Page 72 of Turncloak

Levan leaned against the arched entrance to the chamber so he could see both the necromancer and his dead parents. Even after all these years, it was difficult not to be reminded of the last night he had seen his mother alive. Difficult not to think of her corpse slumped next to the brother he had loved so much.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Levan,” his brother had pleaded.

But Levan had just…stared. Said nothing. It was shock and grief and the feeling of no, no, this isn’t happening, perhaps if I stay very still I will awake from this nightmare. It had not worked, of course, and eventually he could not bear to look at his mother’s dead body for another second. He had screwed his eyes up tight, letting the tears flow and the sobs hitch in his chest, and when he opened his eyes again, his brother was gone.

The next few hours had been a blur of night-black and bloodred and paling skin, fraught murmurs and frantic bodies, Segal and Perant and his father disappearing to the house of the nearest known necromancer—Saffron’s mother.

“Still no luck,” he said, gesturing to his parents’ bodies.

Halant raked slender fingers through his snarl of curls. Already deep-set, his eyes looked particularly exhausted, deprived of daylight, deprived of life. “It’s getting harder. Further away. My well isn’t replenishing the way it should.”

“Aren’t we feeding you well enough? Providing you with the finest—and coldest—bodies the pleasurehouses have to offer?”

“I told you the cold thing was a joke.”

“You asked for scarred, wounded, interesting to look at. Lindelan tells me those are not so easy to find, in a world where most scars can be healed.”

“Perhaps that’s the appeal—the rarity of it.” Halant still sat cross-legged, his tall back hunched over like a shepherd’s crook. “You strike me as the kind of man who understands that sometimes a delicious meal and a random fuck are not enough to fill the gaping hole.”

Levan raised a brow. “So what is?”

“Teny Tolvas.”

“Teny…?”

“The love of my life. We’ve been together since we were teenagers—they were one of the mages to break me out of Tarsan prison. Nobody in this world knows me better, loves me more deeply.” The necromancer’s voice clotted with emotion. “In a world of mages who see me only for what I can do, Teny sees me for who I am. Pleasure is not pleasure without them.”

Levan knew precisely what Halant meant. He had never been one for the cheaper pleasures—he needed them to be hard won, layered, deep. The love of another mage, the respect of his peers, the aching gratification of a marathon.

Though he did not especially want to indulge the necromancer’s fancies—it could easily be a ploy—he wanted Halant to be successful. Needed him to be.

“I’ll send someone to Nomaden to retrieve Tolvas.”

Halant’s eyes flared, a hopeful twinkle, but it quickly died. “Only if you’ll let them go afterward. I won’t put Teny in danger just because they know something they shouldn’t. You can keep your promises of Irisi. Teny is the most important thing.”

“You have my word. If you resurrect my parents, both you and Teny Tolvas will walk free. I am willing to make another binding oath to cement that promise.”

Halant nodded once, stoic, emotional.

Resolute.

35

• • • •

An Exercise in Wild Conjecture

“I don’t understand why breaking into the Order is necessary,” the kingpin said, from the other side of his late father’s desk. His golden hand lifted a cup of clove tea to his mouth.

“Sneaking in might be a more apt description,” Saffron replied dryly.

She thought Levan looked dramatically older than he did a month ago. The vaguely hopeful lift she’d picked up on in the library had sunk once again into a sort of bleak resignation, and his eyes were bloodshot with exhaustion. She craved another reality in which she could comfort him, make sure he was eating and sleeping. Ask him softly, as they lay together, what was on his mind.

That other world is possible, she thought longingly, determinedly. You just have to make it so. Undo all the things that broke us, write it all anew.

Levan laid down his mug, shot her a hard glare. “If you’re trying to make me suspicious of your intentions, you’re doing a fine job. Reestablishing the Silvercloak bridge could easily be done via wand, with far less risk, and in a way that enables me to be privy to it.”

A fire crackled and spat in the hearth, and a bead of sweat formed at the base of Saffron’s neck. She reached into her inner cloak pocket.