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For Chloe Seager, who took all my wildest dreams and made them true
CLASSES of MAGIC
Enchanter
Brewer
Wielder
Healer
Compeller
Foreseer
Extinct
Timeweaver
PROLOGUE
years ago
The Killorans’ front door changed color depending upon who knocked.
Sky blue for a charming acquaintance, heart red for a lover present, past, or future. Clover green for a spiteful enemy, or a rich, jammy plum for an old friend. Mustard yellow for family and, due to a slight inaccuracy with the spellwork, traveling salesmen.
The day the Bloodmoons paid a visit, the door turned as black as the bottom of a well.
Mellora had just returned home from a long shift at Saint Isidore’s, the nearby hospital for magical maladies, to find her husband, Joran, and daughter, Saffron, giggling with glee. Joran was slowly and methodically turning everything in the house into sausages, including but not limited to the taps in the kitchen sink, all the cutlery in the top drawer, several house plants, the cat’s furious tail, and his own highbridged nose.
“Good afternoon to thee,” he said earnestly, as Mellora shrugged off her violet Healer’s cloak. His tone was a little nasal, on account of having a sausage for a nose. He tapped it once with his spindly cedar wand, and his handsome aquiline features returned.
Saffron stood by his side, arms wrapped around his leg, weeping with laughter. Her wild silver-blond curls tumbled over her face. “Daddy, stop! I can’t breathe.”
Warmth swelled in Mellora’s chest.
Oh, how she loved them.
The Killoran family home was a round, ramshackle building overgrown with wildflowers, and Joran had charmed every inch of it with their daughter in mind: bookshelves that never ran out of new stories, miniature stars trapped in lanterns to form tiny constellations, a kettle that whistled the Serpent’s Shanty once the tea was boiled. Carpets that took off at random and whizzed Saff around their small village, whooping and hollering with delight. Favorite of all was a spiral staircase that became a slide whenever Saffron approached the top—a not insignificant piece of conditional transmutation that would floor most ordinary mages.
Mellora was entirely more earnest than her husband—she’d always been unfalteringly sincere, even as a child—but it made her appreciate Joran’s whimsy all the more. She could not imagine a better father for her only child.
Crossing to the cabinet of honeywine, Mellora poured herself a large goblet. As the sweet, sharp nectar hit her tongue, she felt her well of magic—depleted after a long day of healing—begin to refill.
Power was a finite thing, easily drained, and could only be replenished through rich pours of pleasure. Scented clove candles were eternally lit around their home. Gentle violin music echoed in the ceiling rafters, and the walls were adorned with glorious artwork. A feast for the senses, designed to restore.
Of course, the other thing that bolstered power was pain.
While pleasure swelled the quantity of magic at a mage’s disposal, pain improved the quality. An ancient survival mechanism, one that made magical wars as brutal as they were unpredictable.
But the Killorans wanted nothing to do with pain. Not after everything Joran had been through.
“You’re wasted tinkering away on this house,” Mellora told him, as he enchanted a knife to chop vegetables into neat inch-wide chunks. “You should be in the King’s Cabinet, protecting the realm. Or lecturing at a university. Even magical cure research. I know the Academy for Arcane Ailments and Afflictions is looking for—”
“Maybe joy is enough,” he replied simply, brushing a corkscrew curl away from her face and planting a kiss on her lips. His own long blond hair was tied back with a worn leather string. Mellora had the sudden desire to run her hands through it, to seek pleasure the other way.
And then came the knock at the door.
Both of them turned at once.
At the sight of the ink-dark wood, Mellora blanched, setting down her goblet with a trembling hand.
“Saff, you have to hide.”
Every word was a shard of bone in her throat.
“But Mama,” Saffron protested, big brown eyes flitting from her parents to the door and back to her parents. She was six years old and doleful as a fawn. “Who is it? I’ve never seen the door black before.”
“Please,” said Joran, hoarse as he laid down the half-charmed knife. It skittered on the chopping block in confusion. “Please, Saffy.”
They didn’t know who was on the other side of the door, but they knew.
Another knock, more insistent this time, with the air of a final grace.
Joran took an envelope from his cloak pocket and stuffed it into the top drawer of the nearest cabinet, running a mournful finger over the cursive name on the front of the parchment. Mellora watched him, dread gnawing at her belly. Her husband was afraid enough for a farewell letter, and Joran was so rarely afraid.
“Saffron, we love you,” Mellora whispered, kissing her daughter on the cheek. Saff tasted of creamy butter and strawberry jam. “We’ll see you soon.”
Joran ushered their daughter into the corner of the room. The pantry was enchanted to conceal any Killoran hidden inside, making them invisible and inaudible to anyone but another Killoran.
For once, Mellora was glad her genius husband wasted his time tinkering with their home. It might just be the thing that saved their daughter’s life.
As the pantry clicked shut, the front door slammed open, hanging loose and frightened from its hinges. Slowly the color—the magic—
seeped out of the wood, until it was once more a plain brown teak. A few inches below the silver fallowwolf knocker, the imprint of an opening spell faded slowly.
Two hulking figures stepped over the threshold, cast in a wedge of fading daylight. Their cloaks were a deep scarlet, pinned at their throats with round ruby brooches, the moon phases embroidered down the lapels in black and gold thread. Everything else was black—the kneehigh boots with gold buckles, the neatly laced tunics, the billowing breeches, the look of death in their eyes.
Mellora’s stomach clenched like a fist.
Bloodmoons.
She took a few protective steps in front of her husband.
“Can we help you?” Joran said, the words cragged and uneven.
“We need a necromancer,” said the shorter of the two men. He had a low, heavy brow and a scratchy voice. He twitched with a kind of fraught energy—whatever order they’d been given, haste was of the essence. And there was nothing so dangerous as desperation when it came to the Bloodmoons.
Joran squared his shoulders. “You won’t find one here.”
“Won’t we?” The taller mage narrowed his gray eyes, a kind of rapacious hunger pulling his lips wide.
They both stared straight at Mellora.
Everything inside her seized with fear. She considered casting a desperate praegelos charm, to buy herself precious thinking space, and yet what good would thinking do when the devil was already upon them? The only thing that could save them now was the teleportation spell, and such a thing had been outlawed long ago.
Joran glanced back at her in confusion. “Mellora?” His knuckles were white as he gripped his wand. “My wife is a Healer. Easy enough to prove.” He lifted his wand to his palm and made a slicing motion. “Sen incisuren.”
A cut opened—too deep, worried Mellora, he’s gone too deep—and bloomed dark red. He didn’t so much as wince.
Mellora raised her sleek willow wand and muttered, as she had a thousand times before, “Ans mederan.”
Heal.
Though her well of magic had been scantly replenished by a few sips of honeywine, the wound inelegantly knotted itself back together. It would scar, if they lived long enough.
The Bloodmoons stared disdainfully at Joran’s hand.
“Either you know as well as we do that necromancy is a sub-class of healing,” said the tall viper, “or you’re entirely as moronic as you appear.”
Joran’s pale cheeks heated with anger, and Mellora silently willed him to not throw bait at the feet of wolves, yet she couldn’t quite convince her mouth to form words, to urge him to keep his head.
True to form, he did not heed her wordless plea. He only lifted his wand.
But the Bloodmoon lifted his faster.
“Sen ammorten.”
The killing spell landed true on Joran’s chest, and he fell to the ground like a sack of bezoars.
Mellora let out a strangled cry, feeling the expectant weight of the intruders’ gazes upon her. They knew what she would do next, and so did she.
Because she could not let Joran, her Joran, die at her feet.
After decades of running and rigging enchanted gamehouses, the Bloodmoons were experts at forcing players to show their hands.
The strand linking Mellora’s mind to her body snapped.
She moved without thought, sinking onto her haunches and tearing open the fabric of Joran’s tunic. There was a star-shaped scar over his heart where the spell had struck, and when she laid a palm over it, it was ice cold to the touch, like liquid silver. Magical death had a unique scent to it—not blood and rot, but smoke and ash and something honey-sweet.
She kept one palm resting on Joran’s unbeating chest and raised her wand with the other.
“Ans visseran,” she incanted, self-hatred pluming inside her. “Ans visseran. Ans visseran.”
Revive. Revive. Revive.
A sense of utter depravity clutched at her with gnarled fingers. Necromancy was not just unlawful—it was sacrilege. It went against
nature, against all the various gods and Saints upon which Ascenfall was built. Something essential of the human spirit was lost in death, and it could not be brought back through the veil between there and here, no matter how skilled the mage.
But this was Joran. She had to try.
“Ans visseran. Ans visseran. Ans visseran.”
Nothing happened immediately, but these things took time. Time to coax the heart back into thumping, time to cajole the blood into flowing. An inescapable law of physics: whether magical or not, an object in motion wanted to stay in motion, and an object at rest wanted to stay at rest.
Surely Joran’s heart doesn’t want to be at rest, Mellora thought pleadingly. Surely it bucks against its very stillness. Surely it can sense me just on the other side.
The Bloodmoons watched as she incanted the spell again and again, but there was no telltale lurch beneath her palm. Desperation surging, she bit down hard on her tongue until she tasted blood, letting the pain stab and swell in her mouth.
If pleasure worked like rest to restore magic, then pain worked like adrenaline to enhance it. A short, intense burst of energy, granting extraordinary power in the most dire of situations.
And Saints knew Mellora needed it.
“Ans visseran. Ans visseran.”
Joran’s heart remained a stone.
But it had to work. This was Joran. Saffron’s dad.
Saffron.
Mellora prayed to Omedari, the patron saint of healing, that her daughter had not witnessed her father’s murder. She was still concealed in the pantry, but if she pressed her eye right up to the keyhole . . .
Focus lapsing dangerously, Mellora’s gaze flitted up to the pantry— —just in time to see the golden doorknob begin to turn.
No, roared everything inside Mellora, but the handle kept twisting. If the Bloodmoons saw Saff, they’d kill her too.
Mellora spun on her heels, squaring her wand. She had never cast a killing spell, but to save Saff, she would do anything.
“Sen ammort—”
Her curse was severed by the two killing spells striking her heart.
The golden doorknob stopped turning.
The room rocked still.
For several moments, silence sprawled out like nightfall. Wordlessly, the intruders burned crescent moons into their victims’ lifeless cheeks, the skin bubbling a grotesque burgundy beneath the tips of their wands.
If a death did not serve its original purpose, at least it could spread fear.
When the Bloodmoons departed, they left the door hanging off its hinges like a rotten tooth.
And when Saffron Killoran finally opened the pantry door—it could have been moments later, or hours, or days—the living room smelled of charred flesh. Of smoke and ash and something honeysweet.
She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
Hunched over her mother’s body were two mages in long silver cloaks, pinned at the neck with sapphire brooches. One mage drew a chalk circle around her father by hand, while the other examined the ruined door. Their wands were scrawling in notebooks suspended midair, and they talked in low voices.
At the sight of Saffron, one detective looked up. She was pale, narrow-nosed, thin as a spire, and for the briefest of moments, pure, unfiltered grief flashed across her face.
“Oh, sweetling,” she murmured to Saffron, shielding the corpses from view. “Come here. You’re safe now.”
Part one
CADET
The Cohort
Saffron’s cloak would turn silver by sundown— if she wasn’t caught in a lie first.
A mere quarter hour stood between her and the final assessment. Twenty years of grief and determination distilled into a single sequence.
She arranged her features into a neutral expression and set down a winning polderdash card. The priestess on the front winked coltishly. Her opponent, Gaian, groaned like a dying hog.
“A whole year of having my hide whipped, and still I take the bait.” He slid a pearly ascen over the bench, and Saffron pocketed it with a smirk. “You must have more coin than the city treasury at this point.”
Not far from the truth. Saffron had spent most of her adult life gambling rather fruitfully against her peers and countrymen. Everyone else was so bad at card games.
Shuffling the deck idly in her hands, Saffron cast her gaze around the brewing lab. Orange-gold sunlight poured through the mullioned windows, turning dust motes to fireflies. The high walls were lined with shelves holding glass jars of common tincture ingredients: herbs and spices, ash and earth, fallowwolf claws and mourncrow beaks, flesh and blood and bone. Six long wooden benches ran parallel down the
middle of the lab, each topped with pewter cauldrons and an array of gilded instruments. Along the benches, two velvines stalked and purred. Slender cats with purple eyes and black fur, their satin-cool breath sent ripples of pleasure across bare skin. They patrolled the Silvercloak Academy day and night, replenishing the magical wells of drained-dry mages.
The six cadets had gathered in the lab ahead of the final assessment, so that Auria and Sebran—the only Brewers amongst them—could stopper their tinctures. Though the cohort had spent twelve months competing against one another for the top rankings, they had become unexpectedly close-knit, and though none of them would admit as much, they all wanted to make the most of their last moments together. Before they were sent to far-flung corners of the continent for their first postings, before they no longer lived in one another’s pockets.
Assuming, of course, that they all passed.
Tension hung heavy in the room. The cadets stood on the cusp of an ending and a beginning, and they all felt the knife-edge beneath their feet.
“Look alive, folks.” Auria beamed, bright and earnest, her eternal vim never wavering. “We’re all going to turn our cloaks silver tonight. I can feel it.” A velvine brushed against her arm, purring pleasure over her throat as she notched three final vials into her tincture belt.
Nissa hung out of the arched window, smoking a hand-rolled achullah. It smelled of orange and clove and an earthy type of tobacco grown in the hottest part of the Diqar desert.
“Have you ever, even once, believed things wouldn’t work out?” Nissa drawled, blowing out a smoke ring. Black hair fell to her waist in a sleek, shining sheet. “Despite all evidence to the contrary?”
Auria flashed another sincere smile. “No, not really.”
Nissa’s own lips curled. “You know, in Nyrøth they consider blind optimism a sign of low intelligence.”
“Good thing we don’t live in Nyrøth,” Auria replied cheerily.
In truth, Saffron found Auria’s sunny veneer comforting, but she didn’t say as much. Despite overcoming her six-year stretch of silence when she was twelve, she still preferred to stay quiet.
From across the room, Nissa caught Saffron’s eye with a private
smile, and it felt like grabbing a fistful of gallowsweed—as though everything in her blistered at once. Saff and Nissa had been ensnared in a clandestine relationship for the last few months. It began with simple, stress-relieving fucking, and slowly bloomed into something richer, softer. A stroke on the cheek, a flower left on a pillow, I saw this and thought of you.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, Nissa had ended things. Said that they needed to focus on their futures, and the very real chance that they’d be posted hundreds of miles apart. Nissa believed that the best Silvercloaks cut off sentimentality at the root. But for Saffron, the entire reason she was at the Academy was an emotional one.
She looked away from Nissa, gathering up her playing cards and tucking them back into her white cloak.
Tiernan—a tall, uncertain Healer, mainly at the Academy to appease his father—stopped his frenetic pacing to shoot Nissa a withering look. (Well, as withering as it was possible to be, when he’d sooner perish than insult someone.)
“I, for one, appreciate Auria’s positive spirit.” Tiernan blushed, raking a hand through his pale brown curls. He and Auria were mutually infatuated, and yet both believed their feelings to be unrequited. “Her love of the game makes it easier to reconcile the fact we’re both teammates and competitors.”
He had a point. The final assessment was not just of the Silvercloak cadets as individuals, but of how they worked together as a field unit.
The Academy was reserved for the best of the best, and there were only six mages in Saffron’s cohort. There was Saffron herself: stubborn, quietly cunning, relentlessly single-minded, even more relentlessly sweet-toothed, and frighteningly good at gambling. An Enchanter, in the eyes of the Academy—if not in truth.
Shy, awkward Tiernan, whose father was in the King’s Cabinet. A talented Healer, albeit a perpetually nervous one.
Auria, a bright-eyed bookworm, a rule follower, with lofty ambitions of becoming a Grand Arbiter someday. Uncommonly gifted with three mage classes—Enchanter, Brewer, and Healer—her work was precise, if not especially imaginative, and she had an encyclopedic knowledge of Modern Potions & Tinctures: Volume IV.
Nissa, the elemental powerhouse of a Wielder. She was smoking hot and smoked a lot, but only so she could wield fire at any given moment, and certainly not because she was in any way addicted to achullah. Her dragonesque command of smoke and flame was revered by everyone in the Order—even Captain Aspar.
Sebran and Gaian, each of whom held a single classification— Brewer and Enchanter respectively—but made up for their moderate magic with unfaltering bravery in Sebran’s case and a sharp, almost frightening intellect in Gaian’s. The latter had the uncanny ability to spot lies; his interrogations always yielded confessions, even without truth elixir. And yet he still couldn’t beat Saff at cards.
“You’re the competition, pure and simple,” said Sebran, stoppering a dark purple tincture that smelled of aniseed. He was broad and brawny, with dark brown skin and a close-shaven head. He never spoke of his family, his home. Nobody quite knew where he had come from, other than the military academy. “I’ll get that Pons Aelii posting even if it kills me.”
“Not a chance,” Gaian said coolly, tying his long blond hair neatly out of his face. “It’s mine.”
Nissa ran her forked tongue over her bottom lip. “Or they could give it to the actual half-Eqoran.”
The graduate assignments had been posted on the noticeboard the previous week—and there had been only five vacancies listed for six cadets.
Three were run-of-the-mill detective postings here in Atherin.
One was a stationing at a border outpost in Carduban, guarding the ascenite-rich Mountains of Promise from the lustful eyes of the neighboring Eqora. (None of them wanted this posting, since the Eqorans hadn’t made any meaningful moves toward the mines in decades, thus the mission would largely involve mediating disputes between mountain goats.)
The last was an undercover field intelligence operation in Pons Aelii, the capital of Eqora itself. Nissa, Sebran, and Gaian had waged war over the posting for days. Going undercover held a certain level of prestige—if they performed well on such a high-stakes first assign-
ment, they’d likely go on to great things in the Order of the Silvercloaks. (Plus, it just sounded sexy.)
But Saff wasn’t interested in Pons Aelii. If she wanted to destroy the Bloodmoons who’d stolen her childhood, she had to be in the city where their roots were laid—here in Atherin.
“Are you alright, Saff ?” Auria asked. “You’re quiet. More so than usual.”
Saff peered through the wide double window. The pale-stoned Academy was perched on a hill just on the outskirts of Atherin, and the capital’s skyline blurred with heat, smudging together the purple sapphire domes of Augurest temples, the towering crimson-and-gold obelisks honoring the patron saints, the carved marble pantheons with sapphire spires, the gleaming emerald tiles and pale sunbaked walls of the slouching townhouses. A sultry, jewel-toned riot of a city, built upon pleasure and violence in equal measure.
Lunes, the quaint northern village she’d grown up in, had never felt farther away. Her heart panged at the memory of overgrown wildflowers and cobbled courtyards, shabby cloaks and warm faces, the scents of rosemary and honeywine.
“Fine,” she replied vaguely. “Just mentally preparing.”
As though she hadn’t spent two decades doing just that. As though she hadn’t spent two decades planning and calculating, scheming and rerouting, overcoming every obstacle thrown at her by nature or circumstance, biding her time with the big why always in the forefront of her mind.
“That’s what’s driving me mad.” Tiernan’s teeth worked at his bottom lip. “We can’t prepare when we have no idea what the assessment entails.”
“Like real life.” Sebran had a soldier’s gruffness; there was little emotion behind his hazel eyes. “You’re hardly going to get a detailed memorandum before every dangerous situation, are you?”
“As long as I get a job at the end of all this . . .” Tiernan fiddled nervously with the strings of his tunic. “My father will decapitate me if I come home without a posting. Even Carduban would be preferable.”
“I’ll let Aspar know you volunteer,” smirked Nissa, stubbing out her achullah on the stone windowsill.
Deep down, Saff shared Tiernan’s sentiments. Though she’d rather not be a glorified border control officer, she’d still take that over missing out on a posting altogether.
After everything she’d done to claw herself here, she couldn’t fail now.
Twelve years of mage school. Four years at the Northern University of Novarin, earning her Knight’s Scroll in Modern History. Five years of patrolling Atherin on the streetwatch, as all prospective Silvercloak candidates had to do, acting as first response to gory crime scenes, rounding up robbers and crooks and killers and hauling them off spitting and cursing to Duncarzus, accumulating injuries and trauma and hard-fought wisdom, knowing all the while that whatever innocence had survived her parents’ slaughter was being slowly eroded, maturing into the understanding that evil was everywhere, so commonplace it was banal, and now that she knew this, she could never unlearn it.
And then there was the simple fact that all this experience was built on a foundation of lies and illusions.
She only had to maintain the fallacy for one more day.
One more hour.
The six cadets stood outside the Grand Atrium, staring at the words levitating over the threshold. Candidates only—assessment in progress.
Beneath the sign stood a pale, raven-haired professor who had drilled them endlessly in the art of combat, leaving their flesh bruised and their muscles sore. When they’d protested that they wouldn’t have to use physical strength with a wand at their fingertips, Professor Vertillon had retorted that unless their wands were surgically attached to their palms, they had to be prepared to lose them. A disarmament spell could be thrown at them at any moment, or in the heat of the skirmish, they might simply drop it out of sheer nerves and ineptitude.
Professor Vertillon gave Sebran a terse nod—the professor had trained him at the military college before accepting the teaching post at the Academy—then pressed his lips into a flat line to greet the others.
“The final assessment is upon us,” he decreed, in his low baritone. “Though we can prepare for such events to the ends of the earth, we still must take into account the slippery element of chance. A wand snapped during a raid, a tincture belt shattered on the ground, compromising injuries, and conflicting information.”
He held up six cream-colored envelopes. “As such, you will each draw a different hand for this exercise. Three of you will have no disadvantages. One of you will lose your wand. One of you will have a limb temporarily frozen. And one of you will work on different information than your peers. Cards will be drawn in alphabetical order of surname.”
Vertillon fanned the envelopes in his weathered hands, then offered Sebran the first pick. Sebran pulled an envelope, opened it, and nodded woodenly. Tiernan drew next, then Saffron.
You have no disadvantages.
It wasn’t quite true—she had her own temperamental magic to contend with—but it was a relief nonetheless.
As Auria then Nissa drew the last two envelopes, Saff looked up at Tiernan, whose foot jittered uncontrollably. The sea-green tinge to his cheeks had only intensified. He’d clearly received a disadvantage. And he was already terrified of letting his notoriously cruel father down.
Saffron would never forget their first week on the streetwatch. A vicious gang of thieves called the Whitewings had cut the tongues out of the mouths of several children who’d accidentally witnessed a robbery, then burned said tongues with magical fire so they could not be reattached. Saff, Tiernan, and Auria had been first on the scene, and Tiernan had spent the first twenty minutes vomiting into a gutter. When word got back to Tiernan’s father about his son’s weak stomach, Kesven Flane had chained Tiernan to a chair and forced him to watch vivid reenactments of torture, animated with the kind of illusionary magic Saff used to hide her secret, every night for a month.
Then Kesven had brought home an inebriated Ludder—a person born without magic—and sliced their tongue out for real, forcing Tiernan to practice healing it. Over and over and over again, until the Ludder blacked out from the pain and a small piece of Tiernan’s humanity died.
And now, during the final assessment, the last show of strength before jobs were assigned, Kesven would see his son weakened. An embarrassment to the family name, even though it was through random chance, no fault of his own. Kesven would not see it that way.
“Switch with me,” Saff whispered under her breath.
Tiernan twitched in her direction. “What?”
“Swap envelopes.”
After a split second of indecision—clearly trying to discern whether Saff was trying to pull one over on him—he slipped his envelope into her hand. She reciprocated. Professor Vertillon was none the wiser.
Saffron read her new fate.
Your leg will be frozen for the duration of the assessment.
“I have no disadvantages,” announced Auria.
“Me neither,” said Tiernan, shooting Saffron a grateful look.
“Nor me,” confirmed Gaian.
“No wand,” muttered Sebran. He rubbed at his cheek, as though checking he’d shaven well. “But I suppose I can keep these?” He patted his tincture belt, and Vertillon nodded confirmation.
“It’s a bit on-the-nose to give the foreigner false information,” muttered Nissa.
“Not false,” pointed out Saff. “The professor said different.”
“And besides, it was drawn at random, Nissa,” said Auria hotly. She took any criticism of the Academy personally, though she had no familial ties to it, just a fundamental reverence for the rules and the establishment. A future Grand Arbiter to her bones.
“What’s the information?” Gaian asked.
“Don’t know. I assume I’ll be given it during the exercise?” Nissa asked.
Vertillon nodded again. “Indeed. Sebran—I mean, Cadet Aduran— will have his wand removed as he passes the threshold of the Grand
Atrium. At which point Cadet Killoran’s leg will also freeze.” He took a step to the side. “You may enter.”
“This is it,” whispered Auria, patting her tincture belt for the thousandth time, eyes glowing with anticipation. She wholly and genuinely believed everything was going to work out. Saff envied her that easy faith. The world hadn’t yet beaten it out of her.
Saffron checked her own belt. She was no Brewer, so it wasn’t notched with vials but instead with an array of weapons and equipment they always took with them on the streetwatch: ropes, manacles, a tourniquet, a baton. Matter could not be created from nothing, no matter how strong the mage, and so some things had to be analog. She also carried a rune-engraved blisblade notched in a leather holster— daggers unique to the Silvercloaks, enchanted so that even a shallow self-inflicted wound provided an enormous full-body ripple of painpleasure. A fast way to replenish the magical well in a pinch.
Not that it had ever worked for Saffron. Nor did velvine breath.
She had to seek pleasure the old-fashioned way.
On the other side of the enormous double doors, a muffled din of chatter swelled. Who would be judging from the raised gallery on the southern side of the atrium? Captain Aspar, of course, and their other superior officers, but Auria suspected higher-ups from the King’s Cabinet were here to cherry-pick the most sparkling candidates for House Arollan’s own court.
Not that Saffron would accept any other offer.
She was fated to be a Silvercloak.
That fate was her god, her faith, her church. That fate was the only reason she was still standing. It had been written in the defining moment of her life—she believed that with her whole being.
Saffron shoved open the high double doors and gasped at what lay beyond.
2
The Final Assessment
Inside the cavernous Grand Atrium stood a reconstruction of an Augurest temple, hewn from pale stone and surrounded by red-leafed trees.
Augurest temples were shaped like an open eye: two curved outer walls sharpening into points where they met, with a domed purple roof. Inside was a winding spiral of a corridor, like an iris, leading into the central worship chamber—the pupil. They were designed to honor the prophetic power of the Five Augurs but were famously a hostage liability. Once intruders entered the spiral corridor, the worshippers in the central chamber became trapped.
Sure enough, this looked like a re-creation of a hostage situation. Two burly men flanked the arched entrance, wearing long scarlet robes with the moon phases embroidered in black and gold, the unmistakable ruby pins at their throats. Bloodmoons.
Everything in Saffron bristled at the sight of them. Even though she knew these men were just Silvercloaks playing dress-up, even though she knew this wasn’t real, her body rose to the threat like the hairs on a fallowwolf’s scruff standing on end.
All at once she was six years old again, watching the murder of her
parents through a narrow golden keyhole. The charred flesh, the reek of ash and honey. The slump of her father’s body as it hit the ground. The surge of raw horror in her chest.
Instead of shaking it off, she leaned into the pain of the memory. She could either suppress it, or she could use it, and she’d already come this far with the latter.
The cadets crossed the Grand Atrium’s threshold as a unit, and Sebran’s pine wand soared into Vertillon’s outstretched hand. Nissa cupped her palm to her ear, receiving her alternative information.
Saffron’s leg, of course, did not freeze as it should. But she was used to pretending.
She altered her gait, dragging her left foot behind her like a corpse.
“Welcome, candidates,” boomed Captain Aspar, their commanding officer, though she was nowhere to be seen. The room’s acoustics had been enchanted to amplify the voices inside it, and her words tremored, slightly distorted. “In the worship chamber, there are twelve hostages. The temple has been taken by an unknown number of Bloodmoons. You are to rescue the hostages with as few casualties as possible. As always, no killing spells—use effigias to turn your foes into statues, to represent death, but only when strictly necessary. The best cohort in the Academy’s history retrieved all twelve hostages while taking every Bloodmoon alive. That is the standard you should be aiming for. Good luck.”
The six cadets all turned to stare at one another.
“Taking every Bloodmoon alive?” muttered Nissa, dropping her hand from her ear. “Why would that be a priority?”
“Intelligence,” replied Gaian. “You know, the reason we’re here.”
“And so that innocent hostages aren’t murdered in retribution.” Auria’s voice was hollow, echoey—their voices too were amplified by the room’s enchanted acoustics. She tucked a lock of frizzy ginger hair behind her pale ear. “At first glance, I think this is a reconstruction of the Temple of Augur Amuilly, in the apothecary district. It was built roughly seven hundred years ago, meaning its walls are approximately forty-eight inches thick, and it won’t have an escape tunnel, like some of the newer temples. Could you burrow one, Nissa?”
“I’m not a fucking mole,” Nissa seethed.
A frown notched between Auria’s brows. “No, but Wielders can manipulate earth. I don’t know why you have to be so—”
“Not sure that’s the best solution.” Peacemaking Tiernan scratched his head, looking up at the glittering purple dome. “My father always impressed on me the importance of community relations. What if we accidentally damage the temple? What if we burrow too hard or deep and destroy its foundations? If the whole thing crumbles to the ground, not only have we killed the hostages, but we’ve also decimated the Silvercloaks’ reputation amongst the Augurest community.”
Nissa rolled her eyes. “Fuck the community.”
Gaian smirked. “You know, it’s never clear what you’re arguing for or against.”
“Maybe I just like arguing.” Nissa’s fingers twitched to her lips, as though smoking a phantom achullah.
Saffron swallowed hard and looked away, trying desperately hard not to remember how their naked bodies felt intertwined, Saff ’s soft edges pressing against Nissa’s hard planes, candle wax dripping over her bare hip—that tantalizing line between pain and pleasure, where the finest magic bloomed.
“What information were you given?” Auria asked Nissa.
Nissa paused for a second. “I’m not sure I should share.”
Auria clenched her fist around her slim wand. She and Nissa clashed so often that Gaian had started a tally.
“Let’s think about how we’d take this building from a military perspective,” said Sebran. He’d served in the Vallish infantry before enrolling in the Silvercloak Academy. “There are two Bloodmoons manning the entrance, and likely at least two in the central chamber guarding the hostages. Another four or five spaced out in the spiral corridor to block our way.” He tapped his bottom lip with his forefinger. “Nissa’s wind could provide a lethal weapon when combined with effigias. Take out all the Bloodmoons in the tunnel in one fell swoop.”
“We’re not supposed to kill the Bloodmoons,” Auria said, with the air of a parent trying not to lose patience with an unruly child. “We need to think about this as sorcerers, not soldiers. What spells could we use to extract the hostages without ever encountering the Bloodmoons?”
“What are you going to do, roll your little vials through the spiral corridor for them to sip at?” Nissa laughed, but not kindly.
She had a point. There were no windows into the central chamber— it was sealed off from the outside world. How could they cast spells with any kind of precision when they couldn’t see the targets? Magic was far more directional than that.
“We could take invisibility elixirs,” Auria suggested. “They’d help us sneak in and disarm the Bloodmoons.”
“Use your head,” Sebran replied, irritated. “The guards would see the front doors open. And even if we weren’t instantly killed, the odds of us accidentally firing curses at one another . . .”
As the cohort bickered, Saffron’s mind spun like a roulette wheel.
She always did this, thought while others spoke, weighed every word or action carefully before committing to it. Because Saints knew what happened when you didn’t think it all the way through. When you turned a doorknob a quarter of an inch, and your parents were slaughtered between one heartbeat and the next.
In any case, they were all thinking about it the wrong way. Shallowly, one-dimensionally. Putting too much weight on the solution without giving the problem its due diligence.
Forgetting one very simple question: Why?
Interrupting Sebran’s rant about the acceptable number of civilian casualties being higher than zero, Saff said, “Look, why would the Bloodmoons hold up an Augurest temple in the first place? Don’t we need to understand their motives first?”
“We’re not fucking diplomats,” said Nissa, golden eyes boring intensely into Saff, a stare that carried an almost physical heat. There was a rumor that Nissa’s grandmother was a dragon, but Saff couldn’t quite wrap her head around the logistics.
“Auria, could there be anything of great value in Augur Amuilly’s temple?” Saff asked. “Something worth this level of Bloodmoon manpower?”
Auria pursed her lips. “Some of the older worship chambers contain relic wands from the era of the Five Augurs. Not the wands belonging to the Augurs themselves, but from other Foreseers in that
time period. Followers believe these relics still contain old power, and that in the right hands, they could be used to cast new prophecies.”
Saff nodded intensely. “So maybe we focus on extracting the relic, not the hostages. Draw the Bloodmoons away from the innocent people they have no real interest in.”
“I like that idea.” Auria’s blue eyes crinkled. “But the relics would likely be in underground vaults. If they were in plain sight maybe we’d be able to levitate them out, but . . .”
“This is ludicrous.” Sebran shook his head in disgust. “You’re intentionally misinterpreting the assignment. Following orders is critical in a hierarchal institution. The captain told us to extract the hostages— not a relic that might be completely irrelevant, that might not even exist.” He projected his voice a little more clearly than usual, as though he wanted the higher-ups to hear.
“Would you like me to fetch a straw, Sebran?” Saff asked earnestly.
Sebran frowned. “Why?”
“For all your sucking up.”
“Sen effigias,” came a sudden command from beside Saff. Then again, “Sen effigias.”
In a burst of impatience, Nissa had struck the two guards flanking the entrance.
They stood still as statues, their bodies turned to ash-gray stone.
For the purposes of this exercise, they were dead.
“Shall we?” Nissa asked sweetly, starting toward the entrance, and Saff was knocked momentarily breathless by a surge of anger.
“What the hell?” hissed Auria.
Nissa turned on her heel, exposing the vertical column of runes tattooed up the side of her neck. “There’s only one way into the temple, and they were guarding it. We’d have had to do it at some point.”
“No, the captain said it was possible to complete the task with all Bloodmoons and hostages taken alive.” Auria’s cheeks were pink with rage. “I can think of countless enchantments we could’ve used to get past them. Exarman, to disarm. Vertigloran to make them dizzy and disoriented. You didn’t need to ruin the assessment before we even—”
“I’m going to make a wind tunnel,” Nissa interrupted. “Who’s coming?”
Sebran gave her a mocking salute and followed, wandless. Gaian hesitated for a moment, pale skin looking particularly white, then tailed Sebran toward the entrance.
Auria sighed, shoulders sinking. “So now our choices are either to split up the group and get a low score for teamwork, or go along with this reckless insanity.”
Saff clenched her jaw. “Nissa was the one who sacrificed any notion of working together. Let’s do our own thing. Prove that we care about doing this properly.”
Auria nodded in agreement, while Tiernan looked anxiously from Nissa to the temple and then up to the viewing gallery where his father sat.
“Sorry,” he eventually said, rubbing the back of his head. “I don’t see a better way.”
And then he stalked off after Nissa, Sebran, and Gaian.
“You’re better than this, Tiernan,” Auria muttered. Some of the shine had slipped from her demeanor.
Nissa yanked open the doors to the temple, and an echoey voice yelled from inside: “Sen effigias.”
She ducked the curse, and it struck Tiernan square in the forehead. Every inch of him turned to gray stone, and a skirmish broke out between Nissa, Gaian, Sebran, and whoever was on the other side of those doors.
“Well, I’m glad that went horribly for him,” Saff snorted. But in truth, she was pissed off he’d squandered the switched envelope. “While they’re distracted, let’s do a lap of the perimeter. There must be something we haven’t thought of. A back entrance, an open window, a tree we can scale to get a better vantage point.”
Auria nodded, casting one more disdainful glance in the direction of the others. Sebran lay prone on the floor behind the statue of Tiernan, the vials from his tincture belt scattered and smashed on the flagstones around him. Nissa and Gaian were nowhere to be seen.
As they walked, Saff reminded herself to drag her leg behind her like a useless slab of meat. It was uncomfortable—her left hip was overcompensating, and a dull ache already throbbed in the socket— but as Professor Vertillon always reminded them, this was how it
might be in the real world. She might have to fight for her life with a horrible injury.
She knew better than anyone that these things were rarely fair. The Academy had gone to great lengths to make the scene feel real. Around the perimeter of the temple, vendor carts sold pleasureevoking refreshments: apricot pastry crescents and almond nougats, frothy caramel coffee and spiked hot chocolate. A pair of horses grazed at a hay bale, and a group of elderly mages sat at a fold-out picnic table playing polderdash, a card game in which the suits of Saints and priests were prone to changing colors and loyalties midway through proceedings. A young, handsome lute player with fiery red hair twanged the Bone Queen’s Lament, eyes closed in feigned sorrow, fingers blurring over the strings. The mournful music was sweet and sad, pure and clean as bellsong, and as the lament built, Saffron’s well of pleasure felt a smidge fuller than before.
Yet for all the scene’s painstaking details, neither Saffron nor Auria spotted any alternative ways into the temple.
“Shame portari is no longer an option,” Saff muttered, but under her breath, so that rule-loving Auria wouldn’t hear.
Portari, the teleportation spell, had been outlawed several decades ago—stripped out of every wand in the land—and Saff was usually glad of the prohibitions. It meant fewer criminals evaded capture. But right now she had to wonder why the Silvercloaks hadn’t been given special dispensations.
Slowly, however, another plan was forming in Saff ’s head.
“The roof,” she said, looking up at the magnificent structure. The bulbous purple glass shimmered like a dragon’s hoard. “It’s mostly opaque, but we might be able to carve a couple of holes in it. We’ll be able to see the central worship chamber. Maybe even cast some enchantments through it.”
“Yes,” agreed Auria, so vehemently that the horse nearest to her startled. “I brewed three levitation tinctures—knew they’d come in handy.”
A low yell echoed inside the temple, followed by the distinctive ping of a spell ricocheting off a stone wall. Auria pulled out two pearly
white potions neatly labeled ascevolo. She handed one to Saff, unstoppered her own, and gulped it down in one.
A few moments later, Auria’s feet floated several inches off the ground.
Saff knew the elixir would not work on her, but she had to maintain the lie. She swallowed the gritty potion confidently, as though fully expecting it to have the desired effect.
But of course, nothing happened.
Auria, now six feet above the ground and gripping onto a tree branch, frowned down at her. “Did you take it?”
“Yes.” Saff feigned confusion. “But I don’t think it’s working.”
“That makes no sense. I brewed them from the same batch.”
“Strange.”
“Maybe I didn’t mix it well enough? There could be too much elm ash in yours.”
Saff studied the nearest tree. A long, spindly branch jutted low on its trunk.
“Sen efractan,” she muttered, and it snapped clean off. Magic might not work on her, but she was still able to enchant other people, other objects.
Next, she gathered a bushel of straw from the horses’ stash—with grunts of effort, to maintain the impression her left leg was not cooperating—and bundled it together, holding it to the end of the branch.
“A broomstick!” Auria called gleefully. She had a genuine, almost childlike adoration for magic.
Saff unlooped a thin rope from her belt and secured it around the bundle of hay. Finally, she opened the third levitation elixir and spread it over the length of the branch. Gravity immediately loosened its grip, and Saff mounted as it floated upward, making sure one leg drooped more clumsily than the other. For the smallest of moments, her stomach swooping as the broomstick rose from the cobbled ground, Saffron shared Auria’s delight in the simple art of a well-executed spell.
As they drew level with the purple dome, Auria and Saff grabbed onto the corniced rim of the curved stone wall and hoisted themselves
onto it with a grunt. The broomstick continued skyward before clattering against the high ceiling of the Grand Atrium.
Saffron perched on the ledge, breathing hard. The dome was mostly opaque, but there was a vague swarming and shouting of shadowed shapes in the worship chamber below—which meant at least one cadet had made it that far.
“Sen aforam,” muttered Saff, pressing the tip of her wand right up to the thick, tempered glass.
A burst of horn-shaped magic shot from her wand, piercing a small round hole in the dome. Auria mirrored Saff ’s spell, and they both looked through.
The scene fifty feet below was carnage. Nissa was a statue in the doorway, while Gaian had been struck a little farther inside. Both stone faces wore stunned expressions, like they couldn’t believe they’d been hit. Sebran, the trained soldier, was the last cadet standing. Using Gaian as cover, he fired haphazard effigias spells into the chamber, striking Bloodmoons and hostages alike.
A quick tally showed that five hostages had been “killed,” as well as four Bloodmoons—though there could be more in the spiral corridor. The three surviving Bloodmoons, using hostages as shields, strode across the room to where Sebran crouched. Sebran drew his blisblade and sliced urgently into his palm, shivering with the surge of painpleasure, but it was too little, too late. He was badly outnumbered.
“What a bloodbath,” Auria groaned in dismay. Forgetting her voice was magically amplified.
It boomed through the wand-hole and echoed around the chamber below. All three Bloodmoons glanced up at the purple dome. One fired an effigias, striking the pane Auria perched on. The glass smashed inward, and she turned into a solid statue.
And then she fell through the dome.
Fast, hard, and made wholly of stone.
As she hit the mosaic tiles below, she shattered into a hundred pieces.
3
The Relic Wand
Saints, cursed Saffron, stomach twisting violently as she ducked out of sight.
What did that kind of obliteration mean? Could such damage be repaired? Once Auria was reanimated, would she still be in a hundred pieces? Limbs and organs spread over the mosaic-tiled floor like a spilled coin purse? She wouldn’t be the first candidate to die in a Silvercloak assessment, but it was rare.
Yet one of the first things Saffron had learned in life was that when the worst could happen, it usually did. It was this cynicism that made her a great detective—she was very difficult to catch off-guard—but also prone to gloom and misanthropy.
Somewhere far below, the Bone Queen’s Lament picked up pace, lute strings twanging fervently beneath the musician’s deft fingers. A second effigias curse flew in Saff ’s direction, shattering another section of the glass roof. It wouldn’t actually turn her to stone, of course, but she couldn’t let the Academy know that, or her forged Enchanter accreditation would be exposed.
She could cast one of her illusions, if circumstances became truly dire. Her father had taught her the rare art of illusionwork when she
was a child, so she could cast a shimmering glamour to make the others believe she was hewn from stone. But such spells were difficult to wield and costly to hold for more than a few seconds, draining the magical well faster than almost any other kind of enchantment— which is why so few modern mages used them.
Below, Sebran fired disarmament spells at the Bloodmoons. One landed true, sending a wand careening across the rounded room. The other Bloodmoons turned their attention away from the figure on the roof and closed in on Sebran, their faces thunderous, their scarlet cloaks drifting behind them like shadows.
Two effigias curses struck Sebran at once, and he turned to stone.
Saff was on her own.
How should she play this?
How could she salvage this ruined assessment to come out on top?
She could disarm the Bloodmoons one by one from the roof, but that wouldn’t buy her enough time to free the hostages. She would have to cast to kill—or, in this case, turn to stone. Yet she badly wanted to prove there was a way to execute this assessment without crude slaughter. Even if she could take one Bloodmoon alive, they’d be a valuable source of information.
She ran through her arsenal of enchantments, landing on one Auria suggested before everything went wrong. Vertigloran, to make a target dizzy and disoriented.
Could she use that? And then cast an illusionary version of herself to trick the Bloodmoons, distract and confuse them while she approached from behind? It would drain all her magic almost immediately and expose her knack for illusions to the Academy, but both would be worth it to emerge from this trial as the sole survivor.
Then the Atherin posting would have to be hers.
In an ideal world, she’d have plenty of time to stop and consider every potential ramification of her plan. But this was not an ideal world, and hers was not an ideal life, and with all other cadets neutralized, the Bloodmoons turned their attention on her.
The remaining purple panes of glass shattered one by one, and then she was falling.
Her wand-free hand flailed above her, finding purchase on an un-
expected solid length. Her enchanted broomstick gradually lowered itself from the ceiling, the levitation potion wearing off.
Hanging on for dear life as she descended, Saff yelled, “Ans vertigloran! ” into the chamber below. It struck true on the first try, making her glad for the hundreds of hours of target practice they’d gone through earlier in the semester.
One Bloodmoon staggered and fell to clumsy knees, but the other two wore murderous expressions. The shorter of them fired another effigias spell up at her. It narrowly missed, but the next one likely wouldn’t.
“Ans clyptus,” Saff bellowed.
A shimmering spellshield formed just in time to repel another effigias.
The spellshield shuddered and nearly dropped, and Saffron trembled with the effort of keeping it up.
While matter could not be created from nothing, certain Enchanters could use raw magic to maneuver intangible forms, such as illusions and spellshields—a rare sub-class of enchanting known as mattermancy. Thanks to her father’s tutelage, Saffron was the only cadet at the Academy with any sort of grasp on mattermancy, much to Auria’s chagrin.
The mattermantic shield would not protect Saffron from a fist or a sword, but it would repel most charms and curses. It was, however, incredibly costly, and Saff felt her power drain with alarming speed, as though a sinkhole had opened beneath it.
With the spellshield raised, she couldn’t cast another spell at the same time—magic being a well with a single bucket—but it bought her precious seconds in which to think. Should she cast to kill? Conjure an illusion, even though it was likely too late, now that she was mere moments from the ground? Keep firing vertigloran and hurry out the remaining hostages in the confusion?
But now the other two Bloodmoons trained their wands on her, and she couldn’t shield herself from all angles.
“Sen effigias,” bounced and echoed around the chamber, sparks flying, her shield flickering dangerously. And then she was struck.
The spell grazed her shoulder just as her boots hit the tiles. She sucked in a breath, half preparing to be turned to stone—would she still be conscious, just unable to move?—but of course, it never happened.
Her heart thudded against her ribs like a battering ram. Everyone would have seen that spell hit her.
Everyone would know.
The lapse in concentration caused the shield to evaporate.
The three Bloodmoons closed around her in a circle formation, one still wobbling from the disorientation spell. The end was nigh. She couldn’t disguise three spells striking her square in the chest.
“Ans vertigloran,” she shouted, and this one found its target, but while the struck Bloodmoon keeled backward, the other two approached with menacing glares.
Both cast effigias at once.
Saff pointed her wand at her boots and called, “Et esilan.”
One of her favorite tricks.
The boots leapt from the ground as though on springs, and Saffron sailed forward on the momentum, clearing the Bloodmoons’ heads— and overshooting quite dramatically.
Slamming into the opposite wall, she crumpled to the ground.
Rolling over to face their backs, she raised her wand, but they were already above her, the word sen hovering on their twisted lips.
Desperation cresting, Saff remembered a rare spell her mother had admitted to using on occasion. It would freeze a scene exactly as it was, if only for a few moments. Mellora sometimes used it to buy herself time when a patient was bleeding out, or if they had precious few seconds in which to diagnose and heal—she said it bought her invaluable thinking space.
Worth a shot.
She raised her wand, unsure what to aim at. “Ans praegelos.”
Nothing happened, but the Bloodmoons spun their heads wildly, a strange expression on their faces. Something like fear, or revulsion, or disbelief.
Saff sharpened the intent in her chest to a single defiant point. “Ans praegelos.”
Still nothing.
Was she pronouncing it wrong? Had she misremembered the word?
Or was the prefix the wrong one?
Magic was commanded verbally, and when casting a spell, one had to announce one’s intentions. Ans represented honorable intentions, while sen represented ill. An important distinction, a built-in fail-safe, making it difficult to injure or destroy by accident. There were a couple of other prefixes—don for the elements, which didn’t particularly care for human notions of right and wrong, and et for the practical everyday magics—but neither of them fit this scenario.
Why wouldn’t ans be the correct prefix? Saff believed her intentions were honorable: save the hostages. Get Auria medical attention. But magic was as elusive as it was pedantic, and it had its own ideas as to what constituted good and evil. Some commands were inexorably linked to a prefix, such as sen incisuren, because the magic would always consider cutting and severing to be a destructive act.
Did it have similar preconceptions about praegelos?
The Bloodmoons recovered their composure, raising their wands simultaneously.
“Sen praegelos,” Saff bellowed with as much ferocity as she could muster.
There was a burst of blue-silver light, and the world fell silent and still.
All except Saffron.
The hostages ceased squirming and fake-sobbing, and the Bloodmoons froze in place, one of them in the middle of a backward stagger, the tilted angle of his body defying gravity, the ruby brooch at his throat shining like a pearl of fresh blood.
Even the distant muttering from the viewing gallery fell to nothing.
Every inch of Saff ’s body shuddered and coiled with the effort of holding it, an immense pressure pushing at her from all angles.
Time was not a beast that took well to being bridled.
Not wasting a precious second, she grabbed the three outstretched Bloodmoon wands and tossed them into the corner of the room. She
