Page 69 of Silvercloak

Dead because of her. Because of a single misstep.

Auria would never recover. Would she know that it had been Saff’s fault? Would she connect those damning dots? She was one of the best detectives Atherin had ever seen. Of course she would see the bigger picture—and Saffron’s role in it.

“Oh, and Filthcloak?” Vogolan growled, raising his wand. “Don’t approach your former captain again without our consent. That is an order, and to refute that order would be a death sentence, as far as your brand is concerned.” He lowered the tip to her forearm, a hungry, almost feral expression on his greasy face. “Sen efractan.”

The bones should have snapped in an instant.

Should have,had Saffron not been immune.

Reeling, she couldn’t cast an illusion fast enough.

When nothing happened, a white bolt of fear snapped through Saffron, hot and fast.

Vogolan peered down at his wand, frowned, then repeated, “Sen efractan.”

Again, nothing happened.

“Invisible shield,” she said calmly. “I cast it before I ever set foot in this room. But nice try.”

Yet slowly, terribly, the pieces arranged themselves in Vogolan’s mind. He looked up at her, a look of cold accusation in his pallid eyes, the truth of it all playing out over his sallow face.

“You’re immune to magic,” he drawled, pupils flashing with a satisfied glint. “That’s why you willingly drank the truth elixir. That’s why you so willingly offered yourself to the brand. You’re still a Silver—”

“Sen ammorten,” Saffron said, and the killing spell landed true.

STARING AT VOGOLAN’S LIFELESS CORPSE—A CRUMPLE OFscarlet silk, grayish skin, and oily hair—Saffron waited for the guilt to crash through her, waited to feel even the slightest ebb of remorse, but it never came.

The world was a better place without Porrol Vogolan.

She was glad she had not hesitated.

And yet … what did it mean, that she had not even blinked? That the decision had been made between one heartbeat and the next? Had it been borne from necessity, to keep her fatal secret, or from anger—a desire to avenge Auria’s grandfather?

Which motivation would be worse?

No matter. The simple fact was that it was done, and she felt nothing but relief.

And now she had a body to dispose of.

Not for the first time in recent days, she wished theportaricharm hadn’t been stripped out of every wand in the land. How simple it would be to transport them both out of the city, to head down to the coast and dump Vogolan over the cliffs of Sarosan into the Sleepless Sea. Or even just down to the incinerator, so that she could turn his ashes into a gemstone and hand it to the first lox-addicted mage shecame across. Though she supposed that was preciselywhythe transportation spell had been outlawed to begin with. Corpses should not be so easy to hide.

Nor could she simply make the corpse disappear. One of the cardinal rules of magic was that something could not be turned to nothing. There was whatever Levan had done to usher Tenea’s spiritelsewhere,but Saffron didn’t understand that magic, let alone how to wield it.

She mentally rifled through her old stack of case files, trying to recall any particularly ingenious methods of corpse disposal, but none came to her. There was one serial killer who’d used waneweed to shrink his victims down to palm-size, but he did thatbeforeending their lives. And besides, leaving the mansion to seek out waneweed would require leaving a dead body in her bedroom for anyone—namely Levan—to stumble upon.

Saffron pressed her eyes closed and did what she always did when she needed to channel brilliance: asked herself what Auria would do. Auria, with her encyclopedic knowledge of magic, with her love for rare spellwork and obscure charms whose uses had long become obsolete.

Auria.

Slowly, an idea came to her—drip by drip, then all at once.

She opened her eyes and raised her wand, aiming it at Vogolan’s gut. “Sen effigias.”

She wasn’t wholly sure whether the curse would work on a cadaver, but sure enough, Vogolan turned from flesh and blood to pure stone.

“Et ascevolo,” she incanted, lifting her wand up, guiding Vogolan’s stone form to the high ceiling.

And then she let it drop.

---