Page 40 of Turncloak

Saffron smirked. “Always with the poetry.”

Levan held up his small stack of books in his golden hand. “Guilty as charged.”

This quip was not accompanied by anything so craven as a smile, but there was a slight lift in his body language.

“Something’s changed.” Saff studied him. “Something’s happened.”

Levan set the books firmly down on the desk. “No.”

“You aren’t wearing your grief so heavily—as if someone has allowed you to shrug it off like an unwanted cloak.” A suspicion dawned. “You found another necromancer. That’s what the lift in your step is. Hope.”

“I haven’t felt hope since I was seven years old,” Levan responded emptily, but his body had stilled. “And stop trying to read me like that.”

Her intrigue charred into impatience. “Tell me, Levan. Stone by stone, remember? How am I supposed to rebuild trust without the raw materials?”

“Just make sure Sorvel runs without a hitch.” Ah, Sorvel. The purported loxlure shipment he thought she’d be stupid enough to have raided so soon after the Havenwood. An unsubtle test of her claim to no longer have a handler in the Silvercloaks. “Then maybe we’ll talk.”

So there is something to talk about, Saffron thought triumphantly, and perhaps a little fearfully. She did not especially want Levan to be successful in raising his parents from the dead—not least because both Lorissa and Lyrian had cause to execute her.

Rasso leapt down from Saffron’s lap and padded away in search of Miret, tail wagging merrily. As the animal dismounted, his hind legs jostled the book in Saffron’s lap, exposing the top corner beneath her cloak.

“What are you reading?” Levan asked, eyes narrowing.

“None of your concern.”

“Which is exactly what makes you sound concerning. Show me.”

Another heart clench, another small surge of petty victory. “No.”

Levan straightened, his voice dropping several degrees. “I’m your kingpin. That’s an order.”

“Is that a compelled order? Because unless so…”

“As always, I have no desire to compel you.”

Saffron was glad of his reluctance. She would never forget how it felt, in the version of the Havenwood she had later unmade, to watch her body obey him with so little fight. How it felt when the instincts sprung up from deep inside her, nameless and sourceless, so that if she didn’t know any better, she wouldn’t realize she’d been compelled at all.

“Then you’ll have to take it from me by force.”

Watching the battle play out in his body was an interesting spectator sport. His hand went to his wand, then fell away again. A muscle feathered in his jaw. His weight shifted from one foot to the other—and then he turned and walked away.

“Rasso, here,” he called.

The fallowwolf heeded the command, trotting after the kingpin—but unhappily so, casting glances back at Saffron, making sad little whimpering noises in her direction.

“Levan,” Saffron called thickly after him. He paused, but did not turn. “Why does your magic work on me?”

He did not reply, but the air between them grew taut, crackling.

“Is it only because you’re so powerful? Or is there something more?”

Levan stood perfectly still for a few moments, his hand curled into a fist at his side.

And then he was gone.

Saffron let the breath seep out of her slowly, slowly, then all at once.

“I think the problem is,” came a kindly old voice behind her, “that you made him want to be better.” Miret peered after his surrogate grandson. “You made him believe that it was possible to exist in this dark crack of humanity while maintaining some semblance of morality, and whatever happened between you shattered that belief.”