She could ask if he had ordered Bazel to kill her.
She reached for power—not doing anything with it yet, not even readying it, just knowing it was there. She could. She didn’t know if she should, and she didn’t know if she wanted to, but she knew that she could.
The glass turned black.
Ileni leaped away from the mirror, power sizzling painfully through her palm.
This can’t be good.
She pulled a ward around herself. The mirror was already becoming less black, the shadows inside it swirling into shapes, the shapes taking on form and color. It was a room, square and bare and stark, its floor covered with a chalk pattern that gleamed with silver light. A tall figure sat in the center of the pattern.
Ileni barely breathed as she watched the images solidify. Even though she knew what she was seeing, she couldn’t grasp the final piece, couldn’t believe it, until the figure rose to his feet.
His face was familiar, despite long absence. She knew every inch and angle, every mood of those eyes, every expression those thin lips could twist into.
She doubled over slightly, as if all the air had been driven out of her body with one swift blow.
She met his sky-blue eyes.
“Hello, Tellis,” she said.
CHAPTER
24
They both stood frozen, eyes locked on each other. Tellis’s eyes were wide and blank with pain, riveted to her face as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Ileni felt blank inside, too, but not from pain. It took her a moment to realize what she felt.
Nothing.
That was almost worse than pain. It was staggering. How could she have loved him so much, and now feel nothing? She could still remember how her heart had once leaped every time she saw him, how desperately she had wanted to be near him.
She remembered it, and still she felt nothing.
“Ileni,” Tellis whispered. “He was telling the truth?”
“Who was telling the truth?” Ileni said. “Tellis—how did you—”
“I’m here to help you,” Tellis said. “Elder Absalm opened the portal just enough for you to see me. But together, we can open the portal fully, and you can come through.”
Elder Absalm? “Where are you?”
He shuddered slightly, which was answer enough. “Don’t worry. I’m all right. I was just brought here to talk to you, and to help you escape.”
“I don’t need to escape,” Ileni said. He blinked at her. “I’m not trapped here.” Although that wasn’t entirely true. “I’m—it’s complicated. But I know what I’m doing.”
That was entirely not true, but Tellis nodded, trusting her. He leaned closer, reaching out a hand, as if he could push it through the spell and touch her. He probably could, if he wanted to. He was more than powerful enough.
“Ileni,” he said, and his voice caught on her name. “I miss you.”
“I—” Ileni began, and then couldn’t think of what to say. I miss you, too? She had shattered her heart against memories of him a million times. But now . . . now she was no longer the girl who had loved Tellis so uncomplicatedly and wholeheartedly.
She missed being that girl more than she missed Tellis.
“I knew I would,” Tellis said. “But I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know it would be so hard. I didn’t know, when I told you to leave, that I was making a mistake.”
The thought crept into her mind, stark and inescapable: I’m going to hurt him.
Once, she would have been savagely glad of that. He had hurt her, after all, so badly she hadn’t known how she would survive it. But that felt like so long ago. She had survived it. She had come out on the other side. And she no longer cared enough about Tellis to want to hurt him.
“Thank you,” she said, and immediately hated herself for how stupid it sounded—for not coming up with something better. The intensity on Tellis’s face made her heart twist. But she forced herself to meet his eyes, letting her own face show . . . whatever it showed. And she forced herself not to turn away when he searched her face, the hope in his eyes slowly dying. His throat pulsed, and he was the one to finally drop his eyes.
“So you’re a weapon,” he said.
“I—what?”
“The assassin leader said . . . he said you had a way to destroy the imperial sorcerers. Is it true?”
“What on earth were you doing with Sor—with the assassin leader?”
“It’s a long story,” Tellis said. “But he wanted me to talk to you. To find out what you were doing. What was stopping you from proceeding with the plan.”
Curse you, Sorin.
Ileni had thought she understood what it felt like to be the betrayer, to become loathsome in the eyes of everyone she knew. Now she had an inkling of what it would truly feel like. Her insides clamped shut, shrinking into a thick, agonizing knot.
“It’s . . . not that simple,” she said, hearing and hating the weakness in her voice.