Page 5 of Turncloak

“Or you were just sloppy.”

“I’m a lot of things. Sloppy is rarely one of them.” Saffron lifted her chin, pale curls spilling like the silver cloak she was born to wear. “But your compelling…it’s your best weapon against me. You can compel me to obey you. Compel me to reveal everything you think I’m still hiding.”

Some part of him soared at the thought.

Maybe he did not have to kill her. Maybe there was another way.

He could allow Saffron Killoran back into the scarlet ranks under his absolute command. The other Bloodmoons did not know the extent of her treachery—as far as they understood, the brand would’ve felled her for leaking the Havenwood operation to the Silvercloaks.

He could compel her into obeying, into revealing the crawling underbelly of whatever rocks remained unturned. Treat her like a henchmage, a foot solider, nothing more and nothing less. She could do his bidding inside the Silvercloaks if necessary, could keep the scarlets one step ahead, one street ahead when it mattered.

Yet Saffron was a Timeweaver, able to rewrite all of reality.

How could he let such a cataclysmic thing walk free?

For now, compelling worked on her. But for now was not a great comfort. This was a slippery mage, riddled with strange magical quirks and immunities. If anyone could chart a path around his commands, it was her.

Then there was the obvious problem that, as a living Timeweaver, Saffron Killoran could hold a greater claim to the Vallish throne than his own mother.

There had been an era in Vallish history when every Timeweaver wore a Highcloak. Saffron was, in some distant past, nobleborn. Perhaps even an ancestor of the Nivezans, the aristocratic rivals of the Rezarans all those centuries ago. The Nivezans should have been slain upon the Palace steps following the Dreadreign, but then again, so should the Rezarans. The Fourth Augur, Emalin, even predicted, in his world-shaping prophecy, that multiple lines of Timeweavers would slip through the cracks.

Perhaps the real reason Saffron would not confess the truth of her power was because she knew how far Levan would go to protect his mother’s claim. Because if it came down to a young, powerful mage in full possession of her weaving, or a Risen, empty-welled queenpin of a cruel criminal empire, one contender for the crown would be infinitely stronger.

All things considered, Levan knew he should do the safest thing. He should kill her. Yet the very thought was a clawed fist grabbing the pulsing pink organ of his heart.

For several long moments, he stood at a dreadful impasse.

Anger warred with hope and despair and loss. Feelings of naïveté, idiocy, of being a hellsdamned fool who never learned, a little boy in a too-big cloak, stepping into boots he did not have the strength nor desire to fill. Crests of fury raised his wand, and then that calculating strategic mind, like Saffron’s very own, stayed his hand, searched for a better move, a better line.

At some point, Saffron sank to the floor, weak from overcasting. The pail of water she’d used to clean his impaled body still stood in the corner of the cell, still carried the faint scent of citrus soap oil.

Only days had passed.

The irony of the situation struck Levan with all the force of a physical blow. Less than a week prior, his father, who had believed Levan to be a traitor, pinned his son in place with deminite because he could not bring himself to do what needed to be done. Some pale vestige of love kept him from dealing the killing blow, from cutting the tumor out of the organ.

All Levan’s life he had railed against his father’s monstrosity, and now he faced the very same dilemma.

How could he kill Saffron? How could he not?

The decision was too permanent, and he could not make it yet.

When he left the cell and bolted it from the outside, she did not call after him, did not plea or beg, and he grudgingly respected her composure. Little wonder she was such a menace in the polderdash hall. Little wonder she had hidden her true colors for so long.

Rasso looked up at him with wide, betrayed eyes, then nuzzled at the door, jabbing the wood pointedly with the tip of his snoot. Levan couldn’t help but think that the fallowwolf had performed no such sorrow when it was Levan locked inside.

He rolled his aching wrist and thought of his severed hand hitting the cell floor. How much effort it had cost him to hold back the scream, and how the roar had trembled the very walls when he finally loosed it. If he listened very carefully, he thought perhaps he could still hear its echo.

4

• • • •

The Pale Crypt

Levan became an animal of action and action alone.

In the hours after the attack on the compound, he oversaw the scouring of the building, searching every nook and cranny until he was certain no Whitewings lurked.

When this was done, he recast the wards with the help of Lindelan, Penzar, and Naron, three of their best Enchanters sacrificing the entirety of their magic wells to hold down the spellwork. Levan had no idea whether said spellwork had been properly executed—it was an odd, conditional sort of enchantment, permitting entry to certain subsets of mage while remaining compliant with Vallish law—but for the time being, it would do. As long as the wards kept Whitewings out, the rest could be fine-tuned.