Page 182 of Turncloak

A worried muscle flickered in Auria’s narrow, pale jaw. “The King’s Prophet foretold that the Bloodmoons would take the throne by force. The king therefore pressured the Grand Arbiter into allowing prophecy, at least royally sanctioned prophecy, into the courts as evidence of future crime. Dematus caved. Legally, the scarlets and all known associates are already guilty of treason.”

The cascade of revelations left Saffron breathless, and cursing a name she had cursed so many times of late.

Harrow.

No wonder he had gone on the run. The Fifth Prophecy was now evidence of his own treason, and if anyone found out what Sarcane had kept hidden all these centuries, the King’s Prophet would lose his life.

As would Saffron, if she couldn’t maneuver her way out of it.

She still had one card left to play: the Steel King’s letter, hastily hidden in the woods outside her childhood home in Lunes. But if there was a way to escape this situation without turning it over…

“You think it’ll hold?” She swallowed hard. “A treason charge.”

“I think you’ll be convicted with extraordinary ease. Unless…”

Saffron grimaced. “I prove I’m undercover.”

So that was why Auria was risking this unsanctioned conversation. Saffron was yet to be properly interrogated, and anything she said now to her former colleague would be unrecorded, inadmissible. A bureaucratic breach so unlike Auria Marriosan, and she was doing it to save Saffron.

“Do you have anything? Anything, Saffron.” Auria’s tone was pleading. “I’ve spoken to Jebat, and he’s willing to go over Karvas’s head with any evidence you can provide. Straight to Commissioner Dillans, who can pardon you—celebrate you—and push for a Bloodmoon-wide arrest.”

Yes, Saffron had something.

But it would be the end of Levan.

She no longer needed the Bloodmoons to achieve her goal—Lorissa Rezaran’s weaverwick wand had been destroyed, and if the Fifth Prophecy was anything to go by, their ascenite vaults paled in comparison to the Palace throne room. Saffron could travel to Nyrøth, find her own weaverwick, then follow the course of destiny toward Vallin’s highest seat. There she would have everything she needed to unmake twenty-something years and save her parents—and Levan’s. She wouldn’t let the continent descend into war.

There was nothing tying her to the Bloodmoons anymore, nothing tying her to Levan.

Nothing but a foolish, ill-fated love.

Perhaps they’d find their way back to each other, in another reality. Perhaps they wouldn’t.

It was too great a decision to make—too permanent, too ruinous.

Saffron ran her hands through her knotted, smoke-scented hair. “Has Levan told you anything?”

“Not a word since we brought him in.” Auria shook her head. “It’s like something has snapped inside him. Some tether to sanity, to reality…broken.”

“Maybe if I could talk to him…” Saff trailed off.

“I think you know we can’t allow that to happen.”

Saffron’s hand went to her necklace; the pendant that reminded both of her parents and of Levan. “When will I see him?”

It took a few beats for Auria to respond, as though a pause might somehow soften the blow. “Likely never. You’ll be questioned separately, held separately. Tried separately. Executed separately.”

Despair flared inside Saffron, hot and bright. There was nothing she could do to save them. If some genius chess move lingered just beyond her ken, she couldn’t see it. Not in her exhausted, terrified state.

“We’re running out of time, Saffron. They’ll be here to take you for interrogation in the next few moments. I already hear footsteps.”

Saffron’s mind took off at a sprint, everything around her blurring, as though she were a beast of prey fleeing through the woods so fast the colors smeared together.

There was so much Saffron wanted, needed, to do. She wanted to bring back her parents, to save the world, to redeem the Timeweavers and prevent the annihilation of her beloved homeland. But she also wanted Levan to be by her side throughout it all, not hanging from a noose outside the Palace steps. The thought was so profoundly terrible that it thrust a sharp pain through her chest.

She could not live with such a thing, even if there was a chance she might later undo it. She could not let him die, could not let him take his last breath believing that once again she had not chosen him. That he was not worth choosing at all.

Images fell through her mind like the royal suits in a polderdash deck.