Page 103 of Silvercloak

He raised his wand, face twisted and crude as a gargoyle.

“Sen ammorten. Sen ammorten. Sen ammorten.”

The three customs officers fell dead.

Someone screamed, and it echoed off the corrugated edges of the shipping containers.

A white crack of lightning forked the sky, illuminating the quay with a spectral paleness.

And then the world descended into chaos.

THE SILVERCLOAKS COALESCED ON THE QUAY, EVERY WAND RAISEDtoward the boat as though worshipping some sadistic god.

Bones transformed from cat to captain, conjuring repeated forks of lightning from the dark velvet sky. Behind Aspar, crates and shipping containers and coils of rope smoldered and erupted into flames.

Flames she could now use against them.

The crew workers on the dock scattered and scurried like ants, but there was no safe place to go.

“Sen ammorten. Sen ammorten. Sen ammorten.”

Something in Lyrian had splintered. He shot hard-eyed killing curses at the dock, indiscriminate, unhinged. Segal was somewhere in the fold, but the kingpin didn’t seem to care whether he hit one of his longest-serving allies.

He wanted ruin,and he was going to get it.

A Bloodmoon crew worker was struck and fell dead, ankle snapping in the fall.

Lyrian still did not stop.

Levan stared at his father in shock,hatred,but he did not move to stop the anarchy.

The Silvercloaks seemed to be awaiting a command. A vast, shimmering wall of magic separated them from Lyrian’s curses: a mattermantic shield. Detective Dallar’s brow glistened with effort. It would not hold for long.

“Don aquiss!” yelled Castian, hauling a great wave from the river and sending it cascading toward the Silvercloaks.

As the water was torn from the river, the boat juddered and tilted violently, its hull scraping along something hard and rocky. Saffron pitched sideways, steadying herself before she hit the deck.

Dallar’s protective barrier fell to the wave. The fresh bodies of the customs officers were washed away toward fiery containers, flames licking toward the dark sky like grotesque tongues. Several Silvercloaks—including Nissa and Auria—were wiped out before Aspar halted the rest of the wave in midair, the wall of water suspended into something solid and wrong.

A string ofeffigiascharms shot up at the deck from Detectives Alirrol and Fevilan.

Saff ducked just in time.

Hunched on the wooden deck, she conjured her own shaky mattermantic shield and threw it over herself and Rasso. The fallowwolf, far from the fierce predator she knew he was, cowered behind a bench, shaking from the roar of thunder. He pressed his body into her torso, whimpering in her ear.

“It’s alright,” she whispered to him. Possibly the worst lie she had ever told, and his doleful eyes told her he knew it too.

What would happen to the beast when every human he’d ever known was arrested? Perhaps he’d stick with Saff. The idea warmed her for a second, until she realized Aspar would never allow a creature so intrinsically linked to timeweaving into the Academy.

Fallowwolf aside, Saff just had to stay calm and survive the battle. She urged herself to keep her head down, to let the Silvercloaks take the Bloodmoons, to pray to a court of Saints she barely believed in that none of her friends fell victim to Lyrian’s errant curses.

But… no.

She couldn’t take that risk. She couldn’t let Auria or Nissa die. She could not leave this in the hands of the Saints.

She had to disarm Lyrian, to neutralize his threat.

Another thunderclap, and Saff pressed her eyes shut against the blinding flare of light.

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