Page 172 of Turncloak

It was all Levan could do not to stagger backwards again.

Harrow knew?

How could he possibly know such a thing? Simply through the royal grapevine, the whisper network among Highcloaks and lowborns alike? Or was there something more sinister at play?

Relar’s words: You can’t trust the King’s Prophet.

Levan’s vision vignetted, his throat blockaded with shock.

He could not speak, could not think.

Alucia was alive. Harrow was a traitor.

Beneath all the crosshatched emotions was one stronger than the rest: shame.

Failure.

He had not known any of this, but his father would’ve. His father knew everyone in the city, their weaknesses and strengths, their lies and loyalties. Levan, on the other hand, had been so consumed by his own internal struggles that he hadn’t seen what was right under his nose. Hadn’t even tried to pull at the strings of the Whitewing deaths. Had been too concerned with saving one apothecary’s grandson, neglecting the bigger picture.

“You aren’t dead,” Levan said, intelligently.

A feline grin spread across Alucia’s face, like a velvine who’d been pursuing the same inkmouse for a year and finally had him cornered. “No, though I can see why Vogolan wouldn’t have wanted to confess as much. I must admit I wasn’t devastated to learn of his death.”

From the bustling tavern, raucous laughter erupted onto the green. Lute strings twanged as someone in another world struck up a song.

“You overpowered Vogolan?” Levan stood taut and rigid. “Fled?”

“Brewers are notoriously weak in dueling.”

Yet the loyalty brand had not killed Vogolan for the lie of omission.

“Where have you been for the last three years?”

Another shrug, those black-embroidered shoulder pads lifting and lowering in the moonlight. “Organizing. Amassing loyalty. If you’d bothered to recruit another rat in the Silvercloaks, you’d know this—they’ve been watching our drophouse for months.” Another strange smile, the lashes of her lone eye fluttering almost…flirtatiously. Coyness, suggestive lust, used as a force of antagonism. “You look as hurt as you did on the night you learned what I really was. Haven’t the last three years hardened that hurt into anger? It’s surprising that you haven’t channeled more energy into destroying us, especially given the heavy losses we’ve dealt recently. Sando Segal should’ve set you ablaze with fury.”

Levan felt as though his ribs were being plucked like the nearby lute. “You’ve been trying to provoke us? Because—why?”

“First, because you killed my brother. But also to lure you to our door.”

“And, what? Kill me?”

She laughed, bright and cruel. “Taking you prisoner would’ve been preferable. Supplanting myself at the head of your very lucrative operation.”

“To what end? Why do you want or need so much wealth?”

“The same reason you do,” Alucia said, though he had never confided in her the truth about his mother lying in the ascenite crypt. “So that I never have to feel powerless again.”

Her own childhood had been cratered with tragedy, having spent several years in juvenile detention for a crime she never committed. By her own admission, she’d taken the concept of double jeopardy slightly too far.

Levan thought of those nights spent in his bed, making love, reflecting on their childhoods, revealing the long shadows cast over their hearts.

“Was any of it ever real?” he muttered, loathing the vulnerability of the question.

“No.” The word came swift and sure as a judge’s gavel, though perhaps too swift, too sure.

“Even when we had the holly tattooed on our ribs?”

Behind Alucia, her subordinates exchanged bemused glances.