Death Sworn(29)

Advanced sorcerers required uninterrupted stretches of solitude for practice and preparation exercises. If she’d still had her power, those long afternoons and evenings would barely have been enough time. She had once gone through the mental exercises for hours each day, then spent more hours memorizing the rituals and incantations that enabled more complicated spells, repeating the hand motions and words endlessly until they were second nature, drawing thousands of warding patterns until she could get them right every time.

Now she had nothing to do but stare at the walls, fight off memories, and wait for whatever pathetic remnant of her power returned to her.

She tried to think of other ways to investigate Cadrel’s and Absalm’s murders. There must be methods that didn’t require magic—questions she could ask, places she could search—but it all seemed so tenuous, so unlikely to produce answers. The knife was her best clue. And she needed her magic to pursue that.

What she did, for the most part, was sleep: for hours and hours, until it made her feel heavy and groggy instead of alert. Back home, she had slept grudgingly, always trying to get away with as little as she could. She had needed those extra hours for practice, or studying new spells, or—more and more, especially over the past year—being with Tellis. She had often thought, back then, that she was tired. But that was nothing compared to how she felt now, when the tiredness came from within her, as if her body simply had no interest in remaining awake.

On the third day after Sorin showed her the knife, she finally felt power begin to coil within her, enough for her mind to grasp and use. A part of her wanted to hold off, to let the magic build, to feel it flow . . . but that wasn’t what she was here for. Besides, who knew if it would ever happen? Maybe this was all she would get.

And more than that . . . she wanted to use the magic. She felt the power tugging at her, waiting to be shaped and unleashed on the world.

The problem was that now that she had the power, she no longer had the knife, and she couldn’t think of how to get her hands on it again. Unless . . . she blushed, a tingle running through her. She could think of one obvious excuse for sneaking into Sorin’s room, and the idea was surprisingly tempting. But she didn’t trust herself to pull off a seductress act, not with Sorin. He would probably just throw her out.

She lived in danger of imminent death, yet she was afraid of a little humiliation? Ileni shook her head at her own stupidity, but abandoned that particular idea. She would have to use the magic for something else.

That night, she pulled the warding stones from under her bed, arranged them on the floor, and placed a strand of Irun’s hair inside the pattern.

She had retrieved the hair from his rug after class that day. But now that she was ready, she felt a sudden, overwhelming weariness. She stared at the pattern and couldn’t bring herself to sit down and start the chant.

Irun was too obvious a bully to be a real threat. The dangers in these caves wouldn’t be that straightforward. She couldn’t enact a protection spell against every hot-blooded young killer who wanted to prove he couldn’t be controlled by a woman.

. . . Couldn’t she? It had been her original intent, when she took the stones from Tellis.

With a sickening wrench, she recognized what lay behind her reluctance: fear. She was afraid her magic would fizzle out halfway through the spell.

She dropped down cross-legged with such force that she banged her ankles painfully against the floor. Judging by how empty she felt, she might live long enough to see all her magic gone. And that had never been part of the plan.

A sudden, sharp memory pierced her: the day she had first learned to use the warding stones. The Renegai didn’t have many stored spells, and though they required little power, they called for great skill—that much power, wrongly handled, could easily shatter a sorcerer’s control. Only she, Tellis, and two other students had been permitted to try the stones that day. Tellis had always been quicker with new spells, but she had mastered the stones first. He had been furious, and she had laughed at him, which had made it worse. He hadn’t spoken to her for days. And then, when he finally had . . .

She tried to push the memories away, to focus on the stones in front of her, the threats all around her. But it was too late. Tellis’s arms around her. Tellis on the grass beside her, staring up at the stars, telling her things he’d never told another living soul. Tellis watching her at practice, as if she was the only other person in the stadium. The first time he had kissed her, leaning forward fast and suddenly. Telling her afterward that he hadn’t planned to, had thought he should wait longer, but wanted to so badly that he couldn’t.