Page 95 of Silvercloak

Saffron made a show of considering the proposal: a notched frown, a finger tapping her bottom lip. “Two conditions.”

Levan looked up, surprised. “Which are?”

“Number one, we don’t wear scarlet cloaks. I don’t want to spoil it for all the other fans. They’ll run in the opposite direction if they see us.”

“Fine. Number two?”

“You answer one question truthfully.”

He smirked. “I thought you’d gotten all the invasive questions out of your system when I was addled with truth elixir.” Levan studied her with interest, the same way she imagined him searching for an obscure word’s meaning in theLost Dragonbornglossary. “But go ahead.”

Saffron had many to choose from.

Why do you need a necromancer?

Who did you love and lose?

How did your mother die?

What does your fatherwant?

But she found that none of these were what needled at her most. What needled at her most washim.How he could be so ruthless, so cruel, without breaking a sweat. Did it come from his own whims and desires, or from the brand? Was Lyrian pulling the puppet strings? Did Levan hunger for violence, or was he fulfilling a fate dealt to him at birth?

Eventually, she settled on, “Do you want to be a Bloodmoon? Do you truly want this life? Or are you only here because of the brand?”

He gave her a pointed, displeased look. “That’s three questions.”

Saff snorted. “AndI’mpedantic?”

“We both are. It’s why we get along.”

“Alright, let me rephrase. Do you have a choice but to be a Bloodmoon?”

His expression darkened. “That’s not something I often think about.”

Saff used her tried-and-tested technique: she said nothing, in the hopes he would fill the silence.

“No, I suppose I don’t have a choice,” he said finally. “But even if I did, I would still choose my family.”

Another notch in the similarity column.

Everything Saff had ever done, good or bad or downright heinous, had been for hers.

The riverboat canted suddenly over a current, and she threw out an arm to steady herself. She felt a little faint then, and leaned back against the wall for support, her vision vignetting at the edges. Now that the adrenaline of the encounter with the necromancer had faded, the effects of her overcasting hit her at full force. A light tremble started at her fingertips and spread to her shoulders. She pressed her eyes shut, trying to right herself.

“Are you alright?” Levan asked, and it was far less wooden than the first time he’d asked her that, hours after she’d been branded. A soft emphasis on the final syllable.

“Just depleted. I cast too much. I’ll have to refill once we’re back.”

He sighed. “Me too.”

There was a strangely loaded pause, in which they considered what each other might do in the pursuit of pleasure. Her breath hitched slightly as their gazes met, and there was a sort of crackle, a spark, a scintilla ofsomethingthat Saffron did not trust.His cerulean eyes, no longer so flat and lifeless, raked over her halo of silver-blond curls, down to the place where they ended at her waist.

For a few beats, the truth of who and what they were fell away. A fading mist, a dropped drawbridge, the vines around their ankles melting into the earth.

In that moment, they were just two mages in need of power.

Feed me,said the empty well inside her,feed me now, because it will feel so good.

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