She made to move past Renthorn, but he caught her by the shoulders, shoving her back into the shelves. Her heart jumped to her throat. In an instant, she was back in the schoolyard with a bully pinning her against the fence. Only this was so much worse. More intimate. More threatening. She could smell the oil Renthorn had used to slick back his hair.
“Let go of me.”
“What do we have here?” He pulled back the flap of her bag, despite her attempts to swat his hands away.
“Jurowyn, Sintrell, and… Gorbel? Interesting reading choices Freynan. Favorites of one Highmage Sabernyn, if I’m not mistaken.”
“I said let go!” Twisting away, at last, Sciona tugged her bag shut and shouldered past him.
“Wait!”
His hand fastened around her wrist with frantic strength, stopping her.
“What?” she snapped, hating the fear in her voice.
“Don’t go!” For a moment, Renthorn registered as a human—a boy as lost and desperate as Sciona had been grabbing at Thomil’s sleeve the day she found out. “This isn’t just about the barrier expansion.”
“Then what is it about?” Sciona demanded, wishing to God that he would just let go.
“It’s just that… you saw the siphoning itself.” Something in Renthorn’s voice had gone fragile, longing. “You witnessed magic as appetite, watched it feed.” Pupils dilated against brilliant green. “What was it like?” he whispered.
“Excuse me?”
“I didn’t find out firsthand the way you did. For me, it was a dark suspicion that grew for years until my father confirmed it—and then made it immediately clear that he would disown me if I ever spoke of it again. I’m sure Archmage Bringham told you something similar.”
“He wasn’t quite so callous,” Sciona said and experienced an unwelcome pang of pity for this archmage’s son, who had probably never had the chance to come to his own conclusions about a thing once in his regimented, predetermined life.
“I suppose Bringham’s not really the callous type. I just never understood why we couldn’t talk about it like real men—real mages,” Renthorn amended, meeting Sciona’s eyes. His grip had tightened on her wrist, pulling slightly as though on a lifeline. “Where is the honesty in that? Where is God’s holy truth?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” Sciona admitted. “I think… for many mages, the denial must be a necessary shield against the guilt.”
“Not for me.” Renthorn pulled at her arm—harder this time—and his face lurched close, green eyes hungry in the low lamplight. “I don’t need a shield for my soul or my eyes, Freynan. I want to see what you saw. I need to look the truth of magic in the face.”
“That’s… commendable, Highmage,” she said, vaguely hoping it would get him to let go. “It seems I misjudged you as well. At the very least, I may have misjudged your level of integrity. Even so, I don’t think you want to see what I saw.”
“But I must. I must see and understand why the archmages want this thing hidden so badly.”
“I don’t think their reasons are that much of a mystery. Like I said, they need to avoid the guilt somehow.”
“But guilt over what, do you think? The taking? Or the enjoying?”
“Pardon?” Enjoying?
“You don’t think some of them get a thrill from it? A dark satisfaction they wouldn’t want God or anyone else to discover?”
Unbidden, Sciona recalled the sense of power she had felt at mapping to the distant ocean. There was an abstract thrill that always came with magic, bending reality to one’s will. For her, the excitement had turned to horror the moment the abstract turned to skin, blood, and stripped bones. But what if it hadn’t? Horror could be close to excitement… Fear could be close to excitement. What if Sciona’s hunger for power had carried her straight through the hideous nature of the discovery and on to a higher thrill?
She didn’t want to understand what Renthorn was talking about, but she did.
“I suppose I can see the appeal.” At least for someone with a stronger stomach and weaker principles than hers. “Commanding that kind of carnage at such a distance…”
“See! You do understand!”
Renthorn pressed closer with terrible desperation, his breath quickening.
“Step back, Renthorn.”
He didn’t. “You’ve felt the thrill too. This is why you have to show me, Freynan! I have to know the power you’ve known. I have to taste it!”
“This excites you,” she whispered in realization. “Not just the power itself… The act of taking human life.”
“We’re a species of predators, Freynan. What could be more exciting than the raw truth of that? This is conquest. It is power. It’s what made our forefathers the superior race. It’s how they raised a city from a wasteland of savages!”
“You need to take a breath.”
“I need you.”
Sciona yelped as Renthorn tried to kiss her. She pushed against his chest with all her strength, a forearm at his throat. The effort kept his mouth from hers, but it didn’t free her—she was still trapped between his arms, the shelves digging into her back.
“Help!” she gasped. “Someone, help!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that.” Renthorn’s mouth was up against her hair, breath hot on her scalp. “If they come running, who are they going to believe? The best sourcer in the Magistry? Or the new political hire who took all of three months to fall apart?”
“Where’s the raw honesty in that?” Sciona demanded.
“Here,” he breathed.
And Sciona shouted as pain shot through her ear. “Did you just bite me, you f—”
“Come back to my laboratory,” he said against her cheek. “If this is too public for you. We’ll talk mapping behind closed doors.”
“No!” She jerked in another fruitless attempt to get him off. “I’m not going anywhere with you, and you’re not having one line of my spellwork!”
A chuckle bubbled from somewhere deep in Renthorn’s chest. “That’s not how this works, though, is it? The true mage is a conqueror, Freynan. And conquerors don’t ask. We take.”
Clutching his hands painfully in her hair, he pulled her head back and kissed her on the mouth.
Sciona had never been kissed before. She knew it was a thing girls were supposed to want, to fantasize about. She never had, particularly, but part of her still raged that she was losing this moment of her life to a deranged Cleon Renthorn. Her right hand went to her belt, only to find her overstuffed bag of books blocking her way to her cylinders.
“No!” She turned her head away, but Renthorn had crushed his body into hers so that there was no leverage to push him off. “I don’t want—”
“Yes, you do. You’re a mage like the rest of us. Yes, you do!”
At last, Sciona got hold of a cylinder, bruising her hand in the effort. She couldn’t see the paint markings and didn’t care. Whether she startled Renthorn or permanently burned his eyes from his skull. She just wanted him off. He struck the conduit aside at the last moment, and it discharged with a bang against the nearby bookshelf, exploding several old tomes.