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T HE IMPOSSIBLE PROPHECY HAD BEEN FULFILLED .

Levan’s eyes peeled open, staring, unseeing, at the ceiling of the shack. A lock of dark brown hair fell into his face, and his scarred lips were slightly parted in shock. His blade of a body, normally so sharp with tension, seemed horrifyingly empty.

She could not have done what she’d just done.

She could not.

And yet it had been the only way.

If she’d let him walk back into the shack, it would’ve been over. The Silvercloaks would have lost, and the Bloodmoons would certainly have executed her.

The enormity of it didn’t hit her yet. Instead, there was only disbelief, the same breed of shock she’d felt when her parents died, the sense that nothing this horrific could possibly be real.

The feeling of standing on the edge of the Shard of Khulin, unable to comprehend the scale of the waves crashing down upon her.

Pure adrenaline shoved Saff into the room beyond.

The three Bloodmoons were stone statues in the kitchen. In the bedroom, Auria crouched over Aspar’s bleeding body, weeping pro fusely and pouring a series of tinctures down her captain’s throat in a desperate bid to revive her.

Aspar gurgled, then hacked up so much blood that Saffron knew there was no saving her.

Saffron crossed the room and sank to her knees before her captain.

“We got them,” she murmured, so dizzy she almost tipped, grabbing Aspar desperately by the shoulders. “We got them, Captain. You’re going to be commissioner. Stay with us.”

But Aspar’s gaze was weak, glassy, as the blood burbled down her chin.

Auria yanked Saffron back so hard her fingertips left bruises. “Get away from her,” she all but spat. “It’s your fault she’s dying.”

Saff shook her head vehemently. “I’ve been undercover this whole time. I’m the one who snuck Aspar intel about the first shipment, who told her we were retrieving the lox tonight. Tell her, Captain.”

“Dragontail …” Aspar tried to say, but it was hard to understand her over the thick gloops of blood spouting from her mouth like a faucet. Moonlight limned every ridge of her shaven head. “Dragontail … your father. And he … he … he would be proud. There’s a … letter.”

Captain Elodora Aspar died in Auria’s arms.

A sigh, a shift, a final twitch. And then nothing.

Auria let out a single rollicking sob, turning to Saffron, wand raised, world-ending anger blazing over her face. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

“Auria, I—”

“My grandfather died a gruesome death because of you. The captain is dead because of you.” Auria’s skin was pale as bone, framed by frizzy copper hair, and she looked so unbearably young.

“The only thing I want more than to see you dead is to see you suffer for the rest of your life. To see you rot in Duncarzus, living every day with the shame of what you have done.”

“I’ve been undercover,” Saffron snapped. “Which should be familiar to you, as a concept.”

“How can you live with yourself?” Auria went on, as though Saff had not spoken. “I thought you were good. I saw the very best in you, and now look—”

“It’s not that fucking simple, Auria! In this world, everything comes with a price. Magic comes with a price, love comes with a price, goodness comes with a price. Sometimes you have to do dark things in the name of the light.”

“Is that the bullshit logic you use to exonerate yourself?” A scathing head shake. “In the great arc of humanity, goodness will always win. Nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.”

“This was a part of the great arc. You have to believe me,” Saffron whispered, palms up in surrender. “ I froze time and tied up Bloodmoons. Would I do that if I weren’t undercover? If I weren’t still working for you?”

“You were switching sides at the last minute because you knew defeat was nigh.”

“Switching sides?” Saff shook her head in frustration. “Because it’s so easy to just switch sides back into the institution that publicly shamed and imprisoned you? You heard Aspar. She said my father would be proud. Would she say that if I hadn’t been risking my life to bring in the Bloodmoons?”

“Aspar was dying and delirious.”

Saffron pressed her palms into her eyes, trying to right her pitching vision. “Fine. Nissa knows too, ask her.”

Auria’s expression grew even colder. “Nissa has been in a coma since the first raid. She went into shock a few minutes after you portari- ed out. She might recover, and she might not.”

No. Nissa couldn’t be … Tiernan had said …

New horror dawning, Saffron realized he’d only said Nissa was alive. Not that she was awake .

Something freshly furious reared behind Auria’s hazel eyes, as though she could read Saffron’s thoughts. “Where’s Tiernan? The last time I saw him, he said he was going to meet you. To make amends. I didn’t understand why.”

A single tear rolled down Saffron’s cheek. “He took his own life.”

Anger and grief and hatred erupted over Auria’s face.

“He’s dead?” She was shaking uncontrollably. “You killed him.”

“ No. He’d been compelled into informing by the kingpin’s son. Who I just killed in that closet, by the way, to save your life. Go and see for yourself.”

At this, Auria blanched. “Tiernan was the rat?”

“Tiernan was the rat. He cost us the first raid.”

“Don’t say us , like you’re still part of it.” Auria trembled from head to toe, looking from Aspar’s dead body to the last person who’d seen her betrothed alive. Her palm went to her rib cage, where the betrothal tattoo was likely still fresh. “He can’t be gone.”

“He might not be. I took him to the Bloodmoons’ ascenite crypt.

It’ll preserve his body until we can get a necromancer to him.

” A plan galloped into Saff’s mind fully formed, a way to convince Auria to let her walk free.

“I alone can get beyond the wards into the crypt, since I’ve been branded.

Once all the Bloodmoons are safely imprisoned, I’ll get him out.

We just need to find a necromancer, alright? ”

War waged behind Auria’s eyes for several moments. All around them, silence pressed in, as solid as a physical object after the fierce skirmish. Saffron wondered dimly what was going on in the other shacks, who had lived and who had died.

Auria shook her head frantically. “It’s wrong. Necromancy is wrong. I don’t want him back like that. And even if I did, Tiernan wouldn’t want me to put him above what’s right.” She raised her wand in a trembling hand. “ Sen effigias .”

The statue spell struck Saffron, but nothing happened.

Auria frowned at her wand as though it had betrayed her.

“I’m immune to magic,” Saffron murmured.

It was once again true, now that Levan was dead.

Dead. The word, hard and unyielding as stone, sent a peal of loss through her. A physical whip-crack, straight to her well. She had little magic left after holding time still, but what dregs remained glittered from the fresh wave of hurt.

“It’s how I was able to receive the loyalty brand without actually being bound by it,” she added. “Being branded is hell, by the way.”

Her attempt to break through Auria’s walls failed, and her old friend took a step closer to her, hatred convulsing all over her face as she drew her blisblade.

Rasso growled and leapt through the air toward Auria.

“No!” Saff yelled. “Leave her.”

But Rasso did not listen. Moments before his jaws closed around Auria’s throat, Saff gasped out a desperate, tremulous, “ Sen praegelos .”

The world froze for the second time that night. If it weren’t for the pain of losing her uncle, for the pain of killing Levan, for the pain of Aspar dying in Auria’s arms, she likely would not have the magical strength left to hold it.

Startled, Rasso landed on all fours, glancing curiously back at Saffron.

“Don’t hurt her,” Saff whispered to the fallowwolf, trying her very damnedest not to pass out.

If she passed out, the praegelos would lapse, and it would be over.

With every ounce of mental strength she had left, she weighed her options.

There was no getting out of this situation without temporarily incapacitating Auria, and if she did that, she’d have an even harder time proving to the Silvercloaks that she’d been on their side all along.

She’d be arrested and tossed in Duncarzus until the end of time.

Aspar and Levan would stay dead, and Saff’s life would be effectively over.

There was a chance, of course, that Nissa would recover well enough to testify in Saffron’s favor. But there was an equal chance she wouldn’t.

Detective Jebat had known that Aspar had someone undercover, just not who. But Saffron had no idea whether Levan had left Jebat alive.

Still dazed, Saffron could’ve sworn she felt the weight of her parents’ gaze from beyond an imperceptible veil.

Their love and judgment, their silent pleas.

But what were they pleading for ? Would they want her to do this—to sacrifice her life and freedom in the name of banishing this great evil? Or would they want her to save herself?

She could always flee. Levan’s wand could portari her anywhere on the continent, but as Levan had said, the Silvercloaks were becoming far more proficient at tracing these things.

Even if she exiled herself to another country, everywhere but Mersina and Nomaden had extradi tion agreements with Vallin, and the chances of her successfully transporting that far in her weakened state were slim.

If she fled, sooner or later she would be caught. Auria would stop at nothing to bring her in—as far as she was concerned, both Tiernan’s and Aspar’s blood was on Saff’s hands.

The praegelos charm shimmered and faltered around her as she considered her final option.

Timeweaving.

She had Lyrian’s wand, the hourglass, and Rasso. She might be able to unwind this disastrous night, but how far back could she get without all the ascenite she’d been bolstered by in the mansion?

For this not to be so ruinous, she needed Aspar to survive, but Aspar had already been struck by the time Saff and Levan had made it to the shack.

In any case, placing herself in the middle of the brutal skirmish to try and block a spell fired at the captain would just as likely result in her own death.

Could she go back even further?

To before the night even began, before the kingpin ordered her uncle’s death?

Likely not. She vividly remembered the lung squeezing sensation from the last time she’d weaved, the fierce fighting for breath, the way it had become harder and harder to keep her wand on the hourglass.

In Lyrian’s office, she’d been surrounded by ascenite from all angles.

Here she could rely only on her own well of magic—which was running dangerously low.

Desperation mounted as she realized there was no way out of this … unless she made the other decision.

Unless she didn’t betray Levan.

Unless she went back to before she killed him.

Aspar would die regardless, but Saff could incapacitate Auria instead of Lyrian, let the Bloodmoons flee, stay undercover until she knew whether Nissa would be able to vouch for her. Until she knew whether Jebat lived.

Doing so would win back Levan’s trust, and further down the line, there would surely be another chance to bring the Bloodmoons in.

This time she would make sure the whole institution of the Silver cloaks knew what she was doing, so that no matter who died in the crossfire, her efforts would be recognized, and she’d be reinstated.

Of all the options, it was the only one that didn’t leave her decimated.

She reached deep inside herself and felt a meager smear of magic at the bottom of her well. She had to make it last—make it as potent as possible, so that it might do what she needed it to do.

And so she opened the internal box where she stored all her grief, and held it upside down, so that every last devastating piece came tumbling out.

The terror on Tiernan’s face as he had raised his own wand beneath his chin. The wet squelch of an eyeball beneath a letteropener. The mental image of her uncle’s fresh corpse, and of his widower weeping alone by a fire.

A killing curse leaping from her knobbly beech wand and into the body of the man she loved.

That fateful night in Lunes, kneeling over her dead parents, knowing that life as she knew it was over.

The grief was a mountain sitting on her chest. She could barely breathe through the weight of all she had lost. It hurt so much, all of it, but pain could always be used. That was the very foundation of their world.

Pain meant you were alive. Pain meant you still had a fighting chance.

Her grandfather’s words, slurred at her parents’ wake, came back to her.

Let me tell you something about loss, sweetling. You can either yield to grief, or you can use it. Those are the only two choices, in the end.

Maybe pain was the only thing that could save her.

Yet now the emotional dam had fallen, throwing it back up felt like trying to best gravity.

Dad, the broken child at the heart of her wept. You can’t be gone.

Mama? Please. Please, I need you.

She was six years old and cleaved in two.

Looking down at her body, she was surprised to see long limbs, broad hips, the swell of breasts.

Because at her very core, in every place that mattered, she was still hiding in that pantry, staring through the keyhole at the corpses of her beloved parents.

Some fundamental part of her would be anchored there forever.

She drew from that part of her now, a bucket lowered and then raised.

The solitary smear of magic left in her well glowed bright as ascenite.

Face salt-slick with tears, she pulled the hourglass from her cloak pocket and met Rasso’s piercing gaze. Turning the hourglass over and tapping the weaverwick wand to its new top, she threw every ounce of power she had left behind the word: “ Tempavicissan. ”

Then the world smudged around her. An almighty wrench, a backward yank, a star imploding, a fate unbraided, so profoundly wrong that it hurt, like all the tissue was being torn from her bones.

Time blurred and uncoiled. Her body scuttled backward of its own accord, across the room and back into the closet.

Levan was dead, and then he was alive.

She might have vomited, but it disappeared through the cracks of time unwritten.

Keeping the wand tip to the hourglass took everything from her, and when she could breathe no more, and her mind was on the brink of collapse, she let go.