ducked Nevia’s fighting staff as it cut through the air, then shot back up and met the staff with her own.
Fighting was good. Fighting helped her forget the horrible thing she had done.
For nearly an hour straight, she had been fighting with Nevia in one of the Lyceum’s sparring yards. She refused to stop, not even to wipe her face, which was lucky, because Nevia had a reputation for ruthlessness and would not have agreed to rest.
That ruthlessness was why Jessamyn had left Remy in her room in the middle of his lesson, marched into the barracks, and tossed a staff to Nevia, which had made the older woman grin in her wolfish way.
Now they fought, the yard’s doors and windows lined with onlookers. Recruits with their own staffs at the ready, eager to jump in should Jessamyn relent. But Jessamyn could not possibly relent.
With each strike, with each blow she delivered and received, she felt some of the wild fear within her diminish, though her mind still spun with the memory of what had happened in Eliana’s rooms the day before.
How was it possible that this gaunt, mute, joke of a girl—who had once been a formidable assassin, supposedly, though Jessamyn couldn’t imagine that—could have bested her? Jessamyn, student of one of the greatest assassins Invictus had ever employed? Jessamyn, virashta of Varos? She had told herself it was lingering grief over his death that had distracted her. But this was no comfort, for it indicated a softness to which she had long thought herself impervious. A human softness Varos had tried to beat out of her.
Nevia’s staff grazed her arm, making Jessamyn grunt and stumble. She regrouped, spun on the thin, flexible sole of her sandal, and smacked Nevia hard on the shoulder, then again on the hip.
And still she could not stop thinking about what would have happened if Eliana had succeeded in killing herself, what the Emperor’s punishment would have been.
What his punishment might yet be.
Thinking about it made her sloppy. Nevia spun fast, whacked Jessamyn on the head with her staff, then used it to strike Jessamyn’s feet out from under her. She fell hard, knocking her chin against the ground. Stars burst across her vision, and she tasted blood, but the shame was far worse.
Nevia circled her. “I never did understand what Varos saw in you,” she said. There was no malice in her voice, simply a bewildered curiosity.
Then a set of doors to Jessamyn’s right flew open, and everyone but her—Nevia, the watching trainees—fell simultaneously to the ground.
The Emperor stormed into the yard, a fur-trimmed cloak thrown about his shoulders, and as soon as Jessamyn locked eyes with him, her body stiffened, her bones snapped rigid. She blinked, and the world shifted.
She was alone in the yard. The sky was gray, the buildings of the Lyceum black and windowless. The world vibrated—the air, the Lyceum, the stone underfoot. A child’s sketch given furious life.
In this strange, shaded world, the Emperor was glorious—eight feet tall, slender and long-limbed, his face an exquisite configuration of sharp cheekbones and bright, pale eyes, his hair a shifting black cloud. His clothes floated about him in dark whorls. From his back fanned a set of enormous wings—bright where they burst from his shoulders, tipped in shadow.
Jessamyn cried out, her knees buckling. She wanted desperately to look away. He was too beautiful, too brilliant. She should not be looking at him. Her human eyes were too small for it.
But the Emperor held her in place with his mind, forcing her to stare. She felt him slipping into her thoughts like a snake through a crack in stone. Soon she would shatter, the taste of his fury on her lips as metallic and sour as blood.
“You brought knives into her room,” he said, his voice jagged and booming.
He was too immense for her. His mind in hers made her head ache and her eyes burn with a searing heat. His fingers were deep in the folds of her thoughts, digging, twisting.
The world flickered, then changed.
Jessamyn watched in horror as Nevia and the others reappeared—though now they were emaciated, wild-eyed. They bashed their heads against the walls until their faces were soaked in blood. They leapt on each other and tore with their teeth, feasting.
Jessamyn choked out, “My lord, please—”
“You have been trained by my finest fighters,” the Emperor said, “and yet you were stupid enough to present Eliana with weapons. Your idiocy astounds me.”