“What is that?” Sorin demanded.
“I don’t know,” Ileni whispered, and didn’t care what he thought of her ignorance. She couldn’t take her eyes off the rock. The power within it, too vast to be crammed into something so small, called to her with hypnotic urgency.
Karyn held the rock out, as if to give her a closer look. “We call them lodestones. They store magical energy.”
Black magic! Ileni tried to look away, and managed it just long enough to see the eagerness in Sorin’s eyes, the predator’s focus as he slid one foot forward.
Karyn saw it, too, and laughed. “It can only be used by someone with no power of his own. So don’t bother.”
Ileni’s heart pounded so hard it hurt, and her breath caught every time she drew it in. All that power, trapped and waiting . . . she could imagine drawing that strength into herself. Being full of magic again, able to do anything.
It wouldn’t last forever. She would use it up, and it would be gone, and then she would go through that loss all over again. She didn’t care. She had never wanted anything so badly in her life.
Karyn lifted her eyebrows. “More interested in talking to me now?”
Ileni’s mouth was too dry for speech.
“I think we’ll be taking that,” Sorin said, and pulled two knives from beneath his tunic.
The knives flashed in whirling silver streaks over the chasm. Magic flashed from Karyn, blindingly powerful, and the knives flew back, straight at Sorin.
Sorin dodged them as if they were in slow motion and took off at a dead run, straight for the chasm between him and Karyn. At the very edge, he launched himself over the black space.
Ileni couldn’t help a brief, strangled scream. It was an impossible leap. But Sorin’s hands thudded onto the rock on the other side, and he tucked himself into a ball and rolled. When he unfurled himself, sleek and swift, he was on his feet, another dagger in his hand, its point inches from Karyn’s throat.
Karyn lowered her hands and sighed. Smoothly, she tucked the lodestone away under her tunic. Ileni felt a ward flare up, and then the stone went silent to her senses. Its sudden absence made the cavern duller. “You bore me, assassin.”
“Ileni,” Sorin said, very calm, “break through her wards.”
Ileni opened her mouth, then closed it. The silence stretched for a long, terrible moment. Sorin glanced at her, a swift look stark with betrayal.
He didn’t know she couldn’t do it. He thought she was choosing not to.
Sorin. No. But Ileni couldn’t speak. She could barely breathe.
Karyn laughed again. She turned on her heel as if Sorin wasn’t there, and he lunged and struck. His dagger slid across the side of Karyn’s neck as if along marble rather than flesh, leaving her unharmed. As he finished the lunge, he twisted and tangled his legs with Karyn’s, throwing both of them hard on the flat rock.
They rolled once, and then Sorin was on top, kneeling over the sorceress, fingers wrapped around her neck. The dagger was gone, but he didn’t need it. His fingers dug hard into Karyn’s throat. Her eyes fluttered dazedly—she had knocked her head hard on the rock—and she opened her mouth, but all that emerged was a croak. His fingers tightened, and her heels kicked frantically at the rock, her mouth open in a soundless plea. Sorin leaned down, arms taut, a hunting animal lunging in for the kill.
And then he hesitated. He turned his head and looked across the chasm at Ileni. Their eyes met, and his weren’t deadly and focused at all. They were . . . afraid.
This thing between us wouldn’t survive my watching you murder someone.
Sorin’s face hardened. He turned back to Karyn and pressed down.
But that momentary hesitation had been enough. Karyn twisted her head to the side and gasped out a word. A burst of power erupted from her, flinging Sorin through the air, his body twisting as he arced down into the chasm.
Ileni screamed as he fell into the darkness, and reached for her magic. It was like scraping the insides of her soul.
Sorin jerked to a stop and hung suspended between the white rocks and the empty blackness. A sob broke from Ileni’s throat. For an insane moment, she believed that somehow, she had done it; she had saved him. Then Karyn surged to her feet and beckoned with one hand, and Sorin turned helplessly in midair to face her.
“Now,” Karyn said pleasantly, “perhaps we can reopen our discussion.”
“Don’t waste your time, Sorceress,” Sorin snarled. “I’m no traitor, and I’m not afraid to die. You might as well drop me now.”
Don’t. Ileni had never felt so helpless. She had betrayed everyone, ruined everything, and now Sorin was going to die. Dropped into a dark canyon, gone forever, his death wasted. Because of her.
“How noble.” Karyn’s neck was mottled red with bruises. “But I’m still not speaking to you.”
Ileni tore her eyes away from Sorin.
“Ileni,” he said. “Don’t. She’ll kill me anyhow.”
“Why would I do that?” Karyn murmured. “Some of us prefer not to kill, if it’s unnecessary.” She gave Ileni a small smile, including her in that some of us. “I wouldn’t expect an assassin to understand.”
Ileni forced herself to straighten, to meet the sorceress’s eyes. Sorin was defying Karyn despite the abyss beneath him. How could she do less? “What do you want to know?”
“Many things. But mostly, I would like to know how to get through the Renegai wards around these caves.”
Ileni froze. She could feel Sorin struggling to use magic against Karyn, like a fitful breeze against the strength of her spell.
She hadn’t betrayed everything after all. She hadn’t betrayed her own people yet. But in exchange for Sorin’s life, she would.
“You think I can tell you that?” Ileni said finally. “Right now?”
“Can’t you?” Karyn rolled her shoulders back. “Then let’s start with an easier question. Why have your assassin friends been killing off sorcerers? Do you know the answer to that?”
“I do,” Ileni said. “I’ll tell you when you let him down.”
Karyn lifted an eyebrow. “I could still kill him, if I wanted to. So what does it matter?”
“It would make me feel better,” Ileni said, through gritted teeth. “If you want this to be a friendly conversation, let him down.”
Karyn considered, then nodded. Sorin floated toward the sorceress, landing roughly near the edge of the chasm, and promptly fell over on his side. He lay perfectly still, not allowing himself the indignity of a struggle.
Ileni couldn’t see his face. Her last glimpse of it had been that stricken look he gave her right before he failed to kill Karyn.
“All right,” Karyn said. “Let’s be friendly.”
“Let’s not,” Sorin growled.
The surge of power caught Ileni by surprise. She had never felt Sorin use his full strength before. He was more skilled than she had realized, and his magic had an edge to it, an untamed tremor pulsing beneath the perfect, clean precision of his spell.
The spell holding Sorin captive shattered, with an impact that made Ileni gasp. Karyn doubled over with a sharp cry. Sorin was on his feet and across the rock before the sorceress could recover. He slid behind her, yanked one arm around her neck in a chokehold, and clamped his other hand over her mouth.
“Nice spell, isn’t it?” Sorin’s smile was sharp and feral. “Absalm did do some teaching, you know, in between his . . . extracurricular activities. And now I think this is going to get a lot less friendly.”
Karyn twisted against his grasp, once, futilely. Sorin pressed his forearm against her throat, ignoring the fingers tearing desperately at his arm.
This time, he didn’t look at Ileni.
Karyn let out a broken, throttled cry that reminded Ileni of Irun’s hands pressing on her throat. She forced herself to stand and watch as Karyn’s face turned purple-red and her struggles grew weaker. There was nothing else she could do.
Then Karyn opened her hand and flung the lodestone wildly.
Sorin let go of her and leaped to grab it. He landed in a crouch, holding the glowing stone in one hand. Its swirling lights played across his face.
Then he grunted as Karyn’s magic hit and forced him to his knees. He managed to hold onto the stone, even as his face twisted in agony.
Karyn threw her head back and laughed.
“You can’t use it,” she said. “But I still can, from this distance. You should have killed me when you had the chance.”
She lifted a hand and began chanting. Ileni didn’t recognize the spell, but the cadence made her stomach twist. It was dark and ugly and vindictive, promising terrible pain. The colors in the stone twisted violently as Karyn drew on its power.
She knew what this was, even though she had never heard it before, except in whispered rumors: a deathspell.
“Sorin!” she shouted. “I can use the stone.”
He looked up at her, and she saw him understand what that meant. It can only be used by someone with no power of his own. His eyes widened in shock, even through his pain.
He threw her the stone.
Karyn let go of the spell in mid-chant and threw herself at Sorin, slamming into him as he released the stone. The shimmering orb arced across the chasm, and Ileni ran to intercept it. It was going into the abyss, it was going to fall—she threw herself after it, and her fingertips brushed its smooth surface.
Power tingled through her hand, just from that small contact. But the stone slipped away from her and down.
Her cry turned into a scream as she plummeted after it.
Something thudded behind her, and a hand clasped around her ankle. Sorin’s grip jerked her to a stop, almost yanking her leg right out of her hip. She dangled against the cliffside, fingers scrabbling against slick rocks. She could no longer see the stone. She had never even heard it hit the ground. It was gone, gone, gone.
Sorin pulled her out bit by bit, her body scraping against the rock, until she was on solid ground. Then his hands closed around her waist and he pulled her up. She had just enough time to see that Karyn had vanished before he pulled her roughly around.
They looked at each other. Ileni’s legs felt like jelly and her heart felt broken, and she was afraid of what she was going to see in his eyes. She let out a sob.
Sorin yanked her to him and held her tight, so tight it hurt. But it still felt better than anything else she was feeling. She closed her eyes and buried her face in his shirt, breathing in dust and sweat and the faint, metallic scent of blood.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you—”
His hand touched her cheek, a faint nudge. That was all the encouragement she needed to lift her face so his mouth could land on hers. She clung to him desperately, trying to find what she had found in his kisses before: forgetfulness.
But it didn’t work. She couldn’t stop thinking about the lodestone, tumbling away into the darkness. About how it had brushed her fingers, sending tingles of power through her, making her feel, for a second, like herself.
The dark power she had abhorred her entire life. The source of the Empire’s evil.
It can only be used by someone with no power.
But someone who knew how to use magical power. Someone who had the skill to use spells, but no power to fuel them.
Someone like her.
That’s why this deception was necessary. So you could be trained in earnest.
Absalm had gone through all this to create a Renegai who could use a lodestone. But why?
She pulled away, and it was a moment before Sorin let her go. She could feel the force of his gaze even though the shadows hid his eyes.
“We should go after Karyn,” she whispered.
Sorin shook his head shortly. “I don’t see the point. We know what she wants—a way through the wards. And the master has to know about that, Ileni. This has gone too far.”