The Witch's Betrayal

"Who the hell are you?"

A man's voice. It cut momentarily through the shriek of my pain. I rolled onto my right side. My left side was still burning, the pain moving inside of me now, sliding into my bloodstream. I lifted my head. The man was wrapped in shaggy furs, but he wasn't an ice-islander. He was Empire. He was a Lisirran.

He was Lisim Sarr, my magic whispered.

For a blinding moment I didn't know what to do. Sarr leaned over me, squinting, and then his eyes went wide, and he recognized me, bleeding and burning though I was, and through my good eye I saw him drawing up his magic.

The Order trained me well, all those years ago, when I was nothing but a scared little boy. They left me with no choice but to be an assassin in all moments. The pain was paralyzing, but still Iconjured upmy speed, what little remained of it. In one blurred motion I pulled out my sword and I drew it across Sarr's belly. His blood splattered across the floor,and he died. I didn't feel anything. Everything hurt too much.

I reached out one shaking hand and slapped it into his blood. I didn't trust my own blood; it had betrayed me to the fire. But I used the blood of this wicked man and I fell backward through the shadows, through Kajjil, back over the sea and the ice, back to the Empire.

#

I was in a bed, soft and luxurious and familiar. I sank into the blankets. I couldn't feel my body; it was like being in Kajjil, but I wasn't in Kajjil. I wasn't at the Order either. This wasn't an Order bed. It smelled of river water and perfume.

"Leila." My voice rasped and came out barely above a whisper.

"Shhh, don't talk." A shadow fell over me. I was aware of a hand stroking my hair but I couldn't feel it.

"I can't feel --"

"Oh,Naji, you never listen. I asked you not to talk." The bed moved beneath me. I turned my head a little. Leila was sitting beside me, her hand stroking my hair. I saw this but didn't feel it.

"You were very stupid," she said.

I didn't answer.

"I told you not to go after him."

Him. Sarr. I'd killed him. Only then did I notice the yellow sunlight in the windows. I'd completed my commission. But I still felt like I was being punished.

I tried to sit up and Leila nudged me back down, gently. "You aren't well. I worked a spell for the pain but I'm afraid it's too strong for you to go wandering around."

"I don't feel myself."

"Well, that's what I had to do to take the pain away." She shrugged. There was something in her expression I couldn't place. Distance or sadness or revulsion. Or maybe all three mixed together. I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't know what to make of any of this. I wondered if the fire was still burning in the desert. It needed to be extinguished.

"Why aren't I at the Order?" I said. "I tried -- after everything -- I meant to go there."

"I don't know. I woke up last night to your screaming and found you bleeding all over the floor." Her hand dropped away and disappeared from my sight. "You stank of blood magic. And you were --" She stopped.

"What? I was what?"

I kept seeing the fire flickering in my head, golden and sparking, my twisted face in the flames. Not exactly my face, no -- my face as it was seen by the people of the Empire. My face as if it belonged to a monster.

I looked at Leila,and she was trying to keep her expression blank and failing.

"What!" I said. "What's wrong with me?"

"Nothing." She sounded insincere.

"Leila!" I struggled on the bed, trying to push myself up. I felt as if I were tied down. "After all this, you're still going to keep secrets from me? Really?"

She narrowed her eyes. "I told you not to go," she said. "I don't call that keeping a secret."

"Leila, what thehellis wrong with me?"

She went still. I thrashed on the bed and then exhaustion overpowered me and I went still too. I stared up at the patterns of sunlight on the ceiling. In the empty space where my body should have been I felt creeping, dreadful coldness.

The bed lightened. I dropped my head to the side. Leila was rummaging in the drawer of her vanity. She wore a backless dress andher skin glimmeredin the yellow light. It wasbeautiful.

She walked back over to me and sat down and laid the mirror in her lap.

"What is it?" I whispered.

She hesitated.

"Show me!"

Leila sighed and held up the mirror. It was small, filigreed with little carved flowers. It looked expensive. I noticed all this before I noticed the face. Not my face. The face in the flames. My face, only monstrous.

I didn't understand what I was seeing at first. Then Leilaspoke.

"It'll heal, of course, but there will be a scar.”

She handed me the mirrorand stepped away.My face-that-wasn't-my-face stared back at me. The right side was fine, but the left was melted, the skin reddened and charred. At first I couldn't co

"It’s a shame it had to happen by magic,” Leila said. “Otherwise there might’ve been something we could do about it.”

Ihurledthe mirror aside and itshattered on the floor. Leila looked at it with a calm, implacable expression.

“Although you might find something at the night market. Tohelp, even if it wouldn't get rid of it completely.”

"Youdon’t care,”I said.

"What?"

"About helping me."

She fell silent.

"I'm scarred. What wouldyou want with a scarred man? I know you, Leila. You care too much about beautiful things."

She didn't answer, and I knew I was right. I forced myself up to sitting, ignoring her protests. I still couldn't feel my body but I could feel my anger, my humiliation, my sorrow.

"Naji, wait," she said.

"I need to go back." Ipushedout of the bed and slammed up against the wall. A narrow strip of shadow stretched out from beside the vanity. I stumbled toward it.

"Don't," Leila said, but I noticed that she didn't bother to stand up, that she didn't otherwise try to stop me.

I didn't look at her as the shadows crawled around me. It was exhausting, stepping into the darkness. But I couldn't look at Leila anymore. I couldn't look at myself.

In those seconds before I arrived back at the Order, my thoughts went to the woman at the dance hall. The smoky blue light. Her spangled dress. I thought of how she had smiled at me. How she hadn't been frightened.

And I knew she would be frightened if she saw me now.

The End.

‘The Witch’s Betrayal’ is a short story set in the world of Cassandra Rose Clarke’s YA fantasy adventures The Assassin’s Curse (out now from Strange Chemistry) and The Pirate’s Wish (coming in June 2013 from Strange Chemistry).

Ana

To break the curse, Ana