“This shouldn’t be too difficult for you, then.”
Ileni’s body finally believed it could move. A quick, easy spell healed the cut on her cheek, just as Cyn had predicted. She got to her feet and faced the other girl. Cyn propped one hand on her hip.
“I could destroy you,” Ileni said. Her voice shook. “I could destroy all of you. And I think I will.”
Cyn laughed and flicked an errant strand of hair away from her face.
“Well, Evin,” she said, “I guess that’s your cue to say, You’re welcome.”
Ileni’s throat tightened. She shouldn’t have said it. But she also knew there was no risk in saying it. No one here thought she could possibly be a threat.
She turned her back on Cyn’s smirk and Evin’s frown, soared into the air, and fled.
She didn’t soar very far. She kept close to the bridge, and, as soon as she was far enough from Cyn to feel safe, floated down and landed on it, gripping the rail with trembling hands. She was halfway across, close enough to the main peak to see a group of novices in green tunics filing along one of the lower ledges. She probably could have made it farther, but that would have meant using more stolen magic.
She had barely stepped off the bridge when someone swooped in front of her. Ileni tensed, but it wasn’t Cyn. It was Evin, and one look at her expression made him switch directions and soar upward instead.
“I’m sorry that happened,” he said. He braced himself against the mountainside, his magic holding him to the cliff face, and looked down. “It didn’t mean anything. You caught Cyn in a bad mood.”
“Sure,” Ileni said. “Among my people, we also respond to bad moods by torturing our friends.”
His brow furrowed. “We don’t all respond that way.”
“But you think it’s normal. She isn’t going to be punished, is she? Nobody’s going to treat her like the monster she is. Because you’re used to it. Because everything you do is about causing pain.”
Evin blinked, and Ileni braced herself for a scathing retort she would very much deserve. She was no better, after all—lashing out at Evin because she was angry at Cyn. And at herself.
But what Evin said was, “She will be punished, if you go to Karyn. That was unacceptable. She could have really hurt you.”
“What will she get?” Ileni asked. “A stern lecture?” Not that any of the asssassins would have gotten even that much. They were too honest to pretend brutality was beneath them. “You’re all so important, aren’t you? The sorcerers who hold the Empire together. You’re untouchable, and you know it.”
“We do get away with a lot,” Evin admitted. “In my case, that’s absolutely justified, but in Cyn’s, it’s more of an . . . unfortunate necessity.”
“Why?” Ileni said. “Why is it necessary? Why can’t you just stop? You don’t need this much power—”
“We do, actually,” Evin said. “We have powerful enemies.”
“You could leave the assassins alone, find a compromise—”
Evin’s laugh was the harshest sound she had ever heard emerge from his mouth. “The assassins want us dead. What sort of compromise do you suggest? Shall we die just a little bit?”
She had managed to forget, for a moment, what the assassins had done to him. Ileni drew in a breath.
Evin looked down at her from his spiderlike perch against the gray rock. “There is no compromise possible. They have made themselves into an enemy that must be destroyed.”
She had never heard him sound so fierce. Apparently there was one thing he did care about.
Ileni tilted her head back to meet his eyes. “They can’t be destroyed. Haven’t you figured that out? Everyone knows the caves are impregnable. No army could ever get in, and the wards are unbreachable. . . .”
Her voice died.
There was a breach. There was a mirror in her room, and the portal still attached to it could reach the Assassins’ Caves despite all the wards between them.
It was as if Sorin was there, watching her. She saw herself through his eyes, holding her stolen magic tight, in earnest conversation with an imperial sorcerer. Like it mattered what excuses Evin made.
Evin didn’t seem to notice her silence. He slid down the wall until his feet touched the ledge. “I never told you how my parents died.”
She found her voice, though it was weak and hoarse. “Cyn told me.”
“Did she tell you why they were murdered?”
Ileni shook her head.
“My mother discovered that a city on the southern coast had been taken over by supporters of the assassins. She infiltrated their movement, then organized a raid. She killed them all. Three hundred, officially, though that’s probably a bit exaggerated.”
A bit exaggerated. “So how many did she kill? Merely two hundred?”
Evin’s jaw pulsed. “There are millions who live under the Empire’s protection. The assassins threaten all of them.”