Page 51

B ACK ON THE RIVERBOAT, LEVAN ASKED TO SPEAK TO SAFF in a small office at the stern of the ship.

Rasso followed at her heels. The fallowwolf hadn’t left her side since the praegelos charm, and kept nuzzling his face against her thigh. On the gondola, he’d curled up in her lap, and Levan had eyed them jealously when he thought Saff wasn’t looking.

The beast’s newfound affection filled Saffron with an unexpected warmth—there was something primal, comforting, about a soft body pressed against your own—but also a kind of latent unease.

This was Lorissa Celadon’s pet, and now he doted on her.

Any connection to the dead queenpin felt damning, somehow.

It was the same way she’d felt upon learning of Lyrian’s knack for illusions.

She did not appreciate the reminders that the Bloodmoon founders were people, just like her.

The riverboat office very clearly belonged to Levan.

There were books and plants and little dragon statuettes everywhere, as well as a large sepia map of Ascenfall hanging on the wall.

Gold drawing pins were pressed into a seemingly sporadic selection of locations: the southern tip of Mersina, a valley in Laudon, the craggy heart of Nomaden.

Shishai and Soral and Suva, even a speck-sized island in the Ashen Narrows.

Levan stood and faced the map, his back to Saffron, hands balled up at his sides.

Saffron’s own were clasped behind her back—she’d stanched the bleeding of her forearm with a torn strip of her cloak, but she didn’t want Levan to spot the dark tide marks of dried maroon on her sleeve.

He’d only offer to heal her, and she could not let him know that she was immune to such things.

“Thank you,” he said, soft and measured, and she didn’t have to ask for what.

The impish idiocy she’d inherited from her father suggested that she goad him, that she mock the way he’d needed a knight in shining cloak, but she suppressed the urge, learning from past mistakes.

She had the distinct sense that this conversation could be an important one in her relationship with Levan—in getting him to open up, in getting him to trust her.

Taking the almighty piss would not help matters.

“That charm you used,” he said quietly. “ Praegelos ? Where did you learn it?”

“My mother,” Saff said carefully.

“And when she cast it, she was able to continue roaming through space even when time itself was frozen?”

Ah. The detail Aspar had snagged upon.

Saffron had concluded that this curious quirk was a consequence of her magical immunity—when enchanted, even the stalwart forces of time and space did not impact her the way they ought to—yet this too must remain a secret from the Bloodmoons.

Saffron was weaving a complicated web for herself, and she had to make sure she never became trapped by it.

“Yes. My mother used praegelos to buy herself time with trauma patients.” The lie came easily, confidently. “To treat them before their condition worsened.”

His hand curled and uncurled at his hip. “Can you teach me?”

Saints. It wouldn’t work the same for Levan. It would only freeze time; he wouldn’t be able to move through it.

“What is there to teach?” Saff muttered evasively. “You say the words and time stops.”

“You know as well as I do there’s more to casting than that. Magic is directional, but time is everywhere. Where do you aim your wand?”

Saffron said nothing; almost always the safest choice .

“You don’t want to teach me,” Levan said mildly, still with his back to her. “You think I’ll use it against you.”

Instead of answering directly, Saff did what she did best: rerouted.

“My old captain had a theory,” she started, “that the Bloodmoons had developed a spell or device to siphon pain’s potency away from the victim.

So that you could inflict torture and reap the benefit for yourself, instead of giving the victim a potentially lifesaving power boost. But I’ve never seen you use such a thing, and Zares seemed like the perfect opportunity. ”

Levan shrugged, but it was careful, stiff. “Pain is not something I’ve ever found myself to be lacking.”

A strange thing to say. She’d never seen him especially injured, and earlier he’d healed those ghastly welts with little to no effort.

“Are you saying such a device or spell does exist, and you choose not to use it?”

He used her own trick against her, dodging the question.

“Why did you save me?” Levan’s words were precise, puncturing. “From Zares’s curse. We’ve already established that inaction does not trigger the brand. You could’ve let me die, and no ill would have befallen you. So why didn’t you?”

Saff found that she did not have a good answer, and so once again she did not offer one.

Levan finally swiveled on his heel, and Saff was surprised by the expression on his face. He almost looked angry. “Why did you save me, Silver?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and it was the truth.

Because it wasn’t just that the mission required her to take him alive. It was something innate, the same instincts that drove her to kill Vogolan before the thought had even fully formed. And it troubled her, that these instincts had now overridden her careful strategizing not once but twice.

Levan tapped out the familiar rhythm on his knuckles. “After what you said before, that I wasn’t human, I—”

“I didn’t say that,” she snapped. “I said the exact opposite, in fact. That I wanted to remind myself that you are human. A reminder means to reiterate something already known.”

Although after what she’d seen him do to Zares, she wasn’t quite so sure. His ability to compartmentalize cruelty was … monstrous. And yet didn’t she do the exact same thing, albeit for different reasons?

Levan sighed. “You’re rather pedantic.”

“And you’re rather belligerent.”

He shook his head, hair falling around his face in dark brown waves. “Why did you save me?” he asked again, and this time it was soft, almost pleading. She got the sense that he badly needed to understand this.

And yet Saffron herself did not understand. Not one bit.

Saff gazed over Levan’s shoulder at the map of the continent, lost in thought.

“You know in the climax of Lost Dragonborn, when Aymar saves the villainous wyvern who tried to kill him at the Battle of Tearfall? And Baudry asks Aymar why, and he can’t answer, but deep in his chest he feels this kind of golden strand of light.

An inherent goodness. It seems oversimplistic to say he did it because it was right, but it’s true.

He did it because it was right. Same with saving you.

With stopping to help the lox addict in Atherin.

With sneaking out to end Tenea’s suffering.

These things are just … ingrained in me.

From my parents, I think. They were good to their bones. ”

Levan looked as though he was turning this over in his mind, like tilling a garden before letting the idea plant its seed. “So how do you reconcile that with what you did to Neatras? To Kasan?”

Saff’s insides clenched. “I don’t. Life is rarely that simple.”

Levan perched on the edge of the desk, laying down his wand and instead picking up a dragon statuette. It was forest green with bronzed ridges. “Who was your favorite character in Lost Dragon —”

“Baudry Abard,” Saff said confidently. This conversation was safe ground. It was not severed hands and bodies hanging like moths preserved in amber.

“The wise old mentor.” Levan smiled, and Saffron was astonished to see he had dimples. It was almost comically incongruous with the man she knew. “Why do you think I’ve warmed so much to Miret over the years?”

“He does feel like a Baudry figure.” Saff paused before adding, “Did you know that Erling Tandall is at the Vallish Arts Festival next weekend?”

He looked up at her, surprised. “I thought Tandall didn’t do public events anymore. I heard he has the fading disease.”

“The sign outside Torquil’s Tomes professed rather proudly that he’d be there.”

Something passed over Levan’s stubbled face. “Do you want to … never mind.”

Saff’s chest twinged. “Do I want to what?”

“Go with me.” He rubbed the back of his neck with his palm, looking bashful, of all things. “To the festival. On the night I enchanted your necklace, your uncle mentioned that you liked … actually, never mind. Forget it. Please. If I could timeweave, I would undo these last few seconds.”

Was he … babbling ?

In the tightly wound spool that was his self-control, there emerged the very tip of a loose thread, begging to be pulled.

The realization exhilarated Saff in more ways than one.

On a Silvercloak level, the invitation felt like the first step toward uncovering his true motive. It felt like something grand and inevitable, a cart rattling along the predetermined tracks of the prophecy. A sense of fate rushing to meet her.

And on a human level … it was a fundamentally compelling thing, to relate to someone, to see your passions and your flaws reflected in them.

Not just Lost Dragonborn, but that traumatized quietude, that stubborn streak, that questionable moral code, that unfaltering determination in pursuit of a goal.

A tendency to bury feelings deep, deep down.

A kind of jaded, cynical worldview, born from both childhood tragedy and the kinds of lives they led.

She had never met someone whose emotional contours cleaved so closely to her own.

Her uncles—so wildly different from each other—had always told her that opposites attract.

So why did her similarities with Levan feel so intimate?

Enough, she scolded herself. Enough of the murky emotions. What’s the right strategic play here?

It was obvious. She should go with him to the festival, if only to lower his defenses enough to slip behind them.

Saffron made a show of considering the proposal: a notched frown, a finger tapping her bottom lip. “Two conditions.”

Levan looked up, surprised. “Which are?”