Silvercloak

Silvercloak is the first book in a fantasy trilogy set in Atherin, where magic is replenished through pleasure and sharpened by pain.

Twenty years before the main narrative, six-year-old Saffron Killoran hides in a pantry while two Bloodmoon enforcers, members of Atherin's most feared criminal organization, murder her parents. The Bloodmoons seek a necromancer, a practitioner of a forbidden sub-class of healing magic capable of raising the dead. They kill Saffron's father, Joran, to force her mother, Mellora, into revealing the ability. Both parents die, and Saffron does not speak for six years.

Two decades later, Saffron completes her training at the Silvercloak Academy, Atherin's elite detective force. She conceals a critical secret: she is immune to all magic cast upon her body. No spell, curse, or elixir affects her, a trait her father taught her to disguise through mattermancy, the rare art of casting illusions. She forged her Enchanter certification to enter the Academy. Her cohort includes Tiernan Flane, a shy Healer whose father sits on the King's Cabinet; Auria Marriosan, a brilliant mage who aspires to become Grand Arbiter, the nation's highest legal authority; and Nissa Naszi, a half-Eqoran Wielder, a combative mage classification, with whom Saffron has had a secret romantic relationship.

During the final assessment, Saffron casts praegelos, a spell that freezes time. Unlike everyone else, she can move through the frozen moment, an effect she attributes to her immunity. She touches a relic wand and receives a prophetic vision: She sees herself wearing a Bloodmoon cloak, kissing a dark-haired man with a scarred lip, then killing him.

Captain Aspar, Saffron's commanding officer and a follower of the Augurest faith built around the prophecies of the ancient Five Augurs, confirms the vision is real. She offers Saffron a deep undercover mission: infiltrate the Bloodmoons to gather evidence that the corrupt Grand Arbiter Dematus cannot dismiss. Saffron's immunity to truth elixir and to the loyalty brand, a dark curse burned into every Bloodmoon's chest that kills upon betrayal, makes her uniquely qualified. She accepts, is publicly disgraced and imprisoned for six months, then maneuvered into debt at a Bloodmoon gamehouse.

En route, Nissa intercepts Saffron after overhearing her conversation with Aspar, becoming the only other person who knows about the mission. At the gamehouse, Saffron discovers the Bloodmoons lace complimentary drinks with loxlure, a powerfully addictive narcotic. She witnesses a tall Bloodmoon torturing and killing an innocent Brewer while demanding information about someone named Nalezen Zares. She recognizes the man from her vision: He is Levan Celadon, the kingpin's son. His accomplice, Segal, is one of the enforcers who murdered her parents. Saffron bargains for her life by demonstrating her illusionwork and claiming a Silvercloak contact can find Zares. The kingpin, Lyrian Celadon, whose encyclopedic memory maps every citizen in Atherin, accepts her into the organization. To receive the brand, she must kill a croupier as sacrifice. Her magical well empty, she slits his throat with a dagger. Lyrian presses a cursed poker to her chest, marking her permanently.

In the Bloodmoon compound, Saffron gathers intelligence. Levan reveals he carries Rezaran blood through his mother, Lorissa. House Rezaran was the royal Timeweaver dynasty, mages who could manipulate time, supposedly eradicated a century ago. Saffron relays everything to Aspar at secret meetings: the loxlure operation, the Rezaran bloodline, and the organizational structure. When Lyrian's lieutenant Vogolan discovers her immunity, Saffron kills him, turns his body to stone, and scatters the pieces across Atherin over several days.

On the Bloodmoon riverboat, Saffron identifies the lox shipment schedule and contacts Aspar with the date. During the same voyage, she and Levan capture Nalezen Zares, a necromancer, in Port Ouran. When Zares nearly kills Levan, Saffron freezes time and moves him out of danger. Their bond deepens as Levan re-enchants her parents' pendant necklace with her father's color-changing magic. Saffron notes with alarm that the pendant shows conflicting signals in Levan's presence: enemy, trustworthy, and future lover.

The dock raid fails. Levan, suspecting a trap, teleports the lox hundreds of miles away before the Silvercloaks arrive. Lyrian kills three customs officers, triggering a full attack. Levan strikes Nissa with a killing curse; she survives only because of a protective undergarment. Saffron begs Levan to heal Nissa, confessing her love. He complies, and they escape. No lox is found in the hold.

When Lyrian corners Saffron to execute her for the failed raid, she seizes Lorissa's weaverwick wand, a type crafted for timeweaving, from his hand and turns a miniature hourglass on his desk. Whispering the incantation she memorized from tunnel carvings, she rewinds time by several minutes. She is a Timeweaver, the extinct mage class the Augurests have spent centuries eradicating.

In the remade timeline, Saffron gives Lyrian a defective spell-tracing charm that incorrectly links Vogolan's death to Levan's wand. Lyrian impales his son's hand with a cursed shard of deminite that will drain all his blood if removed. Saffron reads Levan's locked journal and discovers Tiernan is a Bloodmoon informant. She also learns that Levan's lost love, Alucia, was a rival gang's infiltrator whom Vogolan killed, explaining Levan's hatred of his father's lieutenant. When Saffron confronts Tiernan, he casts a killing curse on himself, a compelled suicide triggered by discovery. Saffron hides his body in the Bloodmoons' ascenite crypt, a vast chamber where the rare mineral ascenite, which powers timeweaving, preserves Lorissa Rezaran's body for eventual resurrection. This is the Bloodmoons' driving purpose: bringing Levan's mother back from the dead.

Saffron severs Levan's cursed hand to save him. Their intimacy deepens, though Saffron notices one of his spells appeared to work on her, raising unsettling questions about the limits of her immunity. She relays information about a lox retrieval to Aspar. At the Havenwood, Levan's childhood settlement, a Silvercloak perimeter dome traps everyone inside. Lyrian orders the murder of one of Saffron's uncles. In the tunnels, Levan compels a captured detective into revealing that Aspar has an undercover agent near him. Saffron realizes Levan is a Compeller, a fourth mage class forged through years of childhood torture ordered by his father to make Levan powerful enough to perform necromancy.

Levan confronts Saffron and asks her to choose him. She freezes time and restrains the Bloodmoons, but Levan compels her to undo the restraints even without his wand. Unable to overpower him, she fulfills the prophecy: she kisses him and casts the killing curse. Levan dies. Aspar also falls. Auria, the sole surviving Silvercloak, refuses to believe Saffron was undercover. With Nissa in a coma and no corroboration, Saffron uses a painmaker artifact to fuel her depleted well and timeweaves backward, undoing Levan's death. In the second timeline, Lyrian and Aspar kill each other, and Levan kills Auria. Saffron timeweaves a third time. In this final iteration, she freezes time and drags Auria to safety before Levan's curse reaches her. Levan grieves over his father's body, unable to raise the dead.

Saffron confronts a terrifying realization: she could theoretically gather enough ascenite to timeweave twenty-one years into the past and prevent her parents' murders. Every death would be undone. This goal aligns with Levan's own mission, and she recognizes the seductive logic for what it is, the belief that future undoing justifies present atrocity. In an epilogue, Levan records in his journal that he has become kingpin and deduced Saffron is a Timeweaver who killed him in another timeline. The entry ends: "Saffron Killoran unmade my world. And now I will unmake her" (436).