Author: Leah Cypess

“They can tell whether I feel threatened or not. And anyhow . . .” She took a deep breath. “I’m not. Warded against you, I mean. Anymore.”

He straightened as if in response to an attack.

The wary hope in his eyes made her chest constrict. She forced her words out, awkward and halting. “I don’t have any defenses against you, Sorin. At all.”

When Sorin spoke, his voice lacked its usual smooth assurance. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I know,” Ileni said.

The moment stretched, clumsy and painful. Then, with an almost inhuman swiftness, he closed the distance between them.

Her power acted without her conscious intent, and the door slammed shut. She didn’t care, just then, how stupid it was. And neither, evidently, did he.

It wasn’t until late that night that Ileni heard the rap on her door, but she was wide awake and still fully dressed. She pulled the door open a crack and was back sitting cross-legged on the bed by the time Bazel stepped in, his reddish hair rumpled by sleep.

Ileni inclined her head. “You brought the stone?”

“He brought something else,” Irun said, and stepped through the door behind Bazel.

Ileni scrambled to her feet as Bazel stepped to the side and Irun came across the room toward her. Before she could move, or even think, he jerked her around and pressed her down with her face to the bed. He yanked her arm behind her back at an angle that sent pain screaming along her shoulder.

The thin blanket pressed into her face, suffocating her. She twisted her head to the side and opened her mouth to gasp in air. Something thick and rough slid between her teeth and tongue. She choked, heaved, and tried to reach for the gag. Irun did something to her arm that made the world go black with pain.

When she could hear again, Irun was saying—his voice light and conversational—“That’s the thing about sorcerers, see. If they can’t speak, they can’t work any serious spells.”

He spun her around and threw her on the bed. The back of Ileni’s head hit the stone wall. When she had blinked away the stinging tears, Irun was standing over her. She looked past him at Bazel, who stood with his back to the door. His pale blue eyes slid away from hers.

Irun followed her gaze. “See how easy it was? Just like I said. We’ve lived so long in fear of sorcerers, letting them prop up the Empire, holding us back from an all-out attack. And it’s so, so easy to make them helpless, once you’re not afraid. We can do whatever we want to her now.”

“Just kill her,” Bazel said.

Irun flexed his hand. “Are you sure? If I hurt her enough, I can control her even with the gag off. I can make her work the stones for you.”

“I don’t want to work them.” Bazel did meet Ileni’s eyes then, though he was talking to Irun. “I never want to see Karyn again.”

Irun stepped back from the bed. “You’re a pathetic excuse for an assassin,” he sneered. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep our bargain. You’ll be protected. But what happens to her is no longer up to you.”

“Just kill her,” Bazel said again. Ileni supposed she should be grateful. She reached for the gag, and Irun backhanded her across the face. She rolled to the side, her cry strangled in her throat.

“You lack imagination, Bazel,” Irun said. “There are so many more interesting things we could do first.” She didn’t have to turn to know exactly what his smile looked like. “Besides, I can use her to send a message to Sorin.”

She flinched. Irun laughed. “Sorin the untouchable. I bet your death would touch him. But you didn’t tell him about this meeting, did you, Teacher?”

She rolled onto her back and managed, defiantly, to nod.

“I don’t believe you.” He leaned over and, with a negligent motion, broke one of her fingers.

Ileni screamed through the gag, an ugly rattling sound. She shook her head frantically, blinking away the sudden flood of tears, just in time to see Irun straighten and tilt his head to the side. “Still, maybe we should make it quick. Just to be safe.”

Ileni didn’t see where the dagger came from, but suddenly it was there in his hand. She twisted and lashed out with her foot, a move Sorin had taught her. Irun avoided the kick easily, grabbed her ankle, and pulled up. She landed in a heap on the floor, with an impact that must have knocked bones out of place.

She tried to turn herself over, and Irun planted his foot on her back. “Would you like to do it?” he asked Bazel, politely mocking.

Everything hurt so much. Ileni reached under her bed with her uninjured hand, pulled out her bag, and flung it behind her. The movement twisted her shoulder and sent new agony arching down her back. The warding stones tumbled out of the bag and across the floor.

Irun jumped away, the crushing weight of his foot gone from her back. We’ve lived so long in fear of sorcerers. . . . But he did still fear sorcery, and he didn’t know what these stones would do. She grabbed the nearest one and sent it skidding . . . not toward Irun, but toward Bazel.

He leaped out of the way, and Ileni scrambled to her feet and ran for the door, kicking stones wildly as she went. She wasn’t even halfway there when Irun grabbed her by the hair, pulled her around as if she weighed nothing, and slid his blade neatly across her throat.

She jerked her head away, ripping hair out of her scalp, the knife slashing up along her jaw and cheek. Too late. The blade had cut through skin and breath and blood, ripping right through her airway.

It hurt like nothing had ever hurt before. She grabbed her throat, and blood spurted through her fingers in hot bursts of pain, searing through her mind and her sudden blind panic. Irun let go of her, and she fell to the floor, dying.

Except Irun had also cut through the gag.

The panic of death fueled her remaining power in one final, focused effort. The spell was short, a single word. She opened her mouth and screamed it, through the blood choking her, through the agony and terror of her death. The word rushed out of her slashed throat and into silence.

A new torrent of blood followed it, spilling between her fingers; but then there was air instead of blood, filling her dying lungs and forcing its way through her body. She didn’t even stop to take a deep breath. She leaped to her feet, grabbed the knife held carelessly in Irun’s hand, and plunged it into his back.

It wasn’t hard. Physically, it took all her strength, but it was still one of the easiest things she had ever done. He wasn’t on guard—he thought she was dead—and she wanted him to die with every fiber of her being, wanted it so badly that when he screamed, she shoved the blade in farther. He half-turned and fell, and the knife, still embedded in his flesh, was wrenched out of her hand.

She went after it. She was going to kill Bazel, too.

She should have known better. Like her, Irun was a danger even when he was dying. He grabbed her wrist and flung her—only halfway across the room, but now Bazel was closer to the knife than she was. Ileni snarled up at Bazel from the floor, her hair clinging to her face in tangled sticky strands. He didn’t need a knife; even he could kill her with his bare hands.

But he didn’t have to know that.

“Araskinbalum,” she shouted, lifting one hand as if to throw something at him. And she realized she wasn’t pretending. She was reaching inside herself for whatever magic was left to her, ready to spend it all on Bazel’s death. She didn’t care. She wanted him dead. She wanted him dead now.

Except there was nothing left.

Not weak dregs of power, not pathetic scrapings of magic. Nothing. An emptiness that, as soon as she realized it was there, rose from within and engulfed her completely.

Her magic was gone. And this time, it was gone for good.

She dropped her hand, too sickened to go on pretending. It didn’t matter. Bazel was gone, a flash of terrified eyes and auburn hair. The door slammed shut behind him.

I’ll kill you anyhow. She threw the thought after him, and her fingernails scraped against the rock floor.

She got slowly to her feet. Irun lay twisted on his side, completely still. She looked at his dead body, at the knife she had used to end his life, and felt a sweet, savage joy. Even now that he was dead, she hated him. She wished she could kill him again.

She should have been horrified at herself. She wasn’t.

She went over to the corpse, moving with ease. The healing spell had also knitted her bones and skin. Blood was drying on her neck and tunic and hair, and her throat ached, but otherwise she felt fine. Better than fine; even her muscles weren’t sore, as they had been constantly since she’d started training with Sorin. She knelt by Irun’s corpse, rolled him onto his stomach, and eyed the dagger hilt protruding from between his shoulder blades. She might need it.

She closed her fingers around the hilt. She looked down at her hand, at her slim fingers covered in blood. She felt herself smile.

And all at once, she knew who had killed Cadrel.

Chapter 17

“Absalm!” Ileni shouted. “Show yourself!”

Her voice echoed in the large, empty training area. She stormed through it, her shoes hitting the stone floor in short, hard thuds.

“Absalm. I know you’re alive, and I know you killed Cadrel, and I know you’re here. If you don’t talk to me, I’ll—”

She strode into the smaller training room, and there he was.

Ileni stopped in the entrance. Absalm sat cross-legged in her spot—in the teacher’s spot. He turned his head slowly and nodded at her.

She recognized him at once. Not by his face, but by his age. She had spent so much time surrounded by young men and children that she had almost forgotten what old age looked like: wrinkled and spotted skin, deeply lined brow, hunched shoulders.

“Ileni,” Absalm said. He held his palm out in the traditional gesture of greeting, Elder to student.

She almost stepped forward to lay her hand in his, but stopped herself. Traditional or not, Elder or not, she was not going to greet him with respect.

He had no right to any Renegai greeting at all.

“I should have known.” She tried to sound frigid, but her voice shook. “From the moment I found out Cadrel was killed by sorcery, I should have realized who murdered him.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Absalm asked. His voice was gentle, probing, as if he was helping her correct an error.

Ileni clenched her bloodstained fingers into fists. “Because I had the wrong idea about killing. I thought it was hard. I thought it was something you had to be trained to do.”

Absalm stroked one finger across his chin, examining her thoughtfully, and Ileni’s jaw clenched. She understood, now, why Sorin had always turned away her questions about how the assassins were persuaded to kill.

He was amused, that she thought killing another human being was such a difficult thing. As if it was he, and not she, who had been trained.

“Why?” she said. “Why did you fake your death? And why kill Cadrel? And why—”

“One question at a time.” Absalm raised a finger. “First. I faked my death because it was time for you to succeed me.”

Utter silence. She stared at him, unable to speak.

“They were supposed to send you.” He shook his head regretfully. “Not Cadrel.”

“Me? Why would you expect them to send—” Her words died as she realized the answer. “You knew what had happened to me? That I would lose my magic? How could you know?”

Absalm’s eyes were very gentle. “You don’t remember, of course, but I was the Elder who gave you your first Test.”

Ileni had a vague recollection of her first Test, but of the Elder who had tested her, all she remembered was a shimmering blue robe and a faceless adult. She looked up slowly at Absalm’s face, at his wrinkled skin and dark gray eyes.

“You were very powerful,” Absalm said. “You passed without half-trying. A child prodigy. But I could tell, even then, that your powers weren’t permanent.”