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After the shuffling of footsteps, the door opened inward, and Levan appeared beyond the frame. Without waiting for a single word, Saff pushed past him into the room. Levan held his wand in one hand, peering curiously down at the blue-silver thread buried in its tip, then looked back up at Saff.

Understanding knotted his brows into a frown. He’d been there when Nissa had given her the tracing charm, when she’d warned Saff that it only worked half the time. Driven by childish instinct, he threw his wand to the ground with a clatter, as though holding it was the only thing implicating him.

“But I didn’t …” he said, as though that mattered at all.

“I know.”

The frown deepened. “But the only way you could know is if …”

He searched her face, eyes darting and flickering, so much more alive than on that first night. A brow raised in unspoken question.

Saff nodded once. “Yes.”

It was a risk, of course, to tell him the truth.

It would invite unflattering questions, would tarnish his opinion of her, would cast doubt over the brand’s efficacy.

And yet she was exhausted from a night of chaos and killing, lies and deceits, and some part of her wanted Levan to know what she was capable of.

That she would defend herself, if she so had to.

A curious question came to her, then.

Did the prophecy still exist, in this version of the world she had created? Was she still fated to kill Levan? Or had she unmade that fate too?

She sensed, somehow, that they were approaching some pivotal moment, all the tangled twine of the present knotting itself into a terrible future. But had the form of that future shifted?

“What happened?” His tone was low, urgent. “Did Vogolan hurt you?”

“Snapped my arm.” Or tried to. “Killed my friend’s grandfather in a gruesome and unnecessary way.”

Levan clenched his jaw, and Saffron recalled their conversation after the conclave.

To me, Vogolan seems evil just for evil’s sake.

Yes.

He killed someone very important to me.

She doubted Levan would hold Vogolan’s murder against her.

His brow knitted together. “What about my father? Did he hur—”

“He didn’t hurt me, no.”

Because I unmade the world instead.

“But what—”

“There’s no time,” Saff insisted. Slow, calculated footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. Dread smoldered in her lungs. “He’s coming. Saints, I can’t leave. I’m sorry, Levan. I’m sorry this happened.”

Levan finally registered the peril of the situation. He spurred to life, gesturing toward the wardrobe next to his plant-smothered writing desk. “The armoire.”

She clambered into the too-small space, enveloped by Levan’s clothes. They smelled of him, of lemon and mint and clove tea and leather belts and warm skin. Folding herself into a cross-legged position, Saff patted her lap and Rasso leapt into it. The tight space was cramped and breathless.

Then came the knock at the door.

With a final fraught look, Levan pressed the armoire shut, leaving a tiny sliver of the scene visible where the wooden panels didn’t quite meet.

Levan opened his bedroom door, and Lyrian stood on the other side.

The kingpin’s son stood almost a foot taller than his father, and yet there was something in Lyrian’s quiet, coiled fury that made fear leap in Saff’s chest.

Levan’s wand had rolled under his bed, out of reach.

He was unarmed.

“So it was you,” the kingpin said quietly, almost regretfully, to his son. “You killed Vogolan.”

Levan balled his wandless hand into a fist at his hip. “He hurt too many people. Gratuitously, just for the thrill of it. Alucia. Saffron. And you know perfectly well what he did to me—or at least I think you do. Enough was enough.”

Alucia?

The life partner Harrow had alluded to?

And what was he doing ? Was he taking the blame willingly? Protecting her?

Why?

“How did the brand not kill you for the very act?” Lyrian muttered, staring at his son’s chest.

“Precisely,” Levan said with an air of triumph so convincing Saff almost believed him herself. “The fact I’m alive means Vogolan was a liability, and I acted in the Bloodmoons’ best interests. If you don’t believe in me, believe in your own magic.”

A stunned expression bled across Lyrian’s face, as though several more epiphanies were occurring at once. It was the way Saffron likely looked when the timeweaving pearls had finally strung themselves together, and it made her deeply, deeply afraid.

“All along,” the kingpin whispered, the words stitched with raw emotion. “It was you all along.”

“Excuse me?” Levan said, confused—but also, Saffron thought, alarmed.

“How could I have been so blind?”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

Lyrian shook his head ferociously. “You can overpower it.”

The brand?

Levan shared her bemusement. “I averted major disaster tonight. I stashed the lox. I tried to protect you from the Silvercloaks.”

“I’ve been a fool, Levan,” Lyrian moaned. “You’re my son. My flesh and blood. How can I kill you? You’re …”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Levan said curtly, and Saff had no idea how he kept so cool, so detached, in the face of a death threat from his own father. “Go and get some rest. We can talk about this—”

“ Sen debilitan, ” Lyrian said suddenly, stabbing his wand at Levan.

And without a wand, Levan couldn’t block it.

He froze, so suddenly and absolutely that it felt like a black hole.

One of Sebran’s favored spells on the streetwatch, paralyzing not just the body but the mind as well.

Levan was still aware, in some kind of animal sense, but his thoughts were thoroughly immobilized, and now this devastating mage, so inexplicably powerful, so ruthlessly ordered, so perpetually in control, was at once power less.

Rasso growled, and Saffron clamped her hand around his mouth.

“No. Not now. Please,” she whispered, and he heeded the urgency in her tone.

Lyrian reached out his spare hand and cupped his son’s jaw. The kingpin’s stature was suddenly so small and sad . A father studying his child, wondering how he had so badly lost his way. Thinking of all his failures as a parent.

“I’m sorry, son,” Lyrian said, his voice hoarse. “But you leave me no other choice. Sen ascevolo, carcanduan. ”

Carcanduan. Cell two.

Levan’s body levitated a few inches off the floor, then drifted out of the room.

The kingpin followed.

And Saffron was left pressing her face into Rasso’s warm fur, feeling the beat of the animal’s heart against her cheek, reeling over the terrible new fate she had carved for the kingpin’s son.