Page 160 of Silvercloak

She gave it back.

When he’d given her his wand and saidhope,it hadn’t been a risk at all. He’d always been powerful enough to undo whatever she did on the other side of that door.

Gambling isn’t reckless if you’re good at it,she thought.

“Levan,” she whispered, closing the gap between the two of them. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please, forgive me.”

She pressed her body to his chest, felt the slow, steady beat of his heart against the frantic patter of her own. She gazed up at him, trying desperately to distract him with the only weapon she had left: the way they felt about each other.

Levan shoved his wand tip beneath her chin, pushing her face painfully upward. “I always win, Silver.” His fingers wove through the blond curls at the back of her head, but it was not affectionate. She fought a yelp as he dug into her hair. “Your magic cannot best mine.”

He was right.

There was no other way.

She pressed her breathless lips to his. A surge of emotion crested through her, an existential longing, a desperate desire, and she felt it mirrored in the way his body softened ever so slightly. A subtle yield, but it meant little. She would never be able to overpower him, and they both knew it.

The kiss deepened, intensified.

Saff dug one hand into the hollow of his hip; he let out a low, rough moan.

Her other hand pressed her wand against his stomach.

“Sen ammorten,” she said, grief permeating every inch of her body.

The killing spell leapt, a fork of lightning, a death kiss, and Levan staggered back, as though falling into an empty grave.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

THE IMPOSSIBLE PROPHECY HAD BEEN FULFILLED.

Levan’s eyes peeled open, staring, unseeing, at the ceiling of the shack. A lock of dark brown hair fell into his face, and his scarred lips were slightly parted in shock. His blade of a body, normally so sharp with tension, seemed horrifyingly empty.

She could not have done what she’d just done.

She couldnot.

And yet it had been the only way.

If she’d let him walk back into the shack, it would’ve been over. The Silvercloaks would have lost, and the Bloodmoons would certainly have executed her.

The enormity of it didn’t hit her yet. Instead, there was only disbelief, the same breed of shock she’d felt when her parents died, the sense that nothing this horrific could possibly be real. The feeling of standing on the edge of the Shard of Khulin, unable to comprehend the scale of the waves crashing down upon her.

Pure adrenaline shoved Saff into the room beyond.

The three Bloodmoons were stone statues in the kitchen. In the bedroom, Auria crouched over Aspar’s bleeding body, weeping profusely and pouring a series of tinctures down her captain’s throat in a desperate bid to revive her.

Aspar gurgled, then hacked up so much blood that Saffron knew there was no saving her.

Saffron crossed the room and sank to her knees before her captain.

“We got them,” she murmured, so dizzy she almost tipped, grabbing Aspar desperately by the shoulders. “We got them, Captain. You’re going to be commissioner. Stay with us.”

But Aspar’s gaze was weak, glassy, as the blood burbled down her chin.

Auria yanked Saffron back so hard her fingertips left bruises. “Get away from her,” she all but spat. “It’s your fault she’s dying.”

Saff shook her head vehemently. “I’ve been undercover this whole time. I’m the one who snuck Aspar intel about the first shipment, who told her we were retrieving the lox tonight. Tell her, Captain.”

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