by Leah Cypess
So she didn’t have to imagine it. Good.
She reached for her magic again and felt the familiar painful shock when she came up empty. Even if she survived this, there was no way Karyn would allow her to continue using the lodestones’ magic. Not that Ileni would use it, ever again, after what she had seen last night.
Something to worry about later. If there was a later.
Still, the old familiar despair made her reckless. She tilted her head back into the sunlight and said, “I found what we were looking for. Listen quickly. You were right. The sorcerers are—”
A blunt force propelled her sideways off the spire, and she fell.
The wind ripped the scream from her throat. Her flailing hands slammed futilely against the spire’s stone sides. She plummeted downward, tears ripping from her face.
Then she jerked to a stop, halfway down the spire, the mountains and treetops spread like a tiny painting below her.
She kept screaming for a full minute before she managed to stop. Her eyes stung, and drool hung from the corner of her lip. Slowly, she curled herself upward and turned in the air, not bothering to wipe away the wetness streaked across her face.
“Who were you talking to?” Karyn inquired.
She sat cross-legged in midair several feet from Ileni, leaning back on both hands, as if supported by a pane of glass.
It was a moment before Ileni could make her throat work. “Isn’t it obvious? And they can still hear us, in case you were wondering.”
Karyn narrowed her eyes. “I don’t sense any spell.”
“No,” Ileni said. “You wouldn’t. The spell is in the ear of the person I was speaking to.”
Karyn’s mouth went as narrow as her eyes, skepticism engraved in her face. But her hands clenched. By now, Karyn was well aware that she didn’t know everything the Renegai were capable of.
“Be careful,” Karyn said softly. “I don’t have much reason to keep you alive any more. Given your self-righteous horror at Death’s Door, I can’t imagine you’re still considering joining our side.”
She paused, clearly waiting for Ileni to contradict her. And though it would have been the smart thing to do, Ileni couldn’t find the words.
Karyn’s mouth twisted. “Right. It was worth a try, but you’ve been indoctrinated too thoroughly. So tell me why I shouldn’t kill you now.”
Ileni’s voice came out far less bold than she had intended. “Since you haven’t yet, you obviously have a reason. Why don’t you tell me what that is?”
The world dropped away again, just long enough to rip another scream from her, then jerked to a stop. Karyn floated lazily down after her.
“Guess,” she suggested.
Ileni blinked away tears and let out two short gasps. “Because you still want answers. About who I’m talking to, and why, and what they have planned.”
“That’s right,” Karyn said. The menace in her voice was soft, almost casual. “I do. And you’re going to tell me.”
“Why would I?” Ileni managed. “You’ll kill me anyhow.”
Karyn’s smile was almost as terrifying as the drop below. “And you think you won’t tell me just to gain another few seconds of life? Another minute before you fall?”
Ileni couldn’t speak. She had never known that fear could be as intense as pain. Karyn was right. She would say anything, anything at all, to stave off that fall for as long as she could.
Karyn’s smile widened as she leaned forward—and then it disappeared. She looked over Ileni’s shoulder, her posture rigid. After an agonizing moment, Ileni twisted her head to follow Karyn’s gaze.
The sun shone straight through the clouds in a curtain of faint white light, softening the mountain peaks behind it. Three figures hovered directly in the curtain of sunlight, one with waist-length black hair whipping about her body. They were too far for Ileni to make out their expressions, but they were unnaturally still, nothing moving but their hair and the hem of one girl’s flame-red dress.
Ileni’s heart lifted—then plummeted as she realized they weren’t moving toward her. They were just watching. She felt a rush of anger. And then another rush, this one of realization.
Maybe all they had to do was watch.
Karyn’s lips were pressed together tightly. Ileni said, “Are you going to kill me in front of them?”
If Karyn had been an assassin, she wouldn’t have hesitated. If she had been the master, she would have summoned Cyn and told her to kill Ileni, and Cyn would have done it.
But this was the Empire, and Karyn did hesitate, glancing from the watching students to Ileni.
Ileni’s heart froze in her chest. Beneath her, the ground yawned, terribly far away.
“No,” Karyn said finally. “But I won’t have to.” She stretched into a standing position.
Karyn’s flickering hand motion was by now familiar to Ileni, as was the sharp twist of the spell that accompanied it. So she was ready for the impact, the sickening lurch, and—this time, with relief—the blackness.
Once again, she knew where she was while her eyes were still shut. It was so familiar . . . the darkness, the smallness, the sense of oppressive weight pressing in above her. She was deep in the bowels of the earth again. She was back in the caves.
“Sorin?” Ileni cried, and the sound of her own voice—lost and hopeless—shocked her. She sat up. Blackness, blackness . . . she touched her eyelids with her fingertip to make sure she had really opened them. She had, but it made no difference. There was no light to see with.
She tried to call up a magelight, a futile attempt too instinctive to stop. She closed her eyes, because it made the darkness easier to bear, and flattened one hand on the ground beneath her. Stone, unnaturally smooth and straight. She got onto her hands and knees and slid one hand forward, then the other, making her way across the slick rock floor. When she hit a wall, she wasn’t surprised.
She took off one of her shoes and left it on the ground. Then, keeping one hand on the wall, she began to walk. The wall curved inward.
Her gait was awkward and uneven, but it was only a short while before her bare foot hit her shoe. So her prison was circular and very small.
No. It wasn’t a prison. Prisons had beds. And food. And water.
Perhaps Karyn hadn’t wanted to kill Ileni in front of the others. But none of them would know where Ileni had been translocated to. And none of them would see when Ileni finally died, alone in the dark.
She crossed the room slowly, hands out in front of her, until she hit the far wall. She did it again and again, crisscrossing every inch of the stone ground, but the cavern was empty. There was nothing in here.
Nothing but her.
She stretched up on tiptoe, reached her hands above her head, and her fingertips brushed the flat rock above her.
She couldn’t keep herself from reaching for magic again, digging frantically, ripping at her insides. But there was nothing. Nothing inside, nothing outside, nothing, nothing she could use to escape.
That was when she began to scream.
In the total darkness, it was impossible to keep track of time. At first Ileni could pay attention to the hollow ache in her stomach as it slowly intensified; she could track the worsening of the dry pain in her throat. But then both went away, and everything was endlessly the same.
She thought she slept a lot, but she couldn’t be sure. There ceased to be a clear distinction between sleeping and waking. One slipped into the other. Eventually, she supposed, they would slip a little farther, into death.
Instead of frightening her, the thought filled her with a vague, fuzzy discomfort.
Once she opened her eyes and saw Sorin, his eyes blacker than the darkness. She said, “You can’t be here.”
“I can be wherever I want to be. Haven’t you learned by now not to underestimate an assassin?”
“I mean it’s not safe.”
“It’s not safe for you. I’ve come to take you back.”
“No. I need to be
here. I need . . .” She couldn’t remember what she needed, and the effort pushed her into a doze. Some indeterminate amount of time passed before she roused herself and said, happily, “I’m on your side now.”
The cavern was empty. Sorin hadn’t been there at all. He couldn’t have been. And if he had, he would not have left her.
Another time it was Karyn, and by then all Ileni’s pride was gone. She said, “Please.”
Karyn smiled with cool disdain.
“You’re ashamed to kill me,” Ileni whispered. “That’s why you’re doing it secretly. But the others will find out. . . .”
“No,” Karyn said, “they won’t.” Her eyes glittered, pinpoints of bright malice, and Ileni drifted into darkness again.
She should have been more careful. She should have stood there, among the people waiting for slaughter, and pretended she thought it was perfectly reasonable.
If something like this had happened among the assassins, she would have been killed at once—brutally, publicly, with no need to explain anything to anyone. Perhaps murder was worse when it needed to be hidden.
When she opened her eyes again, the pale girl knelt over her, clutching a baby to her chest. “You promised to save her,” she whispered as her magic flowed out of her and vanished into the stone around them. Her blond hair floated around her head. “You promised.”
“I’m sorry,” Ileni tried to say, but the woman vanished and she had no one to say it to. No one but herself. She was going to die, and because of that, she was never going to keep that promise.
The realization roused her, a jab of frustration piercing her lassitude. She wanted to do something good—something simply, purely, unmistakably good. In all her time in the Empire, she had made only one promise she could keep without guilt or shame, and made it to a woman whose power she had stolen. Here in the darkness, that promise seemed more important than the fate of the Empire or the plots of the assassins.
A part of her was glad that soon she wouldn’t have to think about those things anymore, wouldn’t have to untangle the tightly woven threads of good and evil that shifted with every new step. But she wished desperately that she could have saved the blond girl’s baby before she died.
It hurt to think, like pushing her mind through a fog of needles. It was so hard to fight—and what, really, was she fighting for? What was worth all this pain? All she wanted was to slip back into the peaceful blackness.
So she did.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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When she woke again, she woke fighting. Ileni did not recognize the figure looming over her—she didn’t know if she was really awake, or really alive—but a sense of danger shot through her, real and sharp as pain. She surged upward, her back against the wall, hands up and curled into claws.
“Well,” Arxis said, “I think she’s feeling better.”
Ileni snarled at him, even as she noted that she was feeling better. Her body was slick with sweat and grime, her eyelashes coated with gunk, her limbs trembling—but they were working, and so was her mind.
She realized that Arxis wasn’t talking to her a moment before she registered the faint light of a glowstone, and the figure holding it stepped close enough for her to see him.
Evin.
The tension drained out of her, and the trembling weakness in her legs took over. She slid to the stone floor. “What—” Her voice didn’t work. It took her two attempts to manage more than a raspy whisper. “What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you,” Arxis said. “You’re welcome.”
He reached for her, and she struck at him with all her strength—which wasn’t enough for him to bother noticing. He grabbed her wrist, pressed a finger to her pulse, and nodded. As soon as his grip loosened, Ileni jerked her hand away so hard her elbow thudded into the wall behind her.
“Someday,” Evin said, “one of you is going to have to tell me about your history. It must be an interesting story.”
Arxis laughed, but Ileni was too occupied with the pain ricocheting up her arm to respond. She gritted her teeth, waiting for it to pass. Evin moved forward to stand beside Arxis.
“I’m sure you won’t be happy to hear it,” Evin added, “but you sort of owe Arxis your life now.”
His voice carried its usual light tone, and he stood in his usual half-slouch, but there was something . . . off . . . about it. Like a hastily assumed disguise. Ileni frowned at him.
“Karyn told us she had banished you from the Academy, and you had gone back to your people,” Evin said. “But Arxis didn’t believe it. He said you would never go back. We’ve been searching for you for days.”
“You were half-dead when we found you,” Arxis added. His eyes were deep in shadow, the planes of his face blurred by darkness. “Evin’s been dribbling broth into your mouth for nearly an hour.”
“You did the rest,” Evin said.
That was when Ileni realized he was holding a lodestone in his other hand. She closed her eyes, just for a second, as magic flowed through her skin. Her mind was clear, and when she rolled her shoulders back, they moved without complaint. She had a vague memory, now, of working a healing spell, of Evin gently urging her on.
“Why?” she said to Arxis.
“Why what?”
“Why did you save my life?”
Arxis shrugged. “Evin insisted.”
Trying to think made her lightheaded. She scrubbed her eyes with one hand. “Where am I?”
“We’re in the Academy,” Evin said.
“But—where in the Academy?”
Evin and Arxis exchanged glances. Then Evin closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and opened his mouth.
No sound emerged; his moving lips screamed the spell into nothingness, and the magic engulfed the sound as he spoke. Ileni had worked silent spells before, but never on her own, without a preexisting spell anchored to a solid object. Yet Evin was holding nothing, using nothing but his own power. He squeezed his eyes shut, face twisted with effort. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his neck as he released the spell.
The walls shimmered and were gone, and sunlight flooded through the sides of the room, making Ileni flinch. She covered her eyes and concentrated on the sun beating at her skin, warming her bare forearms and her hair.
When she slowly uncovered her eyes, the brightness made her blink back tears, and rainbow shimmers danced across her vision. Then they cleared, and she walked slowly over to one of the now-invisible walls.
Empty space stretched ahead of her and plummeted to a ground she couldn’t see from this angle. A Judgment Spire soared upward across from her, stark gray against a brilliant blue sky.
One Judgment Spire. She stretched up an arm to brush her fingers against the solid rock ceiling above her, and understood. They were inside the other Spire.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked. When she turned, the sunlight warmed her shoulders and back.
“There’s a bespelled key that allows entrance and exit from the spire cells,” Evin said. “Karyn left it on her desk.”
Each of those sentences demanded a million questions. Ileni chose, rather randomly, “What were you doing in Karyn’s room?”
“Trying to find out what she had done to you.”
“But wasn’t that dangerous?”
“I’m incredibly brave,” Evin said. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“I don’t . . .” She struggled to think. “I don’t understand. Why would you risk so much to rescue me?”
“I’m not risking much.”
She couldn’t tell if that was true. “But you don’t even like me.”
Evin cocked an eyebrow. “Actually, I like you quite a lot. You’re confused by the fact that you don’t like me.”
Her face burned. “That’s—that’s not—”
“It’s all right.” Evin shrugged. “I don’t require people
to like me before I decide to like them. That would be giving too much weight to their opinion of me.”
“You are a very strange person,” Ileni said slowly. “I assume you know that?”
“It’s been mentioned. Usually people have the courtesy to do it behind my back.”
Arxis rolled his eyes. “Ileni’s not big on courtesy.”
“I know. It’s one of the things I like about her.”
“How nice for both of you,” Arxis said. “Before this becomes predictable, I propose we find out if Evin can use this spell to get us out of here.”
“You don’t know?” Ileni said.
“I’m almost sure I can do it,” Evin said. “There’s no way to know for certain until I try.”
“He’s almost sure,” Arxis said. “My certainty is at a far lower level than almost.”
Ileni looked away from Evin, which was a relief, to focus on Arxis. “Then why did you come and risk being trapped here?”
“The confidence you both have in me is truly inspiring,” Evin said. His habitual half-smile was back, his eyes light and dancing. “If you would be quiet a moment and let me concentrate, I’ll do my best to exceed it.”
Before Ileni could apologize, Evin held out a large silver key and focused on it.
He clearly didn’t need to concentrate too hard. He lowered his hands, and the key floated in midair before him, ordinary looking but humming with power. Evin murmured a single word, then released that power with a casual motion of his hand.
Ileni felt the spell unleash, a sizzle that shot through her body from scalp to toe, making the world dissolve into chaotic fragments. Then her feet hit solid ground, and she lurched forward, hitting her hip on the corner of a desk that hadn’t been there a moment ago. When she reached out blindly to break her fall, her hand knocked over a stack of papers. They flew sideways and scattered, a frantic flutter of white sliding across the stone floor.
“Don’t vomit!” Evin said. “We can’t leave any sign we were here.”
The warning was just in time. Ileni clamped her lips shut. She fought her instincts, kept her mouth closed, and—with a whimper of revulsion—swallowed. The bile burned its way down her throat.