My hand slips down to my hip, searching for the knife that isn’t there. Because I left it in my room. Like an idiot. And all so Leora wouldn’t think of me as a weapon. But it didn’t help, and I’ve got something much worse inside my head, anyway.
“I saw you today,” Rathe says. He stares at his hand, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, like they’re dirty. “When you slit open my palm.”
I glance at him, then the others, at the grim expressions on their faces. Edging in so close to me. My fingers twitch, even though I know there’s no knife. “I . . . had to.” I did. I swear I did. “It was part of the process.”
“Was this part of the process?” Rathe holds out his hand, showing me a wide pink scar. It runs across his palm and over the stretch of flesh between his thumb and his forefinger. Then he turns his hand over. I don’t believe it at first. I was there, and I don’t remember the knife going that far in. But there’s a scar on the back of his hand. Where my obsidian stabbed right through him.
“Chasm take me,” Bran whispers, staring wide-eyed at Rathe’s hand. “Tell me you didn’t do that, Azeril.”
“I screwed up. I lost control.” I want to close my eyes and pretend this isn’t happening, but I don’t dare look away from them. “It was an accident.”
Letton glares at me. “What did you have to do to become the High Priest’s apprentice? Everybody wanted the job. To go to Newhaven with him and be somebody. There were plenty of us more qualified. You did something to make him pick you.”
“I saw your face when you cut me,” Rathe says. “I saw how much you wanted to hurt me.” He flinches at the memory. “Everything hurt, like my blood was on fire. The High Priest healed my flesh, but I’ll never forget how it felt when you stabbed your knife through my hand. You had this awful smile on your face, and the more it hurt, the more you liked it.”
My stomach twists into knots. I want to deny it, but I can’t. I think about what Leora said. The Chasm loves chaos and violence. Darkness and pain. Maybe spells weren’t the only things I got from it.
“You sick bastard,” Letton mutters, clenching his fists. His face is red, the muscles in his thick neck strained. He’s going to hit me. I can see the decision in his eyes.
“I thought you were my friend,” Rathe says, and there’s a haunted look to him, a hunger that wasn’t there before. At least not before today. Not before Endeil changed him.
Before I did.
“I am,” I tell him. But it’s not quite the truth. I was his friend, before I stabbed the knife through his hand. Before I got carried away and he saw too much of me.
“The High Priest and I are healers. But you . . .” He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, I could swear they’re black, the color in his irises completely gone. But a moment later they’re back to normal. “You’re a monster.”
I’m backed up against the wall. I don’t even know when that happened, but I try to press myself flat against it. Like I could disappear somehow if I just keep moving backward. Even if there’s nowhere to go.
They want to gang up on me? Beat me up? Fine. It’ll hurt, but I’ve had worse.
Rathe pulls out a knife from inside his robes. It’s not obsidian, but its long, sharp blade glints in the torchlight.
“Whoa,” Bran says. “You didn’t say anything about weapons.”
Rathe ignores him. He looks only at me, meeting my eyes. “Don’t look so surprised, Azeril. You made torture look so pleasurable. But I guess that’s only when you’re the one with the knife, right?”
Letton unclenches his fists, not looking as sure about this. But he keeps his mouth shut.
“It’s okay,” Rathe whispers to me. “I’ve been bringing things back to life all day. You’ll be the first human. Or at least the first monster.”
My insides turn to liquid. My heart pounds, pumping cold terror through my veins. “You don’t want to do that,” I tell him, hoping it’s true. I will myself to remember something—a spell, anything—like I did at the Silver Hound. Anything that could stop this, that could save me. But my mind stays blank.
I have to get out of here. Bran’s paying the least attention, his wide eyes staring at Rathe’s knife, so I dart toward him, shoving him out of my way as I make a run for it.
Bran stumbles, but Letton’s quick. He slams me back against the wall, knocking the air from my lungs. He pins my arms to my sides.
I struggle against him, kicking and twisting. Gasping for breath.
“Bran!” he shouts. “Get over here!”
Bran hesitates. “You guys, I don’t know if we should—”
“You can’t back out now,” Rathe says. “And don’t worry—I can bring him back.”
Bran moves toward me, but then he shakes his head. “I can’t do it,” he tells them, and takes off running.
It doesn’t matter. Letton’s got me up against the wall. I can’t move my arms. I can hardly breathe, both because he’s pressing on my chest and because of the wild terror running through me.
Rathe brings the knife to my throat. I think of Leora, covered in blood. This is how it happens. He’s going to kill me.
Then he smiles and grabs my right hand instead. “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you? That quick?”
He jabs the blade into my palm. I bite my tongue hard and taste blood. “Chasm take you,” I say, but my voice sounds strangled, and I hardly recognize it.
He meant to stab the knife all the way through my hand, but it’s not as easy as he thinks, and he doesn’t have the obsidian to guide him. He tries again, twisting the blade a little.
I scream this time. I spit blood into his face.
He wipes it away with his sleeve, grinning like a maniac. “You don’t like it so much now, do you? Do you?!”
“If I kill you, there’ll be no one to bring you back.”
Letton kicks me in the shin and then grabs my throat. “You’re not hurting anyone tonight, so keep your mouth shut.”
“You should listen to him,” Rathe says, “or I might change my mind and not bring you back at all.” He starts to drive the knife in farther.
A voice interrupts him from the shadows. “Get away from my apprentice.”
All three of us look over to the left where High Priest Endeil stands, glaring at Rathe and Letton. Fire flares to life in his hands. Anger blazes in his eyes.
When he steps toward us, Letton takes off down the hall. Rathe yanks the knife out of my hand and stumbles after him.
And just like that, it’s over. I slump to the floor, holding my wounded hand tight against my chest. Endeil just saved my life.
The High Priest takes me to his office. My hand throbs, blood oozing out with each heartbeat. I lean against the wall, taking slow, deep breaths. My head spins.
He paces the room. “Fire take those idiots! That ungrateful—This is how he repays me?” He stops and marches over to me. “Give me your hand.”
I keep it pressed against my chest, my robes sticky with blood. “I’ve had enough of your magic. You’re not touching me.” No one is.
“Don’t be stupid.”
I think he’s going to grab me and heal me against my will. There’s not much I could do to stop him. Not without making the pain so much worse. But I would still fight him, even if it hurt, just to keep him away from me.
But he doesn’t try. Instead he sighs and throws his arms up in exasperation. “I shouldn’t have to worry about my apprentice getting attacked. And in the halls of the church!”
“I could say the same thing about Leora in the dorms.”
Leora. I think about her palm bleeding along with mine. Of her worried about me, not knowing what’s happening.
I let myself slide down to the floor, leaning my head back against the wall. The movement jars my hand, and I wince.
“And what were you thinking?” Endeil presses his fingers to his temples. “Where in the Chasm was your obsidian?”
“I’m trying something new.”
&nbs
p; “Well, don’t.”
“You have to fix Rathe. Whatever you gave him, you have to take it back.”
“Take it back?” Endeil gapes at me like I’m insane. He sweeps his mop of blond hair away from his eyes, as if he just wasn’t seeing me clearly.
“He wasn’t like that before. He would never—”
“And how do you know what he would or wouldn’t do? How many of your so-called friends would be shocked to find out the truth about how you really spend your nights? Even if I wanted to take his power back—even if I could—it wouldn’t change what’s happened. I healed that girl of yours, but I can still see the hatred burning in your eyes whenever you look at me. Even though you know I had to do it, that it was the only way—”
“You didn’t have to do anything!”
“And you didn’t have to cut open your friend, but you did.”
I look up at the wall and see the painting of the volcano he hung up earlier. I must be remembering it wrong, because I could swear the crack in the earth representing the Chasm looks a little wider, the Fire inside it a little dimmer. Like instead of the Fire conquering the darkness, it’s being swallowed up whole. Or maybe that’s just how I see it, now that I know what’s lurking inside me.
“Fine,” I tell Endeil. “Maybe I had it coming, what Rathe did to me. But what you did to him—”
“What we did.”
“—it changed him. It messed him up.”
“He was the first. There were bound to be . . . complications. We’ll do better next time.”
The pain in my hand is distracting, so that I’m not sure I heard right. “Next time,” I repeat. “You think there’s going to be a next time?”
“Hundreds of them. Thousands.”
I push myself to my feet. “You can’t do that. I’m not going to help you do that.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Oh really? Now the murderer grows a conscience?”
“I always had one. That’s the difference between you and me.”
“So noble, coming from someone who lives for the moment when you taste flesh with your knife and that sweet, dark pleasure hits you. Whether it’s your worst enemy’s flesh or your best friend’s, or even your own—you enjoy it all the same. I know—I saw inside you. I peeked into all the wicked corners of your mind, at all the secrets you would never tell anyone, not even your beloved.” He smirks. “No, especially not her.”
Guilt slides through my chest. “What’s your point?”
“The difference between you and me is that you want to hurt people and I don’t. I will, if necessary. But I’m not going around longing for it.”
But I saw the look in his eyes when he talked about getting my memories back. He wanted it to hurt. I know he did. And when he made me beg him to save Leora—that was all some twisted game to him, too. So I don’t believe for a second that he’s not just as sick as I am.
“I’m still not helping you,” I tell him. The throbbing in my hand is getting so bad, I almost wish I had let him heal me. But then I remember how it felt when he used his magic on me. When he tore into my mind and saw the parts of me so secret even I don’t know about them. And the suffocating horror I felt when that black fire spread from his hands and into Rathe.
And I have my suspicions about that black fire. After all, if my spells and everything the wizards put inside me came from the Chasm, then where did Endeil’s new power come from? He looked into my mind and saw darkness, and he came back with a magic darker and more powerful than ever.
“Oh, but you are going to help me,” Endeil says. “You don’t have a choice, remember?” He flexes his fingers, and dark flames appear in his palm. Silently wavering there, making it hard to breathe, making my skin crawl. I turn my head toward the wall, not wanting to see, but I can’t stop glancing at the flames.
“You’re going to help me, Azeril. It’s not only your duty, but you and I both know I have ways of making you more”—he taps a finger against his chin, trying to think of the right word—“agreeable.” He grins, and the flames in his hand flare up, as if in agreement. “And don’t think an injured hand’s going to get you off the hook. You don’t get to be out of commission, because what we’re doing is too important. Giving people new powers is the first step in crushing the High Guild and destroying them for good.”
“And here I thought the first step was betraying the Church by writing them that letter.”
“The Fire grants us one power, and meanwhile the wizards have whole books of spells at their disposal. Spells that might as well be weapons, that they sell their souls to get. Don’t tell me they don’t because I’ve seen what kind of damage their magic can do, sucking the life out of everyone foolish or unlucky enough to get near them. It’s always been that way. How can we, with our single abilities, fight an enemy that literally sucks the life from us? They’ve always had the upper hand, and someday soon this is going to escalate into more than arguing over a few seats in court. You can’t be everywhere at once. The wizards are out there torturing good people, and nobody has the means to fight back. I’m going to be remembered as the leader who changed all that, who was a savior. I’ve got the ability—no, the duty—to give ordinary citizens the power to turn the tide against the wizards. Let them come after us then. Let them see what it’s like to find themselves on the losing side of a war. When I’m done, there won’t be any wizards.”
“And what’s going to be left of the Church? If everyone turns out like Rathe?”
“They should be so lucky. Give me your hand. You’re not doing either of us any favors.”
“Good.”
“And if a wizard finds you? Alone, in the dark, with no power to speak of? Think of all the things he might do to you if you don’t have your knife. If your hand is too weak to hold it. Just a vulnerable, terrified boy who’d be at the Guild’s mercy all over again. And I think you know by now that wizards have no mercy.”
Cold waves of fear run through me as I remember that wizard at the Silver Hound who put his hands on me and how desperate I was to escape. I would have done anything. I would have completely snapped and given myself away. I would have been sent back to the dark room and the chair.
At least with the knife in my hand I don’t have to be broken. At least if someone catches me in the dark, he’ll be the one who regrets it.
I shut my eyes, fear and pain screaming at me to just let him do it and be done with it. He’s right, I’m not doing anyone any favors. I’m only hurting myself. One touch from him and his dark magic and this could be over. I let him heal Leora, didn’t I? No, I didn’t let him—I begged him.
When I open my eyes, he’s grinning at me like he’s won. Like he knows exactly what I’m thinking and that he’s got me right where he wants me. A few words from him and I’m trembling in fear, ready to do whatever he wants.
“When you’re ready,” he says.
But he doesn’t get to win, not this time. Maybe I have to be his apprentice, maybe he can even make me help him give powers to more people. But I don’t have to let him touch me. I don’t have to let him use his magic on me.
Not ever again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I pound on Hadrin’s door at the inn with my good hand, keeping my injured one pressed tightly to my side, bloody and throbbing. There’s no answer, except some of the other residents opening their doors to glare at me or say, “It’s the middle of the night,” as if I didn’t know that, and I wonder if he’s gone home to the capital already. Maybe he was called away early, or maybe he abandoned me—and Leora—all over again. And after that speech about needing my help—
“For the Chasm’s sake, boy!” Hadrin shouts, flinging open his door, bleary-eyed and scowling at me. “It’s the—”
“Middle of the night. I know.”
He gapes at me, getting a good look at my red robes, stained dark with blood. He puts a hand to his mouth.
Another door opens across the hall, an angry-looking man in his bedclothes snarling somet
hing about alerting the innkeeper. Hadrin waves him off and tells me, through gritted teeth, “Get in here, now.”
I follow him inside, closing the door behind me. An oil lamp burns dimly at his desk, casting shadows across a pile of open books and loose papers.
“Of course you’d break the protective spell on my daughter and then do something like this,” Hadrin says. “Let me see it.”
I glare at him and turn away. “That’s not why I’m here.” Though Leora must be freaking out by now, with her hand bleeding just as much as mine, only without knowing what’s happened. She tells me my spells come from the very depths of the Chasm, and then I leave and this happens?
I probably should have gone to see her first, but I had to come here, before I changed my mind. “You said you needed my help.”
“Yes, I did. But you don’t look like you’re in any shape to help anyone right now and— Do not touch that couch!” he warns.
But he’s too late. The trip over here seemed so much longer this time, with my hand throbbing with each heartbeat, every footstep causing more pain. Now that I’m here, I’m exhausted. All I want to do is sit down. And never get up.
Hadrin groans as I flop down on his fancy white couch, bloody robes and all. “You think I want soiled furniture on my bill?”
“The High Guild’s bill, you mean. They kind of owe me.” I press my injured hand to my chest and shut my eyes.
Hadrin swears under his breath. I hear his footsteps as he crosses over to the couch. “Let me see your hand.”
“You sound like the High Priest, and I wouldn’t let him touch it, either.”
“Damn it, boy, if you think you’re going to show up here in the middle of the night and then bleed to death on my couch—” He cuts off, grabbing my wrist and wrenching my hand away. I cry out at the sudden movement and the sting of open air.
I catch a glimpse of the cut on my hand, though I didn’t intend to look. It’s ragged and red, and blood stains the lines in my palm. “Don’t touch me,” I tell him, making a halfhearted attempt to pull my arm out of his grasp. “It’ll heal. I’ll go to the school infirmary in the morning.”
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