Page 84

T HE WORLD BECAME A PALIMPSEST.

With a violent lurch, Saffron found that she was in the middle of talking.

“—makes you think I’ll do that?” Sweat dripped down her temples, every inch of her body shaking.

Lyrian’s wand was clasped in her right hand alongside her own—two wands, when before she’d had none.

She tucked them into her cloak pocket as subtly as she could, folding forward onto her knees as though buckling under the emotional weight of the situation.

There was a long, potent beat, in which Levan studied her like an ancient tome. Then 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.

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

“Hope.”

Here they were again.

She allowed herself to linger in the moment for longer than she had the first time.

Something na?ve and hopeless soared in her chest. Levan was alive. On this fork in the road, she didn’t kill him. His skin was still warm, and his gaze was not yet scrubbed free of emotion. Tears streamed down her face unbidden, and she couldn’t bring herself to wipe them away.

The deep, stony exhaustion in her body told her that she had to get it right this time. She would not be able to unmake time again. This was her final chance to salvage the ruins of this night.

“I don’t have a wand,” Saffron whispered, remembering her lines.

Levan handed her his.

She clambered unsteadily to her feet and pressed the closet door open.

Tas was still dead, as was Alirrol.

In the great reshuffling of time and wands, Lyrian’s had vanished, and he bellowed his confusion, crouching behind Castian.

Segal fired his ineffectual curses at the Silvercloaks crouched behind the bed.

Aspar and Auria tried to strike their opponents with effigias spells. The bloody starburst on Aspar’s chest spread violently over her silver cloak, her gas mask filling with scarlet as she bled from her mouth.

Castian gusted the bed frame into the open sky above, sending it smashing into the nearest wyrmwood.

“ Sen praegelos, ” Saffron whispered, stars dancing around her eyes.

Time stood unconvincingly still.

It faltered and wavered, jerking back and forward, resisting her command.

Stomach dropping, she realized she couldn’t hold it.

She tossed the kingpin’s wand back at his feet, in a desperate attempt to avoid his—and Levan’s—suspicion.

Time shook itself free, a hellhound escaping a leash.

The owl flew freely overhead.

Chaos resumed.

Castian turned fully to stone, mouth agape.

Lyrian spotted his wand, grabbing it in a heartbeat.

Aspar fired her final spell, a furious roar of grief. “ Sen ammorten. ”

“ Sen ammorten, ” yelled Lyrian at the same moment.

It struck Aspar in the head.

Aspar’s killing curse struck Lyrian’s heart.

They were both dead in an instant.

Silence rang out all around.

Saffron collapsed.

Levan burst into the room, roaring his own grief, hurling himself at his father.

Auria was the last Silvercloak standing.

Segal stared blankly at the felled kingpin.

Whipping around, Levan stabbed his wand at Auria, eyes alight with grief. “ Sen ammorten. ”

Auria fell dead, pale and empty.

Every inch of Saffron wailed no, but no sound left her mouth.

Think! she screamed internally. Reroute!

Levan now had his father’s weaverwick wand in his hand, Rasso by his side, incanting the timeweaving spell over and over, even though it had never worked for him, even though it likely never would.

Auria was dead, and Saffron had no more magic.

Unless …

She dug into her pocket and pulled out the painmaker . Artan had said that Eqoran Timeweavers had used them during the civil war, to inflict massive, life-saving pain.

Magic had only ever worked on Saffron once before, at Levan’s hand. But she had felt the call, the thrum of this device back in Artan’s, and some curious instinct told her this time it would be different.

It was the only play she had left.

“ Az’alamis, ” she begged hoarsely, not truly thinking about what she was doing, about how much pain she could stand, about how this infernal device was just as likely to fell her as it was to fuel her, just willing it to work.

And it worked.

It worked so suddenly and violently that the world was drenched scarlet.

This pain was not the circular sear of a brand, nor the bright sharpness of a cut, nor the lancing burn of a whip.

This was a rusty nail hammered into every nerve ending in her body. She could not scream, could only fall endlessly down the open shaft of agony, existing only as an afterthought to the pain, unable to move or speak or breathe, only to hurt.

She could not drop the saqalamis, could not unfurl her fist, and so the pain kept going.

She was the pain, and the pain was her, a long implosion, an utter annihilation.

Then someone ripped the black quartz from her hand.

The world lightened from deep red to faded watercolor. Levan crouched at her side, breathing hard, existential horror on his once empty face, the saqalamis in his own hand, disarmed.

And the sliver of magic in her well was liquid gold .

She grabbed the weaverwick wand from his loosened grip and whispered, “ Tempavicissan .”

Another almighty wrench, more smudged silhouettes, more pain, always pain, why did everything hurt so much?

She let go. The whirling stopped. Levan was no longer beside her, and the saqalamis was back in her pocket.

Aspar’s killing curse struck Lyrian’s heart.

Silence rang out all around, but the blood roared in Saffron’s ears.

She collapsed to the ground. When had she stood back up?

Time slid, losing form.

Levan burst into the room, roaring his own grief, hurling himself at his father, and Saffron tossed the weaverwick wand back to his feet.

Auria was the last Silvercloak standing.

Face contorted, Levan stabbed his wand at Auria, eyes alight. “ Sen amm —”

“ Sen praegelos, ” Saffron cried, raising her own wand, sweat pouring from her temples, every muscle in her body convulsing and twitching, and thought she might come undone from the pain, from the exertion, but there was nothing she would not do to save Auria.

To save someone.

Time paused unconvincingly.

Saffron clambered to her feet, stumbling and almost falling again, crossing to where Auria stood frozen.

Time lapsed and then froze again, enough that Levan finished in canting the curse, enough that he must have seen Saffron’s glitching progress. The dark magic leapt from his wand, halting in a fork of lightning halfway to Auria as time jerked to a stop once more.

Standing behind Auria, Saff hooked her wrists under her friend’s arms and dragged her back in the direction of the door.

Almost there.

Ten feet.

Saffron was going to faint.

Five feet.

Saffron could not faint.

Outside, the air was eerily still, not a twitch of forest sound to be heard, and Saffron understood then why Captain Aspar had so savagely opposed praegelos, because it felt wrong, even to Saffron, even to a Timeweaver, to bring all of life, all of reality, to a stop.

The pain-brightened magic in her well was fading to nothing.

Time shimmered and faltered.

Please flee, she urged her friend, her found family. Please don’t be a hero. Please accept the defeat, go away, and regroup.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

She stumbled back inside, and time resumed with an inelegant lurch.

Levan’s killing spell buried itself in the frayed wood of the shack.

Saffron fell to her knees, and Levan looked straight at her, and he knew that she had used praegelos to save her friend, yet his expression was so mired with grief that she couldn’t cipher how much he hated her for it.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, unsure who she was apologizing to.

“Find the fleeing cloak,” Levan snarled at Segal, before turning his attention back to his fallen father.

But Segal too was on the floor, staring at his hands as though they belonged to a stranger.

Almost inaudibly, he whispered, in abject horror, “I can’t feel it.

I can’t feel any of it. Pleasure, pain. I feel nothing—I thought, but …

this … I haven’t felt anything since, just old magic, and now … NO. ”

A shudder clutched his whole body as he realized the enormity of it.

Without pleasure, without pain, his well would never refill.

The true cost of being Risen.

For most mages, it was a fate worse than death.

Some innate part of Saffron recoiled at the idea, but she could not find any sympathy for the man who had slain her parents. And besides, his wallowing gave Auria ample time to escape into the Havenwood, to rally the surviving Silvercloaks and regroup back at the Order.

Saffron had saved someone.

She had saved someone, but there was something badly wrong with her body. She felt like a claw, a husk, a snarled mass of mangled bones. The saqalamis had done something permanent, something terrible, though she couldn’t put her finger on what.

There was still pain, and for that she was grateful. Without it, she’d have feared the same fate as a Risen.

“Please,” Levan moaned, grabbing fistfuls of Lyrian’s cloak. “Please. Come back. Come back.”

A tear slicked down Saffron’s cheek, and then another.

Twenty-one years ago, Levan had knelt over his mother’s body, begging her to come back to him. Now, because of her, because of the woman he had trusted against all his better judgment, his father had fallen to the same fate.

Both times she had unwoven and rebraided the strands of time, Levan had suffered in her stead.

“ Ans visseran, ans visseran, ans visseran, ” he pleaded, but the necromancy spell still would not heed his command.

“We can take him to the crypt,” Saffron murmured, louder than before but still not loud, and she didn’t know if Levan heard her. “We can bring him back when we bring your mother back.”

But Saff didn’t believe it. Not really.

Surely there wasn’t a magical well deep enough to bring Lorissa back to life after twenty-one years. Not even as perfectly preserved as she was. And it could be several more years before they found a necromancer skilled enough to even attempt it.

Besides, now they knew that to rise from the dead was to never feel pleasure or pain again. It was to be, for all intents and purposes, powerless. Empty. There was a slim and distant chance that a necromancer could revive them, yes, but they would not be as they were, as they had been.

Levan seemed to realize this too, his horrified gaze slicing between his father and Segal, slowly coming to understand that, in so many ways, his parents’ deaths were more permanent than he had ever been willing to accept.

He did not cry, but his breathing was ragged, his shoulders shaking, and Saffron knew that pain so well, what it was to be an orphan, what it was to have your life carved into a before and an after, and in that moment, she would have done anything to take the grief away.

To mend it, and to mend her own. To mend the world.

But perhaps …

No. Surely it could not be done.

And yet …

Words like before and after no longer held the same weight. They were a tide, a force of nature so powerful they were seemingly absolute, and yet a gifted enough Wielder could alter the flow of the sea. And so it went with time.

She’d just unraveled several minutes without any ascenite around her.

The desire had been so intense, so raw, and the belief so unwavering, that time had obeyed her regardless.

What if …

What if time could be unmade not by minutes or hours or days, but by years?

House Rezaran had done it, during the Dreadreign.

Unwritten and rewritten the same decades over and over until they unfolded exactly as they wished.

They’d done it so ruthlessly and so often that the very fabric of the world had eroded, running time back and forth through the loom of reality until it was so gossamer thin that patches began to fray and disappear.

Unmaking time so significantly was terrible, but it was possible.

And it therefore followed that it was possible for Saffron.

Could she unwind the world until she was once again six years old?

Could she save her parents?

Could she save Levan’s?

Could she go back and not turn that Saintsforsaken doorknob?

If she didn’t, Mellora wouldn’t be distracted, and she’d bring back Joran, proving herself to be a necromancer.

She would revive the queenpin. The Bloodmoons wouldn’t kill the Killorans for silence—having a necromancer in their cards was far too valuable.

The Killorans would be branded, but they would all escape with their lives.

Saffron would not be so decimated with sadness that she spent six years in silence. Levan would never have to grow up inside that same grief, would never be tortured to within an inch of his life on his father’s order, would never be crippled by obsessive, cyclical thoughts.

And all the people who had died because of her would live. Neatras, Kasan, Papa Marriosan. Ronnow, Alirrol, Tas. Lyrian, Vogolan, for better or worse.

Captain Aspar.

Tiernan.

Her uncle.

This revenge mission had been an elaborate gamble, a desperate bet in the gamehouse of destiny, and the sunk cost was too high to turn back now. She had sacrificed too much to walk away.

But if she could keep going long enough to undo it all …

It would require an unholy amount of ascenite. More than existed in the crypt, in the whole of the mansion—hells, in the whole of the city. But the Bloodmoons had the means to accumulate more and more. For the next few months or years, her motivations would perfectly align with Levan’s.

They both wanted ascenite, and they both wanted to bring back their parents.

The prospect filled her with a deep, bright glow.

She could make this right, but she had to go all in.

Her enormous sunk cost could still pay off, in the grand gamble of fate.

She might have to keep torturing and killing, keep covering her tracks, fully invest herself in the Bloodmoons and in her goal.

But it would all be worth it in the end, when she was back with her parents in that round, ramshackle house in Lunes, all the pain she’d caused vanishing between the cracks of rewritten time.

Was it still killing, if you knew you would undo it later, and the victims would be none the wiser?

Then came the axis tilt, the perspective shift, the great pitching of the world beneath her feet.

A thunderclap of terrible understanding.

Oh, she thought, horrified and fascinated in equal measure.

This is how villains are born.