Death Marked (Death Sworn #2)(69)

The last thing she saw, before the room went black and vanished, was Tellis’s face. There was no horror on it, no anger, no betrayal. There was only bewilderment.


Ileni was almost too tired to cry.

Almost. But not quite.

She tried to be angry at Sorin, but the feeling got lost in the ache inside her. How did he know her so well? How did he know that sending Tellis to talk to her would cut so deep—would bring back everything she had once believed, and make her ashamed of what she had become?

And not because he was Tellis, but because he was her, what she had once been. She had grown up wishing daily for the destruction of the Empire, and now she had the chance to actually accomplish it. This wasn’t about betraying Sorin, or Tellis, or the Renegai. It was about betraying the person she had thought she was.

When she finally fell asleep, tears still tracking down her cheeks, she dreamed of the girl at Death’s Door. Blond hair blew across blue eyes that were wide and desperate and without hope. I want the Black Sisters to take her. You can have my life if you promise me that.

The girl had slit her own throat, but that didn’t change the fact that she had been murdered—she and thousands like her, systematically and methodically, all through the Empire. And it would go on forever, death fueling power fueling death, unless someone did something.

Unless she did something.

She was a weapon forged to strike the Empire a killing blow, and that weapon could be used now or never.

Her mind whirled and spun, and her thoughts kept curving back to Girad’s blood spilling over her hands, his wide uncomprehending eyes, to Evin’s almost inhuman howl of grief. Sorin had explained it to her once, without a hint of regret. One death in exchange for avoiding hundreds.

She forced herself to wait until the sky outside her window was stained pink before she left her room. Outside the door to the sickroom, she heard soft voices murmuring. Two voices.

Girad? Her heart leaped almost painfully in her chest as she pushed the door open.

But Girad hadn’t woken. It was Karyn in the room, talking to Evin in low tones, across the room from Girad’s still figure.

Ileni froze, suddenly afraid. Yesterday, she had been more than ready for Karyn to take her magic away; it was magic she shouldn’t be using. Today . . . she still believed that. Yet dread rippled through her body, making her reluctant to step forward and catch Karyn’s attention.

She watched from the doorway—not Karyn, not the body in the bed, but Evin. Her heart hurt at the slump of his shoulders, the defeated set of his face. He looked ten years older than he had the day before.

No. She couldn’t care about him. She couldn’t care about any of them.

She couldn’t forget that she was an assassin, too.

“Evin.” Karyn’s voice was soft, falsely so. “You can’t sit here all day.”

“If he wakes—”

Karyn met Ileni’s eyes over Evin’s bowed head. Ileni reached out, with a nudge of power, and pushed the boy’s restless sleep into something deeper and more healing. She wasn’t skilled enough to fix him, but she could do that.

She didn’t think, until after she did it, about the fact that she had used power from the lodestones. Again.

“He won’t wake,” she said. “Not for several hours. You should sleep, Evin.”

Evin’s laugh was broken. “I can’t sleep. I keep seeing . . . over and over . . .”

“Then prepare,” Karyn said.

They both looked at her, Evin with bleary confusion, Ileni with sharp dread.

“You know we are preparing to attack the assassins,” Karyn told Evin. “We will kill their leader and scatter them, and then they won’t be able to do this to anyone, not for a long time. You can be part of accomplishing that. You could even lead us.”

“Yes,” Evin said. Just the word, but Ileni’s dread spread through her body.

“It’s the only way to save your brother.” Karyn walked across the room and placed one hand on the headboard of Girad’s bed. “If the assassins are left intact, they will keep coming after him until one of them succeeds. If you want to save Girad, if you want to put an end to the assassins—you will have to be better than you have been.”

Evin nodded. He rose, facing Karyn, and Ileni couldn’t see his expression. “I will be training, then.” He turned. Now Ileni could see his face, but she barely recognized it.

“Evin,” Ileni said. “Wait.”

He clenched his jaw, his long mobile face made alien by the grimness around his mouth, the hardness in his eyes. She thought he wanted to say something, but instead he walked out of the room.

Ileni was left staring across the stone floor at Karyn. Girad breathed slow and deep.

“You . . .” Ileni tried to gather her thoughts, the reasons for her fury.

Karyn laced her fingers over the headboard. Ileni thought of a spell Cyn had taught her that would slam that hand off Girad’s bed. “In times such as these, someone with Evin’s power cannot waste it weaving pretty colors together.”

Once, Ileni had thought almost the exact same thing, with the exact same edge of scorn. Once . . . about a week ago. It felt like much longer. “Evin doesn’t want to use his power to kill people.”

“Anyone can want to kill, given enough motivation.”