Page 89 of Silvercloak

She was the knock the whole world feared.

There was the sound of footsteps approaching from inside the house, a brief pause, and then the sound of decidedly more hurried footsteps disappearing again.

“Sen aperturan,” Segal hissed at the door, and it blasted clean off its hinges.

As Levan raised his wand and crossed the threshold, there was a sickening squelch, and he became ensnared in a kind of invisible membrane. Pulling himself free, his face and hands—the only bare skin on his body—mottled like a bruise before erupting in a grotesque crosshatch of welts.

Levan grunted roughly, tapping his wand to the affected areas and mutteringans mederan.The welts healed in an instant, and he sprinted down the hallway as though nothing had deterred him.

Saff could barely disguise her astonishment.

He was as powerful a Healer as he was an Enchanter. And with a memory as vast and exhaustive as his, she had to assume he’d mastered brewing too. A mage with three classes was almost unheard of—Auria was the only other Saff had ever met.

Rasso clambered over the discarded pane of wood into the dank corridor and hared after their target.

“Sen ammorten,” came a female cry from a room at the end of the corridor.

A male grunt. A lupine growl.

Had Levan dodged the killing curse? Had Rasso?

Segal burst into the room behind him. Saff conjured a mattermantic spellshield and followed, creeping through the doorway with a cold, misty dread settling in her lungs. Her arm quavered beneath the effort of holding the enchantment—she was already depleted from the illusionwork on the boat—and she knew she’d have to exact some pain on herself if she wanted to ameliorate her remaining power.

The aubergine-colored kitchen had a solid ascenite island in the center—though the townhouse was narrow from the outside, it had been internally enchanted to create a capacious area. Saff stared in bemusement at the island. How had a lowly necromancer like Zares, who drank in an establishment like the Vant Sod, garnered enough wealth to afford such a mammoth block of ascenite? Did she sell her unlawful services to weeping widows desperate to revive their loved ones?

Zares ducked behind the farthest side of the island, while Levan crouched on the floor beside Rasso, wand outstretched. Tiny flames flickered in a set of sconces bolted to the walls, the fire white-hot and strange. Three velvines perched atop the oak rafters, watching the scene with utter disinterest. A total lack of loyalty to their necromancing mistress.

“Sen effigias,” Levan snarled—clearly trying to take Zares alive—but the spell chinked the side of the island instead of meeting its mark.

Silently, Levan gestured behind him for Segal to wrap one way around the island while he went the other.

Segal crept around the edge, but was ensnared by another invisible membrane. This one was harder to wrench free from—or maybe he just lacked Levan’s raw strength—and Segal dropped his wand in an instant, making fraught gulping sounds.

Zares leapt to her feet.

She was around fifty or sixty, with long, straggly gray hair and feral blue eyes. Her olive skin was the faded leather of an old purse, and her cloak hung off her skeletal frame.

“Az-ammorti,” the necromancer bellowed—the killing curse used by Eqorans and the Mersini alike.

The forked spell struck Segal square in the chest.

He did not fall to the ground, but instead hung suspended in the membrane, like a dead spider dangling from a web.

“Az-ammorti,” Zares shouted once more, and this time the curse darted directly at Saff’s face. She dropped to the ground, because although the spell could not kill her, she could not let Levanknowit couldn’t kill her.

“Sen effigias,” Levan snarled, aiming his wand up at Zares from his crouch on the floor.

Zares ducked back behind the island.

“Az-iruani,” she yelled, voice rasping and desperate, and a chandelier tore loose from the ceiling above Levan’s head. He hurled his body on top of Rasso, taking the blow to his back with a gutturalooft.

Glass shattered everywhere, and Saff grabbed a shard that skittered to her feet. Dragging it across her forearm, she cringed as pain surgedtoward the cut, as blood welled in the peeled skin, her flesh parting like ripe fruit. She’d gone too deep, and magic could not heal it, but the final vestiges of power in her well deepened and brightened.

Zares had ducked behind the island once more, and Saffron didn’t have a clear shot.

Time to lure her out.

“Sen lusio dulipsan,” she whispered, and the illusion sprang from her wand.

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