the time. There are missteps. The Brewer in the alley, the night we met—that was a misstep.”

“And the Whitewings?”

“Only ever killed in retaliation.”

This didn’t ring entirely true. She thought of what he’d said to her that night in the alley: If I find out this is all a trick, I will not kill you.

I will hunt down everyone you have ever loved and bleed them dry in front of you.

And when you beg me to kill you, I won’t.

I will force you to live with the pain until your heart eventually dies in your chest. And I will enjoy it.