Lis turned her arm over. Her forearm was covered with a faint tracing of scars that Ileni hadn’t noticed before. Set into the underside of her thick bracelet was a small round globe with colors swirling in its depths.
“Lodestones to spare, remember? I’ve got my own portable source of magic.” Her tone was slightly bitter. “This stone is almost drained, which is why you can’t feel it. But get close enough and you should be able to borrow some.”
Ileni could feel the magic coming from the stone, but only faintly; Lis was soaking it up through her skin, leaving nothing Ileni could have grasped. Even if she wanted to. She bit her lip. “Did you lose your own magic?”
Lis’s laugh was more than just slightly bitter. “Cyn and I are twins, but we aren’t very alike. I never had any.”
Like Karyn. People who would never have tasted magic on their own, being trained to use power stolen from others.
Ileni pulled her arm back to her side. “Thank you. But I think I’ll use the bridge.”
Lis pivoted and flung herself upward, a swirl of white cloth and black hair.
“Go,” Ileni snapped at Evin. She wanted desperately to be alone. “You don’t have to wait for me.”
“That’s good to know,” Evin said, “since I wasn’t planning to.”
Within seconds, he had caught up to the two girls, looping and curling elaborately through the air. Tears stung the backs of Ileni’s eyes, and she turned away, not wanting to admire the grace and joy of his body in flight.
It was just as well that she had fallen. How close she had come to forgetting that this magic wasn’t hers. That just because something felt good didn’t mean it was good.
That she wasn’t whole, and never would be again.
The bridge swayed unsteadily as she walked, death yawning below her on both sides. Fragments of mist swirled far beneath her feet, drifting across the distant treetops. Far ahead, she saw two white figures touch down on the mountainside and a third swoop effortlessly around the bridge.
Ileni set her jaw and walked, placing her feet slowly and carefully on the slats and keeping her hands tight around the rails.
When she got to her room, there was something new there. A mirror, large and oval, standing in the corner on an ornate silver base.
Ileni recognized that mirror.
She walked over and touched it, tentatively, as if Sorin was still watching from the smooth glass. But she saw only her own face, wide brown eyes and trembling chin, and the fingertips she touched were her own.
Sorin.
The remnants of the spell he had used to reach her shimmered in the glass. The portal was still there. Given enough power, she could open it again.
And she had all the power she could ever want.
But someone had brought the mirror here. Who, and why? Did someone want her to reopen the portal, to talk to Sorin?
She could. It would take just a few minutes, and she would be talking to him, watching his rare, subtle smile warm his face. Reminding her that somewhere, far away from this world of stolen power and lodestones, she was loved. If she opened the portal far enough, she could step right through and touch him. . . .
Her fingers pressed hard on the glass. She curled them into a fist and made her way to the bed. She had nothing to say to the new master of the assassins.
Not yet.
CHAPTER
6
That night, Ileni couldn’t sleep. A cold ache spread through her chest, painful and deeply familiar. Even though, a mere half year ago, she’d had no idea that loneliness could actually hurt.
She reached for thoughts of Sorin, but that only made the empty feeling deepen. Even with him, she had felt alone. He had always been half her enemy. But he had eased the loneliness anyhow, if only by distracting her from it.
Odd that the excitement of having magic couldn’t do the same.
A sob pushed its way up her throat, and she forced it down. She sat up abruptly, making the glowstones flicker.
She reached for magic. The power was easy to grasp, to pull in and around herself. The magic swirled through her, making her feel both safe and tainted.
And bringing home the true import of what she had learned that day.
She had told Sorin she was leaving to find out if the imperial sorcerers were evil—and she had hoped, deep down, that they were. That her choice would be clear and simple and totally right.
That she and Sorin would be on the same side.
But back in the caves, she hadn’t known that most of the sorcerers weren’t true sorcerers at all. That their power came almost entirely from lodestones.
All her life, she had thought the Empire was invincible, a destructive force. And maybe it was. But it was also a tottering edifice, propped up by the lodestones. If she destroyed the lodestones, she could tip over that edifice.
Killing was one thing. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—do that, not unless she was absolutely sure she had to. But maybe she could bring down the Empire without killing a single person.