Page 113 of Silvercloak

Slowly, she turned back from the doorknob and looked at Lyrian, at the frail, wizened shape of him, like a shepherd’s crook, even more withered when time pinned him in place. The wand was taut with a kind of urgent energy. Perhaps because it had just cast the darkest curse possible, or perhaps because it was … waiting.

She crossed to Lyrian and removed the wand from his grip, guided by some nameless force, her heart hammering in her ribs. Then she took the hourglass from the table and turned it upside down.

Rasso purred hungrily, approvingly, as though to say,Yes, that’s it, that’s it.

She tapped the top of the hourglass with Lorissa Rezaran’s wand. It felt warm in her palm, not from Lyrian’s own heat, but from something brilliant and pure.

“Tempavicissan,” she whispered, like a prayer, a litany—

—and the world turned itself around.

An immense smudging, a bleary haze, the feeling of being yanked upward from a great depth. Images blurred around her, Lyrian and Rasso moving backward so unnaturally it made her want to vomit.

Still pressing the wand tip to the golden frame of the hourglass, Saffron felt her lungs squeeze tighter and tighter, compressed through the narrow crevices of time itself, until eventually she could bear it no longer and she tore the wand away.

And then it was several moments ago.

LYRIAN’S BACK WAS TO SAFFRON, ONCE AGAIN FACING THEfire. His bony shoulders protruded through the scarlet cloak, and the lambent candlelight caused the shadowy folds of the robes to shift and eddy.

“Or are you just going to confess and let us be done with it?” he was in the middle of saying. “I can have Levanportariyour uncles here in an instant. It’ll all be over very quickly.”

Lorissa’s wand was still in Saff’s palm, and she tossed it at Lyrian’s feet like a hot coal. It clattered against his ankle, and he stopped speaking to frown down at it, as though he couldn’t remember dropping anything.

Silently, Saffron set the only other evidence back onto his desk. Grains of ascenite flowed through the miniature hourglass, when before they had pooled at the bottom, but Lyrian did not seem to notice the slight disturbance in reality.

“Iwasn’tbehind this,” she stammered, trying to remember her lines. “Fair trial is not a farce.”

Slowly, impossibly, he said: “Does this look like a fucking courtroom to you?”

Saffron could barely hear him over the roar of blood in her ears.

He turned back to her, and she thought she was going to faint from the enormity of what she’d just done. She was weak and dizzy and afraid that he wouldknow,and that she would not have the strength to do it again. Her well had never been so empty—a kind of desert aridness that felt like it would never refill.

Rasso rested his head in Saffron’s hand and licked her palm, tongue rough and warm.

As he had done already, in another version of time, Lyrian tucked a hand inside his cloak and pulled out a vial of truth elixir. Saff drank, noticing that there was no longer sweet fur on her tongue from the first tincture.

Strange, strange, this is so fucking strange.

Once again, he asked, “Did you leak the shipment information to the Silvercloaks?”

“No.”

Saff’s heart thundered. She needed this to go differently this time.

A different fork in the path appeared. One she’d been too panicked to see earlier.

“But I got the spell-tracing charm for you.” Her voice sounded like it was underwater. “From my informant. It’ll lead you to Vogolan’s killer. And it won’t be me.”

There was an almost imperceptiblelurchingsensation, a cart rattling along a preestablished track before abruptly changing direction.

“What’s the charm?” he asked, curiosity piqued.

“Novissan vestigas.” She omitted the fact it only worked half of the time. He didn’t need to know she’d brought him damaged goods. “You’ll need to find Vogolan’s body, and cast the trace on the starburst where the killing spell met his skin.”

Good luck with that.

She’d scattered the rubble of Vogolan’s corpse all over Atherin.

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