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C ROUCHING IN THE ARMOIRE FOR WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN hours, Saffron could not process the night’s events.

She was a Timeweaver. She was more powerful than she’d ever realized, a force of nature so potent that many feared it enough to invoke genocide.

She was powerful, in the same way Levan was powerful .

She was so powerful it was frightening.

The thought was a bolt of pure elation. Without Lorissa’s wand and hourglass, it would be almost impossible to weave again, but she’d go to every wandmaker in the city if it meant finding one with a weaverwick at its core.

She’d trawl shady antiques shops and dusty estate sales until she got her hands on a miniature golden hourglass filled with ascenite.

It was a purpose, a reroute, a new path forward, and she would take it gladly.

The victorious surge in her chest was underpinned by a writhing dread, but she could not think about Levan now. No matter what was happening to him at the hands of his father, she had to move. She could not save the world, nor the kingpin’s son, while hiding in a closet.

As she pushed the doors of the armoire open, light flooded in, cast ing a glow over the robes she’d been folded between.

Something shimmery amongst the raiment caught her eye.

Amidst the scarlet and navy hung two long golden cloaks, each embroidered with pale silk.

Elaborate runes flowed vertically down the lapels, and a pearlwillow—the symbol for knowledge, in the Lost Dragonborn world—was stitched onto the breast pockets.

Baudry Abard’s favored garb. The needlework was slightly clumsy, an endearing wonkiness to the tree branches, an uneven spacing to the runes.

The fabric pierced in places, where wrong stitches had been unpicked.

Her heart stilled.

Matching costumes. For the Erling Tandall signing.

She hadn’t wanted to wear Bloodmoon red, so Levan had made costumes.

Now he was in a cell, at his father’s mercy—because of her.

And the truth was that she had come to care about the kingpin’s son.

Not just in a primal, I-caught-him-fucking-the-King’s-Prophet-and-now-keep-picturing-him-in-a-state-of-undress sort of way, but as a person, which was infinitely more troubling.

Because the truly unfathomable thing was that Levan was …

sweet. At least parts of him were. He had re-enchanted her necklace and shown Neatras’s daughter mercy and spent hours making Saffron a homemade costume.

He learned extinct languages and pored over the same books that had brought her back to life, all those years ago.

Yet hadn’t she seen him cause unforgivable pain? Hadn’t she dodged his killing curses herself? Hadn’t he whispered cruelly in her ear about all the ways he would emotionally destroy her if she betrayed him?

She couldn’t reconcile all of it, despite knowing better than anyone that people contained multitudes, that nobody was either all good or all bad, that even those most confident in their convictions were riddled with inconsistencies and paradoxes, that even those with the strongest hold on their magic still did not have full mastery of their minds.

Saff herself was afraid of public speaking, which didn’t marry at all with her nihilistic worldview.

Her parents had been murdered in front of her.

Why would she fear standing on a dais and simply talking?

And yet her body reacted independently of her mind, stomach cramps and swooping vision, and no amount of logic could ease that fear.

People were complicated. Levan was complicated. He’d never had the chance to become anything other than what he was. She thought of him being branded as a child, and of their shared wounds, and of his lips on hers and how alive she had felt at his touch.

Which is perhaps why, without thinking of the threats and risks, without assessing every possible outcome, without thinking much at all, she decided to act, driven by pure instinct, by pure … something.

As she made her way to the cells, Rasso trotting at her heels, fortune somehow favored her.

A subtle change of the tides, as though luck were suddenly responding to the newly awakened power in her veins.

She did not pass a single soul in the hallways, nor was there anyone guarding the cells themselves.

Perhaps the kingpin did not want anyone to know that his son was held captive.

The eight cells were notched along a short, narrow corridor, four on each side. Three had deadbolts drawn across their doors. Cell one contained Nalezen Zares, and presumably cell two housed Levan. She wasn’t sure who was in cell six, but she didn’t particularly care.

She pressed her ear against the door of cell two, and she did not hear voices—which meant if Levan was in there, he was in there alone. Rasso nudged the door with his wet nose, leaving an imprint on the faded wood. She smiled reassuringly at him and tapped the deadbolt with her wand.

“Good gallowsweed.”

She’d watched Levan lock up Nalezen Zares this way, and she hoped the password hadn’t changed in the days since. She held her breath for a split second, but the deadbolt sighed loose. When the door pushed open, it took her a moment to process what she saw on the other side.

The light was dim, just a single flickering lantern bolted to the far wall. Levan sat on an armless chair next to a thick wooden table, upon which he rested his hand.

Saffron took a few more steps into the room, narrowing her eyes as they adjusted to the light.

No, his hand was not resting on the table.

It was impaled with a thick shard of … glass? Metal?

As his eyes found hers, they looked as dull and dead as the night she’d met him in the alley.

“What’s that?” she asked gesturing to the shard, throat thick with dread.

“Deminite,” he replied, hard, emotionless. “Cursed.”

His hand was palm-down on the table, and the shard jutted right through the center of it. It was a big enough chunk of deminite that it must’ve severed ligaments and crunched through bone. Saff suppressed a shudder.

“Cursed?” she asked, aghast. “Isn’t the whole point of deminite that it nullifies magic?”

“Hell knows.” Levan shrugged one shoulder, leaving the impaled arm still. “But I heard him cast the magic. Ver sevocan, nis sanadiman .”

The same spell pattern as the brand. A kind of dark conditional magic that inspired a primal fear in her.

“What does that mean?”

He fixed his empty stare on a point just beyond her ear. “If I pull it out, all the blood in my body will come with it.”

“Saints.”

“He didn’t have the stomach for killing me, in the end. But I’m not sure this is anything less than a death sentence. The magic … he didn’t caveat it. No conditions or exceptions. Now nobody can pull it out without killing me. Not even him.”

So that was why Lyrian hadn’t felt the need to station a guard outside the cell.

There was no freeing Levan.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, horror gathering inside her like storm clouds. This was her fault. If she hadn’t yanked time unnaturally backward, if she hadn’t chosen a different fork in the path, if she hadn’t given Lyrian a defective tracing charm …

“Don’t be. Vogolan deserved to die.” Levan stayed rigid, wooden, so far from the softened man she’d kissed in the warded tunnel as they talked about meeting their childhood hero.

“But you don’t.”

“Don’t I?”

A fair question. One she might have answered quite differently mere weeks ago.

“Of course not.” She breathed shallowly through the clenched fists of her lungs.

He shifted his weight on the too small chair, but there was no indication he was in any pain. And it must have hurt like all hells.

“Was the rest of it your doing?” he asked plainly. “Did you tell the Silvercloaks about the shipment? Because it’s not clear how you’re alive right now.”

Saffron didn’t know what to do with her body, so she closed the cell door behind her and leaned against it, sliding down to the floor.

Rasso, instead of curling up beside her, padded over to Levan and rested his furry head in his master’s lap.

A brief emotion shadowed Levan’s face before vanishing again, like a frozen lake splintered with an ice pick then immediately freezing solid once more.

“It wasn’t me,” Saff replied, the lie feeling easier than it should. A muscle well trained. “Not intentionally. I think my contact cast a listening spell on my cloak.”

Levan stroked the bony dome of Rasso’s head. “You refused to wear your cloak when meeting your contact.”

“My tunic, then. My trousers, my boots, my necklace, every lock of my hair.”

“And you wouldn’t have noticed that happening?”

She couldn’t parse his tone. Accusatory? Disbelieving? Or trying very hard to trust her?

“I’ve been slightly on edge the last few weeks. It’s rather hard to concentrate when you’re in constant mortal peril.”

The folds of Levan’s scarlet cloak rose and fell with his overly steady breath. “I see. And is your contact the woman I tried to kill, then brought back from the brink?”

“Is she your contact?” Saff shot back.

He frowned. “What?”

“Back in the tunnel, you said you reached out to your rat in the Silvercloaks.”

The question sat between them, solid as a body, souring the air.

“I don’t think it’s wise to share my source,” Levan said levelly. “Given your history.”

“You’re my mentor, aren’t you?”

A snort of derision. “We both know that’s mare-shit.”

“So what am I, then?” Saffron asked fiercely, not sure why her heart was pounding out of her chest.

He shook his head, looking up at the ceiling. “Damned if I know.”

By the tormented expression on his face, she suspected he was as conflicted as she was.

She remembered Harrow’s words: Levan will never take another life partner. Not after what happened to—

Alucia, she knew now. But she sensed this was not the time to broach the subject.

“Are they feeding you?” Saff asked instead, trying to temper the strange tension. “Do you need some water? A piss bucket?”

“Don’t do that,” he snapped, so ferociously that Rasso’s ears pinned back in fright.

“What?”

“ Care. ” Levan uttered the word like a curse.

Rasso looked between them, then sauntered back over to Saffron, as though Levan had betrayed him.

“Sorry, how heinous of me,” Saff retorted. “Of the two of us, I’m definitely the cruel one. I may start wearing horns and communicating in deviltongue.”

“Oh, get off your high horse, Silver. You’ve only been a Bloodmoon for a few weeks and you’ve already killed and tortured.

You’re not better than me. You’re exactly the fucking same.

Most people think they’d never do these things, but in the right conditions, under the right pressure, everyone would. ”

“I had to.” Heat rose in her chest, her throat.

“To save my uncles. Why do you do it, Levan?” Her voice was low, loaded, aimed squarely beneath his defenses.

“Why do you take lives over and over again? Why do you torture with such cold brutality that something must be broken inside you? Because nobody has a wand to your temple. Nobody is threatening your loved ones.”

A long, shredding beat. “Aren’t they?”

“Tell me, then,” Saff urged. “Tell me what this is all about. Tell me why you are the way you are.”

“I don’t owe you that.” His unimpaled hand clenched into a fist. “I don’t owe you a damn thing.”

“Fine,” she muttered, climbing to her feet and turning to the door handle. “Rot here, for all I care.”

She turned the handle, and he groaned self-loathingly behind her.

“Urgh. Silver, wait.”

She didn’t turn to face him. “What?”

“Harrow is coming to my chambers tonight,” he said flatly. “Can you let him know I’m otherwise engaged?”

Saffron nodded once, opening the door.

“ Saffron, ” he said, hoarse, and hearing him say her real name for the first time unspooled something deep inside her. “I’m sorry. I hate people seeing me helpless.”

She’d felt the same way after being branded. They were so hideously similar.

“You’re not helpless,” she replied, sullen but softening. “I offered you help. That is in direct opposition to the word helpless —”

“You know what I mean. Stop being a pedant.”

She sighed, resting her forehead against the door. The wood was cold and smooth.

“Could you … bring me some salve?” he muttered. “I have another wound that’s starting to fester.”

This made her finally turn back to face him. “Another wound?”

He swallowed. “It wasn’t my father, if that’s what you’re thinking.” From the closed look on his face, she didn’t suppose he’d say any more.

“Which salve?”

“There’s a pot in my desk. Third drawer down. Password is, erm … Baudry’s bitch .”

Laughter flared in her ribs, but she kept it caged. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

He frowned, genuinely confused. “No?”

“There’s a word most people use when asking for help. Just to give you a hint, it’s considered good manners in all cultures except Nyr?thi, in which outright hostility is generally preferred. But I’m not from Nyr?th, and neither are you.”

Levan cursed under his breath.

“Sorry, I didn’t quite hear you,” Saff goaded.

“Please.”

“Great,” she said, plastering a false smile over her face. “Anything else?”

“No. Thank you .”

Saffron gave him a sarcastic mock salute and left the cell, Rasso trotting at her heel.

The smile died as soon as she slid the deadbolt back into place.

That deminite shard was going to kill him. It was just a matter of when.