Death Marked

by Leah Cypess

  She had danced with them, once. And she hadn’t asked the age of their victim.

  She swallowed hard. “Arxis was an assassin. From the caves. Girad was his target all along.”

  “I realized that. But I just . . . I don’t understand.” Evin turned the wooden dog over and over in his hands. “Why would they kill a child?”

  He really didn’t understand. Once, she wouldn’t have understood either. The words of explanation were on her lips, words she had heard from Sorin: necessity, the greater good, the purpose served by murder. But she remembered how they had danced, and she knew that if she tried to speak, she would choke.

  Evin finally looked away from the wooden dog, but still not at her. He fixed his gaze on his brother’s face. “They really hate us that much.”

  So maybe he did understand, better than she did, for all the rational arguments she had stored in her mind.

  “Yes,” she said. “They really do.”

  Karyn wasn’t outside the door when Ileni left—which did not, of course, mean she hadn’t been listening in. Apparently, Ileni was free to go wherever she wanted.

  For now.

  Ileni went to her room, because there was nowhere else to go. She shut the door, leaned against it, and closed her eyes, feeling that she should cry. But no tears came.

  She straightened and walked, steps leaden, to the oval mirror in the corner of the room. She flattened her palm on the cold glass.

  The spell in the mirror thrummed against her hand, spanning the distance between her and Sorin. Passing through both sets of wards. She could bring it back to life—she was sure of it. She could look Sorin in the eye and ask if he had ordered the killing of a child.

  She could ask if he had ordered Bazel to kill her.

  She reached for power—not doing anything with it yet, not even readying it, just knowing it was there. She could. She didn’t know if she should, and she didn’t know if she wanted to, but she knew that she could.

  The glass turned black.

  Ileni leaped away from the mirror, power sizzling painfully through her palm.

  This can’t be good.

  She pulled a ward around herself. The mirror was already becoming less black, the shadows inside it swirling into shapes, the shapes taking on form and color. It was a room, square and bare and stark, its floor covered with a chalk pattern that gleamed with silver light. A tall figure sat in the center of the pattern.

  Ileni barely breathed as she watched the images solidify. Even though she knew what she was seeing, she couldn’t grasp the final piece, couldn’t believe it, until the figure rose to his feet.

  His face was familiar, despite long absence. She knew every inch and angle, every mood of those eyes, every expression those thin lips could twist into.

  She doubled over slightly, as if all the air had been driven out of her body with one swift blow.

  She met his sky-blue eyes.

  “Hello, Tellis,” she said.

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  They both stood frozen, eyes locked on each other. Tellis’s eyes were wide and blank with pain, riveted to her face as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Ileni felt blank inside, too, but not from pain. It took her a moment to realize what she felt.

  Nothing.

  That was almost worse than pain. It was staggering. How could she have loved him so much, and now feel nothing? She could still remember how her heart had once leaped every time she saw him, how desperately she had wanted to be near him.

  She remembered it, and still she felt nothing.

  “Ileni,” Tellis whispered. “He was telling the truth?”

  “Who was telling the truth?” Ileni said. “Tellis—how did you—”

  “I’m here to help you,” Tellis said. “Elder Absalm opened the portal just enough for you to see me. But together, we can open the portal fully, and you can come through.”

  Elder Absalm? “Where are you?”

  He shuddered slightly, which was answer enough. “Don’t worry. I’m all right. I was just brought here to talk to you, and to help you escape.”

  “I don’t need to escape,” Ileni said. He blinked at her. “I’m not trapped here.” Although that wasn’t entirely true. “I’m—it’s complicated. But I know what I’m doing.”

  That was entirely not true, but Tellis nodded, trusting her. He leaned closer, reaching out a hand, as if he could push it through the spell and touch her. He probably could, if he wanted to. He was more than powerfulenough.

  “Ileni,” he said, and his voice caught on her name. “I miss you.”

  “I—” Ileni began, and then couldn’t think of what to say. I miss you, too? She had shattered her heart against memories of him a million times. But now . . . now she was no longer the girl who had loved Tellis so uncomplicatedly and wholeheartedly.

  She missed being that girl more than she missed Tellis.

  “I knew I would,” Tellis said. “But I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know it would be so hard. I didn’t know, when I told you to leave, that I was making a mistake.”

  The thought crept into her mind, stark and inescapable: I’m going to hurt him.

  Once, she would have been savagely glad of that. He had hurt her, after all, so badly she hadn’t known how she would survive it. But that felt like so long ago. She had survived it. She had come out on the other side. And she no longer cared enough about Tellis to want to hurt him.

  “Thank you,” she said, and immediately hated herself for how stupid it sounded—for not coming up with something better. The intensity on Tellis’s face made her heart twist. But she forced herself to meet his eyes, letting her own face show . . . whatever it showed. And she forced herself not to turn away when he searched her face, the hope in his eyes slowly dying. His throat pulsed, and he was the one to finally drop his eyes.

  “So you’re a weapon,” he said.

  “I—what?”

  “The assassin leader said . . . he said you had a way to destroy the imperial sorcerers. Is it true?”

  “What on earth were you doing with Sor—with the assassin leader?”

  “It’s a long story,” Tellis said. “But he wanted me to talk to you. To find out what you were doing. What was stopping you from having struck at them already.”

  Curse you, Sorin.

  Ileni had thought she understood what it felt like to be the betrayer, to become loathsome in the eyes of everyone she knew. Now she had an inkling of what it would truly feel like. Her insides clamped shut, shrinking into a thick, agonizing knot.

  “It’s . . . not that simple,” she said, hearting and hating the weakness in her voice.

  Tellis blinked at her, not angry as Sorin would have been, merely confused. “This is the Empire. They drove us into exile, they kill by the thousands, they pervert magic. Why is it not simple?”

  For a moment Ileni couldn’t remember why. What Tellis was saying was true. Everything else was just complications.

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. There was no point. She understood Tellis perfectly; she had been him, just a year ago. With no idea of how much she didn’t know.

  Suddenly she couldn’t bear it anymore. She didn’t want him to know what she had become. Not because she was ashamed—or not only because she was ashamed. But because someone should still be apart from all the death and the compromises and the terrible choices. Some part of the world should still be simple and pure.

  Even if that part couldn’t be hers anymore.

  “Tellis,” she said. “Are you trapped there? In the caves?”

  “No,” Tellis said. “The assassin leader said I can go back as soon as I talk to you.”

  “Then go,” Ileni said fiercely. “Go back to the village, right away. Promise me.”

  “I will. Of course. But—”

  She drew in magic, hoping Tellis couldn’t sense it
through the portal, and said, “There’s no time. The portal is closing. Tellis—”

  He leaned forward, but she hadn’t planned an end to that sentence. She cut it off by slamming the portal shut, using all her strength and all her skill.

  The last thing she saw, before the room went black and vanished, was Tellis’s face. There was no horror on it, no anger, no betrayal. There was only bewilderment.

  Ileni was almost too tired to cry.

  Almost. But not quite.

  She tried to be angry at Sorin, but the feeling got lost in the ache inside her. How did he know her so well? How did he know that sending Tellis to talk to her would cut so deep—would bring back everything she had once believed, and make her ashamed of what she had become?

  And not because he was Tellis, but because he was her, what she had once been. She had grown up wishing daily for the destruction of the Empire, and now she had the chance to actually accomplish it. This wasn’t about betraying Sorin, or Tellis, or the Renegai. It was about betraying the person she had thought she was.

  When she finally fell asleep, tears still tracking down her cheeks, she dreamed of the girl at Death’s Door. Blond hair blew across blue eyes that werewide and desperate and without hope. I want the Black Sisters to take her. You can have my life if you promise me that.

  She had slit her own throat, but that didn’t change the fact that she had been murdered—her and thousands like her, systematically and methodically, all through the Empire. And it would go on forever, death fueling power fueling death, unless someone did something.

  Unless she did something.

  She was a weapon forged to strike the Empire a killing blow, and that weapon could be used now or never.

  Her mind whirled and spun, and her thoughts kept curving back to Girad’s blood spilling over her hands, his wide uncomprehending eyes, to Evin’s almost inhuman howl of grief. Sorin had explained it to her once, without a hint of regret. One death in exchange for avoiding hundreds.

  She forced herself to wait until the sky outside her window was stained pink before she left her room. Outside the door to the sickroom, she heard soft voices murmuring. Two voices.

  Girad? Her heart leaped almost painfully in her chest as she pushed the door open.

  But Girad hadn’t woken. It was Karyn in the room, talking to Evin in low tones, across the room from Girad’s still figure.

  Ileni froze, suddenly afraid. Yesterday, she had been more than ready for Karyn to take her magic away; it was magic she shouldn’t be using. Today . . . she still believed that. Yet dread rippled through her body, making her reluctant to step forward and catch Karyn’s attention.

  She watched from the doorway—not Karyn, not the body in the bed, but Evin. Her heart hurt at the slump of his shoulders, the defeated set of his face. He looked ten years older than he had the day before.

  No. She couldn’t care about him. She couldn’t care about any of them.

  She couldn’t forget that she was an assassin, too.

  “Evin.” Karyn’s voice was soft, falsely so. “You can’t sit here all day.”

  “If he wakes—”

  Karyn met Ileni’s eyes over Evin’s bowed head. Ileni reached out, with a nudge of power, and pushed the boy’s restless sleep into something deeper and more healing. She wasn’t skilled enough to fix him, but she could do that.

  She didn’t think, until after she did it, about the fact that she had used power from the lodestones. Again.

  “He won’t wake,” she said. “Not for several hours. You should sleep, Evin.”

  Evin’s laugh was broken. “I can’t sleep. I keep seeing . . . over and over . . .”

  “Then prepare,” Karyn said.

  They both looked at her, Evin with bleary confusion, Ileni with sharp dread.

  “You know we are preparing to attack the assassins,” Karyn said. “We will kill their leader and scatter them, and then they won’t be able to do this to anyone, not for a long time. You can be part of accomplishing that. You could even lead us.”

  “Yes,” Evin said. Just the word, but Ileni’s dread spread through her body.

  “It’s the only way to save your brother.” Karyn walked across the room and placed one hand on the headboard of Girad’s bed. “If the assassins are left intact, they will keep coming after him until one of them succeeds. If you want to save Girad, if you want to put an end to the assassins—you will have to be better than you have been.”

  Evin nodded. He rose, facing Karyn, and Ileni couldn’t see his expression. “I will be training, then.” He turned. Now Ileni could see his face, but she barely recognized it.

  “Evin,” Ileni said. “Wait.”

  He clenched his jaw, his long mobile face made alien by the grimness around his mouth, the hardness in his eyes. She thought he wanted to say something, but instead he walked out of the room.

  Ileni was left staring across the stone floor at Karyn. Girad breathed slow and deep.

  “You—” Ileni tried to gather her thoughts, the reasons for her fury.

  Karyn laced her fingers over the headboard. Ileni thought of a spell Cyn had taught her that would slam that hand off Girad’s bed. “In times such as these, someone with Evin’s power cannot waste it weaving pretty colors together.”

  Once, Ileni had thought almost the exact same thing, with the exact same edge of scorn. Once . . . about a week ago. It felt like much longer. “Evin doesn’t want to use his power to kill people.”

  “Anyone can want to kill, given enough motivation.”

  Ileni could hardly argue with that. She swallowed hard and said, instead, “Why haven’t you blocked me from the lodestones yet?”

  “Because I think,” Karyn said, “that you’re ready to choose a side now. Do you really want to save Girad’s life? Betraying the assassins is the only way to do that.”

  Ileni couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, and—despite all her agonizing, all the thoughts that had worn grooves into her mind—couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  So instead of saying anything, she went after Evin.

  She caught up with him at the beginning of the bridge, where he was walking instead of flying, his steps slow and heavy. She ran the few steps to catch him, making the bridge sway wildly beneath them, and grabbed his arm.

  “Evin, wait—”

  He whirled, eyes wide. “Is Girad—”

  “No! Girad is sleeping. Still.”

  Evin let out a breath, and Ileni stood staring up at him, trying to think of something to say. The moment stretched on and on.

  “Don’t cry,” Evin said.

  She hadn’t been aware, until he said it, that she was crying. She tasted salt on her lips.

  “I mean—I’m sorry. What a stupid thing to say. Of course you can cry.” Evin reached out and, with his thumb, blotted a tear on her cheek. His other hand was still clutching his brother’s wooden dog. “I’m going to change it. I’m going to make sure they never kill again.”

  “No.” Ileni tightened her grip on his forearm. “Don’t. Nobody can change the way things are.” Nobody but me. “Girad needs you, and you—you shouldn’t have to be something you’re not.”

  “If I change,” Evin said, “that will be what I am.”

  And it would be. No one could force themselves back into innocence. She searched Evin’s eyes for a hint of the wry, careless humor she had once despised.

  She would never forgive Sorin for killing this.

  “Don’t worry,” Evin said. “I’ll still be the best at whatever I end up being.” His smile was small and forced, but in it, Ileni saw a flicker of his old self.

  Above them, a sound, so faint it might have been the wind.

  Evin followed Ileni’s gaze and sighed. He stepped back. The bridge tilted beneath them.

  Lis dove headfirst and straightened when she was hovering beside them. She put one hand on the rail and said to Evin, “I’m sorry.”

  Bleakness settled on Evin’s face, wiping away that brief
glimmer. “Thank you. He will—I’m sure he will be all right.”

  But he didn’t sound sure at all.

  Lis drew in a breath, and her face twisted with an expression Ileni recognized.

  Guilt.

  I know exactly who Arxis is, Lis had said.

  Ileni met Lis’s eyes, and Lis whirled so fast her hair whipped audibly through the air. She leaped upward, arms tight at her sides, and streaked across the pink-streaked sky.

  “I should go,” Evin said. He lifted his hand toward Ileni’s face, then let it drop. “I should train.”

  “Yes,” Ileni said. She curled one hand around the railing. “I shouldn’t have—I didn’t mean—I—I have to go, too.”

  “Wait. I want to ask you—” He looked down at the wooden dog in his hand, and held it out to her. “Can you give this back to Girad?”

  Ileni took the dog, knowing that wasn’t what he had meant to say. She nodded, then turned and ran.

  She caught up to Lis on the ledge near the beginning of the bridge. When Ileni grabbed her arm, Lis jerked away, almost throwing the two of them off the mountain. Ileni used a thrust of magic to push herself closer to the gray mountainside.

  Lis didn’t. She crouched near the edge of the abyss, her heels at the very rim of the drop. As if she didn’t care whether she fell.

  She could fly, of course. But still, unease lodged in Ileni’s throat, choking off her accusation. She recognized that sort of despair.

  “What?” Lis said wildly. “What do you want? Do you have more useless warnings to throw at me?”

  “I didn’t have to warn you,” Ileni said slowly. “Did I? You already knew what he was.”

  Lis laughed, and something about it made Ileni want to back away. She pressed against the mountainside.

  “Oh, yes,” Lis said. “But unlike you, I know what we are.”

  “And what are we?” Ileni said.

  “We’re killers, too.” Lis straightened, but didn’t step away from the edge. “I kept Arxis’s secret because he was right. It’s that simple.”

  It’s never that simple. But Ileni had once thought it could be. That right was a simple concept, that she could make a choice that didn’t take into account who she was and who she loved and what she wanted.