Chapter 52 Restraint
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Restraint
Flarence reeked of nightpoppy. It likely wasn’t all that noticeable if you weren’t addicted to loxlure, but for Levan it was as physical as a smack to the face.
Nightpoppy, the dark-petaled botanical from which loxlure was made, was native to Laudon, just a few hundred miles to the east. Ordinarily one might not be able to smell it so far away, but a westerly breeze blew over the Cinereal Sea, carrying with it the unmistakable scent of the dark fields.
Levan was no stranger to it, of course, after his many years handling shipments for the Bloodmoons, but the crates he received were always dried.
Fresh from the valley, it was a thousand times stronger.
He wanted it more than he wanted air, his whole body aching and begging for it.
It was a curious inner battle, because Levan had always prided himself on his strength of character, his ability to endure.
But when it came to nightpoppy, to loxlure, he suddenly didn’t care about strength, didn’t care about anything so abstract or arbitrary.
He became a creature of want and want alone.
By the time the party made it back to the village, Levan was physically trembling from the restraint.
Rather than dining with the others, he excused himself to the pokey bedroom he shared with Saffron.
Almost as soon as he crossed the threshold, he collapsed to the ground, shuffling into a cold, hard corner and pressing his back against the wall.
Resting his elbows on his knees, he held his head in his hands and tried to extract the claws of addiction from his flesh one by one.
The smell was so strong, even through the rickety window of the humble inn, even though the scent of salty stew and fresh bread wafted up from the tavern downstairs. The tavern where the others sat, normal mages with no ruinous vices, sharing a meal and likely laughter.
As ever, he was alone.
But a few minutes after he’d retired to the shabby room, there were footsteps in the corridor.
A key turned in the lock, and the door swung open.
Saffron entered, carrying a bundle of skinny sticks the approximate color of cinders.
When she saw Levan crammed into the corner of the room, she didn’t seem at all surprised, and Levan barely had the vim to feel embarrassed.
“What’s that?” he muttered weakly, gesturing to the sticks in her hand.
She laid them down on the bedside table, rummaging in the top drawer and pulling out a small wooden oblong, engraved with blackfoxes and notched with a groove in the top. “C?lsa—a kind of Nyr?thi incense. It’s strong and obnoxiously coal-like, but it’ll mask the smell.”
“What smell?”
“Nightpoppy.” She lit one of the rods on the table lamp and slid it into the wooden holder. A plume of purple-gray smoke curled from the tip. “You think I didn’t notice the high wind carrying it over the Cinereal?”
Something skipped between Levan’s ribs. “Honestly, no. I didn’t think anyone not addicted to loxlure would notice.”
Saffron perched on the edge of the bed, looking down on his pathetic position. Starlight filtered through the window behind her, illuminating her curls like a halo. “I might not be addicted, but I care about someone who is.”
Levan’s ribs turned painful all of a sudden. “I didn’t tell you I’ve been struggling.”
“You just lost your father,” she said softly.
Hells, I love you.
The thought came to Levan before all the emotional and logistical reasons not to. He dropped his head back into his hands, so he wouldn’t have to look at her. The pulse at his temples felt like hoofbeats.
Saffron shifted on the bed. “I’ve asked the innkeeper to bring bowls of snowfish stew to the room. You need to eat. It’ll help the shaking.”
She’d noticed his trembling.
He should have felt embarrassed, but…he didn’t.
He felt cared for, which was just as discomfiting.
The cynical kingpin he’d been forced to become insisted it was only because she needed his enormous power to achieve her own ends, like a sword she had to keep sharp. Perhaps he should dispel her false ideas of his fortitude.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” he muttered into his palms, one warm skin, one cold and golden.
“I wasn’t going to, because—well. We live in a world where weakness is exploited.
But I’ve been having trouble with my magic ever since I destroyed my mother’s weaverwick wand.
The legends say such a deed turns magic against you. I thought it was folklore, but…”
As he trailed off, there was a fraught silence.
“You destroyed your mother’s wand?”
Levan’s belly plummeted. That was sloppy. The cravings had addled his judgment.
“Yes. Not long after the Havenwood.”
“Why?” Saffron’s tone was unreadable.
He forced himself to meet her blazing stare. “Because I had my suspicions about your abilities, and I could not trust that you would not use the power against me.”
Again.
Could she sense that final unspoken word?
Saffron dropped her gaze to the hands curled in her lap. Levan waited for her to ask how he’d known, but instead she murmured, “That’s why you kept prompting me to tell the full truth in the aftermath of the raid. You knew I wasn’t just undercover—I was something far more fatal.”
Levan nodded grimly.
“You understand why I couldn’t tell you at first, don’t you?” She peered up through pale lashes. “I didn’t know how you’d take it, knowing I was a threat to your mother’s claim. But I don’t want the throne. You know that.”
“Yes, Silver. I know that.”
Levan sensed the cogs turning in her mind, the way she was casting everything in a new light. Understanding the depths of his mistrust with renewed perspective. Processing what this revelation meant for their joint quest.
“What do you mean by trouble with your magic?” she asked eventually.
So they were moving past the revelation with relative ease. Despite the tension in the tightly strung instrument of his body, Levan found himself a little lifted as one more secret fell away.
“It disobeys me, unless I’m acting from a place of pure and honorable intent.
Healing seems to strengthen the bond. I’ve been able to compel a few times, but it refractures any progress I’ve made rebuilding the connection.
” He raked his fingers through his salt-tangled hair.
“Once we get into that cave, if there’s more sinister magic guarding the prophecy…
I might be able to protect you. That, in itself, is a pure and honorable intent.
But I may not be able to destroy, if such a thing is required. That would fall to you.”
Saffron was silent for a moment. Levan thought she must be horribly disappointed to lose her best weapon, but when he looked up at her at last, he saw not despondency or disenchantment but that same soft concern. It was almost too much to bear, like looking directly at the sun.
“That must feel…complicated. When you have such a fraught relationship with your power to begin with.”
He nodded again, stiff, tense, a little embarrassed.
“I didn’t want you here just because you’re powerful, Levan.”
“Why else would you—?”
His monstrous power was his only worth in this world.
“A complicated question,” she said, her voice soft and oddly sad.
The words whorled between them like smoke.
“The incense is working,” Levan noted, gesturing to the c?lsa.
The incense, or her presence. Both strong enough to fend off the demons—for now.
“You’re still shivering.”
“I know.”
“There’s a whole bed of blankets here. They might not be as downy as Meraude’s, but…”
“I’m fine,” Levan said, knowing that if he got up onto that bed right now, he might not have the restraint to resist her.
“Always a martyr.” Saffron chuckled, tugging the topmost blanket off the bed and tossing it to him. It landed over his outstretched legs, and he didn’t pull it any farther up his body. All at once he felt rather ridiculous.
“Back on the cliffs…” Saffron started. “You didn’t like when I referenced how powerful you are. Was it because it reminded you of—”
“No,” Levan said, unwilling to spend another night reliving his childhood torture. “It’s because I’m not powerful. Not right now, not the way I usually am.”
Against his will, his mind drifted back to the last time he was truly powerless around Saffron Killoran.
Yet you’re the one pinned in place, and I’m the one who could hurt you if I so wanted to.
At the memory, his body reacted. The sharp pain in his impaled hand as she moved back and forth in his lap. The feeling of being wholly at her mercy.
What did it say about him, that the thought of surrendering—to Saffron, to the oblivion of loxlure—was so appealing? What did it say about him, that his body found the relinquishing of control so intoxicating?
Control yourself, he thought darkly, knowing this woman could be the end of him, knowing his life was at the mercy of her desires, and yet he was so tired of controlling himself. He was using all his restraint to fend off the lure of lox, and there was little left to temper his traitorous vock.
Only it wasn’t just his vock. It was his heart too. And that was infinitely more troubling.
He focused on the hard ground beneath him, on the smoky incense, on the dim sounds of the tavern below, but it was no use. His whole body was screaming at him, but now it was not for nightpoppy.
And if he was going to cave into either vice, better it was this.
He discarded the blanket and rose to his feet, swaying slightly from lightheadedness—he hadn’t eaten since arriving in Flarence, so strong was the smell of nightpoppy.