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Levan avoided her furious gaze. “I think I’ve always suspected, on some level, that my father gave the order. Like the brand, he just didn’t have the stomach to do it himself.”

“Suspected? You could just compel him into telling you the truth.”

A nameless emotion passed over his face. “I don’t truly want to know. Would you be able to go on, knowing your father had wished that upon you? If I found out for sure that it was him … I don’t know what I’d do.”

There was the deafening sound of wood shattering in the main shack. Saffron dug her nails into the rotting wooden floor. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“You know what drove me truly insane? It happened at different times every day. If it was always at, say, noon … I could’ve compartmentalized, organized my thoughts around it.

But it depended on Vogolan’s whims, and so I spent every minute of every hour wondering when it was going to happen.

It’s why I’m so fucking neurotic now. It’s why everything is ordered, regimented. ”

“Control or be controlled,” Saffron mirrored, with sudden understanding. Speaking of which … “Have you ever compelled me?”

“ No. ” He shook his head. “I don’t like doing it, Silver. Especially not to you.” He swallowed hard, throat bobbing. From the haunted, hollow look on his face, she knew he was telling the truth.

“How long have you been able to compel? Since the torture started?”

A stiff nod, then a brief pause, as he decided how much truth to share. “The only thing worse than the pain was being powerless. And so I read every piece of literature there is on compelling. I taught myself, with Miret’s help. I swore to myself I would never be powerless again.”

“You compelled Tiernan,” she whispered in horror. “You compelled him into leaking you information, and you compelled him into taking his own life the moment he was discovered.”

Levan nodded gravely. “Covering my tracks. I didn’t know then that he was important to you.”

“Would you have made a different decision if you had known?”

Levan did not—or could not—answer.

Other situations cascaded through her mind, cast in a fresh light. “The night we met in that alley … why didn’t you just kill me? Your power far overwhelms my own. You shot a fair number of killing curses at me, but none of them hit. Yet I don’t think you often make mistakes.”

At this, he bowed his head. “Because I knew you were coming. And I knew you were important.”

Everything in Saffron stilled. “What?”

Levan sighed. “A few months before we met in that alley, Harrow foresaw the scene in Zares’s house.

He told me that an unfamiliar mage with wild silver-blond curls would lead me to the necromancer—and that the same mage would save my life when it all went wrong.

That’s all we knew. Not that you were a Silvercloak, not how it would all come to pass.

But when I saw you in that alley … I knew you were the one.

So I had to give the impression of wanting you dead without actually killing you.

You had to believe you were on the front foot.

And that illusion you cast—the alter self.

I knew I was striking the wrong one with ammorten. ”

The room blurred around Saffron. It explained his moments of kindness, even in the beginning—bringing her salve, asking if she was alright every time her brand stung.

It explained why he’d warmed to her faster than he should have, and continued to trust her long after it was prudent to do so.

It explained so much, and yet it left her reeling.

“Has Harrow foreseen anything else involving us?” she murmured, hoarse.

Levan shook his head. “No. I have no idea how this night ends. I have no idea what lays beyond it.”

But I think I do.

“And Zares? Why did she nearly overpower you, back in her house? Why didn’t you just compel her?”

“I didn’t want you to know what I could do. Some cards are best kept close to the chest. And besides, I’m used to casting to kill. Taking marks alive has always been more difficult, since power rushes from me at full force.”

Saffron let this sink in, then whispered, “Is it all you? Every terrible thing your father does … how much of it is him, and how much of it is you?”

The unspoken question: Did you just compel him to kill my uncle?

“Oh, it’s mostly him. He wants my mother back as much as I do.

I just take over whenever he doesn’t have the stomach.

But he’s been getting better at resisting, even though he doesn’t know he’s being compelled.

That meltdown on the docks, when he kept firing killing spells all over the place—his mind was so embroiled in this unknown battle that I felt it splinter. ”

Saints.

“Levan … is my uncle dead?” She hated how small and scared she sounded. She had spent so much effort making sure he never saw her vulnerable, not even after she’d been branded. But she needed to know. “Or is there a chance your father was bluffing?”

Sympathy crested over his face, and she knew before he replied.

“My father doesn’t bluff. I’m sorry, Silver.”

A sob cracked free of its own accord.

Levan looked like he so badly wanted to comfort her, to bring her into his arms and kiss her forehead and stroke her back while she wept, but then a kind of reluctant darkness fell behind his eyes, as though he’d forced himself to remember the real reason they sat in this shack, a war raging on the other side of the door.

“You’re a rat, Silver.” Every word was a crack of thunder.

“And now I have no idea what to do. I could kill you or incapacitate you or order you to do what I want. But for some hellsforsaken reason, I can’t.

So we’re at an impasse.” Desperation clouded his face.

“But you can choose to unmake your decision. To change loyalties. All you have to do is freeze time with praegelos and get my father out of that room.”

Saffron’s insides were ablaze. “And what makes you think I’ll do that? What makes you think I won’t just freeze time and tie you up for my captain to haul you away?”

A long, potent beat. He crawled toward her on his hands and knees, cupping her sweat-slicked face in his cool golden hand. His blazing blue eyes searched hers so deeply it was like he was mining for ascenite at the bottom.

Everything in her hurt.

And then their lips met, and a shiver rolled through her, and he said a single word so softly she almost missed it.

“Hope.”