Page 60 of Turncloak

Levan studied her shaking hands, the veins on the back raised and dark. “Once it’s done, you have my permission to find the most obliterating lox Mersina has to offer and lose yourself to it.”

She bowed her head and left the room. It was only once Levan was finally alone with Saffron Killoran that the emotion came crashing through him.

There was the relief—and copious amounts of confusion—that he’d been able to heal her at all. His magic had responded, thank all the Saints in the sky.

But why now? Why, after weeks of erraticism and unpredictability, had it heeded his command? He thought of everything he’d tried to do since the destruction of his wand, searching the attempted spells for a pattern. It wasn’t hard to discern one: almost everything he’d tried and failed to do since breaking his relationship with magic began with the prefix sen.

Dishonorable intentions. Magic designed to hurt.

Until now—until he’d employed arguably the purest form of magic there was. Magic designed to mend, to restore, to make better.

It made an oddly perfect sort of sense that the way magic wanted him to heal the relationship was to heal the world around him too. There was a childlike rightness to it. Healing magic had been his very first manifestation of a power, the very first thing he’d learned how to do. He would have to find his way back to that innocent boy—the version of him his mother had so adored—in order to find his way back to magic.

But how the hells could he do such a thing when his entire life was dedicated to hurting?

Hurting others, and hurting himself.

After his last conversation with Saffron in the library, he’d hung back outside the library doors long enough to hear what Miret had said to her.

“I think the problem is that you made him want to be better. You made him believe that it was possible to exist in this dark crack of humanity while maintaining some semblance of morality.”

His almost-grandfather was right. Meeting Saffron, falling in love with her, had made him want to be different. The kind of mage worthy of her love.

It wasn’t that he thought any less of her now—yes, she’d been undercover, but for good reason. And it was hardly her fault that she possessed the Timeweaving gift he so desperately coveted. Hardly her fault that her blood may be noble enough to challenge his mother’s claim to the throne.

It was only that she had betrayed him. That she had made time and then unmade it. And that in the other version, Levan was fairly sure she had not chosen him.

Of course she didn’t, you fool.

Why would she turn her back on her life’s purpose for a mage so cruel-blooded and broken?

All at once, the hatred he felt toward her swiveled inward, like a compass swinging from north to south. It was so sudden, so severe, that he felt it like a physical thing, a brick jammed into his belly, a stake thrust through his heart.

It was too much to bear. Physical pain, he could handle. Could lock himself away from, or lock himself into. But the sheer force of his self-loathing was not something that could be easily dammed.

The desire to follow Castian to the seediest underbelly of Mersina, to melt it all away with loxlure, was all-consuming. It was always there, this desire, waiting beneath the surface for a moment of weakness into which to sink its claws. Even when his mind did not think of it, his body remembered. His body wanted.

Worse than hunger, worse than thirst. Worse than staying awake for seven days and seven nights and still not allowing yourself sleep.

It’s what you deserve, said a voice in his head he recognized from the darkest days of his compulsions. Not the release—no, not that. You deserve to be utterly annihilated. You deserve to spend your every waking moment crawling on your hands and knees toward the cruel god of loxlure. You are a blight on the world, and death would be too kind. Any happiness you have ever felt was a grave mistake.

He teetered over the edge of a cliff, gravity pulling at him like a hungry monster, the wind in his hair, the swoop in his belly, the tug toward the ravine of nothingness below.

Only the sight of the silver-haired, silver-hearted mage on the bed kept him from falling.

Pulling the neckline of her tunic down and across, he lifted his golden palm and rested it over her heart. Over the scar his father’s poker had torched into her perfect skin. With his other hand, he raised his wand.

“Ans mederan. Ans mederan. Ans mederan.”

Magic heeded him once more. The scabbed flesh shifted beneath his touch, melting and re-forming, warming and cooling, until finally, it felt like any other part of her body.

Pale, smooth, unmarred. Untainted by the rot that was himself.

It was difficult to tear his hand away; the feel of her heart beating, of her fading warmth, felt like the only real thing in the world.

Downstairs, there was a kind of commotion—an overlapping of sounds, a familiar yowl, and then soft, clawed footsteps scrabbling up the stairs.

Before Levan could register what was happening, the door flew off its hinges and Rasso exploded over the threshold, panting severely, eyes wide and something worryingly crimson around his jowls. Seeing Saffron supine on the bed, soaked in her own blood and barely breathing, barely living, he let out another strangled howl and leapt onto the bed beside her, licking at her neck and face, whimpering and nuzzling and sniffing, before lying down beside her, face pressed into her shoulder, moaning softly.