Page 184 of Turncloak

Levan stared down at his hands, manacled to a table in short-chained cuffs.

Saffron, who brought him incense to burn away the scent of nightpoppy. Saffron, who held him as he tried not to weep. Saffron, who had outplayed him, who had once again not chosen him.

Of course she hadn’t.

He was a monster.

He was beyond redemption.

He was nothing.

All of this played out in some deep cave of Levan’s mind, without rising as far as his facial expressions or body language. Sebran found this utter lack of reaction infuriating, fist clenching at his side. He could not use his compelling to force a response when Levan was bound in deminite. The irony, that such bounds offered them both protection—from each other, from themselves.

“You’re going to hang. A mercy you do not deserve.”

Levan was very far away from it all, in a similarly dissociative haze to the kind he experienced while on loxlure, only without the raw animal pleasure.

Loxlure.

He would give anything for it right now. That was the one desire capable of cutting through the oblivion. His whole body curled around the pit of his stomach, the intensity of the craving turning him inside out.

Sebran leaned forward, something terrible and raw in those dark brown eyes. “I burned your mansion to the ground. It’s naught but ash.”

The faintest reaction flickered beneath Levan’s fugue.

The crypt. His parents’ bodies.

Everything was gone, yet all he could think about was loxlure. The first rush of euphoria, like the crest of an orgasm but more drawn out. Broader, deeper, better. And then the oblivion. Not the raw, grief-stricken oblivion he currently felt, but something blissful and pure, like an embryo in a womb.

At the very height of his addiction, the black substance had ceased to provide any of this—no euphoria, no oblivion. He had to take it just to feel normal. But since he’d gone two years without it, that first time would be pure heaven.

Sebran grew increasingly irate at Levan’s lack of response. He’d obviously assumed these pieces of information—his lover’s betrayal, his death penalty, his home burned to ash—would cut through his silence, would force the kingpin to talk, but revelations only seemed to drive him deeper inside the labyrinth of his own mind.

When Sebran got up and left for what would likely be the last time, Levan ran his brother’s words through the loom of his ruined heart.

You are fundamentally broken, Levan.

And there is no redemption, whether you want it or not.

Several hours later, Levan was back in his holding cell awaiting transportation to Duncarzus. The wasteland of his consciousness was repopulating with thoughts, feelings, memories, each one of them fresh agony.

He thought of his brother’s hateful stare, and of their time as children in the Havenwood. Of the map they used to study, pressing pins into the places they might one day adventure to: the southern tip of Mersina, a valley in Laudon, the craggy heart of Nomaden. Shishai and Soral and Suva, a speck-sized island in the Ashen Narrows. He thought of the boat they’d made of old rotting crates, how they’d pretended to be pirates plotting their path around the world.

He thought of Miret, of all the thousands of hours the kooky academic had spent teaching him how to defend himself, of how little it had mattered in the end. He thought of half-moon spectacles, of colored Saints stones, of leathery laughter, of a beloved library burned to ash. He thought of a blue-cloaked body tumbling from atop an axelmare’s skeletal black back, lifeless before it hit the bloodied ground.

He slammed his manacled wrists into his forehead over and over again, trying to banish the memories. It hurt too much, and there was no release, no escape.

If he could not have loxlure, at least he could have death.

A release from the pain at last, because this was too much for anyone to bear, too much grief, too much relentless suffering. And yet, did he deserve such relief? He had murdered sixteen mages after Alucia was killed, when the red veil had fallen behind his eyes. He had sentenced sixteen families to this same devastating loss.

I am a monster, and everyone knows monsters exist to be slain.

There was the jangle of keys, and then somewhere beyond his cage—both mental and literal—two figures appeared. Vel Karvas, Captain of the Order of the Silvercloaks, and a lone streetwatcher.

“We’re here to transport you to Duncarzus,” the captain said evenly, though the black ring tattoos on his throat rippled and warped as he swallowed hard.

Levan followed Karvas and the streetwatcher through the halls of the Order, ankles and wrists bound in so much heavy deminite that he shuffled rather than walked. They passed the common room, where Levan had waged battle against Marriosan and Naszi, and the hospital wing, where he had healed half a dozen patients. Somewhere low in his ribs, he felt a brief pang of loss, regret. He would never heal again, never feel that rush of pure, clean satisfaction.