Death Marked (Death Sworn #2)(8)

This one was aimed at her shoulder. Ileni managed to avoid it by twisting to the side, but at the cost of her balance. She slid off the rock, flailed, and landed hard on the ground.

Grunting, she got to her feet just in time for the next orb to hit her cheek. This time she did scream, tears stinging her eyes.

None of them had been large or hot enough to seriously injure her. The point of this was not to test Ileni. It was to humiliate her.

Adding an entry to the Reasons to kill them all list in her head, Ileni dodged the next orb. It flew clear across the cavern and hit the wall, where it exploded harmlessly, a shower of white sparks against the gray rock.

“Oh, come on,” Karyn snapped. “You bedded an assassin, and you’re still stuck on these stupid scruples?”

Ileni had a swift recollection of Karyn’s face bulging, her feet kicking helplessly against white stone, while Sorin’s hands tightened inexorably around her neck. Sorin had almost killed Karyn, back in the caves, when he had discovered that she was from the Empire.

It was really Sorin who Karyn wanted to hurt and humiliate. But Sorin wasn’t here, and Ileni was.

How would Sorin handle this? Ileni couldn’t imagine him ever getting into a situation where he was so helpless.

She had to throw herself to the ground to avoid the next orb. It whizzed so close over her head that her hair sizzled.

“I’ll keep throwing them,” Karyn warned, “until—”

“Until what?” Ileni shouted. But another white light spun toward her, too fast to avoid, and she gave in. She knew what Karyn wanted to see: the terrible truth, the ultimate humiliation. She wanted Ileni to try and fail.

Ileni couldn’t help it. As the white ball whizzed toward her, she called instinctively upon the powers that were lost to her, reaching inside herself for magic.

And found it.

The white orb stopped an inch from her face. Ileni was still cringing away when she realized that her block had worked. She had stopped the orb without touching it. Something so easy, something she had been sure she would never do again.

Time froze. The orb whirled impotently in the air, its brightness blinding her.

Stupid scruples, Karyn had said, and suddenly Ileni understood. It wasn’t her magic.

Stolen magic. There must be lodestones in the walls around her, magic ripped from murdered souls, their life energies trapped in stone and collected by the Academy. Black magic. Not hers.

But it felt like hers.

Ileni swirled the orb, once, then flung it back at Karyn.

Karyn’s eyes widened. She lifted her arms and soared into the air, graceful as a bird, landing lightly on the ground after the orb had passed below her. She jerked her arms together, crossing them over her chest. When she spread them apart, there were a dozen orbs hovering in front of her, so hot they shot off tiny sputtering sparks.

She smiled, a thin unpleasant smile, and the fiery balls spread apart and sped toward Ileni.

There was no way Ileni could dodge, no way she could duck—there were too many of them, taking up too much space, coming too fast. She had no choice. She drew in more power, a rush of magic that went straight through her skin.

Ileni shot upward, and the barrage of glowing balls streamed harmlessly beneath her. As they hurled toward the far wall, she twisted in midair and stopped them with a silent, magic-fueled shout.

Then, with a whisper, she extinguished the fire in the orbs, leaving a dozen clear translucent spheres frozen inches from the stone wall.

She called them to her and gathered them in her arms, sparing a sliver of magic to make sure she didn’t drop any. She landed in front of Karyn, opened her arms, and let the orbs drop onto the ground.

They landed in a cacophony of thuds and immediately began rolling in random directions. Karyn flicked a finger, and they all disappeared, but she never took her eyes off Ileni.

Ileni’s heart pounded so hard it almost drowned out the tingling in her hands, where the magic had poured out, where it had responded to her command. She had worked so hard to put this grief away, to not wish for the impossible, that she still couldn’t believe it. Doubt wriggled through her, as if the last few seconds might have been a dream.

She lifted her hand and whispered a quick spell. Call up fire, Evin had said.

The fire wreathed around her hand, flickering in and out between her fingers. She added a surge of power, and her whole arm was encased by a leaping flame that didn’t hurt her and didn’t touch her skin, even though its heat warmed her face.

“That’s enough,” Karyn snapped.

Ileni twisted her arm, murmured a word, and banished the fire. She turned in a slow circle, eyes flickering over the glowstones embedded in the wall. She chose one at random and stared at it, long enough to see the rainbow colors swirling beneath its surface. To understand that it wasn’t a glowstone at all.

Hundreds of lodestones, representing hundreds of deaths, hundreds of innocents tortured and murdered. Harvested for their power. She had grown up singing songs of mourning for those victims, swearing vows of vengeance.

In the caves, she had thought she was surrounded by evil. She’d had no idea.

That evil had been nowhere near as seductive as this one.

She met Karyn’s dark, speculative eyes. And realized, too late, that it wasn’t only her skill that was being tested.

It was how vulnerable she was to temptation.

Karyn’s smile was a white slash in her pale face. “The Academy doesn’t allow just anyone to access the lodestones. It’s a privilege. Remember that.”