But he wouldn’t be alive for long. You’ll get only one more chance, Karyn had threatened. That was, clearly, an isolated act of disobedience, and one that would soon be reversed. Did it really matter that Lis felt bad about what she was doing? She was doing it anyhow.
When Ileni stepped onto the plateau, Evin and Cyn were already sparring, flinging balls of colored light at each other. Cyn’s balls were pure white, her strikes direct and dizzyingly fast. Evin’s were swirls of translucent color, more beautiful than dangerous. Even so, Evin was clearly winning. His movements were relaxed, almost lazy, while Cyn’s breath came in short, ragged bursts. On the other side of the plateau, Lis and Arxis were standing with their heads close together, sleek black and unruly red.
Evin snapped his head around when Ileni’s foot touched the plateau. He raised a hand, and a burst of power stopped all the glowing orbs in midair. The vast expenditure of magic almost knocked Ileni back over the edge. She swayed slightly.
“Match over,” Evin said cheerfully. “Well, Ileni? Want to give it a try?”
Ileni did want to, and the longing made her feel tight, about to explode.
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
She said it without thinking, and didn’t hear the haughtiness in her voice until it was too late.
Evin shrugged, but Cyn stiffened. “I thought,” she said, “that you’d given up the whole shocked-and-superior act. It’s getting boring.”
“I’ll spar with you again—” Evin cut in.
“No. I think I’d like Ileni to have a turn.” Cyn ran her fingers through her short hair. “She’s proven that she’s quite capable of being a challenge, when she can bring herself to forget that she’s a—what are your villagers called again?”
“Renegai,” Ileni snapped. “And I don’t want to forget.”
“Clearly. You have my deepest sympathies for that.”
Her tone cut deep. The contempt was not just for Ileni, but for Ileni’s people, everything the Renegai had achieved and everything they had sacrificed.
Cyn smiled—an ugly smile, the sort she usually aimed at Lis. “Angry now, Renegai girl? Does that mean you’re allowed to fight?” She flung out a hand, and a column of sand rose before her and whirled across the plateau at Ileni.
Ileni drew in power from the lodestones and blasted the column apart. Then she raised a hand, and Cyn flew backward across the plateau, slamming into one of Evin’s frozen lights. It exploded in a graceful spray of color. Cyn, less gracefully, dropped to the ground and lay still.
The plateau was suddenly, resoundingly silent. Ileni’s heart pounded in her chest, and air streamed into her throat, cold and sharp.
Cyn lifted her head and whispered a word.
Pain tore through Ileni’s body. She screamed once, a short burst of agony, then sent a pain-numbing spell into her bones. She wrenched in a breath—and magic surged from Cyn again, turning Ileni’s body into her enemy, pain searing along her bones and her blood.
She managed not to scream this time, but she wasn’t sure how. Another healing spell dulled the pain enough to let her feel the magic Cyn was pouring into the attack. She tried to raise a defense, and a sideways surge of power slapped her attempt aside.
Cyn wasn’t even using the full strength of the spell. This was just a taste. If Cyn wanted, she could kill Ileni in a split second of agony. Or she could keep her alive and make her beg for death. This was what imperial magic was, what the Academy strove for and the Renegai had rejected. Magic designed to do nothing but cause pain, to hurt a human being beyond endurance.
Ileni crumpled to the floor, fighting the pain, keeping it almost—almost—at bay. She wouldn’t scream and she wouldn’t beg. Not . . . not yet.
“Yield,” Cyn said. She was standing over Ileni. Ileni hadn’t seen her move.
Ileni spat at her feet.
Cyn’s murmured a word, and pain sliced along Ileni’s cheek. Blood trickled down her face.
“Cyn,” Evin said.
“It’s our match,” Cyn said coolly. “Don’t interfere. I’m not causing any permanent damage. She can use one of her cute little healing spells, and she won’t even have to waste a bandage.” She closed her fist, and Ileni couldn’t breathe. Air scraped painfully at her throat, and she gasped and floundered. Panic flooded through her, worse than pain.
“No permanant damage yet,” Cyn added. “All you have to do is yield.”
Ileni was slowly strangling, and she couldn’t quite manage defiance, but she squeezed her eyes shut and managed silence.
“Stop it,” Evin snapped, and suddenly it was gone—the constriction in her throat, the agony, the terror. Ileni uncurled herself slowly, her muscles strange and loose with the absence of pain. The sharp thrust of Cyn’s spell was muted by the power of Evin’s blocking spell, a spell that made Ileni’s attempt at defense laughable by comparison.
“Really, Evin,” Cyn said. She rolled her eyes and sauntered back to the other side of the plateau. “You are such an annoyance. No one asked you to get involved.”
“Call it a whim,” Evin said. His eyes were on Ileni.
“I call everything you do a whim.”