Page 151 of Turncloak

“Miret!” Saffron called over the inky water, hoping the Sordai would not comprehend—especially when Ancient Sarthi was the common language last time the monster had walked Ascenfall. “Check the chest for the relic wand.”

Miret dragged himself toward the chest, though the sloughing movement was weak, unhurried, as though he could not convince his body to care.

Saffron turned her gaze to raise another spellshield, and though her aim was true and it held up the Sordai, the monster was doing something different. It had gained enough form from the magic it consumed to have something resembling a palm, and it was this oar-shaped extremity that it raised in the air now, expectant, charged.

Through bottomless almost-eyes, it studied her so slowly, so hungrily, so deliberately that every muscle in Saffron’s body begged her to flee. Those distant ancestors wailed a warning from beyond the veil, but her magical immunity would protect her—it had to, this gift from her father, bestowed upon her in the name of this very quest, handed down like a beloved cloak, born from—

The Sordai thrust its palm outward, loosing a cord of violent, blinding white.

The whole cave illuminated like a dying sun.

The cord locked on to Saffron like a manacle, like a kiss of death.

Her father’s protection failed.

Something was being pulled from her, lassoed on the rope of sinister magic. Her will to live. Her very soul. Perhaps this was a power so ancient and arcane that a lone mage’s sacrifice could not even begin to contain it.

For several moments—maybe seconds, maybe centuries—Saffron felt a sense of peace as the desire to exist bled from her.

How much easier it would be to relinquish all the struggles that kept her moving forward. How much easier it would be to surrender. She could rest, for the first time in her adult life. She could simply be. Empty of that poisonous desire for revenge, empty of that heavy sense of duty, of obligation. She would be so light, so free.

It would feel so good—was already feeling so good.

She sighed around the yanking, tugging sensation, at the cord of white pulling behind her ribs. There was pleasure in it, so much pleasure, and what was a mage without pleasure? She’d never felt pleasure like it, the euphoric texture, the undercurrent of rightness, every cell in her body glowing as though bathed in saintly light.

True acquiescence was close. It brought with it a dreamy, floating feeling, like dying peacefully in one’s sleep. Why had she ever made it so difficult for herself? Why had she turned every day into a fraught mission for something greater? Why had she not just let herself be? Exist, exist, that’s all, unburdened by petty human wants.

Distantly, someone was roaring.

“SILVER! Fight! Fight, Silver!”

A male, ragged roar, familiar, aching.

Some internal hand grabbed onto the rope of grotesque soul magic and held it fast.

The Sordai grunted its displeasure.

“Yes! Silver, that’s it! Whatever you’re doing—keep doing it!”

Levan, his name.

Serious and tender, soft and kind and tormented, devastatingly smart, a Healer, a dragon nerd, a gifted writer, a tortured little boy, a mage with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was so many things, but above all else, she wanted him to be hers. She wanted to feel his heart beating through the warm skin of his chest as she rested her head against it. She wanted to feel his fingers stroke her hair, wanted to press a kiss against his temple, his branded heart.

Wanted to love him.

Loved him already.

Enough to hold on.

Now the cord of soul magic was not just halted—she was tugging it, inch by painstaking inch, back into herself. And it hurt, Saints, it hurt to go against nature, to go against what the animal of her body so craved, to beat back oblivion, to tap into her higher mind, her higher purpose.

Purpose. Purpose had brought her here.

Her hand found the wooden pendant resting between her collarbones.

She thought of her mother, her father, her home in Lunes, how badly she wanted to go back.

The brush of her father’s lips on her forehead as he carried her up the spiral staircase, after she’d fallen asleep by the fire following a long illusion-practicing session. Her mother’s laugh as she danced around the kitchen, tipsy on honeywine and on life. The swoop in her own belly as she careened around the village on a flying carpet, the whooping and hollering of the Sleeping Wolf’s patrons as they cheered her on. The weeping silence of that same tavern following her dead parents’ jeweling ceremony, the new weight of the pendant around her young neck.