Death Sworn(33)

She struggled to open her mouth, to scream out a spell—any spell, to make him stop, even if it was only long enough for a breath—but she couldn’t.

She could have had all the magic in the world, and it wouldn’t have helped. The room went black around the edges, and the back of her neck was about to crack. She writhed and flailed, too panicked now to aim her blows. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard Irun laugh.

Then his hands were gone, and air came rushing into her lungs again.

She gasped and gagged and scrambled to her hands and knees. She tried to stand—run, run, RUN, her instincts screamed—and fell over, the room turning around her. Dizziness rushed through her, and the world went black.

But air kept coming in, and she concentrated on that, crouched on the ground like a beaten animal, breathing in long, desperate sobs. It was a few moments before she could see again.

And then she saw who had rescued her.

Sorin and Irun were locked in battle, moving so swiftly she could barely see what they were doing. There was nothing dance-like about this fight: it was fast and vicious and brutal. Sorin jabbed his thumbs into Irun’s eyes; Irun twisted his head beneath Sorin’s arms and thrust a knee at his groin; Sorin dodged low and grabbed Irun around the knees, and the two fell to the ground. They continued attacking each other as they fell. Aside from the crash when they hit the stone floor, and the thuds when their blows connected, they fought in absolute, eerie silence.

They rolled over, and then over again, their limbs in constant motion. Ileni could only catch the occasional move: Sorin’s arms encircling Irun’s neck, Irun’s elbow slicing into Sorin’s side, Sorin’s heel slamming against Irun’s jaw, the arc of Sorin’s body as Irun flipped him over his head. She should help Sorin somehow, but the idea was so obviously ridiculous that it barely formed a thought. She forced herself onto her knees and watched, trembling.

The sudden sickening crack of bone echoed through the cavern. The two assassins sprang apart and faced each other, and now she could also hear their quick harsh breaths. Blood spread across the lower half of Sorin’s face, dark red on his mouth and jaw. Irun’s hand hung limply from his wrist.

Irun made a movement toward Sorin, who stepped back and grabbed two knives from the nearest rack. Irun stopped.

“Dangerous,” he observed. Despite his broken wrist, his voice betrayed not a hint of pain.

Ileni didn’t see Sorin move. She saw a lock of Irun’s black hair flutter to the ground, and then the knife Sorin had thrown slid neatly into a crevice between two rocks and stuck there, quivering.

“Very,” Sorin agreed. For all the clipped precision in his voice, something wild ran in the tense lines of his body. Ileni had the odd impression he was on the verge of laughing. “But more so for the one who can hold only one knife. And what’s life without a little danger?”

Irun drew his lips back in a snarl, and Ileni was sure he was going to attack again. Instead he inclined his head, turned, strode right past Ileni, and vanished through the doorway.

Sorin didn’t waste a second before he whirled on her. “What are you doing here?”

A drop of sweat slid with excruciating slowness down the bridge of Ileni’s nose toward the inner corner of her right eye. She knew it would burn when it hit but couldn’t summon up the strength to raise her hand and wipe it away. She couldn’t summon up the strength to lie, either.

“I was looking for your room.”

“Why?”

“The knife,” she whispered.

His black eyes narrowed into barely visible slits. Ileni tasted blood in her mouth; she had bitten her tongue. Now it would all come out, her lack of power, the trick her people had played. Now they would all know how helpless she was. Every single assassin in the caves would feel free to use his strength and skill against her, to reduce her to prey, as Irun had.

Or maybe she would be lucky, and Sorin would kill her now. He would do it fast, she thought. He wouldn’t enjoy it the way Irun would.

“There is a spell you can use to find out who threw it,” Sorin said tightly. “You wanted to use it without me watching.”

Her head came up. She said, slowly, “Yes.”

“Why?”

Suddenly it seemed she might live after all. Her hands still shook, her breath still hurt the inside of her throat, but Ileni’s mind started working again.

“I don’t trust you,” she said, as if it should have been evident.