Chapter 74 Death Penalty
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Death Penalty
Saffron sat on the floor of a holding cell, shivering profoundly.
She had not yet been stripped of her cloak, her own clothes, but she was wandless, hopeless.
It was cold in the cell, yes, and had been cold in the winter-bitten north, but the shivering was borne more of an ingrained trauma, an involuntary bodily response to captivity.
She hadn’t thought her time in Duncarzus had affected her—until she had been cuffed, chained, locked in once more.
The deminite bars filled her with a feeling of profound emptiness, of dark numbness.
“You were right—King Quintan has passed the death penalty,” Auria said softly through the bars of the cage, leaning back against a creamstone wall on the other side.
Her pink, dewy face looked recently scrubbed clean, the cobweb scars starker than usual.
“He heard the Bloodmoon kingpin had been arrested. Wants to make an example.”
“What are the charges?” Saffron croaked. Her throat was dry, and bizarrely enough, she was yet to be offered hot chocolate. “Surely nothing organizational. You don’t have enough to bring down the Bloodmoons entire. That’s why you’re here.”
“The kingpin committed sixteen counts of murder, for a start.” Auria rolled the back of her skull on the wall, then peered through the bars at her disgraced former colleague.
“And no, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I don’t want to see you die for this.
I know you were always willing to, that you wouldn’t have taken the job otherwise. But—”
“I meant what are the charges against me.” Saffron’s teeth were gritted in a feeble attempt to control her trembling. “Yes, I killed a Whitewing, but it was self-defense. Well, Levan-defense. And—”
“Treason, Saffron.” Auria’s voice was gentle, terrible. “The charge is treason.”
The floor fell out from beneath Saffron, but she tried not to let her fear show. “How is this treason? The Bloodmoons are a criminal organization, yes. You might get them on ascenite laundering, murder, but treason? No.”
They had their sights on the throne, true.
But the Silvercloaks should not know as much.
A worried muscle flickered in Auria’s narrow, pale jaw.
“The King’s Prophet foretold that the Bloodmoons would take the throne by force.
The king therefore pressured the Grand Arbiter into allowing prophecy, at least royally sanctioned prophecy, into the courts as evidence of future crime.
Dematus caved. Legally, the scarlets and all known associates are already guilty of treason. ”
The cascade of revelations left Saffron breathless, and cursing a name she had cursed so many times of late.
Harrow.
No wonder he had gone on the run. The Fifth Prophecy was now evidence of his own treason, and if anyone found out what Sarcane had kept hidden all these centuries, the King’s Prophet would lose his life.
As would Saffron, if she couldn’t maneuver her way out of it.
She still had one card left to play: the Steel King’s letter, hastily hidden in the woods outside her childhood home in Lunes. But if there was a way to escape this situation without turning it over…
“You think it’ll hold?” She swallowed hard. “A treason charge.”
“I think you’ll be convicted with extraordinary ease. Unless…”
Saffron grimaced. “I prove I’m undercover.”
So that was why Auria was risking this unsanctioned conversation. Saffron was yet to be properly interrogated, and anything she said now to her former colleague would be unrecorded, inadmissible. A bureaucratic breach so unlike Auria Marriosan, and she was doing it to save Saffron.
“Do you have anything? Anything, Saffron.” Auria’s tone was pleading. “I’ve spoken to Jebat, and he’s willing to go over Karvas’s head with any evidence you can provide. Straight to Commissioner Dillans, who can pardon you—celebrate you—and push for a Bloodmoon-wide arrest.”
Yes, Saffron had something.
But it would be the end of Levan.
She no longer needed the Bloodmoons to achieve her goal—Lorissa Rezaran’s weaverwick wand had been destroyed, and if the Fifth Prophecy was anything to go by, their ascenite vaults paled in comparison to the Palace throne room.
Saffron could travel to Nyr?th, find her own weaverwick, then follow the course of destiny toward Vallin’s highest seat.
There she would have everything she needed to unmake twenty-something years and save her parents—and Levan’s.
She wouldn’t let the continent descend into war.
There was nothing tying her to the Bloodmoons anymore, nothing tying her to Levan.
Nothing but a foolish, ill-fated love.
Perhaps they’d find their way back to each other, in another reality. Perhaps they wouldn’t.
It was too great a decision to make—too permanent, too ruinous.
Saffron ran her hands through her knotted, smoke-scented hair. “Has Levan told you anything?”
“Not a word since we brought him in.” Auria shook her head. “It’s like something has snapped inside him. Some tether to sanity, to reality…broken.”
“Maybe if I could talk to him…” Saff trailed off.
“I think you know we can’t allow that to happen.”
Saffron’s hand went to her necklace; the pendant that reminded both of her parents and of Levan. “When will I see him?”
It took a few beats for Auria to respond, as though a pause might somehow soften the blow. “Likely never. You’ll be questioned separately, held separately. Tried separately. Executed separately.”
Despair flared inside Saffron, hot and bright. There was nothing she could do to save them. If some genius chess move lingered just beyond her ken, she couldn’t see it. Not in her exhausted, terrified state.
“We’re running out of time, Saffron. They’ll be here to take you for interrogation in the next few moments. I already hear footsteps.”
Saffron’s mind took off at a sprint, everything around her blurring, as though she were a beast of prey fleeing through the woods so fast the colors smeared together.
There was so much Saffron wanted, needed, to do.
She wanted to bring back her parents, to save the world, to redeem the Timeweavers and prevent the annihilation of her beloved homeland.
But she also wanted Levan to be by her side throughout it all, not hanging from a noose outside the Palace steps.
The thought was so profoundly terrible that it thrust a sharp pain through her chest.
She could not live with such a thing, even if there was a chance she might later undo it. She could not let him die, could not let him take his last breath believing that once again she had not chosen him. That he was not worth choosing at all.
Images fell through her mind like the royal suits in a polderdash deck.
Levan, brow furrowed as he brought her father’s magic back to life around her neck.
Levan, his hand absently scratching behind Rasso’s furry ear.
Levan, reading a section from The Lost Dragonborn to help her fall asleep.
Levan, making fresh hot cocoa around a campfire, toasting his cup to hers.
Levan, teaching the apothecary’s grandson how to build a shelter.
Levan, shivering and broken in a bathtub.
Love crashed through her, fierce and destructive and cleansing all at once.
Surely there had to be a way to prove her innocence and evade the death penalty without destroying the mage she adored in the process. Surely there would be fair process, a trial, the chance to appeal, the opportunity to outsmart and outplay.
The new kingpin had spent the last weeks and months trying to find a better way.
A way to leave behind the brutal brands and the rule of fear, a way to uphold his mother’s legacy without leaving such a trail of devastation in his wake.
Many times, the quest had forced his hand.
Many times, he had fallen short. But he was trying. She had to try too.
She thought of that toast in the snow-blanketed forest.
To a better world.
The overlapping footsteps stopped outside the cell door. There was a jangle of keys, a low murmuring.
Auria looked at her, hopeful and pleading.
“I have nothing.” Saffron’s voice splintered, her hand finding her parents’ necklace for what might be the final time. “No evidence. No proof I can give you.”
“Saints.” Auria paled to the color of bone. “Then you’re going to hang.”