Page 21 of Turncloak

“Nice plan. Isn’t working, though.” She pointedly held up her quiet wand. “We should try Jebat.”

“No.” Levan rose to his feet, smoothing down his scarlet cloak. Rasso raised a sleepy head, then lay back down with a sigh. “I want Marriosan. She has a grudge against us—first her grandfather dead at our hand, now her betrothed. Rookies with grudges are easier to manipulate and exploit than senior detectives with no skin in the game. We’ll wear her down eventually.”

The grim determination on Levan’s face sent another lance of dread through Saffron. The end justifies the means, she reassured herself. Any harm that befalls Auria in the coming months will be eventually rewritten. Some quiet corner of her conscience wondered just how far this logic might take her.

“Fine. Anything else?” She fought to keep the sarcastic honorifics out of her mouth, such as o’ great leader of mine and your royal highness and other jejune titles that might get her killed.

“Stay on the Whitewings. Follow them, figure out their goal, feed it back to me.”

“A dangerous pursuit. If they catch me, they’ll kill me.”

Levan gave her an expression so cutthroat she realized how entirely expendable she’d become; a pawn to move around a board, to sacrifice in the name of winning the broader game. “So don’t get caught.”

“And if I have to return to the pleasurehouses in the name of Whitewing infiltration?”

“Return?”

“That’s where I killed the last one.” She lifted her chin, imbued her gaze with pointed implication. “One of the more eventful threesomes I’ve participated in.”

For the briefest of moments, Levan went utterly still. She wondered if he was picturing her naked, writhing in pleasure with two mages who were not him. There was a dark flicker behind his eyes, an involuntary clenching of the knuckles, a dart of muscle in the jaw.

Then, with boreal detachment, “Do what you must.”

12

• • • •

Garnet Bark Daze

Auria awoke snarled in her sheets, eyes gummy with tears, betrothal tattoo burning between her ribs—and the voice of a former friend echoing through the tip of her wand.

“Et vocos, Auria Marriosan.”

Something inside her lurched awake.

Saffron had been in the Havenwood in a scarlet cloak—working with the Bloodmoons, perhaps, but she had helped Auria flee the scene when everything went south. Killoran’s presence carried that feeling of a memory inside a memory, the sense there was something important she’d forgotten, some piece of the puzzle lingering on the very periphery of her mind.

Solving that puzzle felt more crucial than ever, after learning of Tiernan’s treachery, after finding him murdered. Killoran could shed some light on exactly what had happened, how he’d been turned, how he’d ended up dead. She could offer an explanation that exonerated Tiernan’s name. Perhaps he’d been killed for resisting the Bloodmoons’ demands, instead of heeding them.

Oh, how Auria hoped that was true. Then she could grieve the mage she had loved so deeply, instead of the coward he was rumored to have become.

If she opened a line of communication with Killoran, the turncloak’s intel could help Auria ultimately bring the Bloodmoons down. They had slaughtered her grandfather, after all, then targeted her betrothed. It was personal, and nothing would give her greater satisfaction than to see them brought to their knees.

But a righteous, self-serving hesitation stayed her hand. A desire not to be tainted by the same ugly crimson, a desire to salvage her name and her reputation—which were already sustaining mortal damage, thanks to her close association with a known rat.

She asked herself what a future Grand Arbiter would do. Keep their hands clean, or take the riskier path, hoping it might lead to the downfall of the deadliest criminal organization in Atherin’s history. Such a victory could be a massive platform to the most powerful law enforcement seat in the country.

Auria, for once in her life, simply did not know what the right move was.

Nor did she care. Grief had hollowed her ambition into a desolate shell. She felt like something once lush now dried out, a pomegranate shucked of its seeds.

“Et vocos, Auria Marriosan,” came that same familiar voice.

Untangling herself from the bear trap of her bedspread, she reached out to the wandholder on her nightstand, grabbed her sapphire-studded willow wand, and hurled it across the circular bedroom. It collided with the far wall and fell to the ground with a clatter.

Saints, her head hurt. Aura migraines, true to her name. Holes of blinding white light piercing her vision, a pain so bad behind her eye sockets that she often vomited. She reached into her bedside drawer and pulled out a couple of garnet bark pills, swallowing them dry. Of course, she could let the pain ameliorate the magic in her well, but she’d never been good at enduring it.

Besides—she couldn’t bear for today to be any harder than it needed to be.