Page 30 of Silvercloak

“Please.” The word was laden with grief, its single syllable sagging in the middle. “I had a daughter your age, and I cannot watch another …” Neatras stared down at his liver-spotted hands as though they belonged to someone else. He wore a deminite cuff around one wrist. He peered up at her pleadingly through slate eyes winged with wrinkles. “You feel it already, don’t you? The restlessness in the tips of your fingers, in the space behind your ribs. Like you won’t be calm until you lay down more ascens. Until you win again.”

Saffron searched herself and found him to be right. The initial euphoria from the blackcherry sour had almost worn off, replaced by a jittering disquiet. There were subtle aches in her body that hadn’t been there before, and the craving for another drink, another gamble, was so intense she could think of little else.

But she had to lose all her ascens.It was crucial to the plan.

“Nothing will ever be enough for you again.” Though his voice was low, quiet, he’d abandoned all effort to speak through his teeth. “You won’t stop until the debt is too high, and the debt isbinding. Do you understand the meaning of the word? You’ll soon find yourself dancing naked in one of those glass jars, hoping that maybe in a few months or years or decades, the meager tips will finally be enough to clear your balance slip.”

This is what finally got through to her.

The naked dancers … they were trapped there until tips paid their debts?

What if that happened toher? What if she wasn’t offered the option of receiving the brand? What if they saw a young woman whose nude dancing would reap plentiful ascens and shrunk her down with waneweed before she could protest otherwise?

Would Aspar do anything to help her then?

“This is my daughter.” Neatras picked up the roulette ball, and the eye—for it was definitely, unmistakably an eye—swirled to look at Saff. “She resisted the glass jars, and now … all that she is exists in this ball, and she must watch day after day as her father is complicit in this hell. And so I beg you one last time. Go home.”

The final words were rough, desperate.

Saffron stood from the roulette table and walked away.

She needed to regroup, to restack her emotional defenses. One of the first things she’d learned on the streetwatch was that it’s almost always better to take an extra beat to steady yourself before diving headfirst into danger. Professor Vertillon, a decorated colonel in the Wielder corps, said that an extra moment of inaction is usually safer than hastily executed action.

Catching her breath would not cost Saffron anything, in the long run.

She pushed her way toward a sign that readACHULLAH TERRACE. The outside decking area was abuzz with gamblers sitting on beanbags around low tables, and the smoke choked in Saff’s lungs. Dodging a waiter carrying a blown-glass pipe of ruby and bronze, Saff hurtled down several wooden service steps and onto the uneven cobbles of a dusk-darkened alley. It snaked around the nearest buildings, and Saff followed it until the chafing laughter from the terrace was a distant echo, and the loudest sound was the roar of blood in her ears.

Pressing back against a cold, rough wall, Saff clutched her knees and lowered her head, forcing her breaths to steady. Her vision canted sideways, terror throwing her off-kilter, but she focused on the rhythmic filling and emptying of her lungs until the stars across her gaze faded.

Slowly, doggedly, she forced her spiraling thoughts into tidy columns.

Everything was going to be alright. Sheknewthat.

When she had touched the relic wand during the final assessment, it had shown her a vision so clear it could only be prophecy. And Aspar had confirmed that all prophecy wasreal.Yes, the captain was a zealotabout such things, but Saffron had seen it with her own eyes, hadfeltit resonate in the deepest corners of her chest. She didn’t understand how or why the prophecy had been cast, only that it had.

Cera belrère.It is written.

She was not going to end up in a jar. She was going to become a Bloodmoon.

The croupier was wrong. She had nothing to fear.

She wiped the arm of her cloak across her clammy forehead. Her thick silver-blond curls stuck wetly to the back of her neck, and the aches in her body grew deeper, more bruise-like. Saints, she wanted another blackcherry sour. She wanted it like she wanted air.

Standing up and turning back toward the gamehouse, however, she heard an echoing cry of anguish from a nearby alley.

No, not anguish.

Agony.

A roar, bloodcurdling and coarse.

Well-drilled instincts sparked beneath her skin. Saffron was a trained Silvercloak, and trained Silvercloaks always went toward the danger.

Heart thudding, she drew her wand and pointed it at the soles of her boots.

“Et aquies.”

The muffling charm took immediate effect. She crept silently down the alley, rounding several corners before a muddle of human shapes came into view.

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