Death Marked (Death Sworn #2)(61)

Bazel’s gaze snapped to the point of contact between Evin’s finger and Ileni’s tunic. His mouth curved in a small, smug smile.

A mistake no other assassin would have made. Ileni recognized the anticipation in that smile.

And she knew who Bazel was here to kill.

She moved without hesitating, pulling in magic, gasping out the words of the most powerful shield she knew. She moved faster than thought, because she didn’t need to think.

She knew when she was prey.

Bazel’s dagger streaked toward her, and she got the shield up barely in time. The dagger stuck in thin air, its point inches from her eye.

Arxis screamed, very convincingly. Bazel flung out a spell, wild and chaotic and immensely powerful. Ileni’s shield shattered with a force that drove her against the wall, and Bazel was across the hall in seconds. He slammed into her, pressing her to the wall, and his dagger whispered cold and sharp on the side of her neck.

“I’m so glad I get to do this,” he hissed in her ear, and sliced the blade across the front of her throat.

It shattered into a hundred pieces.

Bazel dropped the broken dagger hilt and wrapped his hands around her throat, ribbons of blood crisscrossing his face. Ileni’s throat had been stone a second ago, but a wild spell from Bazel turned it back to flesh. Ileni had forgotten how much power he had.

And someone had been teaching him how to use it.

But someone had taught her, too. She threw her weight backward, slid two fingers under his thumbs, and brought her knee up into his groin.

It was the first fighting move Sorin had ever taught her, and it worked. Bazel had expected magic, and was not defending against physical attack. His grip loosened, he staggered back, and Ileni could draw in enough breath for a spell.

Before she had even taken that breath, a thrust of power from Evin threw Bazel away from her. The assassin crashed against the far wall of the hallway and hung there, pinned.

Bazel lashed out with magic, which Evin brushed away. He strode forward and, with a viciousness Ileni had never seen in him, slammed his fist into Bazel’s cheek. Bazel’s head jerked to the side, cracking against the wall.

The hall was quiet and empty. All anyone would have heard, through those heavy doors, was a faint thud.

“Assassin,” Evin snarled. It wasn’t a question. “What do you have against Ileni?”

Bazel spat out blood. “What we have against her is that she is useless. Our master has no use for broken tools.”

Our master. It took Ileni a moment to realize: that was Sorin, now.

It was worse than watching the dagger come at her. Her breath froze in her throat, an ice-cold shard that sliced and burned. Then she saw the gloating malice in Bazel’s eyes, and she straightened.

She didn’t believe it. Sorin might have sent Bazel to influence her—but not to kill her. Not even if it seemed that she was going to make the wrong decision.

No. The person who had ordered Bazel to kill her if she was “broken” was the same person who had taught him those spells.

Absalm. The Renegai Elder who had molded her life and destroyed her hopes. She hadn’t turned out the way he had planned, so he was eliminating her.

“What is he talking about?” Evin said.

“I have no idea,” Ileni said without thinking. Then she did think—about Evin discovering that she had lived with the assassins, about Karyn discovering that she was here to kill for them—and panic spurted through her. She couldn’t let Bazel be questioned.

But she couldn’t let him go, either. He was an assassin on a mission. Nothing would stop him from coming after her if he was free.

And alive.

She knew what she had to do. She knew she could do it. She had wanted to do it, once, in a small stone room, with a dagger in her hand and blood in her hair. She would have killed Bazel then, if he hadn’t run, and she would have done it gladly. She lifted her hand, and Bazel’s eyes focused on her, recognizing her as a threat.

So many spells she could use to kill. She remembered, briefly, that she shouldn’t be using magic anymore. The thought vanished swiftly, drowned by the pounding of her heart. She chose a simple spell Cyn had taught her and spread her fingers wide.

And hesitated.

It was different now, with this vast quiet all around them, with Evin’s eyes on her. It was different when she was making the sorts of cold calculations that Karyn, and the master—and Sorin, now—must make all the time.

She had thought, in the Assassins’ Caves, that she had learned to kill. That she understood killers. But she hadn’t, not really. She had only learned to kill in moments when the choice—kill or be killed—was stark and clear.

Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed, coiled the magic within her, and began to chant.

“Ileni?” Evin said sharply. He recognized the spell.

She released the magic with a hiss, and a band of blue light shot from her fingertips. At the last moment she altered its direction, so that instead of coiling around Bazel’s throat, the glowing blue light wrapped around his body. It pinned his arms to his sides and squeezed.

In her mind, Sorin sighed and shook his head.

I know what I’m doing, she thought fiercely. Out loud, she said, “We have to bring him to Karyn. She’ll get answers from him.”

Bazel sucked in air through his teeth. But the pride in his eyes was almost frenzied when he said, “You think so? Assassins are trained to withstand torture.”