Page 89 of Turncloak

Dad

Saffron could barely see through the hot salt of her tears.

There was so much to take in, too much, the fate of the world and the slaying of the king and the resolution of a major religious quandary, the origins of her magical immunity and the confirmation that her weaving had been her father’s, and yet all Saffron could think was Dad, Dad, Dad. It’s you, after so long. Come back to me, Dad.

“Are you finished?” Levan asked, now sitting beside her on the bed, not peering over at the letter but staring intently at her face.

And suddenly, there was nothing she wanted to do more than tell Levan everything. She needed to discuss all of this with someone, and so why not him?

She had been keeping the Timeweaving from him because she didn’t know how he’d react, and because she didn’t want him to figure out that she’d originally betrayed him in the Havenwood. She didn’t want him to perceive her as a threat to his mother’s birthright throne, and she didn’t want him to eviscerate her accordingly.

But now it was all so much bigger than that.

If her father was right, Timeweavers were pivotal to the prevention of a world war.

So what if she became not just Levan’s enemy, not just a lover, but an ally? Someone who wanted exactly what he did: redemption for Timeweavers, for his mother, and for herself. Someone who wanted to save Ascenfall in the process.

If they worked together, Levan could come with her to Bellandry—Saints knew she’d need the support, if the mission was so dangerous even her experienced field agent of a father was apprehensive about fulfilling it. They could find the Fifth Prophecy together, figure out how to move forward—or rather backward. Perhaps Levan, who’d had trouble finding a necromancer willing to even try to raise his parents, might agree that the best plan of action was to unwind all the way back to the night their parents died and change the course of history.

Perhaps that was how she saved the continent.

Perhaps they were already heading for the brutal world war, and the only way to prevent it was to redo the last twenty years.

There was much the letter did not reveal, of course. Saffron had been hoping for details of her lineage—was she indeed highborn, a true contender for the throne? Had her father’s ancestors slipped over the border into Bellandry generations ago, forsaking their Vallish claim in the name of survival?—but her father had remained vague on the subject. And if Joran Killoran knew of an heirloom weaverwick hidden beneath some unassuming floorboard, he had not shared it with his daughter.

Flarence was a stone’s throw from the Rapier, a narrow blade of land leading up to Nyrøth. Perhaps Saffron could slip over the border and find a weaverwick while hunting down the Fifth Prophecy. Kill two ravens with one rock.

Saffron’s heart fluttered as she looked up at Levan. Their goals and purposes, which had always chafed against each other, now clicked into alignment. And if it all went south, she had the letter from the Steel King. Providing the kingpin didn’t kill her between one minute and the next, she could take it to the Silvercloaks, have herself extracted from the Bloodmoons, and pursue the Fifth Prophecy on her own.

Two possible paths, both risky, both arduous, with ravines on either side so steep that if she fell off course, she would die. But two paths nonetheless.

Saffron wiped her salt-streaked face on the arm of her cloak and handed Levan the letter.

40

• • • •

Brittle as Glass

Levan had never read anything so raptly as that letter. When he finished, a kernel of raw emotion glowed hot inside him—hot enough that the savage burn on his side paled in comparison. The traitorous mage who had upended his life might very well upend the fate of the world, and he had no idea how to process such an idea.

Yet Saffron had handed him the truth on a platter.

Unvarnished, untampered with, unobscured.

That meant something.

“I need you to come with me,” she said quietly. Her hazel eyes were bloodshot and sore. “To Flarence, to the warded cave off the Cinereal Sea.”

“Why?” The mattress felt unstable beneath him.

“As my father said, it’s likely to be highly dangerous. You’re the most powerful mage I’ve ever met.”

Levan snorted. “A glorified bodyguard.”

But instead of meeting his snark with her usual chirpy sarcasm, Saffron shook her head slowly, meaningfully. “You think that’s all you are to me?”

He bowed his head, unable to meet her gaze.