Page 158 of Silvercloak

A long, potent beat. He crawled toward her on his hands and knees, cupping her sweat-slicked face in his cool golden hand. His blazing blue eyes searched hers so deeply it was like he was mining for ascenite at the bottom.

Everything in her hurt.

And then their lips met, and a shiver rolled through her, and he said a single word so softly she almost missed it.

“Hope.”

SAFFRON FELT AS THOUGH SHE WERE STANDING IN A CEMETERY,drenched in the scarlet light of a true bloodmoon. All around her were graves of those already fallen: those she had lost, and those she had fought to save, and those she had killed with her own hand, each headstone a solid, immovable weight upon her chest.

Neatras and Kasan. An uncle, though she knew not which. Tiernan. Her mother and father.

In the front row of the cemetery was a neat line of open graves, awaiting their bodies.

And it was up to Saffron who would claim each one.

An awful power, and yet more awful still not to wield it.

This was the final play. The last square before the Flight of the Raven was complete.

“I don’t have a wand,” Saffron muttered.

Without hesitation, Levan handed her his.

Saints.He was putting all his trust and faith in her. He was putting his life, his fate, in her hands. And it felt how it had when she’d severed his hand—a curse, a burden.

Saffron pressed her eye against the crack in the pantry door.

Beyond it, the carnage roiled on, even more bodies on the ground. Tas was dead, as was Detective Alirrol. Lyrian, once again casting killing curses with reckless abandon, was flanked by Castian and Segal. Castian wielded wind so powerful that the roof had blown off the shack, while Segal fired vague disarmament curses at the Silvercloaks crouched behind the bed. But there was something wrong with Segal’s wand—the spells trickled out in pathetic tufts of mist, falling dramatically short of their marks.

Aspar and Auria, both still in gas masks, tried to strike their opponents witheffigiasspells. One velvine was perched on Auria’s shoulders, black-furred and arch-backed, but Aspar’s velvine lay dead on the ground, spine snapped, eyes faded from indigo to gray.

Castian gusted the bed frame into the open sky above, sending it smashing into the nearest wyrmwood.

The Silvercloaks were completely exposed.

Not a moment too soon, Saffron gripped Levan’s wand and uttered, “Sen praegelos.”

The world stood still, and the spell felt strong.

She didn’t have much ascenite out here in the Havenwood, but she had Rasso to bolster her, and a magical well full of pain and pleasure. From the intimacy she’d shared with Levan, and from the world-ending hurt of hearing her uncle’s murder ordered. From the historic loss of her parents, and from the righteous sense of purpose that had fueled her since. All of it so potent she felt it in her body and her heart, all of it churning together in one fearsome pot.

Behind her, Levan crouched perfectly frozen. The emotion in his eyes was so richly textured she couldn’t wholly parse it.

He wouldn’t see what she was doing while time was held still. Only the outcome.

She stepped into the room.

The shack was decimated. Copper pots and pans were scattered all over the floor, bent and misshapen. Castian had blown holes in the walls, and a white owl hung suspended over the roof, as though it couldn’t resist getting a better look. The colored starbursts of various spells streaked the air, their paths frozen with time. It was almost festive, like strings of twinkling winter solstice lights.

On one side of the room, Aspar and Auria crouched beside Detective Alirrol’s lifeless body. Auria’s pale face was pinned wide with terror. Next to her, Aspar had been struck square in the chest by a spell Saffron only vaguely recognized—not the pale shimmer ofsen ammorten,but rather a vicious shining scarlet, like a pool of blood.

Dread coiled through Saffron’s stomach. It would kill the captain, albeit slowly. The caster clearly planned to extract information before her demise. Information about Saffron, no doubt.

Castian had been caught by aneffigiasspell—turning to stone from the heart outward.

Up close, Segal’s face was the picture of wrongness. His Risen irises were a single shade darker than the whites of his eyes, but now that he was frozen long enough to study in earnest, Saff saw that they were not blank at all, but rather churning from behind, fromwithin. She could not say whether the monster who had murdered her parents was still in there, or whether he had become something else entirely—could not say, with any amount of certainty, which would be worse.

Saffron closed her eyes, picturing the cemetery once more.

---