Death Marked (Death Sworn #2)(56)

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 told me once that 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 spells this powerful 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.”