Page 43 of Turncloak

“I—argh.” Levan pulled away, swallowing hard. “Not now. Not here. I have to steel myself for what might come.”

If Harrow was stung by the rejection, he didn’t show it. He shrugged and lay flat on his back, cupping his palms behind his neck. “If Killoran shows up…”

“I’ll have to execute her.”

Execute. Such a blunt, callous word.

“But you don’t want to.”

“Of course not.”

It was true, and yet there was a complicated texture to the not-wanting. Something spiteful, something small and humiliated. Some part of him craved a clean cut. The hand amputated, instead of left to fester with a malignant shard inside it.

Yet wasn’t it a good thing that Saffron had the opportunity to prove herself loyal, to switch sides into true scarlet?

Alucia had not been afforded the same chance.

Levan had discovered the truth one night in his chambers—a careless honeywine-fueled slip, a reference to a key Whitewing player she shouldn’t have known anything about, and when he’d applied the slightest bit of pressure, she’d fled into the night. Levan had gone straight to his father, aired his suspicions, and Lyrian had sent Vogolan after her. The henchmage had returned a couple of hours later, smattered in blood and with frothy spittle around his lips, that gleam in his eyes he always got when he’d made a fresh kill.

In his more troubled moments, Levan wondered if he’d been right to go straight to his father. What if, given the chance, Alucia might have chosen him, after all? Perhaps this was why he’d been persuaded to give Saffron something resembling a fair trial.

He thought of her question in the library: why his magic worked on her, the mage who should be immune. The truth was that he didn’t know, and that was infinitely troubling.

On the hillside, Harrow grew so unnaturally still that he might have fallen asleep. But when Levan looked over at his supine companion, the King’s Prophet was staring up into the stars—unblinking, unmoving, yet transfixed, as though a scene were playing out across the vast canvas of the night.

“What is it?” Levan whispered, the hairs on the backs of his arms standing on end.

No response.

Several minutes passed. Time dilated, blew wide open.

The air around them grew taut, brittle.

Then, finally, Harrow came back into his body—looking deeply troubled.

“Harrow,” Levan muttered, trying not to let his urgency show. “That was a prophecy if I ever saw one.”

The ghost of something terrible passed over Harrow’s face. All at once, he looked miraculously and fatally sober. “I drifted off for a second.”

“You’re lying.”

“Fine, a vision. But it didn’t pertain to you.”

A blatant lie. Harrow could not meet Levan’s gaze.

“I still want to know,” Levan urged.

“What you want is hardly my concern.”

Levan recoiled from the blade-edge in Harrow’s retort. The sharpness was a surefire indicator that there was something of pressing importance in the prophecy.

Possibilities spiraled through Levan’s overactive mind.

He could compel Harrow, or at least try—he hadn’t successfully done so since the destruction of the weaverwick. Yet compelling was a line he rarely crossed with those he genuinely cared about; some pale semblance of a moral code. Perhaps he really was losing his edge, his killer instincts. But he couldn’t do it.

Beside him, Harrow lifted a goldenjade pocketwatch from the breast pocket of his doublet. “Five minutes after darknight. Looks like the turncloak hasn’t betrayed you.”

Something bright and hopeful surged in Levan. He wasn’t sure whether he’d really believed Saffron would fail the test, but it was a relief regardless.