No sound emerged; his moving lips screamed the spell into nothingness, and the magic engulfed the sound as he spoke. Ileni had worked spells this powerful before, but never on her own, without a preexisting spell anchored to a solid object. Yet Evin was holding nothing, using nothing but his own power. He squeezed his eyes shut, face twisted with effort. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his neck as he released the spell.
The walls shimmered and were gone, and sunlight flooded through the sides of the room, making Ileni flinch. She covered her eyes and concentrated on the sun beating at her skin, warming her bare forearms and her hair.
When she slowly uncovered her eyes, the brightness made her blink back tears, and rainbow shimmers danced across her vision. Then they cleared, and she walked slowly over to one of the now-invisible walls.
Empty space stretched ahead of her and plummeted to a ground she couldn’t see from this angle. A Judgment Spire soared upward across from her, stark gray against a brilliant blue sky.
One Judgment Spire. She stretched up an arm to brush her fingers against the solid rock ceiling above her, and understood. They were inside the other spire.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked. When she turned, the sunlight warmed her shoulders and back.
“There’s a bespelled key that allows entrance and exit from the spire cells,” Evin said. “Karyn left it on her desk.”
Each of those sentences demanded a million questions. Ileni chose, rather randomly, “What were you doing in Karyn’s room?”
“Trying to find out what she had done to you.”
“But wasn’t that dangerous?”
“I’m incredibly brave,” Evin said. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“I don’t . . .” She struggled to think. “I don’t understand. Why would you risk so much to rescue me?”
“I’m not risking much.”
She couldn’t tell if that was true. “But you don’t even like me.”
Evin cocked an eyebrow. “Actually, I like you quite a lot. You’re confused by the fact that you don’t like me.”
Her face burned. “That’s—that’s not—”
“It’s all right.” Evin shrugged. “I don’t require people to like me before I decide to like them. That would be giving too much weight to their opinion of me.”
“You are a very strange person,” Ileni said slowly. “I assume you know that?”
“It’s been mentioned. Usually people have the courtesy to do it behind my back.”
Arxis rolled his eyes. “Ileni’s not big on courtesy.”
“I know. It’s one of the things I like about her.”
“How nice for both of you,” Arxis said. “Before this becomes predictable, I propose we find out if Evin can use this spell to get us out of here.”
“You don’t know?” Ileni said.
“I’m almost sure I can do it,” Evin said. “There’s no way to know for certain until I try.”
“He’s almost sure,” Arxis said. “My certainty is at a far lower level than almost.”
Ileni looked away from Evin, which was a relief, to focus on Arxis. “Then why did you come and risk being trapped here?”
“The confidence you both have in me is truly inspiring,” Evin said. His habitual half-smile was back, his eyes light and dancing. “If you would be quiet a moment and let me concentrate, I’ll do my best to exceed it.”
Before Ileni could apologize, Evin held out a large silver key and focused on it.
He clearly didn’t need to concentrate too hard. He lowered his hands, and the key floated in midair before him, ordinary looking but humming with power. Evin murmured a single word, then released that power with a casual motion of his hand.
Ileni felt the spell unleash, a sizzle that shot through her body from scalp to toe, making the world dissolve into chaotic fragments. Then her feet hit solid ground, and she lurched forward, hitting her hip on the corner of a desk that hadn’t been there a moment ago. When she reached out blindly to break her fall, her hand knocked over a stack of papers. They flew sideways and scattered, a frantic flutter of white sliding across the stone floor.
“Don’t vomit!” Evin said. “We can’t leave any sign we were here.”
The warning was just in time. Ileni clamped her lips shut. She fought her instincts, kept her mouth closed, and—with a whimper of revulsion—swallowed. The bile burned its way down her throat.
“A little late for that, don’t you think?” Arxis said as the last paper fluttered against the far wall.
“We can clean that up,” Evin said. “Karyn is disorganized. If they’re out of order, she’ll assume it was her fault.”
That didn’t sound like Karyn, but Ileni was in no state to argue. Her mouth hurt. Power tingled in the air, tantalizingly distant, and she reached for it and drew it in. Karyn’s office must be just close enough to the testing arena. She could use magic to . . .
No. She stopped herself. Not this magic. Never again.
But she remembered the helplessness of falling through the air, of lying trapped in the dark, and she didn’t let the magic go.