Page 8 of Turncloak

He wished with every fiber of his being that it had not come to this, that Saffron had been true and genuine, that his father had not died and the loxlure retrieval had gone without a hitch and he was spending this evening with wild pale curls spilling over his bare, branded chest. He ached with the sheer force of that wish, and with the reality of what he now must do.

The cell block arrived too soon.

Because his chin was tucked low, because he was lost in the shadowy corridors of his mind, it took his several beats to register that the door was already ajar, the deminite bolt slid free.

Horror staked through his belly as he entered the vacant cell.

Spinning wildly on his heel, all casual gait vanished now, his breath hitched between his collarbones, and he tried to make sense of it, to figure out how this could have happened, who would dare to free her.

Because someone had freed her.

The deminite bolt had been opened from the outside.

Yet nobody in this place was loyal to her—hells, nobody even knew she was here in the first place. Even if they did, none of them would risk the brand’s deadly retribution to free a rat.

Then he saw the unmistakable dusty prints on the floor, illuminated by a single sconce.

Paw prints.

Levan went to the door, studied the outside. Matching prints were stamped halfway up, as though the beast had climbed onto his hindquarters to coax the bolt loose.

Rasso.

His mother’s own fallowwolf had freed Saffron Killoran.

5

• • • •

From Sacred to Sacrosanct

Saffron pulled the plain black cloak tighter around her body, strolling toward the crooked wandmakery at the end of the street. Rasso pattered at her heel, panting happily, like the very best of boys.

Thanks to the fallowwolf, she’d been free for four days now.

Four days, and the Bloodmoons had not followed—or perhaps they had tried, and her expert warping and wefting of a tangled trail made the hunt impossible. Four days spent plotting her next moves, scheming in response to dead kingpins and dead captains, trying to quell the ludicrous tenderness of her heart, the feeling of grief whenever she thought of Levan Celadon.

There had been the temptation to embrace the escape, at first. To disappear into Hamren or Välgard or Kintaso, a sprawling city in a new land where neither the scarlet nor the silver tendrils could reach. A fresh start was faintly appealing, but she had sacrificed so much, endured so much. She could hardly walk away now, not after she’d finally found a way to fix her world: by unmaking the last twenty years to save both her parents and Levan’s.

For this, she would need three things.

First, a weaverwick wand of her own. Not just to return to childhood and prevent her parents’ deaths, but for her safety in the meantime. If things went south with Levan again, if he moved to kill or compel her, she had to be able to undermine it.

Second, her father’s long-lost letter—the letter Captain Elodora Aspar had described in her final moments, mouth leaking blood, eyes filled with regret. Some deep gut instinct told Saffron this letter was key to everything. Since Timeweaving ran through ancestral lines, she wanted to know everything about her heritage, whether her ancestors had been allies or rivals of the Rezaran throne, whether there was a birthright weaverwick hidden in some forgotten vault.

Third, an unsaintly amount of ascenite to bolster her Timeweaving—enough to wind back such a perilous number of years. More ascenite than she could ever hope to accrue on her own, which meant she had to stay aligned with the Bloodmoons, whose looted wealth rivaled King Quintan’s own reserves. And for that, she had to win back Levan’s favor.

The opportunity had come to tell Levan the truth from the outset, when he’d offered leniency in exchange for honesty. Yet everything had been so fraught, fractious, balanced on a blade edge between mercy and murder. This monumental revelation would have given him one more reason to kill her, because as a legacy Timeweaver, she represented a possible threat to his mother’s claim. Surely, he could not abide such a thing in his ranks. She would tell him eventually, but only once everything had stabilized, only once he trusted her again.

And for that, she had a plan.

Saffron took in the unfamiliar locale. Carduban was in the throes of wind season, and a warm desert gale threaded through the twisty streets, grains of sand scrubbing her face raw.

The border city was a wealthy place, notched in the Mountains of Promise—home to the continent’s biggest ascenite mines. Communal spaces were adorned with the precious, magic-bolstering material, grand fountains carved into sandserpents and sunhawks, cobbled walkways inset with star-shaped tiles, ornate windowsills where flowers and herbs flourished with unnatural speed and color.

The wandmakery’s maroon awnings snapped like the wings of a great wyrm. The sign hanging over the black-and-burgundy shop front read Mizad’s Emporium, and inside the window, the proprietor had dutifully slapped dozens of Crown decrees:

Following King Quintan Arollan’s 14th Amendment to the Public Safety Act of 1074PV, the sale of weaverwicks is prohibited by Vallish wandmakers. Those found in breach are punishable by a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.