Page 123 of Silvercloak

There was no way even the most gifted necromancer could bring her back. Surely a mage as smart as Levan had to know that.

There were so many questions, and she held all the answers in herhands. But she also remembered what Aviruna said about moral codes within the confines of Bloodmoon life.

The kingpin is not always here. What you do in his absence matters.

She should put the journal back in the drawer and never look at it again. The idea of Levan having access to her deepest thoughts made her prickly, nauseous. She couldn’t do the same to him.

And yet …

What if he named his Silvercloak rat?

She was here as a detective, first and foremost, and she wouldn’t be able to best the Bloodmoons while the rat was still active. Every raid would meet the same fate if Levan was always one step ahead. No tactical team would ever be able to close in when the Bloodmoons knew exactly what was coming.

She had to read it.

It was yet another line crossed, another betrayal of the good person she’d always believed herself to be.

You’re not better than me. You’re exactly the fucking same.

No. Levan was wrong. She was doing this not to save her own skin, but to bring down the bloodiest, most brutal criminal organization in Atherin’s history.

The end justified the means. It had to.

Flipping the pages until she found the most recent dates, she blurred her eyes as she skim-read, focusing only on proper nouns, on capitalized names, hoping to spot a familiar shape. But as she passed through the last few weeks of entries, none of her suspects materialized—not Grand Arbiter Dematus, not Detective Fevilan, and not Nissa Naszi.

She was about to close the journal when something caught her eye.

It wasn’t just the name Silver—though that had been mentioned plenty of times—it was the date of the entry. Plenting morning, just after she’d told him where he could find Nalezen Zares.

We have a location for Zares at last, but I keep my hopes tempered. It would not be the first time the necromancer has slipped between my fingers.

I cannot let desperation cloud my mind. Not when Silver has already misted the glass.

I must play this carefully, perfectly. The rat promises to be a valuable source of information, and his father is in the King’s Cabinet—yet another thread to pull, when the time comes.

Saffron clasped a hand to her mouth.

His father is in the King’s Cabinet.

It was Tiernan.

Tiernan was the rat.

TIERNAN—SWEET, UNASSUMING, SLIGHTLY USELESS TIERNAN—was working for the Bloodmoons.

Once the initial shock had worn off, Saffron supposed that it made sense. He was weak-willed, which made him easy to turn, and his father was a significant figure in the King’s Cabinet, which made the whole family ripe for extortion.

How long had this been going on? It could be a legacy rot, stemming from his father and passed down to Tiernan like an awful family heirloom. But from the way Levan had phrased it in his journal, it seemed like Kesven Flane hadn’t been used to his full potential yet.

The most likely explanation was that while Saffron was inside the Jaded Saint talking to Nissa that first Laving night, Levan had approached Tiernan outside. Threatened him into cooperating. It would explain why Tiernan hadapologizedto Saffron the following week, having learned just how easy it is to fall from grace, just how fragile the house of cards holding up his life truly was.

His corruption was a stunning blow to the undercover operation, and also to Saffron as a person, but she was simply too tired to think her way around it now. Once she’d delivered the salve to Levan, Saffron finally fell into her bed, exhaustion pulling her under.

When she woke the next morning, the first thing she smelled was the chaos of the raid—smoke and saltwater, blood and sweat andpain.Wrapping herself in a silk robe, she padded along to the bath chambers and ran a steaming pool filled with rosehip oil. There, she let the warm water coax the fraught knots from her body, resting her head back against the edge of the pool. On the ledge next to her, Rasso snored on his back, every leg cocked in the air. She couldn’t quite remember why she’d ever found him frightening—the shredded Whitewing throat was like something from a distant dream.

In any case, she wouldn’t leave the bath chamber until she had formulated a plan for how to deal with Tiernan. Her mission could not succeed while he was still informing for the Bloodmoons.

She should go straight to Aspar, of course, although she hadn’t spoken to her commanding officer since the raid. The captain would be at Esmoldan’s Baths that evening, but it seemed far too great a risk when she’d only just convinced Lyrian of her innocence. Besides, telling Aspar would mean Tiernan losteverything.His career, his freedom—he’d certainly be thrown in Duncarzus—but also perhaps his life.

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