Chapter 56 Fields of Black #2
A mile away, the sea thrashed against the cliffs, and the saltwater fizzle was as good a medicine as any.
The fresh air and the metronomic steps eased some of the tightness in Levan’s chest, cooled some of the sour want in his empty belly.
He still felt like a husk, a half mage, a ghost haunted by his own flaws, but at least it was easier to breathe.
“A little while ago,” Levan began, surprised how stark his voice sounded in the night, “I realized that the loyalty brand was no longer active. My father used medei perpetua to hold them down, and now that he’s dead, there’s no magic well for the enchantment to draw from.”
“Ah. I wondered how long it would take you to figure that out.”
Levan snapped his gaze to the old mage. “You knew?”
A casual shrug, as though they were discussing common bird species and not a life-defining revelation.
“I’ve long hoped that once you were free from the fatal claws of your obsessed father, you might choose to walk away.
But once the time and opportunity finally arrived…
I suppose I was afraid of being proven wrong.
Afraid that you would continue to choose this life. ”
Levan’s jaw clenched. “Well, your fears were founded. I’m still here. And you’re a hellsdamned hypocrite.”
Miret absorbed the vitriol like a pillow folding around a fist. There was a soft silence as they walked, their feet perfectly in step, and then: “I’m proud of you, mil.” The scholar’s voice splintered a little. “I truly am.”
Levan scoffed, feeling deeply fraudulent, like a monster being praised for their small fragment of humanity. “What is there to be proud of?”
“You are here, talking with me, instead of obliterating yourself with loxlure.”
Miret hesitated.
“Let me ask you something. If you could click your fingers right now and have your parents resurrected, would you?”
“Yes,” Levan said, by habit or rote or obligation.
“Why?” Miret sounded genuinely curious.
“Neither of them should have died. They should both be here.”
“Death is rarely a mistake,” Miret countered easily.
Levan stared at him in betrayal. “How can you say that?”
“Mil, the reason you so value my counsel is that I do not prioritize your feelings over the truth. Both of your parents died as a result of their own reckless ambition. Clear cause and effect. Not a mistake. Not a tragedy. Hubris in action.”
Breathing through his anger, Levan waited for his ire to abate before responding. “Be that as it may, I still want them back.”
“Why?” Miret asked again.
Because I miss having a family.
Because I miss who I once was.
Because it’s a purpose, and purpose is the only thing keeping me upright.
Only now…a small voice in his head told him there could be other purposes, if he so wanted there to be.
It felt like a night for the truth, and so he said, “My whole life, I’ve never had a choice. Now that I do, the prospect of deciding is crippling.”
“When you feel ready, I’d be honored to help you make that choice.”
Emotion throbbed in Levan’s throat like a second pulse.
“I’ve been indulging thoughts of pursuing healing, truthfully.
But in Vallin, at least, my reputation would preclude me from any medical school worth its salt.
And I don’t want to buy or blackmail my way through the hallowed doors of a university.
” He scoffed, the bitterness coarse on his tongue.
“Sometimes it feels like I took all the promise of my life and burned it to ash.”
He thought of the three corpses he’d tossed into the sea just a few hours earlier and shuddered.
“The brand gave you little choice,” Miret said gently. “And there are plenty of countries that know not of the Bloodmoon scourge. The best medical school in the world is in Cape Fala.”
Deep in Levan’s gut, longing tugged like a rope. “What if there were another way? A way to bring my parents back and to become the Healer I might always have been. To wipe myself clean of this heinous addiction, to scrub the world of all my evil deeds.”
A long, woolly silence. Miret parsed his meaning with remarkable ease. “She’s a Timeweaver, isn’t she? That’s why the Fifth Prophecy pertains to her.”
Levan bowed his head. “Powerful enough to unmake twenty-one years. And if her father is right, and the lost prophecy foretells her redeeming all Timeweavers with a war-preventing act, my mother would never have to…”
“Seek the throne by force.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a rather large if.”
“The idea that the prophecy foretells her saving the world?” Levan looked up, consternation clear in his side profile. “What do you think Sarcane predicted instead?”
“I have no idea. Nobody truly does.” Miret sighed an academic sigh. “But I stand by what I said. Death is so rarely a mistake.”
“Death is so rarely a mistake,” Miret said, only just loud enough for Saffron to hear from fifty yards behind, boots magically silenced, breath pluming in the night. “I would prefer to see you relinquish your parents’ bodies and souls to the Saints at last, and then move on with this life.”
The two walked in fermenting silence for half a mile, leaving Saffron to process what she’d overheard.
Levan wasn’t planning to steal the Fifth Prophecy out from under her nose, but he had confided their ultimate plan to Miret. And while she’d always thought kindly of the grandfatherly scholar, his knowledge still filled her with unease.
“Can’t you understand the appeal of being six years old again?
” Levan’s voice was fissured with misery, black stitches threading through his words like lox-ridden veins.
“Six years old, with a fresh field of snow in front of me? One unsoaked in blood, untainted by addiction. I would have no brand, both hands, nil ruinous cravings, and two parents who loved me. Can’t you understand why I want that so desperately? ”
“Of course. I have always understood you, mil.” Miret peered over at his surrogate grandson, smiling knowingly. “As does, I believe, Saffron Killoran.”
A gruff sound. “For better or worse.”
“If you went back twenty years and pursued that fresh field of snow, you might not chart a path to her. And if you did somehow find her again…you would both be so different. You might not fall in love.”
The thought sent a curl of sorrow through Saffron, a peeling sensation low in her belly.
As a Timeweaver, she would remember Levan in the remade reality, as she remembered the other versions of the world she’d rewritten—the iteration in which Lyrian had almost killed her, the iteration in which Levan had succeeded in killing Auria.
But based upon the fact Auria did not retain her earlier memories of the Havenwood, Saff had to assume Levan would not know to find her at all.
Would it be worth it? Bringing back her parents, but losing him?
“I think,” Levan said, his voice rough and low, “that any permutation of me would love any permutation of her.”
Everything in Saffron soared, her heart spreading and beating like dragon wings.
She wanted to run to him, press her face in his back, declare her paradigm-transcending love for him in return.
Yet a part of her regarded his statement the same way she did the Saints’ manifesto: as a glorious, well-meaning, ultimately baseless fantasy.
They could not know for certain that he would find her, let alone love her.
And she had never dealt well with uncertainty.
Still, the romance of his words was almost enough to make her bury the Steel King’s letter in the endless northern snow, to let the cold wet wash away Vad Kr?nik’s ink until it was no longer evidence of treason but rather a sodden piece of useless parchment.
Almost, but not quite.
When they reached the cliffy inlet, Miret and Levan stood above the cave containing the prophecy—a patch of frozen earth dotted with small copses of leafless, narrow-trunked trees. The old scholar closed his eyes and raised his hands, palms facing the earth.
After several moments, he dropped them back to his side, and in a slightly strangled voice said, “There’s no longer a frequency. All wards have dropped.”
Levan’s stomach tied itself in a knot.
Tomorrow, they’d find the Fifth Prophecy.
Tomorrow, they’d know whether Saffron would indeed save the world—or unmake it as she had him.