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I T TOOK SEVERAL HOURS OF PAINSTAKING WORK TO PUT AURIA back together.

Tiernan and Saffron sat by her bedside in the hospital wing as a swarm of Healers and Enchanters tried—and failed—to reassemble her shattered parts.

There was cursing and blaspheming, low mutters and furrowed brows, and a mounting sense of worry that the brightest mage to walk these halls in a decade would not leave this room in one piece.

Beyond the arched windows, the sun dipped over the horizon of Atherin, washing the purple domes and gold obelisks in a pink-peach light. Dust rose between the buildings, and there was the distant clang of bells, the roar of drunken crowds, the rapid clop of hooves.

A chariot race.

The streets would be shifting and reversing in order to trick riders into wild detours, and a crew of Wielders would be creating vicious hailstorms and torrential gales in a bid to unseat them from their steeds.

The competitors rode wandless, to avoid the temptation to maim their rivals, though they were permitted to enchant their own horses prior to the race.

Last year’s Vallish Grandstand had been won by a beast the approximate size of an Augur temple, with eyes that could see through walls.

Several important government buildings had been trampled by its carriage-size hooves, but it was so entertaining that nobody seemed to mind.

Saff used to bet on such races every week, until the Academy consumed her life.

At first, she had used gambling as a kind of exposure therapy for her fear of the unknown, hitting the gamehouses night after night, rolling the dice and learning to live with the outcome, however unfavorable.

She used it to blow off steam, to allow herself a brief respite from careful planning and controlled execution.

She wasn’t expecting to be quite so good at it.

Not necessarily at the simple bets, like the roulette wheel or the chariot races, but in the more intricate, skill-based games.

Her tightly guarded emotions aided her nicely in the polderdash hall; her constant vigilance allowed her to read her competitors’ every muscle twitch—she was used to studying subjects closely, so that she might recreate them in an illusion—and her natural inclination toward nihilism led to big risks with big rewards.

Her bank vault was suitably lined with the fruits of her frivolous labor.

She wrapped her hand around the ascen she’d won from Gaian only a few short hours ago. Everything was about to change. Everything had already changed.

“I’m annoyed the others aren’t here,” Tiernan admitted, as a broad-hipped Healer gently removed his hand from Auria’s stone wrist. “Thanks, Saff. For this, and for switching envelopes with me.”

Nissa, whose fury over the final assessment had caused literal smoke to billow from her nostrils, had taken herself away to the pleasurebaths to replenish her well.

Sebran and Gaian were drowning their sorrows in the Glory’s Edge—a dimly lit, musk-scented tavern down the street from the Academy—while trying not to think about the fact that the job postings would be pinned to Captain Aspar’s bulletin board in mere hours.

“Of course,” Saff said vaguely, but in truth her ears were still ringing from the post-assessment silence.

The silence, and what had come before it.

What was that, when she touched the relic wand?

It had once belonged to an Augur—the temple was named for Augur Amuilly, if Auria’s knowledge was correct (which it usually was).

Augur Amuilly had been the first of the Five Augurs, casting the original world-shaping prophecy a thousand years ago.

Saffron was fairly certain his own wand was in a tightly guarded display in the Museum of Verdivenne, back in Amuilly’s homeland of Bellandry.

What had Auria said? Not the wands belonging to the Augurs themselves, but from other Foreseers in that time period. Followers believe these relics still contain old power, and that in the right hands, they could be used to cast new prophecies.

The wand Saffron touched could’ve been one such relic, hailing from the era in which the art of foreseeing was at its height. But why hadn’t the Academy just used a replica? Surely they hadn’t brought in a genuine relic wand for what was essentially a training exercise?

Assuming the relic was real …

Did that mean it had cast a prophecy?

Was Saffron fated to kiss—and then kill—a Bloodmoon?

And had the rest of the room also borne witness? Or was the vision for Saffron’s eyes only?

She wished she could ask Tiernan whether he’d seen anything, but he’d spent most of the assessment as a grim statue outside the Augur temple.

Her first instinct was to tell him everything, yet she felt somewhat ashamed of the whole thing.

When she thought of herself in a Bloodmoon cloak, horror tugged viscerally at her guts.

Horror, but also … intrigue. She was strangely compelled by it, picking at the image like a fresh scab, examining every tiny detail.

The sleekness of the cloak, the rough edges of those moans.

It was like walking in on yourself fucking someone you shouldn’t.

“I’m worried about Auria, you know,” Tiernan murmured, shaking Saff from her thoughts.

“And not just because she’s currently a pile of rubble.

She’s going for a fourth mage classification, on top of everything else.

Because it’s not enough to be an Enchanter, a Brewer, and a Healer.

She wants Wielder too—probably because she can’t handle Nissa having something she doesn’t.

She’s working herself to the bone all hours of the day, endless library studies, endless drills from Aspar in the dark of night. She’s a shadow of her former self.”

A fourth classification? Saints, that was almost unheard of.

Three was exceptional enough—only a few mages in a generation achieved such a thing.

Even Aspar, the highest ranking Silvercloak in the Academy, only had two.

Magical abilities mostly followed ancestral lines, and if you didn’t have a natural talent for a class, it was incredibly toilsome to force the matter.

“Is that why you’re following her around like a lost puppy?” Saff smirked. “To provide restorative pleasure upon request?”

She’d meant it as a joke, but Tiernan’s face fell. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe she is just using me.”

Saffron remembered one night a few weeks ago, when Tiernan had returned to the common room after a meeting with his father, sporting an ugly welt across his cheekbone.

Healing practice, Kesven liked to call it.

Storm clouds had darkened behind Auria’s furious gaze, but instead of trying to bring assault charges—as she had so frequently threatened to do—she went straight to Tiernan, healed the wound herself, and then clasped his jaw in her trembling palms.

My father is right, Tiernan had said miserably. I do need to toughen up.

Your softness is the best thing about you, Auria had whispered, as though nobody else were in the room. It’s what makes you a great detective, and a great person. The world would not be so broken if everyone were like you.

And she was right. Saff often envied Tiernan for the way he’d never hardened against suffering. Surely it was a good thing to still be so horrified by violence that you lost your dinner. Surely it was a good thing to always believe the best in people.

Saff smiled warmly at him. “Auria is not using you. I promise. And when she inevitably becomes Grand Arbiter one day, your father had better flee the country.” A taut beat. “Have you spoken to him yet? After the assessment?”

Tiernan paled and shook his head.

“You should be in a place like this, you know.” Saffron gestured around the hospital wing. “Healing, not catching criminals.”

Tiernan nodded. “I know. Maybe once my father’s dead. Hopefully he’s assassinated soon.”

Saffron barked with laughter. “I’m sure that could be arranged. Nissa would do it just for the sport.”

For a few moments, they watched the Healers work in amicable silence.

The hospital wing flickered with golden lanterns, and enchanted orchestral music played in the air.

Intricate murals covered each wall—glorious depictions of temples and fruit bowls and Saints and orgies.

Four-poster beds were strewn with layers of soft blankets and fur pelts, and there were bowls of sweet treats everywhere.

Candied citrus peels and honey-roasted chestnuts, huge purple grapes and dark chocolate truffles.

Velvines purred on windowsills, licking at their own underbellies.

In Vallin, pleasure was not just pleasure—pleasure was a force of nature, as vital as water, as integral as air. Pleasure healed, nourished, enlivened. Pleasure was downright constitutional.

Pleasure was magic, and magic was pleasure.

But pain was also magic, and magic was also pain, and therein lay the problem.

The Order of the Silvercloaks had been founded two centuries ago in an attempt to bridle the chaos and debauchery wracking the country.

Ever since the founding of Vallin, there had always been a streetwatch, always a trial-by-jury system and always a crude dungeon into which criminals were tossed, but House Veliron were the first rulers to truly explore what magic could do in the prevention and solving of major crime.

Because in a world built on pain and pleasure, there were always going to be those who pushed the very outer limits of it—who exploited the fact that magic could not exist without those twin pillars.

Street gangs who peddled narcotics to mages desperate for pleasure, Compellers who manipulated other mages into intimacy and submission, torturers who tried to siphon the potency of their victims’ pain for themselves.

Enter the Silvercloaks.