Page 57

N ISSA COULD NOT BE DEAD.

The flame-wielding part-dragon, so full of fire and life and spite and love, simply could not be dead.

Saffron fell to her knees at Nissa’s side, a sob tearing from her throat. There was the patter of lupine footsteps, the clack of claws on floorboards, and then Rasso was by her side, nuzzling his face into her thigh.

She had kissed Levan, and then he had done this.

He had murdered one of her closest friends.

One of her greatest loves.

Tears flowed thick and hot down Saff’s cheeks. This was all her fault.

She had called this raid.

If she hadn’t done that—

—if she hadn’t involved Nissa—

—if she hadn’t accepted this mission in the first place—

—if she hadn’t lied her way into the Silvercloaks—

—if she hadn’t turned that doorknob—

—her thoughts tracked back and back and back through time, obsessing over every single decision that had led her here, to this moment, kneeling by Nissa’s lifeless corpse.

There were so many ways this might not have happened, and only one way it did.

Because of Saffron.

The thunder was as distant to her as the rolling forest of Bellandry, as the scorched desert of Eqora, as the icy tundra of Nyr?th. Every shout and wail was muffled, as though sounding from another realm.

Nissa was gone.

Grief slammed into Saffron’s chest like a fist, a solid, physical pain.

The sensation caused the magic in her well to swirl and darken, to become more glittering, more potent.

This had happened in the aftermath of her parents’ deaths—the loss was so acute that she felt it all over her body, and to feel it all over her body was to be in agony .

Had she been able to utter a single word in that time, her magic would have been raw and devastating, impossible for a young child to control.

Perhaps some part of her knew that. Perhaps some part of her stayed silent in self-preservation.

Perhaps such grief was the reason for Levan’s terrifying strength.

Pain is not something I’ve ever found myself to be lacking.

Lifting a trembling hand, Saffron swept Nissa’s sleek hair from her face.

Though her eyes were closed, her cheeks still held with the warmth of life.

The ruby lips, the gold stud on the bow, the column of runes up her neck, all so Nissa, so spirited and strong, she couldn’t be gone.

The shell of her body could not be empty.

But then—

—something.

A movement. A flutter. A hitching breath.

In Saffron’s chest, hope kicked off the ground. Took flight.

She wasn’t dead.

How wasn’t she dead?

Levan’s magic was the most powerful Saffron had ever seen. A killing curse from him should’ve crumpled Nissa’s lungs in an instant.

Saffron searched the body for answers. Nissa’s silver sleeve was slick with blood, her blisblade lying on the wooden floorboards beside her, its edge shining scarlet. Her well had obviously been running dry. Perhaps the split second in which she’d tried to replenish had cost her everything.

She loosed another breath. Ragged, shallow, but a breath nonetheless.

How was she still alive?

Unless …

Pulse thudding, Saffron tore open the front of Nissa’s cloak, exposing her undershirt.

The garment was made from a gleaming fabric Saff had only seen once before, on an Eqoran soldier who’d stopped at her mother’s doorstep with a grievous injury.

It was called seriqua, Saff remembered, and it was strong enough to take some of the lethal force out of a killing curse.

Saff yanked the vest down below Nissa’s razor-sharp collarbone.

There, just above her heart, was the undeniable starburst of the ammorten spell. Faded like an old wound, but there nonetheless.

Nissa teetered on the knife-edge of life and death.

Saffron rolled up her cloak sleeves, held the tip of her knobbly beech wand to Nissa’s curse mark.

“Ans mederan, ans mederan, ans mederan.”

Heal. Heal. Heal.

But nothing happened. Saffron had never held any affinity for the work her mother had found so natural, and yet some part of her had thought—hoped, wished, beyond all reason—that sheer desperation would bend the magic to her will.

That the grief and pain swirling in her well had lent her whole new power.

“Ans mederan, ans mederan, ans mederan.”

Still nothing.

She tried again and again and again to rouse Nissa, dogged, almost frenzied, feeling the strength leech from her with every attempt. Somewhere in the distance was the bellow of thunder and water and fire, but none of it louder than the fact Nissa was dying.

Her chest rose and fell, but unevenly, unconvincingly.

On the brink, the precipice.

A wind gusted through the corridor, its direction and force so unnatural that it had to have been wielded, knocking Saffron backward so hard that her head slammed against the floor. Her vision starred. The gale carried with it a peculiar scent—like pepper and ash and rotten rose petals.

Sharp, hacking coughs erupted over the deck. Coughs, thuds, retching noises.

Large figures appeared at the end of the corridor. Levan stood upright, levitating the prone bodies of Lyrian and Castian along the hallway. Alive, but retching so violently they couldn’t stand. Levan was coughing, staggering, gripping the walls and doorframes for support.

The smell stung the back of Saff’s throat, singed the hairs in her nose, but it didn’t force the air from her lungs the same way.

Which meant it had to be magical.

She forced a string of violent coughs to keep cover.

“We h-have to go,” Levan gasped between hacking his guts up. “They h-have some k-kind of airborne weap—” The final word was severed with another vicious retch.

“Nissa’s still breathing,” Saff said in a rush. “Special undergarment. Please bring her back from the brink, Levan. Please.”

He shook his head violently. “N-no time.”

Castian fainted, her whole body convulsing around her middle, and Lyrian wasn’t far behind.

“ Please. ” Tears spilled freely down Saff’s face. She faked another cough, pretending to be dizzy. “I don’t want to beg you, but I will.”

“Get. Us. Out, ” Lyrian hissed, thumping a palm on the floorboards, his face purple from lack of oxygen, before promptly falling unconscious.

Levan glanced over his shoulder, pitching dangerously as he did.

Auria and Aspar boarded the deck of the boat, wearing strange black masks over their noses and mouths. An endless whorl of fine purple mist curled and cascaded from Auria’s wand.

An airborne weapon.

At the thought, a sharp chill scraped down Saffron’s neck.

“Levan, please.” Saff grabbed fistfuls of Nissa’s cloak in her hands. “I love her. I love her so much.”

Levan’s gaze went first to the pendant around her neck, which shone an unmistakable heart red, then burned straight through to Saffron’s very core, right into the wounded child at the heart of her.

He seemed to see all the broken, shattered parts, how she’d glued them back together into something loosely resembling a person.

He seemed to understand what irrevocable harm another breakage would do.

After a splintered moment of indecision, he dropped to his knees.

At first Saff thought he’d passed out, that it was over, that Auria and Aspar would take them all in despite the lack of lox, that Nissa would succumb to the lure of death, but … no. Levan was still very much alert.

Dizzily, he rested his wand on Nissa’s curse mark and said, “ Ans mederan .”

Levan’s healing words sent a peal of grief through her chest. They always reminded her of her mother—and of her parents’ final moments.

That sacred incantation coming from someone like him felt like a sick joke from the Saints.

He had an unexpected mastery of enchantments, like her father, and yet he could heal as easily as he could breathe, like her mother.

He read Lost Dragonborn like Mal, and pored over ancient languages like Merin, and kept his emotions tightly guarded like Nissa.

It was like he’d been specifically designed by some cruel deity to torment her.

From a mage as powerful as Levan, one healing spell was all it took.

Nissa’s back arched as though she’d been struck by Aspar’s lightning, and she gasped an unsaintly amount of air into her lungs. Her bronze eyes peeled open, shining and furious, as though embers burned behind them.

For a second, Saffron hated Levan for how easily he’d done something so miraculous, for how much power he had at his fingertips, for the fact he did not choose to use that power for good . He used it to sever hands and torture necromancers.

“Killor?” Nissa was still dazed, but her voice was remarkably clear.

“H-hold on,” Levan said weakly to Saffron, after another hideous coughing fit had shaken through his lungs. One of his palms clasped the wrists of his father and Castian, and he extended the hand that still held his wand.

Behind him, Auria and Aspar stormed across the outer deck.

They had mere moments to portari out of here.

“Killor,” Nissa repeated, coughs wracking her own weakened lungs. She grabbed Saffron’s wrist hard enough to bruise. “The tracing charm. It’s novissan vestigas. Works around half the time.”

Auria and Aspar entered the mouth of the corridor, each with a velvine perched upon their shoulders. The felines’ eyes flared purple as they purred fresh pleasure into their mages. Aspar’s palm bled; she clutched a blisblade in one hand and her wand in the other.

Auria’s eyes found Saff’s, and she recoiled with shock at the sight of her old friend in a scarlet cloak.

Saffron pressed her lips to Nissa’s forehead. Raw emotion spilled from her like blood from a wound. The grief of her death, the relief of her resurrection, the unrelenting fear of what was about to happen to them all.

Levan’s hand closed around hers, warm and fierce and terrible. She let go of Nissa and grabbed Rasso by the scruff.

“Et portari, Cryptmouth Tunnel.”

The world folded itself around them, and everything went white.