Page 177 of Turncloak

All these thoughts happened between one moment and the next, closely followed by another internal question:

How had she gotten inside the Saints hall?

Who had rescued and then reanimated her?

Her vision clearing slowly, vague smears of color and light and shade resolving into solid shapes, she peered up.

Above her, wand trained sharply at Saffron’s forehead, was a mage cobwebbed with scars from her own time as a statue. Frizzy ginger hair, missing ear, glasses askew on a pretty, pale face.

Auria.

72

• • • •

Saints, Forgive Me

Auria’s hand trembled as she trained her wand on Saffron.

She still associated her friend’s face with nights spent in the common room losing at polderdash, with spells of silence peppered with dirty jokes and fascinating facts about modern history, with hot chocolate and sarcasm and a general aversion to any manner of tidiness.

Not with this. Not with blood and fear and death.

She looked so vulnerable. Here, in the place where her parents had lived and died, in the hall of the Saints who should have saved them and didn’t. Her curls corkscrewed in a thousand stubborn directions. She cradled a broken wrist to her ribs, the bone jutting through skin, pain etched in all the lines and grooves of her face.

Auria’s heart hurt for her. She’d gone undercover, and it had gone wrong, and now she was badly trapped.

“Ans mederan,” she murmured, aiming the healing spell toward Saffron’s arm. In a braid-twirl of raw magic, the bone sealed itself back together in perfect alignment.

Saffron looked down at the mended wrist, then back up at Auria. “I thought it wasn’t worth risking your own neck to rescue me.”

Despite it all, Auria laughed. It was such an absurdly Saffron response, heavy with sarcasm and rich with scorn. “I was wrong, alright? But you’re safe now. I have you.”

“Safe.” The word dripped with cynicism.

“Yes.” Auria ignored the babble of arrest and casualty updates streaming through her wand. “The kingpin is about to be arrested, and if you testify against him, against the Bloodmoons…we could finally have an organizational bust.”

Saffron clambered to her feet then took a step back, wet boot heels squeaking on the tiles. “Not with Dematus and Karvas still—no. I’ll be thrown in Duncarzus with the rest of the scarlets.” A fraught head shake, gaze darting to the exit, to the village green where hell had broken loose. “I have to flee.”

“And go where? Freedom is never really freedom when you’re running from the law.”

“Plenty of countries don’t have extradition treaties with Vallin.”

“Mersina? Nomaden? You’d want a life there?”

Saffron thrust her chin and her wand higher. “King Quintan is about to pass a death penalty for traitors.”

Auria frowned. “What? No. We won’t go back to capital punishment.”

“Yes, we will.” Saffron’s voice was small, hollow. “He’s paranoid about the Bloodmoons coming for the throne—he’d kill them with his own bare hands if he had to.”

“No,” Auria repeated, stunned by this revelation, feeling a sort of internal shifting of tectonic plates. “The Grand Arbiter will never let that happen.”

“She’s not beyond bribe or blackmail, as we know.”

Auria lowered her wand, took a few steps closer to Saffron, but her friend backed away like a cornered animal. “It won’t come to that for you—neither the bars nor the gallows. Nissa, Jebat, and I can all fight your case, prove you’ve been undercover. And Karvas is not infallible. I defeated him in an inquest, and I can do it again. I’m quite good at arguing.”

“And if you can’t? If Karvas and Dematus are too powerful to overrule? What then, Auria?”