Karyn’s lips were pressed together tightly. Ileni said, “Are you going to kill me in front of them?”
If Karyn had been an assassin, she wouldn’t have hesitated. If she had been the master, she would have summoned Cyn and told her to kill Ileni, and Cyn would have done it.
But this was the Empire, and Karyn did hesitate, glancing from the watching students to Ileni.
Ileni’s heart froze in her chest. Beneath her, the ground yawned, terribly far away.
“No,” Karyn said finally. “But I won’t have to.” She stretched into a standing position.
Karyn’s flickering hand motion was by now familiar to Ileni, as was the sharp twist of the spell that accompanied it. So she was ready for the impact, the sickening lurch, and—this time, with relief—the blackness.
Once again, she knew where she was while her eyes were still shut. It was so familiar . . . the darkness, the smallness, the sense of oppressive weight pressing in above her. She was deep in the bowels of the earth again. She was back in the caves.
”Sorin?” Ileni cried, and the sound of her own voice—lost and hopeless—shocked her. She sat up. Blackness, blackness . . . she touched her eyelids with her fingertip to make sure she had really opened them. She had, but it made no difference. There was no light to see with.
She tried to call up a magelight, a futile attempt too instinctive to stop. She closed her eyes, because it made the darkness easier to bear, and flattened one hand on the ground beneath her. Stone, unnaturally smooth and straight. She got onto her hands and knees and slid one hand forward, then the other, making her way across the slick rock floor. When she hit a wall, she wasn’t surprised.
She took off one of her shoes and left it on the ground. Then, keeping one hand on the wall, she began to walk. The wall curved inward.
Her gait was awkward and uneven, but it was only a short while before her bare foot hit her shoe. So her prison was circular and very small.
No. It wasn’t a prison. Prisons had beds. And food. And water.
Perhaps Karyn hadn’t wanted to kill Ileni in front of the others. But none of them would know where Ileni had been translocated to. And none of them would see when Ileni finally died, alone in the dark.
She crossed the room slowly, hands out in front of her, until she hit the far wall. She did it again and again, crisscrossing every inch of the stone ground, but the cavern was empty. There was nothing in here.
Nothing but her.
She stretched up on tiptoe, reached her hands above her head, and her fingertips brushed the flat rock above her.
She couldn’t keep herself from reaching for magic again, digging frantically, ripping at her insides. But there was nothing. Nothing inside, nothing outside, nothing, nothing she could use to escape.
That was when she began to scream.
In the total darkness, it was impossible to keep track of time. At first Ileni could pay attention to the hollow ache in her stomach as it slowly intensified; she could track the worsening of the dry pain in her throat. But then both went away, and everything was endlessly the same.
She thought she slept a lot, but she couldn’t be sure. There ceased to be a clear distinction between sleeping and waking. One slipped into the other. Eventually, she supposed, they would slip a little further, into death.
Instead of frightening her, the thought filled her with a vague, fuzzy discomfort.
Once, she opened her eyes and saw Sorin, his eyes blacker than the darkness. She said, “You can’t be here.”
“I can be wherever I want to be. Haven’t you learned by now not to underestimate an assassin?”
“I mean it’s not safe.”
“It’s not safe for you. I’ve come to take you back.”
“No. I need to be here. I need . . .” She couldn’t remember what she needed, and the effort pushed her into a doze. Some indeterminate amount of time passed before she roused herself and said, happily, “I’m on your side now.”
The cavern was empty. Sorin hadn’t been there at all. He couldn’t have been. And if he had, he would not have left her.
Another time it was Karyn, and by then all Ileni’s pride was gone. She said, “Please.”
Karyn smiled with cool disdain.
“You’re ashamed to kill me,” Ileni whispered. “That’s why you’re doing it secretly. But the others will find out. . . .”
“No,” Karyn said, “they won’t.” Her eyes glittered, pinpoints of bright malice, and Ileni drifted into darkness again.
She should have been more careful. She should have stood there, among the people waiting for slaughter, and pretended she thought it was perfectly reasonable.