Page 60 of Silvercloak

Say something,she had begged herself, staring at her halo of silver-blond curls. Her pale blue scholar’s cloak was a luxurious, neatly pressed silk, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing it.

Say anything.

She could not remember what her voice even sounded like. The exact pitch had been lost to the dusty attic of time.

Watching her struggle, Uncle Mal had pulled something out of the top drawer.

“I picked something up for you last night, on my way past Torquil’s Tomes.The Great Adventures of the Lost Dragonborn.This is the first book, but there are five more published, and the sixth is being released in the spring.”

By spring, Saffron still had not spoken, but she had devoured all six of the availableLost Dragonborntomes. The sixth book ended on a massive cliffhanger, and there was still a year until the last installment, and she was dying to discuss it with someone. She had burst into the living room where her uncles played chess, brandished the book in the air like a wand, and said, “Dragons are fuckingawesome.”

The words had been hoarse, painful, rasping.

Freeing.

There had been a moment of stunned silence, in which Merin’s pincered fingers hovered over a bishop. Give them their due, her uncles did not erupt in joy or surprise, did not make any great fanfare of the moment, but rather acted like she hadn’t been silent for the better part of six years.

“Language, Saffron,” Merin had admonished, peering over his monocle before going back to his chess game.

Now, in the Bloodmoon mansion, disbelief felled her for the second time in the span of a few minutes.

The kingpin’s son was aLost Dragonbornnerd.

The revelation glittered with possibility. She could use this shared ground to her advantage, establish a rapport with Levan so that eventually, he would trust her with the Bloodmoons’ true motivations. He’d already shared with her his heritage. How much deeper could she go?

But before she could ask Levan about the book they both loved, he muttered, “I’ll wait for you outside.”

SAFFRON FOLLOWED LEVAN ANDRasso through the warded tunnels, discreetly studying the markings on the darkly lit walls. They told a story, albeit in the crude style of an ancient cave painting—the Divine Peaks of Kudano were filled with such art.

This sequence was as follows:

A figure walks through a forest.

A few steps later, they’re skewered by a bladebull’s furious horn.

The bull flees.

Another figure hunches over the corpse in grief.

From the folds of their cloak, they retrieve a miniature hourglass, like the one on Lyrian Celadon’s desk.

They turn it upside down, so the sand flows in a different direction.

Then, a single word:tempavicissan.

The second figure disappears again, and the bull reappears.

The original figure is unskewered.

The bull retreats.

The original figure is alone in the woods once more.

The hourglass-wielding figure approaches, takes the other figure by the hand, and leads them in another direction.

A simple depiction of timeweaving, Saff realized.

Heresy,according to the Augurests. But after what Levan had told Saff about his mother’s bloodline, it made all the more sense.

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