Page 117 of Silvercloak

The brand?

Levan shared her bemusement. “I averted major disaster tonight. I stashed the lox. I tried to protect you from the Silvercloaks.”

“I’ve been a fool, Levan,” Lyrian moaned. “You’re my son. My flesh and blood. How can I kill you? You’re …”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Levan said curtly, and Saffhad no idea how he kept so cool, so detached, in the face of a death threat from his own father. “Go and get some rest. We can talk about this—”

“Sen debilitan,” Lyrian said suddenly, stabbing his wand at Levan.

And without a wand, Levan couldn’t block it. He froze, so suddenly and absolutely that it felt like a black hole. One of Sebran’s favored spells on the streetwatch, paralyzing not just the body but the mind as well. Levan was stillaware,in some kind of animal sense, but his thoughts were thoroughly immobilized, and now this devastating mage, so inexplicably powerful, so ruthlessly ordered, so perpetually in control, was at once powerless.

Rasso growled, and Saffron clamped her hand around his mouth.

“No. Not now. Please,” she whispered, and he heeded the urgency in her tone.

Lyrian reached out his spare hand and cupped his son’s jaw. The kingpin’s stature was suddenly so small andsad. A father studying his child, wondering how he had so badly lost his way. Thinking of all his failures as a parent.

“I’m sorry, son,” Lyrian said, his voice hoarse. “But you leave me no other choice.Sen ascevolo, carcanduan.”

Carcanduan. Cell two.

Levan’s body levitated a few inches off the floor, then drifted out of the room.

The kingpin followed.

And Saffron was left pressing her face into Rasso’s warm fur, feeling the beat of the animal’s heart against her cheek, reeling over the terrible new fate she had carved for the kingpin’s son.

CROUCHING IN THE ARMOIRE FOR WHAT COULD HAVE BEENhours, Saffron could not process the night’s events.

She was a Timeweaver. She was more powerful than she’d ever realized, a force of nature so potent that many feared it enough to invoke genocide.

She waspowerful,in the same way Levan was powerful.

She was so powerful it was frightening.

The thought was a bolt of pure elation. Without Lorissa’s wand and hourglass, it would be almost impossible to weave again, but she’d go to every wandmaker in the city if it meant finding one with a weaverwick at its core. She’d trawl shady antiques shops and dusty estate sales until she got her hands on a miniature golden hourglass filled with ascenite.

It was a purpose, a reroute, a new path forward, and she would take it gladly.

The victorious surge in her chest was underpinned by a writhing dread, but she could not think about Levan now. No matter what was happening to him at the hands of his father, she had to move. She could not save the world, nor the kingpin’s son, while hiding in a closet.

As she pushed the doors of the armoire open, light flooded in, casting a glow over the robes she’d been folded between. Something shimmery amongst the raiment caught her eye. Amidst the scarlet and navy hung two long golden cloaks, each embroidered with pale silk. Elaborate runes flowed vertically down the lapels, and a pearlwillow—the symbol for knowledge, in theLost Dragonbornworld—was stitched onto the breast pockets. Baudry Abard’s favored garb. The needlework was slightly clumsy, an endearing wonkiness to the tree branches, an uneven spacing to the runes. The fabric pierced in places, where wrong stitches had been unpicked.

Her heart stilled.

Matching costumes. For the Erling Tandall signing.

She hadn’t wanted to wear Bloodmoon red, so Levan had madecostumes.

Now he was in a cell, at his father’s mercy—because of her.

And the truth was that she had come to care about the kingpin’s son.

Not just in a primal, I-caught-him-fucking-the-King’s-Prophet-and-now-keep-picturing-him-in-a-state-of-undress sort of way, but as aperson,which was infinitely more troubling. Because the truly unfathomable thing was that Levan was … sweet. At least parts of him were. He had re-enchanted her necklace and shown Neatras’s daughter mercy and spent hours making Saffron a homemade costume. He learned extinct languages and pored over the same books that had brought her back to life, all those years ago.

Yet hadn’t she seen him cause unforgivable pain? Hadn’t she dodged his killing curses herself? Hadn’t he whispered cruelly in her ear about all the ways he would emotionally destroy her if she betrayed him?

She couldn’t reconcile all of it, despite knowing better than anyone that people contained multitudes, that nobody was either all good or all bad, that even those most confident in their convictions were riddled with inconsistencies and paradoxes, that even those with the strongest hold on their magic still did not have full mastery of their minds.

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