Page 122 of Turncloak

Again.

Could she sense that final unspoken word?

Saffron dropped her gaze to the hands curled in her lap. Levan waited for her to ask how he’d known, but instead she murmured, “That’s why you kept prompting me to tell the full truth in the aftermath of the raid. You knew I wasn’t just undercover—I was something far more fatal.”

Levan nodded grimly.

“You understand why I couldn’t tell you at first, don’t you?” She peered up through pale lashes. “I didn’t know how you’d take it, knowing I was a threat to your mother’s claim. But I don’t want the throne. You know that.”

“Yes, Silver. I know that.”

Levan sensed the cogs turning in her mind, the way she was casting everything in a new light. Understanding the depths of his mistrust with renewed perspective. Processing what this revelation meant for their joint quest.

“What do you mean by trouble with your magic?” she asked eventually.

So they were moving past the revelation with relative ease. Despite the tension in the tightly strung instrument of his body, Levan found himself a little lifted as one more secret fell away.

“It disobeys me, unless I’m acting from a place of pure and honorable intent. Healing seems to strengthen the bond. I’ve been able to compel a few times, but it refractures any progress I’ve made rebuilding the connection.” He raked his fingers through his salt-tangled hair. “Once we get into that cave, if there’s more sinister magic guarding the prophecy…I might be able to protect you. That, in itself, is a pure and honorable intent. But I may not be able to destroy, if such a thing is required. That would fall to you.”

Saffron was silent for a moment. Levan thought she must be horribly disappointed to lose her best weapon, but when he looked up at her at last, he saw not despondency or disenchantment but that same soft concern. It was almost too much to bear, like looking directly at the sun.

“That must feel…complicated. When you have such a fraught relationship with your power to begin with.”

He nodded again, stiff, tense, a little embarrassed.

“I didn’t want you here just because you’re powerful, Levan.”

“Why else would you—?”

His monstrous power was his only worth in this world.

“A complicated question,” she said, her voice soft and oddly sad.

The words whorled between them like smoke.

“The incense is working,” Levan noted, gesturing to the cølsa.

The incense, or her presence. Both strong enough to fend off the demons—for now.

“You’re still shivering.”

“I know.”

“There’s a whole bed of blankets here. They might not be as downy as Meraude’s, but…”

“I’m fine,” Levan said, knowing that if he got up onto that bed right now, he might not have the restraint to resist her.

“Always a martyr.” Saffron chuckled, tugging the topmost blanket off the bed and tossing it to him. It landed over his outstretched legs, and he didn’t pull it any farther up his body. All at once he felt rather ridiculous.

“Back on the cliffs…” Saffron started. “You didn’t like when I referenced how powerful you are. Was it because it reminded you of—”

“No,” Levan said, unwilling to spend another night reliving his childhood torture. “It’s because I’m not powerful. Not right now, not the way I usually am.”

Against his will, his mind drifted back to the last time he was truly powerless around Saffron Killoran.

Yet you’re the one pinned in place, and I’m the one who could hurt you if I so wanted to.

At the memory, his body reacted. The sharp pain in his impaled hand as she moved back and forth in his lap. The feeling of being wholly at her mercy.