Page 3 of Turncloak

Unless, of course, the wards had dropped entirely.

To Levan’s knowledge, there were half a dozen henchmages dedicated to maintaining the defenses. Racking his brain, he realized with a sickening lurch that he had not laid eyes on any of them in weeks. Had the Whitewings picked off the wardholders prior to this grand finale? Levan thought of the ambush on Dubias Row a few weeks prior, how random it had seemed. He’d slain the three white-cloaked mages without questioning their assault in any real sense. Perhaps those whites had attacked him because they believed he was a wardholder.

Anger was a far easier emotion to feel than grief, and Levan surrendered to his rage. Rage toward the Whitewings, who had sent Alucia to break his heart three years ago, who toyed with him still. Who would not stop, it seemed, until they destroyed everything he held dear.

“Lindelan, Castian, Benvornan—search the mansion for any stragglers.” Levan was surprised how steady his voice sounded. There was none of his father’s brittle fury, his spitting impatience. “The white scum have deserted the scene, but before we recast the wards, ensure we don’t trap any inside with us.”

The three mages nodded grimly, Castian climbing unsteadily to her feet.

Levan felt Saffron’s stare upon him.

Did she do this? asked an ugly part of his mind, forged through decades of torture and betrayal. Is she in league not just with the silvers, but the whites too? It didn’t make sense, of course, but paranoia flowed through him like poison, cold and dark and taunting.

“Our first order of business must be reestablishing the wards. Long-term we’ll find a slew of addicts to donate their wells for access to the black, but for the foreseeable future, none of us leave the compound. Not with the Whitewings lying in wait. Six of you will surrender your magic in the interim. If none volunteer, I’ll choose names out of a hellsdamned hat.”

More muttering, a disgruntled undertone to it now, a nascent ire.

“When you say you don’t want us leaving the compound…?” asked Benvornan, a lank, hook-nosed mage Levan had never liked. His face was perpetually fixed in a rotten sneer.

“We need to regroup, fortify. Bury our dead, then retaliate.” Levan looked at the nearest corpse—a young, pretty servant with creamy Bellandrian skin and dark veins spidering her slender throat. A juvenile horror jumped up inside him. “But for now, yes, I’m placing everyone under curfew.”

At this, the simmering displeasure blew wide open, like a flame catching spilled bivkar. Everything in Levan clenched at the sound, at the feeling of control slipping away.

What would his father do at a moment like this?

Well, his father was demented, so he’d probably kill one of them to bring the rest into line. But their numbers were already diminished, and Levan needed as many mages as possible to rebuild the wards.

“You have your orders, like them or not.” He rose his voice over the din without allowing any heat into it. “To breach them will be a breach of the brand, and a breach of the brand will mean certain death.” He swept his golden hand around the room. “Clear this mess. We sleep only when all trace of the Whitewing assault has been wiped clean and the wards have been reestablished.”

Saffron looked at him questioningly, as if to say: What about me?

It angered him, that look of disbelief, that assumption she was above the rest of them because she’d tricked her way into his bed. She was right, in many ways. She was something other. And she had to be dealt with differently.

“Killoran. With me.”

He strode up the sweeping ascenite staircase, not bothering to look behind him. He knew Saffron would follow; she had to keep cover with the rest of the scarlets, and cover meant pretending the brand worked on her the same way it did on them.

Rasso pattered after her, tense and alert. It rankled Levan to see the beast fall into step by the traitor instead of him. The fallowwolf had always doted on her, and Levan finally understood why: because the creatures were historic allies of the Timeweavers.

As they walked in charged silence, Levan’s highly trained body thrummed with paranoia, the sense that she would plunge a dagger into his chest and run, the fear that lingering Whitewings were waiting around every corner. The cloying scents clung to his cloak: burnt honey, acrid smoke, the airborne weapon deployed by the Silvercloaks in the forest. He felt dirty, violated, almost insane with the desire to wash it all away.

But first he had to take care of her.

Saffron Killoran was a cancer to the scarlets, a malignant black tumor with roots spreading deeper and broader by the minute.

Time to cut her out.

“Where are we going?” she asked at last.

He said nothing.

Those eyes, a shining hazel, large and doe-like, pleaded with him.

They rounded a final familiar corner, toward the cell where Levan himself had been locked less than a week earlier.

“No,” Saffron whispered.

Rasso loosed a strange growl-whimper, a sound of confusion and protectiveness, as he glanced between the two mages he loved most.