Death Marked (Death Sworn #2)(47)

The plateau was suddenly, resoundingly silent. Ileni’s heart pounded in her chest, and air streamed into her throat, cold and sharp.

Cyn lifted her head and whispered a word.

Pain tore through Ileni’s body. She screamed once, a short burst of agony, then sent a pain-numbing spell into her bones. She wrenched in a breath—and magic surged from Cyn again, turning Ileni’s body into her enemy, pain searing along her bones and her blood.

She managed not to scream this time, but she wasn’t sure how. Another healing spell dulled the pain enough to let her feel the magic Cyn was pouring into the attack. She tried to raise a defense, and a sideways surge of power slapped her attempt aside.

Cyn wasn’t even using the full strength of the spell. This was just a taste. If Cyn wanted, she could kill Ileni in a split second of agony. Or she could keep her alive and make her beg for death. This was what imperial magic was, what the Academy strove for and the Renegai had rejected. Magic designed to do nothing but cause pain, to hurt a human being beyond endurance.

Ileni crumpled to the floor, fighting the pain, keeping it almost—almost—at bay. She wouldn’t scream and she wouldn’t beg. Not . . . not yet.

“Yield,” Cyn said. She was standing over Ileni. Ileni hadn’t seen her move.

Ileni spat at her feet.

Cyn’s murmured a word, and pain sliced along Ileni’s cheek. Blood trickled down her face.

“Cyn,” Evin said.

“It’s our match,” Cyn said coolly. “Don’t interfere. I’m not causing any permanent damage. She can use one of her cute little healing spells, and she won’t even have to waste a bandage.” She closed her fist, and Ileni couldn’t breathe. Air scraped painfully at her throat, and she gasped and floundered. Panic flooded through her, worse than pain.

“No permanant damage yet,” Cyn added. “All you have to do is yield.”

Ileni was slowly strangling, and she couldn’t quite manage defiance, but she squeezed her eyes shut and managed silence.

“Stop it,” Evin snapped, and suddenly it was gone—the constriction in her throat, the agony, the terror. Ileni uncurled herself slowly, her muscles strange and loose with the absence of pain. The sharp thrust of Cyn’s spell was muted by the power of Evin’s blocking spell, a spell that made Ileni’s attempt at defense laughable by comparison.

“Really, Evin,” Cyn said. She rolled her eyes and sauntered back to the other side of the plateau. “You are such an annoyance. No one asked you to get involved.”

“Call it a whim,” Evin said. His eyes were on Ileni.

“I call everything you do a whim.”

“This shouldn’t be too difficult for you, then.”

Ileni’s body finally believed it could move. A quick, easy spell healed the cut on her cheek, just as Cyn had predicted. She got to her feet and faced the other girl. Cyn propped one hand on her hip.

“I could destroy you,” Ileni said. Her voice shook. “I could destroy all of you. And I think I will.”

Cyn laughed and flicked an errant strand of hair away from her face.

“Well, Evin,” she said, “I guess that’s your cue to say, You’re welcome.”

Ileni’s throat tightened. She shouldn’t have said it. But she also knew there was no risk in saying it. No one here thought she could possibly be a threat.

She turned her back on Cyn’s smirk and Evin’s frown, soared into the air, and fled.


She didn’t soar very far. She kept close to the bridge, and, as soon as she was far enough from Cyn to feel safe, floated down and landed on it, gripping the rail with trembling hands. She was halfway across, close enough to the main peak to see a group of novices in green tunics filing along one of the lower ledges. She probably could have made it farther, but that would have meant using more stolen magic.

She had barely stepped off the bridge when someone swooped in front of her. Ileni tensed, but it wasn’t Cyn. It was Evin, and one look at her expression made him switch directions and soar upward instead.

“I’m sorry that happened,” he said. He braced himself against the mountainside, his magic holding him to the cliff face, and looked down. “It didn’t mean anything. You caught Cyn in a bad mood.”

“Sure,” Ileni said. “Among my people, we also respond to bad moods by torturing our friends.”

His brow furrowed. “We don’t all respond that way.”

“But you think it’s normal. She isn’t going to be punished, is she? Nobody’s going to treat her like the monster she is. Because you’re used to it. Because everything you do is about causing pain.”

Evin blinked, and Ileni braced herself for a scathing retort she would very much deserve. She was no better, after all—lashing out at Evin because she was angry at Cyn. And at herself.

But what Evin said was, “She will be punished, if you go to Karyn. That was unacceptable. She could have really hurt you.”

“What will she get?” Ileni asked. “A stern lecture?” Not that any of the asssassins would have gotten even that much. They were too honest to pretend brutality was beneath them. “You’re all so important, aren’t you? The sorcerers who hold the Empire together. You’re untouchable, and you know it.”

“We do get away with a lot,” Evin admitted. “In my case, that’s absolutely justified, but in Cyn’s, it’s more of an . . . unfortunate necessity.”