Death Marked (Death Sworn #2)(58)

Karyn hadn’t given up, clearly. She was still searching for a way in. Still readying an attack.

How soon would it come? Ileni’s heart pounded. Her choice lay in front of her, stark and clear. She could prevent this attack. With the Academy in ruins and the lodestones buried—with Karyn dead—this plan would die stillborn.

“I don’t think you have much choice,” Evin said.

Ileni half-turned, tearing her eyes from the map. “What?”

“Karyn will realize you’ve escaped. The only way to stay out of her reach is to go back to your own people. I know you don’t like the idea. . . .” He hesitated. “I don’t like it, either. But in the mountains, you’ll be safe.”

Would she?

For a moment the prospect was unbearably tempting. She could go back to being a Renegai, wrapped in empty dreams of someday—someday—making a difference.

But those dreams were gone, and she could never get them back. When she had believed she could learn the truth and make her own choice, she hadn’t realized that truths could not be unlearned, that knowledge would rob her of choices as well.

She turned her back on the map, just in time to see Evin hold up the silver key and mutter a quick spell. The key sparkled briefly, and Evin placed it on top of one of the towering piles of paper on Karyn’s desk.

Ileni blinked. “That’s where you found it?”

Evin shrugged. “Karyn’s messy.”

“And busy planning a war,” Arxis added. A hint of steel pierced his voice, then vanished, and he slouched against the white stone wall. “Which is probably distracting.”

Ileni opened her mouth, then shut it. She was part of Karyn’s plan for that war. She didn’t believe for one second that Karyn would have been careless with the key to Ileni’s prison. Not if Karyn really wanted her to die.

Karyn had intended for Evin to find the key.

A long shudder ran through Ileni. There was nothing heartwarming about this revelation. If Karyn didn’t want Ileni dead, it was only because she still had some use for her. She still thought Ileni might be turned against the assassins, might choose the Empire, even after what she had seen.

Was she banking on Ileni’s need for power? Did she really think Ileni would turn her back on everything she believed so she could keep using magic?

Or had she planned for Evin, specifically, to rescue Ileni? Was she hoping Ileni’s gratitude would keep her from doing anything that would hurt her rescuer?

And was she right?

Ileni’s head hurt. She missed Sorin. He never had doubts. If he was here, maybe he could convince her not to have doubts, either.

Sorin would say they all deserved to die.

But she was not Sorin, and she didn’t have to play by his rules. She could use the shattering spell, bury the lodestones—but warn the others first. Evin, especially, deserved that from her. Cyn, too . . . even Lis. She would get them out somehow, protect them.

Sorin wouldn’t like it, wouldn’t even understand it, but that was too bad for him.

“We need to get out of here,” Arxis said, “before Karyn comes back.”

Evin nodded. “Ileni, if you tell me where to transport you—”

“I can’t go back.” Ileni said it as fast as she could, in an attempt to make it hurt less. “I have no magic of my own, and my people don’t steal magic. If I go back, I’ll be powerless.”

“There is more than one type of power,” Evin said.

Easy for you to say. She shook her head. “I was the most powerful sorceress of my people, once. But there was . . . they made a mistake.” It hadn’t been a mistake. They designed me to kill you. “My power started fading, when I got older, and it faded until it was gone. And then I came here, and I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t resist it. If my people knew what I did here, the sort of magic I used, the way I used it . . .”

“But you can’t stay here,” Evin said. “Is there anywhere else you can go?”

“Maybe.” Ileni didn’t dare look at Arxis. “But I can’t leave yet. There’s something I have to do here first.”

Arxis’s voice was sharp and smooth. “And what’s that?”

Ileni hesitated.

“If what you need to do here is a secret,” Arxis said, “it’s going to be harder for us to help you with it.”

Ileni choked down a laugh. They both focused on her, and she bit her lip hard, using the pain to hold back her growing hysteria. She didn’t know which side was right, or even less wrong. She didn’t know if destroying the Academy was an act of heroism or of murder. But she knew one small thing that was simple and right, one choice she could be proud of.

“I made a promise to a dying girl,” she said. “I have to keep it before I go.”





CHAPTER

20

The knife thudded into the target with a force that made the man-shaped cloth swish against the stone wall. Another knife followed it, and then another. All three knives quivered, inches apart, exactly where the man’s heart would have been.

“Impressive,” Absalm said.

Sorin walked over to the weapons rack and pulled out a blade. The slight hitch in the sorcerer’s breathing told him that Absalm knew which knife he had drawn.

He flipped it up in the air. The blade twirled, a deadly circle of steel, until he caught it by the hilt.