Death Marked (Death Sworn #2)(48)

“Why?” Ileni said. “Why is it necessary? Why can’t you just stop? You don’t need this much power—”

“We do, actually,” Evin said. “We have powerful enemies.”

“You could leave the assassins alone, find a compromise—”

Evin’s laugh was the harshest sound she had ever heard emerge from his mouth. “The assassins want us dead. What sort of compromise do you suggest? Shall we die just a little bit?”

She had managed to forget, for a moment, what the assassins had done to him. Ileni drew in a breath.

Evin looked down at her from his spiderlike perch against the gray rock. “There is no compromise possible. They have made themselves into an enemy that must be destroyed.”

She had never heard him sound so fierce. Apparently there was one thing he did care about.

Ileni tilted her head back to meet his eyes. “They can’t be destroyed. Haven’t you figured that out? Everyone knows the caves are impregnable. No army could ever get in, and the wards are unbreachable. . . .”

Her voice died.

There was a breach. There was a mirror in her room, and the portal still attached to it could reach the Assassins’ Caves despite all the wards between them.

It was as if Sorin was there, watching her. She saw herself through his eyes, holding her stolen magic tight, in earnest conversation with an imperial sorcerer. Like it mattered what excuses Evin made.

Evin didn’t seem to notice her silence. He slid down the wall until his feet touched the ledge. “I never told you how my parents died.”

She found her voice, though it was weak and hoarse. “Cyn told me.”

“Did she tell you why they were murdered?”

Ileni shook her head.

“My mother discovered that a city on the southern coast had been taken over by supporters of the assassins. She infiltrated their movement, then organized a raid. She killed them all. Three hundred, officially, though that’s probably a bit exaggerated.”

A bit exaggerated. “So how many did she kill? Merely two hundred?”

Evin’s jaw pulsed. “There are millions who live under the Empire’s protection. The assassins threaten all of them.”

A familiar argument. “Then why,” Ileni said, “are you so angry at her?”

“My mother was warned.” Evin’s voice was wound tight, as if the slightest waver might break it. “They sent her a message: if she continued going after the assassins, she would die. I was only ten years old. Girad was an infant. We needed her, and she didn’t care.”

Ileni hesitated. The pain in his voice seemed to preclude argument. His mother was a murderer. And yet . . . “How could she make a decision based on two people, when it affected the fate of so many others?”

Evin gave her a look of searing contempt, and Ileni’s spine snapped so straight she felt a crack.

“I never would,” she said, and for that moment she was sure of it. “I would never do the wrong thing for the sake of any one person. No matter how much I loved him.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t.” Evin’s expression was every bit as scornful as his voice. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not overwhelmed by your nobility of purpose. By your willingness to sacrifice someone you love.”

Her heart was pounding too hard for a theoretical conversation. “For the good of—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” He stepped closer. His eyes were flat and remote, as if he was a different person. “Heap your scorn on me all you want, but don’t expect me to care. Because I, Ileni, would sacrifice millions of people I don’t know for the sake of one person I love.”

No. This wasn’t a theoretical conversation, not to either of them. “You’re talking about Girad.”

Evin’s mouth twisted. “He’s more powerful than even I am. The Empire needs him, too. But they won’t have him. I’ll be their soldier, but Girad is going to have a different sort of life. No matter what I have to do to protect him.”

Ileni swallowed hard. “Shouldn’t it be his choice?”

Evin gave her a withering look. “Who gets to make their own choices?”

None of us, Ileni thought. Every one of them had been raised to be a weapon.

But she had refused. She was here, among people who would all be dead if she agreed to be what Absalm had designed her to be. Despite what she had seen at Death’s Door, she could still choose not to be a weapon.

Which didn’t change the fact that Evin was right. It was too late to choose to be anything else.


The last thing Ileni wanted to do, after Evin flew away, was return to the plateau. But she did it anyhow, one laborious step after another. If she was to have any chance at all of being a weapon of her own choosing, she still needed more answers.

She was in luck; Cyn and Lis were engaged in battle, magic flying fast and furious between them. Neither glanced at Ileni as she crossed the plateau to where Arxis sat, cross-legged and straight backed, watching them. By now, the sky was roiling with dark gray clouds, and a few damp drops dotted the top of the plateau.

“I found Bazel,” Ileni said, sitting beside Arxis with a thump. “In the city.”

He didn’t react—though that meant nothing; he was an assassin. Ileni gambled. “How did you know Bazel would be there to meet me?”