Silvercloak

Prologue

TWENTY 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 high-bridged 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 knee-high 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.

Th e 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.

Th e 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.

Th e golden doorknob stopped turning.

Th e 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.”