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She knew the threats were not empty, but when she looked back on them, she thought there might have been an element of performance to them.

He’d just been trying to scare her, to keep her in line, but the pleasure he claimed he’d derive from destroying her …

that was wholly at odds with the mage she was coming to know.

He didn’t seem to derive any satisfaction from fear or violence, the way his father did.

He just believed the end justified the means—whatever that end may be.

And wasn’t she doing the exact same thing? Hadn’t she killed Neatras and maimed Kasan in the pursuit of her own goals?

“Are you going to force your contact’s hand?” Levan asked, changing the subject somewhat. “Over the tracing charm my father asked for.”

Saffron had almost forgotten what Lyrian had ordered her to do.

She grimaced. “I suppose I’ll have to. Your father will torture or execute my loved ones if I don’t.”

Just then, her wand tip crackled, and her uncle Mal’s familiar voice sang through the tip. “ Et vocos, Saffron Killoran. ”

Saff stared down at her wand, cursing the woeful timing. He’d tried to reach her half a dozen times since her release from Duncarzus, and she still hadn’t mustered the courage to respond.

How could she? How could she speak to the sweet, kind mage who raised her when it would only put him more at risk?

“Saffy, my love, sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall. Al though that stretch of creamstone in the alley behind the Cloakery certainly has better conversation. Don’t tell me you’ve gone mute again? Because frankly, I don’t have another Lost Dragonborn up my sleeve.”

Levan watched her grapple with the emotions, but he didn’t ask her about the significance of Lost Dragonborn, or what her uncle meant by mute .

When Mal tried several more times before finally giving up, the kingpin’s son said, “Your uncles raised you?”

Saff nodded numbly.

“What were your parents like?”

Once again, Saffron did not want to taint her parents’ memories by sharing them with a Bloodmoon. And yet she was also supposed to be under the influence of truth elixir, and so she’d have to answer.

“My mother was a Healer. And she was very, very good at it. She developed a hornpox vaccination that cured a savage outbreak when I was three or four. King Quintan himself nominated her for the Vallish Distinction Prize. She had dozens of job offers after that, mostly in the capital, but she refused them all. She believed rural villages were just as deserving of excellent care.” A wistful smile twisted her lips.

“She could also drink. She loved honeywine. The smell always reminds me of her.”

And your terrible family took her from me.

“What about your father?”

A sort of sighing feeling sunk into Saffron’s chest, heavy and solid. “A highly gifted Enchanter, but he never had particularly grand ambitions. He used to spend his days pottering around our house, charming it in new and increasingly absurd ways for when I got home from school.”

Something reared in Saffron’s memory—something she hadn’t been able to quite shake.

Aspar, on that fateful night of the final assessment.

Once upon a time, I owed your father a great debt of gratitude.

Would she ever find out what that had meant?

Saffron’s hand went once again to the wooden pendant hanging around her neck.

“Our front door changed color depending upon who knocked. One of my father’s favorite enchantments.

Sky blue for an acquaintance, heart red for a lover present, past, or future.

Clover green for an enemy, plum for an old friend.

Vibrant orange for someone trustworthy, pale pink for a blossoming relationship.

Mustard yellow for family and, erm, traveling salesmen.

The best door in the world. This pendant is all that remains of it, and of them. ”

The two jewels, studded into the wood. Emerald and purple sapphire.

“I still don’t quite understand how he wove that spell—how the magic could understand human relationships well enough to reflect them back on the beholder.

But the door was damaged on the night they died, and the enchantment slipped out of it.

I wish more than anything it still carried the magic.

It would feel like my dad was with me, in some way.

And it would show me exactly who I could and couldn’t trust.”

Levan stopped walking for a moment.

“Can I?” He gestured to the pendant.

Saffron nodded, unsure why her breath froze in her throat as his hand went to the necklace, holding it up to the nearest streetlamp. A frowned notched between his brows.

“I think I can re-create the enchantment. If you want me to.”

Something surged in Saffron’s heart. “How?”

“I remember something similar from an ancient book of enchantments in the mansion library. The volume is six hundred years old—from when House Portaran reigned. They were gifted Enchanters too, and wanted to spread their knowledge to all the people of Vallin.”

“Do you remember everything you read?”

He shrugged, a little bashful. “The pages remain in my head, like a personal library I can peruse at any moment. Do you want me to try?” He gestured to the pendant, and the softness of his words took her aback. “I understand if not. If the spell feels sacred.”

Sacred was the right word.

“Why would you do that for me?” she asked.

“To see if I can,” he said evenly, still composed despite his lowered defenses. “It’s very interesting magic.”

Saffron gave him a wry smile. “Is that the only reason?”

Levan’s eyes bore into hers so intensely it sent a shiver down her spine. “Fine. I meant what I said earlier. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now you’re caught up in all of this without deserving to be. My apology doesn’t mean much, but I can tell this does.”

The words flowed easily, coaxed out of him by the truth elixir. Not worth choking back.

And so Saffron replied, rather coarsely, “Alright.”

Levan withdrew his wand, laying the tip on the smooth oval, then furrowed his brow even deeper in concentration.

He uttered a string of low, urgent enchantments all rolled into one, so quickly and expertly that Saffron could not even begin to parse them into separate commands.

At the sound of the style of magic—so familiar, and yet she hadn’t heard it for decades—her heart ached like a wound, deeper and more primal than her prickling brand.

Slowly, beneath the assertive pulse of Levan’s wand, the wooden oval came back to life, flaring into a rainbow spectrum of colors before settling into a select few.

Some patches were a pale floral pink, while others were vibrant orange. There was a blotch of clover green, and right down the middle, cleaving the oval in two, was a streak of heart red.

Levan frowned down at it. “I’m not sure I did it right. It should only be one block color, shouldn’t it?”

Saffron nodded, but she could barely speak.

The hues were so perfect, so precise. It was an arrow through her chest.

“I think you did it better, ” she whispered, a betrayal of her father. “His chose only the most dominant relationship dynamic. Yours seems to highlight all present ones.”

Clover green for an enemy.

Vibrant orange for someone trustworthy.

Pale pink for a blossoming relationship.

Heart red for a lover present, past, or future.

As Levan slotted those pieces into place, his gaze lifted from the necklace to her face, and a mottling of color spread above his collar.

He exhaled slowly, searching her eyes for some clue as to how she felt about these conflicting connotations.

In truth she was hot and cold all at once, both horrified and bewildered.

The prophecy came back to her unbidden: her lips on his, a firm palm in the small of her back.

A moan of pleasure. A wand pressed to his stomach. The killing curse.

Was there going to be something more to their relationship?

No. She wouldn’t allow that.

She had been letting herself get closer to him because it’s what the mission required—but the pendant mistook that closeness for something else. For a blossoming relationship. For a future lover.

Surely that was all it was. An error in the spellwork.

Levan cleared his throat and turned away.

“We should go,” he muttered, rearranging his cloak before striding off in the direction of the Jaded Saint.