Page 29 of Turncloak

Stricken, Auria cast her gaze around the street, locking on the backs of two navy-cloaked Enchanters scurrying toward the portari gate.

“I do.” Auria pushed past the streetwatchers and hastened toward the witnesses. Saffron tucked in close behind her. “I’ll bring them down to headquarters now.”

“Heeded.”

The call ended, but Auria kept her wand squared in front of her. Even though the suspect was in custody, Saffron could tell Auria had been rattled by the notion of more Whitewings appearing to silence the witnesses.

Taking a deep, self-loathing breath, Saffron quickened her pace and fell into step beside the detective. “Auria.”

Auria lost her footing, jerking her body away as though Saffron carried a highly infectious and invariably fatal disease. The hole on the side of her head where her ear should’ve been looked stark and strange in the shadowy streetlight.

She shook her head fiercely. “No. No, Saffron, you can’t be here.”

“Please. Let me have two minutes.”

“I don’t have two minutes.”

Saffron touched her fingertips to Auria’s forearm, gently enough not to rattle her former colleague. She had no idea what the gifted mage thought of her after the rewritten events of the Havenwood, in which Auria no longer recalled their conversation about being undercover, and in which Saffron—in a galling scarlet cloak—had helped Auria flee the scene.

Auria swiveled on her heel and ripped her arm away. The expression on her face was like none Saffron had ever seen—rage and thunder, but something darker and deeper still, like a haunting, like a…child. Like Saffron must have looked all those years ago, seeing her parents’ bodies for the first time.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Auria whispered, the words sewn together with unimaginable hurt.

Saffron took an instinctive step back. “Please, let me—”

“No.”

“Surely you want to know what really happened to Tiernan. There’s more to it than you think.”

Breaking her gaze to scan the street, Auria hissed in frustration—she’d lost the eyewitnesses. She strode toward the portari gate at an almost-jog. “I need to find these—”

“The new Bloodmoon kingpin compelled him into informing,” Saffron rushed out, desperate to regain Auria’s attention. It worked. Auria stopped dead, mouth peeled open. “Yes, Levan Celadon is a Compeller. Yes, that’s wholly as terrifying as it sounds.”

“How do you—”

“Because I’m undercover. Only Aspar knew of the assignment, and now she’s dead, and I’m without a handler, and I’m terrified, Auria, terrified that I’ll be found out, that without someone on my side in the Silvercloaks, there will be no way to extract me. I will die in agony, and the hard-won Bloodmoon secrets will be buried with me.”

Auria stared at Saffron, then started walking furiously once more. “You’re lying.”

“Doesn’t it make sense? Don’t you feel it?” Saff’s words were hurried, breathless, as the gate came into view. The navy-cloaked Enchanters were still nowhere in sight. “My unceremonious dismissal from the Academy, how loudly it was reported in the newspapers—to make sure the Bloodmoons saw the controversy, to make sure they believed in it. My presence at the docks—a raid orchestrated through intel I fed to Aspar. My presence in the Havenwood, not fighting for either side but trying to emerge unscathed, helping you flee even when it could have cost me my own life to do so. Didn’t you wonder how the Order knew about the Havenwood in the first place? Doesn’t it all fit?”

Auria’s grip tightened on her wand, gaze scanning the street frantically. “Even if any of this were true…I cannot have anything to do with it. I’m no longer working the Bloodmoons, and I certainly cannot be seen associating with a known scarlet. Not if I want a future as a Highcloak. Reach out to Jebat, to Dallar, anyone but me.” A pause, in which some internal battle was fought. “Just…not Karvas. I can’t say more.”

“Nissa knew, alright? Once she wakes up, she can tell you—”

“Nissa might never wake up. That seems to be the pattern with anyone who touches you or the scarlets.” A note of desperation, of pure pain. “Please, Saffron. If you ever cared about me at all, please leave me out of this. It’s all too raw.”

The coarse grief in Auria’s voice was enough for Saffron to relent. “Alright. But there’s something else—something for which I need not a handler but a friend. My father wrote me a letter. Left it with Aspar, I think. I haven’t heard my mother or father’s voice for over twenty years. I want it more than I want to breathe. And I thought…maybe we could trade. I was with Tiernan when he died. I can tell you everything.”

At this, Auria’s tenderness hardened into a wild, scathing fury. “I am not your friend, Saffron. And it is far too great a risk for me to take you at your word, to believe without any real evidence that you’re undercover. Because what if you are lying?” A ferocious head shake. “I will not dishonor Tiernan’s memory by using his final moments as a bartering chip, whether you want a letter or something far worse—because I have no doubt that’s where this leads. We make one trade, this innocent missive from your lost father, and you hold it over me forever. You threaten to tell my captain, the commissioner. You threaten to ruin me if I don’t play your game. So no, I refuse to engage with the very first move.”

Despair crested in Saffron. “No, Auria, I would never—”

“They’re gone,” Auria moaned, spinning wildly in search of her marks. She turned to face Saffron, that annihilated expression only deepening. “You are ruining everything I hold dear, and I hate you, I really do.”

Such a callow thing to say, but Saffron believed it all the way to her bones.

Tears slid down Auria’s pale, freckled cheeks, though she didn’t seem to notice. One hand fiddled with a slender silver bracelet around her left wrist. “Because this all leads back to you, doesn’t it? My grandfather’s death, Tiernan’s. All my worldly pain stems from your choices. So stay away from me. Or I swear—to all the Saints in the sky—that I will toss you back in Duncarzus and throw away the key.”