Page 183 of Turncloak

Levan, brow furrowed as he brought her father’s magic back to life around her neck.

Levan, his hand absently scratching behind Rasso’s furry ear.

Levan, reading a section from The Lost Dragonborn to help her fall asleep.

Levan, making fresh hot cocoa around a campfire, toasting his cup to hers.

Levan, teaching the apothecary’s grandson how to build a shelter.

Levan, shivering and broken in a bathtub.

Love crashed through her, fierce and destructive and cleansing all at once.

Surely there had to be a way to prove her innocence and evade the death penalty without destroying the mage she adored in the process. Surely there would be fair process, a trial, the chance to appeal, the opportunity to outsmart and outplay.

The new kingpin had spent the last weeks and months trying to find a better way. A way to leave behind the brutal brands and the rule of fear, a way to uphold his mother’s legacy without leaving such a trail of devastation in his wake. Many times, the quest had forced his hand. Many times, he had fallen short. But he was trying. She had to try too.

She thought of that toast in the snow-blanketed forest.

To a better world.

The overlapping footsteps stopped outside the cell door. There was a jangle of keys, a low murmuring.

Auria looked at her, hopeful and pleading.

“I have nothing.” Saffron’s voice splintered, her hand finding her parents’ necklace for what might be the final time. “No evidence. No proof I can give you.”

“Saints.” Auria paled to the color of bone. “Then you’re going to hang.”

75

• • • •

The Kingpin’s Interrogation

Levan had been in the interrogation chamber for several hours and had yet to speak a word.

First Auria Marriosan attempted to wrangle answers out of him—to no avail. Then Jebat threw every trick in the book at the captured kingpin, trying to get him to talk.

Nothing worked.

Not because of some grand plan on Levan’s behalf, not through willpower or wisdom or stubborn pride, but because he was not truly there in that room.

All the parts of him that usually thought and planned and felt—his mind, his intuition, his heart—had been decimated, leaving behind a wasteland entirely devoid of life. He was by turns numb and utterly ravaged by grief, and in both states, the questions levied by the increasingly frustrated detectives did not penetrate the fugue.

Miret was dead.

First his mother, then his father, now his surrogate grandfather.

At some point, Tenébo Jebat was replaced by a younger mage with long, ashy hair tied back in a ponytail. His interrogation technique was more sophisticated than the other attempts, a masterclass in dark psychology and subliminal warfare, but it didn’t crack Levan either. There was nothing left to crack. The kingpin simply dissociated out of his body, out of the room, out of the world.

After the sixth or maybe sixteenth hour, Sebran entered the room. Levan’s long-lost brother was almost enough to penetrate the emotional fog.

Sebran looked weak, exhausted, as he sat too heavily into the seat opposite Levan. His eyes were red with lack of sleep, his once brawny arms and chest drowning in the folds of his silver cloak.

When he spoke, his words destroyed anything that remained of Levan’s soul.

“Saffron Killoran has handed over evidence of Bloodmoon treachery. It would appear she was undercover all along.”