“It’s not,” Ileni said. “It’s not the only way.”
“Oh, really?” Lis sneered. “You have another one? You think if you look long enough, you’ll find a perfect shining solution and fix everything without getting your hands dirty?”
“No,” Ileni said, and heard her own voice: small, defeated. “No. I don’t.”
“Then who are you to judge his sacrifice? Arxis knew what his life was worth, and what he was willing to trade it for. He was braver than any sorcerer in this Academy.” Lis’s hair hung in a tangle of threads over her face, lit into strands of silver by the sun behind her.
“None of them care about their lives,” Ileni said. “There will be another one to replace him. To kill Girad where he failed. Did Arxis ever tell you about the Roll of Honor? Because he might not have feared death, but I assure you, he feared not having his name carved on that column. And it won’t be. Not now.”
Lis’s face twisted, and guilt stabbed Ileni. This cruelty wasn’t all meant for Lis. Some of it was meant for herself.
Which didn’t mean Lis didn’t deserve it. Ileni saw again Girad’s tiny body, heard the startled cry as he fell.
“Maybe you can fall in love with the next one, too,” she said. “Since you enjoy being miserable so much.”
Lis slapped her.
Ileni had been expecting that, and her block was instantaneous. Lis’s hand froze an inch from Ileni’s face. She struggled to break through, but Ileni held her off easily.
Lis snarled at her. Then she stepped backward off the ledge and dropped from sight.
Ileni didn’t move. A moment later, a slim figure rose in the sky, black hair blowing wildly around her.
Ileni stood there long after the sky was empty again, not moving, the mountain firm against her back. The clean slashes of the mountaintops were smudged. She blinked fiercely and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
She had also once thought that she was on the side of good—that she would do something wholly, unmistakably right. She missed that belief more than she missed Sorin, more than she missed her magic, more than she missed not wondering every morning if she would die that day.
For a moment, she envied Lis. She wished she, too, believed in something strongly enough to kill for it without hesitation or doubt.
She turned her back on the empty sky and ran.
CHAPTER
25
Ileni ran straight to her room, and straight to the mirror, and she pulled power from lodestones as she ran. She dropped to her knees and drew patterns on the floor with dangerous haste, her chalk strokes steady despite her shaking arms, pulling in yet more power through her skin. By the time she unleashed all that power on the mirror, sweeping her arm at the glass and shouting the spell, she had more than she could safely control.
And it wasn’t even necessary.
The portal slid open easily, and behind the breach in the wards, someone was waiting for her. She knew it, sensed his presence, even before the mirror erupted into a rainbow whirlwind. When the colors faded back into the glass, he was there.
As if he had been waiting for her.
“Did you know about it?” Ileni demanded, before he could say a word. Her throat was so tight it hurt, but the words slid out easily.
Sorin’s face didn’t so much as twitch. He stared at her unflinching, not denying it.
Sorin. The two of them had stood together beneath the earth and faced death. They had lied to each other and betrayed each other and loved each other through it all. Her heart shattered slowly, a hundred agonizing hairline fractures.
“The boy? I didn’t order that,” Sorin said. His voice was calm, even. “Our assassin was placed there over a month ago. It was the master who sent him. You know that.”
His cheekbones were sharp as blades, his eyes dark coals. She couldn’t look away from him. Her heart pounded so hard she could hear it.
Sorin leaned forward, very slightly. A tuft of blond hair fell over his forehead. “What do you really want to ask me, Ileni?”
She sucked in a harsh, painful breath, and said, “Have you ever killed a child?”
Sorin’s face hardened, and the dangerous slant of his eyes wiped away any hint of vulnerability. When he finally spoke, his tone was measured. “I’ve only been on one mission. I killed a nobleman. You know that, too.”
“But you’re . . . in charge now.” She couldn’t bring herself to say you are the master. “You must have sent people on missions. Since I . . . since I left.”
“Yes.”
She flinched despite herself. But she had always known he was a killer. She forced the next question out. “Were any of the targets children?”
He looked at her for a moment—a long moment, considering how dangerous it was to keep this portal open. His eyes had never seemed so impenetrable. Ileni braced herself, heart thudding.
He said, “No.”