Silvercloak by LK Steven

Here is a summary with spoilers for Silvercloak by LK Steven

In the prologue, a child named Saff is happily living with her magical parents, who can use necromancy. One day, her parents panic and tell her to hide. Dark mages called the Bloodmoons arrive, searching for anyone with necromancy magic. They ask Saff’s parents if they can use it. They lie, but when Saff’s father is killed and her mother is brought back, their magic is exposed. The Bloodmoons kill both parents, leaving a young Saff alone in the world.

Two decades later, Saffron Killoran has joined the Silvercloak Academy. She wants only one thing: to bring the Bloodmoons to justice. She has spent years training, and she is now in the final stages of becoming an elite detective. She faces her last trial, barely passes it, and watches as some of her classmates fail in ways that almost turn deadly.

After her trial, she meets with the headmaster, who reveals that he knows her true identity. He knows she lied her way into the academy, and because he knew her father, he offers her any position she wants. But the position comes with a cost. She will be officially graduated, but publicly renounced. To everyone else, it will look as if she failed. She must go through a staged trial and imprisonment, and once she emerges, her real mission will begin. She is to infiltrate the Blood Born. To do so, she must lose all her money at a gambling house and then beg to join them.

She spends six months in prison. It destroys many of her friendships. After she is released, she goes to the gambling house and loses everything, though she almost accidentally wins. She forces herself to act desperate and finally approaches the Blood Born, begging to be taken in. They are suspicious. They already know who she is and that she once tried to be a Silvercloak. They try various tactics to make her reveal secrets, but she refuses. Eventually they decide to brand her, marking her as one of them. She agrees, because she wants to take them down from within.

Before the branding, they put her through an initiation. They force her to kill someone, and although it breaks her, magic cannot affect her, so she must act the part. They give her a truth elixir, and she pretends to be under its influence flawlessly. The branding hurts badly and makes her pass out. When she heals, her training begins with the boy who found her, whose name she still needs to look up. To maintain her cover, she must return to her old friends and try to gather information, hoping to trap them if she can.

Because they do not trust her, Levan is often assigned to watch over her. This leads to long days of training and missions to the docks, where the Blood Born receive shipments. Saffron enjoys this part of the assignment because it gives her opportunities to gather information and potentially pass it to the Silvercloaks. But she also finds herself beginning to like Levan and forming an unexpected friendship with him.

One night, Saffron sneaks out of the den to meet her captain in a bathhouse. She shares the information she has gathered and then returns. But Kingpin’s right-hand man follows her. He knows she met with the Silvercloaks, yet he cannot understand how she did it with the brand. Then he realizes that magic does not work on her and that she is truly a spy. Saffron reacts quickly and kills him. She uses an old spell to turn his body to dust, then spends days scattering that dust around. When he never reappears, everyone is summoned to Kingpin’s office to take a truth serum test. Saffron lies easily, unaffected by the magic. Everyone is confused by the disappearance.

Saffron uses the moment to speak more openly to Levan under the guise of the truth serum, though he catches on and stops her before too much can slip out. In return, she shares a personal memory about a magical door her father built that changed color based on who knocked. Levan tells her he can recreate the effect using the piece of that door she wears as a necklace. He succeeds, and the necklace glows with the color of a lover. It means Levan may one day be her future love.

During an outing, Saffron and Levan encounter one of the people responsible for her parents’ deaths. Saffron finally gets her retribution and kills him. They resume their dock operations, but Saffron becomes impatient. Wanting to know the schedule of the next shipments, she breaks into Levan’s room and finds the information. She uses magic to conceal her tracks, then contacts her commander to relay everything she learned.

When Saffron and the others go to the docks for the next shipment, all hell breaks loose when the Silvercloaks appear to infiltrate. Amid the chaos, Saffron gets trapped, and Levan chooses to save her instead of his father. Because of this choice, the two are trapped together, and Saffron can no longer run from her lies. Levan realizes she is the reason for the Silvercloak attack and that she has been their spy. But he still cannot believe it, since her mark should make that impossible.

When they are rescued, Kingpin seizes Saffron and throws her into prison for interrogation. She acts convincingly, hiding the fact that magic does not affect her. When she is brought back to speak to Kingpin, Saffron accidentally uses magic she has never touched before: time magic. The magic harms Levan, and as the replayed conversation reveals everything, Levan declares himself the traitor, leaving his father no choice but to imprison him instead.

When Saff visits Levan, she finds his hand pinned to a table by a knife. If the knife is removed, he will die. She feels awful for the position she has placed him in and promises to visit as often as she can. With her new knowledge of time magic, she goes into town seeking magical equipment, but everyone she approaches turns her away and warns her not to speak of time magic. She eventually finds a place that can help her, but they demand her magical necklace, the piece of her parents’ door that Levan charmed. It breaks her heart, but her need to avenge her parents wins out, and she trades it away. She continues visiting Levan, and each visit draws them closer.

With Levan and the other Bloodmoons no longer shadowing her every step, Saff snoops more freely. She discovers that one of her old classmates is the Bloodmoons’ mole. When she confronts him, he panics and kills himself. Saff tries to use necromancy, hoping her new time magic might mean she has inherited it as well, but it does not work. Later, when she goes to pay her respects, she realizes why the Bloodmoons are still searching for a necromancer. Kingpin’s wife, Levan’s mother, is still being magically preserved. When she tells Levan, he confirms it. They have shared the same grief and many of the same childhood stories, growing up only a town apart.

After several days, Levan decides Saff must cut off his hand so the dagger will only kill the hand and not him. They share an intimate moment, and Saff does as he asks. As he tells her to leave him alone with the pain, Saff realizes they may truly be fated.

Later, when Levan comes to visit her, he has a new golden arm. He kisses her. Their moment is interrupted when the Silvercloaks attack the Bloodmoons’ base. During the fighting, Saff watches her old commander die. While Kingpin celebrates, she takes the chance and kills him. With both leaders dead, the battle ends and everyone retreats, including Saff with the Silvercloaks. But now that the commander is dead, no one believes she was truly a spy. They all push her away and call her a traitor.

Saff begins reflecting on all her choices over the past months and realizes that many terrible events happened because of the decisions she made. She decides she may need to become the villain in order to learn how to reverse time, all the way back to the day her parents died, to save countless lives.

Meanwhile, Levan becomes the leader of what remains of the Bloodmoons’ organization. He feels utterly betrayed by the girl he believed he was fated to love, and now all he wants is retribution for everything she has done.