Page 45

“Nikki.” I fumbled for him, my vision blurry and my fingers like claws.

He stepped back.

I whispered his name again, although thick saliva clogged my throat and the whisper turned into a shattered sound. “Nikki.”

“You did this.” His accusation slammed, cracking me open. “You left. You betrayed me. The red priests have the evidence—you’re a mutant.”

“No.” I shook my head. The white skirt tangled around my legs while my knees sank deeper into the sand.

“Your mother was a mutant,” my brother sneered. “I’m glad she’s dead.”

The pain shredded.

“You killed my father and mother.”

“Our father,” I rasped. “And I loved your mother. They died in an accident. Because of the Malice Moon.”

“No, Senaria,” said Nikki in a way that had me stiffening.

“It was you. Who you are. You were angry that day because my father refused to take you with him. You used your magic to cause that accident. To get revenge because they left you alone. You are the enemy, sneaking into Thales, destroying. You should be killed like your mother.”

I twisted my fingers hard enough to cause pain. “Who told you this?”

“The red priests.”

“They lie.”

“I’m in the King’s Guard now,” my brother said, although the armor he wore was not from the King’s Guard. Not the current armor. What he wore was from a decade ago, before Tarian changed the fashion.

And something else revealed the illusion; Nikki never called me Senaria. It was always and only Senna.

“Are you here to kill me?” I asked, rising to my feet with the aid of the spear I still held close.

“Silk would condemn you for what you did,” the illusion of Nikias said. “You killed others when the secrets you kept were just as bad.”

“And what secrets are you keeping right now, Ciriane? This is your illusion, isn’t it?”

The image of my brother drew his sword, held it ready. “The magic demands a blood sacrifice. Who else will you kill to gain what you covet? Will you kill me before I can kill you? Call it mercy?”

“Unless I refuse to kill.” Turning the spear, I slammed the point into the sand and shouted at the sky, “Your magic is too weak to get the memories right, so you fabricate. Hope I’ll fill in the holes, confess my sins when I spent years as Silk—enough of this.”

My fingers warmed. Magic raced down my arms and toward the phantom of the woman in black, then the wavering Nikias. Both images exploded like the shards of a dropped mirror, and in their place stood Kion Abaddon.

He wore black fighting armor and held a sword in his hand. His silvered hair was wild against his face, and blood smears marred his skin in a way that set my heart to thundering. But his eyes, the eyes I could drown in, were empty of any light other than hate .

I stepped back. Would I face this man in combat? A man who touched me like no other? I shut down the memories. Memories brought weakness when the mages spoke of destiny—but what was destiny, other than a series of choices made?

If I’d turned left instead of right…if I’d never thrown an apple at a man beating a boy, or agreed to become Silk. If I’d never cried in a garden…or a dungeon cell…

Pointless wishing because Fate did not allow leniency. Past decisions could not be undone. But I controlled my future, no one else. Not Fate, or Ciriane’s illusions, and this was one more choice to make.

My mother’s words about deceit requiring courage were close to my heart when I said, “Kion.”

He sneered, “I’m impressed. You lie so well.”

“I don’t lie.”

“You have since the day we met.”

The voice was male but not his voice, and he wore no curse tablet. Another detail the mages of the Stone Tower overlooked, like the red priests. Were they not as strong as they pretended? Did they fear me more than I feared them?

“You use people for your own gain,” the fake Kion said.

“No.” I spoke to the mages in the Stone Tower and not to the phantom in front of me. “I want peace. But people like you, like your queen, and the king from Thales—you want chaos.”

“You bring chaos.”

I turned back to the image of Kion as if he was actually there.

“Haven’t you ever wanted a place where you belong?

” I searched for the words. “A place that welcomes you with nothing other than the love you don’t deserve?

But no matter what you do, or how hard you try, you never find it.

Not that place. Instead, the place you find breaks you apart. Rips what you want from your fingers.”

His image wavered.

“People toss away love like it doesn’t matter. They offer to use you, not love you. They lie and cheat as if the truth never mattered. But I’m not the stupid, vapid girl who believed them.”

The image of Kion stepped closer. The lack of emotion in his eyes terrified me…until I realized this was my fear, staring back at me. My doubt was in the sneering curve of his lips. My self-revulsion moved his hand when his sword slid upward to press against my throat.

I tipped my head, felt the icy blade against my wildly thumping pulse. Kion wasn’t real. The blade wasn’t real. I still said, “Have you ever hated yourself so much, the things you did, that you wanted to change? Become someone new?”

The phantom’s lips pressed together. His fingers flexed on the sword hilt…and my father’s knife appeared in my clenched hand.

I pressed the blade to the phantom’s throat and said, “If the magic demands blood, then let it flow.”

Swiftly, I dragged the blade across flesh, not Kion’s flesh but my own. I cut first one palm, then the other, and let the blade fall.

Blood ran in thick rivulets, dripping from my fingers .

The illusion disintegrated, and I was kneeling on the stone floor, screaming. Ciriane clutched my head with both hands, her fingers like claws, and streaks of jagged energy raced from her and into me.

The pain was insurmountable.

Ciriane was shuddering as if she wanted to let go… needed to let go…but my magic held her there. To punish. Ravage her.

I was Skyborne. Powerful. Proving it. Absorbing what this mage could not risk losing, no matter the pain. Absorbing until Ciriane Ymir was nothing but a husk.

Anneli stepped forward with her hands out.

The blasting wave of energy sent the woman flying while I slid and spun across the stone floor, curling in on myself.

My hands still dripped blood—the cutting had not been an illusion—but the skin on my stomach also burned.

Anneli ripped the dress, folding the tattered pieces aside.

“The magic confirms her destiny,” she hissed. “The mark of the High Mage is here on her skin.” Anneli turned her head and ordered, “Help me.”

Camael supported my weight. When I stood and glanced at my stomach, I saw the six-pointed star marking my skin: three lines that crossed in the middle, smeared with my blood. The high mage mark, proving the sacrifice I’d made. The worthiness.

Pain made me dizzy. My vision narrowed to a pinprick of light, then nothing but the blessed dark.

When I woke, a clean shift replaced the soiled clothes. The soft linen sheet cooled my skin. Interior shutters bracketed a window; the shutters could be closed against the chill, but they remained open, framing the darkened sky. A fire blazed in an arched fireplace to keep the room warm.

Anneli sat in a chair beside the fire with a book in her hand. Light from mage magic illuminated the pages, and as she focused, I wondered what had claimed her attention. If she read a book of lost love or one of magic.

“What makes you smile like that?” I asked when her mouth turned upward with a hint of longing and sadness.

“A story of love,” she said as she closed the book. “Of a foolish girl who continues to hope when she should not.”

“Love is like that.” And, one day, I would ask her about the man who broke her heart enough to cause a magical wound. But not today.

Concern glistened in her eyes, an emotion I hadn’t expected to see.

“You survived,” she said.

I plucked at the sheets. “Apparently. Somewhat more scarred than before.”

“Protected,” she murmured. “The price was high. I doubt Ciriane will recover. She is…was…a High Mage, you know. But your magic was stronger than hers.”

I said nothing. The magic had seemed flawed, but Anneli did not need that detail. She hadn’t been honest despite her intentions to protect me. I would not discount a hidden motive of her own—an alliance she now expected. Playing her own power game.

“Where are we?” I hoped it wasn’t the Stone Tower. But was Halla Taja’s castle any safer ?

“You’re in my fortified villa in Shiala,” she said. “No one comes in without an invitation.

I moved aside the sheet and sat up. “What now?”

“Now you heal.”