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How could enchantments be used to gather forensic evidence, so that the trial process was more robust, less reliant on hearsay?

How could truth elixirs be built into the country’s constitution, so that it was impossible to lie in a court of law?

How could the Order develop powerful tracing spells to follow a killing curse back to its origin?

The latter was still a work in progress, and the Grand Arbiter had repeatedly voted down any motions to bring truth elixir into the courtroom (purportedly under the guise of protecting state secrets). But the Order did what they could regardless.

The air in the hospital wing shifted as Detective Tenébo Jebat—a fierce-faced, middle-aged mage with an utter mastery of enchantments—swept into the room, silver cloak billowing behind him like smoke.

Hailing from Sinyo, a lush country of mountains and rainforests, he had deep brown skin and an arc of gold-and-ruby jewelry hanging from his septum.

“Step aside,” said Jebat, his accent kissed with the gentle lisp of Cape Fala, Sinyo’s capital.

The wall of Healers parted as he pushed toward the stone rubble of Auria. In the last few hours, they’d only reassembled part of an arm and the rippled folds of her cloak.

Jebat rubbed his temples. “The ineptitude is astounding, frankly.”

He raised his palm-wood wand, closing his eyes and swaying to the orchestral music. A velvine leapt from the sill to his shoulder, purple eyes flaring, caressing his throat with cool, potent breath. Pleasure washed over him, and his skin glowed brighter from within.

“Ané-akouventa.”

Though Jebat spoke perfect Vallish, magic was always strongest cast in one’s mother tongue.

The jagged debris leapt at the command, scurrying into a sensible order like soldiers into formation, and in moments Auria’s full form reassembled—all except her left ear.

Curse words rippled around the Healers.

“Find the ear,” said Jebat, tucking his wand inside his cloak with a satisfied grimace.

As he stalked back out of the hospital wing, several Enchanters followed, heads bowed.

“So what happened in the assessment?” Tiernan asked Saffron, leaning back in the cushioned armchair with a sigh. He couldn’t tear his eyes from Auria’s statuesque form. “After I ‘died.’”

Saffron scanned the room, but after Jebat’s whirlwind, there were only a couple of Healers left behind, tending to another patient in a faraway bed.

So she told Tiernan everything.

Everything, except for her magical immunity. That card had to be kept close to her chest.

But he listened, enthralled, as she described the battle, the praegelos spell, the relic wand she’d found not in its original compartment but tucked into a Bloodmoon’s waistband.

At this, Tiernan groaned. “You were right. To think of the why. I should’ve listened to you and Auria.”

Tiernan was the most self-chastising person Saffron had ever met. She understood why—with a father like Kesven, he was so excruciatingly aware of his every flaw—but it became quite boring after a while.

“Obviously. But there’s something else,” she muttered lowly, before she could talk herself out of it. “When I touched that wand, I saw something. A prophecy, I think? And I don’t know if it was real or not.”

A small part of her twitched nervously. Should she be sharing all of this with Tiernan?

He was a good person, and a good friend.

She trusted him implicitly. And yet there was always the threat that he might share sensitive information about his cohort to win favor with his father.

There was no precedent for this—as far as Saff was aware, he hadn’t shared so much as Auria’s tea preferences.

But the staunch cynic tucked in the back of Saffron’s mind always wondered what it would take for Tiernan to betray her trust.

Surely he wouldn’t. Not after she’d switched envelopes with him in the assessment.

Tiernan blinked, pushing his owlish glasses up the bridge of his nose. “What kind of prophecy?”

“It was about me, and it was bad.” She pressed her lips together. “Do you think it could’ve been a genuine vision? I’m no Foreseer.”

Tiernan’s brow furrowed. “Auria’s the one with the comprehensive knowledge of such things.

If anyone’s going to know about a relic in Augur Amuilly’s temple, it’s her.

But I do know that genuine prophecies are rare, these days.

Other than the King’s Prophet, there aren’t many legitimate Foreseers left in Vallin.

Although you know as well as I do that frauds abound. ”

The streets of Atherin were rife with wheeled carts decked in flowers, where shawled old mages charged four ascens for a fate. But most of them were known nonsense, and it was mostly tourists and Ludders who fell into their trap.

“Say it was a real vision.” Saff’s thoughts pirouetted as she tried to make sense of them.

“Once a prophecy is cast … is it guaranteed to come to pass? Or is it more of a warning? Is it saying, If you continue down this path, this will happen? Or will it happen no matter what you do to try and stop it? No matter how hard you try to shift onto a different path?”

Tiernan gave a bitter laugh. “If we knew that, it would have prevented a lot of wars.”

Stomach sinking, Saffron knew he was right.

The question over whether prophecies were airtight had plagued the Augurests for a thousand years.

Tiernan’s homeland of Bellandry had endured plentiful civil wars over the very subject, while the two aged prophets who sat the thrones of Esvaine and Tarsa perpetually clashed over their differing opinions on what the future may hold.

Tiernan passed Saff the bowl of dark chocolate truffles, and she palmed three into her mouth at once.

As they melted over her tongue, a shiver of pleasure rolled through her, the feeling of fallow ground being watered after a long drought.

Still, she’d need a lot more to replenish the well in full.

Praegelos had been so taxing to sustain that exhaustion burrowed all the way to her marrow.

Perhaps Saffron would seek Nissa out later. Her forked tongue could revive magic like nothing else. Besides, she craved Nissa’s solidity, the way she never yielded beneath the weight of Saff’s pain.

Because while Saffron loved Tiernan and Auria, she did so in a guarded sort of way.

She never let them all the way in, never let them see how broken she was—not out of self-preservation, although there was an element of that, but to protect them .

She worried that her dark outlook, her lack of faith in humanity, would somehow damage them.

She’d never forgive herself for tarnishing Auria’s shine, for eroding her faith in karma.

During Auria’s impassioned tirades about all the good she wanted to do for the city when she became Grand Arbiter, she genuinely seemed like she’d never entertained the notion of failure.

And Tiernan … Tiernan could barely handle his own negative thoughts, let alone anyone else’s. He was a sweet man, but there was a kind of innate fragility to him that alienated Saff—although she supposed he hadn’t survived his father’s brutality for this long by accident.

Such was the appeal of Nissa. She was robust enough to bear witness to Saff’s innermost despair without withering beneath the black gloom of it. Saff never worried for a second that Nissa could be tainted.

Just as Saffron and Tiernan were finishing off the truffles, an auburn-haired Healer entered the hospital wing, shaking her head defeatedly.

“Summoning spells are coming back empty, even for Jebat. The ear is nowhere to be found. Probably nothing but dust. We’ll have to reanimate without it.”

“Alright,” said Paliran, the chief Healer, tucking their chin-length, caramel-colored hair behind an ear and rolling up their violet cloak sleeves.

They had dozens of gold and silver bangles stacked up to the elbow, each engraved with the names of obscure healing charms, but Paliran didn’t need to refer to the bracelets for this.

They’d been reanimating fake hostages and Bloodmoons all afternoon. “Are you ready?”

Tiernan turned to the six-sided golden teapot on the bedside table, pouring out a cup of hot ginger tea for Auria’s awakening. She was never without a flask of the stuff.

Relief coursed through Saff like a pulse. They were going to bring Auria back, and she was going to be alright, less for a missing ear, and Saff might be able to glean some answers about the prophecy before the job listings were posted.

Auria had always been generous with knowledge, never hoarding it for herself so that she’d appear brighter than everyone else.

She left annotated notes on Saff’s desk during exam season, helping her out on the subjects she struggled with, sharing strategies and shortcuts for remembering common law.

She quizzed Sebran, the other Brewer, on elixir ingredients until they were both ready to drop with exhaustion.

She picked up rare books from secondhand shops in town, wrapping them in brown paper and gifting them to Nissa, her sworn enemy, because even sworn enemies deserved good reading material.

She was prim and sanctimonious, yes. Relentlessly assiduous, irritatingly upbeat, and often judgmental.

A veritable stick up her backside at least seventy-four percent of the time.

But she was also warm and smart and wonderful, with a fierce underpinning of righteous anger and a fundamental faith in the world.

And just like Saff, she always held a grudge.

Paliran raised their wand with a long, slow intake of breath, bangles clinking on olive-skinned arms. But before Saffron could bear witness to her friend’s reanimation, there was a sharp touch on her shoulder.

One insistent tap, like a mourncrow’s beak.

Saff swiveled to see Malcus, the captain’s straitlaced assistant, standing behind her. A Ludder, but an excruciatingly thorough—and naturally deferential—one.

At the sight of him, dread sank into Saff’s gut, the childish feeling of being caught just when you thought you’d gotten away with a misdeed.

That stony silence in the Grand Atrium still echoed in her ears.

“Captain Aspar wants to speak to you,” Malcus muttered, voice low and grim. “Alone.”