Page 158 of Turncloak

Saffron laid all her cards on the table. “Do you know what brought Levan and me back together, after the Havenwood? Once I realized the depths of what I could do, I realized that I might be able to wind back twenty-odd years and save both of our parents. With enough ascenite—and Saints, there was more than enough ascenite in that throne room—I could do it, Harrow. Save his parents, save mine. And in doing so, lead us into a safer world. A world unravaged by war.”

Harrow voice was deathly quiet as he said, “No.”

Saffron didn’t know exactly what he was saying no to, but resolve was hardening inside her, iron forged into steel. She stood, all the cold leaving her at once as she mentally charted a path. “First, I need a weaverwick. Not just for the broader plan, but to make sure we have total control over how fate unfolds. So that we can undo any mistakes, keep bloodshed to a minimum. Levan destroyed his mother’s wand, and I’ve been unable to find another. But we’re a stone’s throw from Nyrøth, where there might still be—”

“Stop.” Harrow turned to face her, and she was surprised to see that he was crying quite heavily, snow coating his lashes and then melting into the warm salt of his tears. “Stop. I can’t—I need time to…I can’t. I just found out I’m going to play a part in the world’s end.”

“Harrow—”

“King Quintan recently reestablished the death penalty for traitors.” His voice was clotted. “Did you know that? We could hang for this very conversation.”

Saffron did not know that.

The revelation sent a lightning bolt of fear through her, not only because of what the Fifth Prophecy had foretold, but because of what she was doing now. If she was caught while still inside the Bloodmoons, and she couldn’t prove her undercover status, she would lose her life.

But before she could respond, the King’s Prophet walked away—not in the direction of Flarence, where Levan was taking Miret, but deeper into the trees above the clifftop. The small forest into which Relar had run not half an hour earlier.

Saffron looked around, a sense of unreality washing the world into strange light.

Across the Cinereal Sea was Nyrøth, the brutal, pain-loving nation whose king had colluded with Lyrian Celadon to wage war against her homeland. A hostile, unforgiving place, where she’d be in danger the moment she stepped over the border, and yet perhaps the best chance she had at securing a weaverwick wand.

Behind her was Flarence. Levan, frantically trying to save the last real family he had left. Levan sad, afraid, grieving. Levan angry and confused at the prophecy, Levan just a moment of weakness away from loxlure relapse, Levan, Levan, Levan.

After several moments of indecision, she closed her eyes, ignored all logic, all cause and effect, and asked her gut what she should do.

The answer was clear. She opened her eyes, pulled her sodden cloak tighter around herself, and set off through the clean white snow.

64

• • • •

Fight or Freedom

Levan laid the fragile body of his beloved mentor on a tavern bed.

Miret, who had been drifting in and out of consciousness on the bitterly cold journey back to the inn, sighed as his head hit the cushion. Levan couldn’t look at the hole in the old man’s side—he knew enough about anatomy to know that the scarshark hadn’t gouged any major organs, but the right-hand ladder of Miret’s abdominal muscles had been torn away like meat from a bone. A hunk of rib too, no doubt.

The old man, however, showed no pain. Rasso leapt up next to him on the bed, curling his warm body into the scholar’s unwounded side. Miret patted the beast’s head absently, though it seemed to cost him an immense amount of effort, and there was little affection to it. Muscle memory, plain and simple. Levan found himself more devastated by Miret’s psychological state than his physical wounds.

The kingpin cupped his palms around a lantern, warmth washing through his hands, his arms. The sensation was slightly painful as his frozen flesh thawed, like tiny icy shards piercing his skin, but this worked to his advantage—the rich pleasure-pain combination trickled a small amount of magic back into his well, which he used to evaporate the water from Miret’s clothes, but Levan left his own raiment cold and wet. The sensation was making him suffer, and the longer he could bear suffering, the more potent the rush of pleasure when said suffering finally ended.

Somewhat unbelievably, it was still light outside. For a few moments, the clotted winter clouds parted, despite the enduring snowfall. Streaks of low, buttery sunlight washed through the window, turning snowflakes into fireflies so bright Levan had to turn away.

He looked instead at his mentor, the pallor of his skin, the limpness of his body. Turmoil brayed inside him, and he could not help but give voice to it.

“What am I supposed to do?” Levan asked, voice low and hoarse. He was very thirsty from all the salt water he’d accidentally swallowed, and yet such a concern felt so small, so meaningless, in light of what he’d just learned. “I knew when I met Silver that she was going to be the beginning and end of everything. I just thought the stakes were a little more personal than the end of the world.”

Miret smiled emptily. “She has an apocalyptic energy to her, does she not? Ruq a’l valqamin, we call it in Eqora. The air of the end days. Usually a compliment to describe a mage who feels like a force of nature, but this is rather more literal.”

“Do you believe in predestiny?” Levan restlessly stalked Miret’s room in a bid to keep his teeth from chattering, his limbs from trembling. “That everything is already written.”

Miret drew his Saints stones from their velvet pouch in his inner cloak pocket, spilling the small painted rocks into his wrinkled palm. He frowned at them, a look of betrayal on his face, as though he’d been expecting them to bolster him and they’d fallen short.

“Once, I believed in the guiding hand of the Saints in all things. I believed in our own power to do what is right, in accordance with the will of the Sixteen, no matter what has been previously ordained by prophecy. I believed that the Saints’ light was powerful enough to guide us through anything, to bend magekind along the arc of goodness through magic and faith.” Miret shook his head, as though trying to dispel a ringing in his ears. “Now I have seen the truth. There is nothing out there but us. No court, no arc. Magekind has always been alone.”

Something in Levan dropped. “Before your brush with the void, did you believe that the Augurs were…what? Fraudulent?”

“Far from it.” Miret ran a desolate thumb over the bronze stone that represented Evisusari, the patron saint of Foreseeing. “I believed the act of prophecy foretold what would happen if magekind continued along its current path. But I also believed it was possible to change that path.”