Page 179 of Turncloak

Auria crossed in a sprint and sank to her knees beside her arrest, wrenching the deminite manacles from her belt and cuffing them around Saffron’s newly healed wrists. She disarmed her captive the old-fashioned way, tugging the wand out of a concussion-loosed grip and tucking it into her waistband.

Her wand tip crackled again, but this time, it was not Jebat.

“Et vocos, Auria Marriosan.”

Auria was surprised by the twist of relief she felt at the sound of the low female voice.

“Nissa.”

“What’s happening?”

Trembling madly, Auria looked down at her prisoner with a burrowing sense of dismay.

“I have Saffron Killoran in custody.”

73

• • • •

The Red Veil

A red veil had descended behind Levan’s eyes.

Gone was the young boy who just wanted to heal.

He thought only of blood.

Alucia’s savage smile in the moments before she slayed him was imprinted on the back of his eyelids, stamped onto his psyche, branded over his heart.

His mind went blank, his body took over, and Whitewings fell. He spun in the air, bringing the dagger down on the papery skin of a throat. He twisted at the waist, slicing through a femoral artery. He ducked to the floor, cutting at heels and hamstrings, through wand-holding wrists and into gut-spilling bellies.

Killing curses forked toward him, but the highly trained animal of his body dodged with such perfect precision that they found different marks. Whitewings killed Whitewings, screaming in pain and confusion, bellowing at one another to stop using ammorten, but what else could they do? They were fighting a monster, and on their faces Levan saw the same reaction he’d had to the Sordai. The sense that all was lost, that they had made an immense mistake in coming here, that they’d pay for it with their lives.

But then—

—another color.

Silvercloaks spilled into the station, barking orders and spells, and whites began turning to stone. Terrified faces, wounded mages, transmuted to gurning statues.

Jolting from his violent reverie, Levan ducked behind a stone figure, heart thumping like a Bokolani battle drum, some of the crimson fog in his mind clearing. He surveyed the carnage, noting with vague horror that he’d killed more whites than he could count on his hands. Dark blood—blacker than it was red—soaked the flagstones, pooled at the feet of statues, trickled beneath the axelmare arches of the portari gates.

This had been so different from the killing of the wardholders in Flarence. That had hurt him, badly, but this had not. It had been mindless, furious, righteous. He hadn’t seen his foes as fellow human beings, only as enemies. As other.

It had not been in his mother’s name, nor at his father’s command.

This was all him.

Miret was wrong. He was a monster, after all.

There was no redemption. The prospect had always been a fallacy.

And judging by the hordes of Silvercloaks, he was about to be arrested for all he had done—unless he could get to the portari gate.

He was loath to leave Saffron after she’d saved his life, but he could get a message to her once he reached safety. He’d go down to Aredan, over Assassin’s Bay to Mersina, catch his breath on the isle of mercenaries and mendicants. She’d flee this skirmish without too much trouble—she was atop an axelmare and immune to magic, after all—providing she didn’t come back for him.

Shouts and footsteps thudded and blurred around him, echoing in the rafters. A Silvercloak tore toward him—Tenébo Jebat, the Sinyi mage he’d compelled in the Havenwood—and Levan knew he had to move.

The portari gate was twenty yards away, but statue curses flew with reckless abandon. Sweat poured from his temples, pooled in the small of his back, as he picked up a heavy Whitewing statue as a shield and broke into a grunting run.