Page 134 of Silvercloak

Everything in her leapt. Grabbing Tiernan by the ankle, she hauled him over the threshold, then tapped her hourglass again. The wall closed behind her, and she exhaled slowly, looking around.

They were in some kind of entry chamber, every square inch made of ascenite, the surrounding air cold and metallic. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, all of itglowingin a way plain ascenite did not, like the shining pearl-silver of a waxed moon. Enchanted with a kind of embalming power to keep Lorissa viable?

Scattered around the atrium were piles and piles and piles of coins, of smelted bars, of ascenite rings and necklaces and diadems, all gambled away by the helplessly addicted citizens of Atherin. More ascenite than Saffron had ever seen in her life.

The space was entirely devoid of noise. No longer could Saff hear scuttling feet or distant dripping, just a silence so absolute that it made all the hairs on her body stand on end. The unrelenting cold held her spine pin-straight.

From the entry chamber, an open doorway led into another space beyond. Leaving Tiernan just inside the threshold, Saff passed into a room six times the size of the atrium.

The central chamber’s ceiling was domed, a little like an Augurest temple, but hewn from raw ascenite rather than tempered purple glass. The floor tiles were carved into seven-pointed stars, starting with a single star in the center and spiraling outward in concentric circles. Silver sconces were bolted to the walls, flickering with a blue-ish light, and several other arches branched off the space: more vaults, filled floor-to-ceiling with ascenite treasures. Something cold rose in Saffron’s chest, a sense of awe and horror at what the Bloodmoons had built.

Right at the apex of the chamber was a raised platform—a block of solid ascenite worth more than the entire village of Lunes—upon which Lorissa Celadon, or LorissaRezaran,lay in death.

If Saff hadn’t known any better, she’d have said the corpse was an ice sculpture—almost entirely devoid of color, shining blue-white like a Nyrøthi glacier. The scarlet cloak was a shock of blood in the otherwise pale, pearlescent chamber.

Lorissa’s chestnut hair was plaited in a thick braid, resting on her chest beside folded hands. Her lashes were black crescents against her muted skin, and her lips were a deathly lilac. She looked so much younger than Saffron would’ve expected—Lyrian was in his sixties,after all—frozen in a moment of early motherhood, her own life just beginning. The body still smelled, but not of death. Ofmagic.Something clean and bright and metallic, with an underpinning of roses and earth.

There was something so mesmerizing about Lorissa, even in death. A kind of luring charisma, an innate demand for respect.

A chill scraped down Saffron’s spine, like a shovel over frosted earth. She had seen many a dead body before, but there was something profoundly disturbing about the corpse before her, about the glowing crypt in which she lay. It was so unnaturally silent, sostill,like thepraegeloscharm itself, like the whole of reality hung suspended, awaiting the queenpin’s next breath.

She could not bear to look away.

There was a legendary cliff on the southwestern tip of Daejin, sky-high stone cutting into the Serantic Ocean. The waves famously crashed over the Shard of Khulin with such astonishing height and force that it defied all nature—almost a thousand feet of towering water, if the lore held any truth. A vast yawning mouth of ocean biting down on the jutting bluff, minute after minute, century after century.

It was often said that to witness the waves of Khulin was to lose one’s mind, because the human head could not make sense of such magnitude. The fertile grassland atop the cliffs remained unfarmed for a thousand years, because no shepherd would work in such proximity to the waves. Daejin was frequently left out of trade routes, because no sailor worth their salt would willingly enter those waters.

Lorissa’s crypt made Saffron feel as though she was looking over the Shard of Khulin.

Awestruck, terrified, vaguely insane.

It was so damnquiet.

With immense effort, she hauled herself back to the atrium, remembering why she was here in the first place.

Tiernan’s body looked so frail, so angular, as it slumped against a large open chest filled with ascenpearl necklaces. In the sickly blue glow of the crypt, he too bore that glacial pallor, though without any of Lorissa’s innate gravitas. The sense that he was an ice sculpture, not a person, was only intensified by the silver cloak spilling around him—the only bolts of color were the sapphire brooch at his throat and the burgundy starburst at his chin.

Saff dragged her friend’s body into the vault farthest from the entrance. Hopefully the kingpin would only come to visit his wife, not check on the surrounding loot.

“I’ll come back for you,” she murmured, kissing her fingertip and touching it to Tiernan’s forehead, then the tip of his nose, then the jutting point of his chin, a mourning tradition from northern Vallin. One she’d been too traumatized to do for her parents.

A single tear spilled down her cheek. The salty warmth of it was even starker in the clean ice-brightness of the crypt.

She had endured so much, lost so much.

How did it still hurt like this?

She knew it had been a mistake to allow her fellow cadets to breach her emotional barriers. Sheknewit would only ever end like this. And yet she had done it anyway.

“Tempavicissan,” she said, as clearly as she could, tipping her hourglass and scraping her wand against the top.

The tunnel wall sank, and the threshold appeared.

The breath leaked out of her like water through a hole in a pail. She had cast too much, her well wholly depleted. Her legs were weak, foal-like, but she smoothed down her cloak and fixed a look of strength onto her tear-streaked face.

She was going to see Levan. And she was going to confront him about everything she had just uncovered.

WHEN SAFFRON ENTERED THE CELL AT AROUND FOUR IN THEmorning, Levan’s head lifted off his chest. He’d perhaps been dozing, but the red rims around his eyes suggested he hadn’t had any real sleep over the last three days.

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