Dark Dealings Read Online Free PDF

bed. Their powers were too similar. Whereas hers...
    Her attention jumped to the left, the sudden pull in her senses warning her that another magician had entered the wide hall. Whoever it was prickled her skin. Ancient power, pulled from the earth, from the fire of the sun, licked across her empty soul. Panic hit her and she shrank back against the stone. Elemental magic. She swallowed. Heyerdar.
    He was there in the shadow of a side room archway, the burnished breastplate of his senior captain’s armor catching the glints from sconces on the wall. He watched, as she’d watched. His face was bleak, no emotion, just the hard frown that was his mouth regardless of his mood. His meaty fist clenched and reclenched the pommel of his sword.
    A heartbeat later he turned away and disappeared.
    Ava blinked. Now she’d witnessed it herself. This was Heyerdar. The Left Hand to the Emperor. The man who would take a body apart if he thought someone looked at him the wrong way. Yet...he had walked away. Why?
    She closed her eyes, focusing on the brief brush of power that had skittered across her soul. Her heart beat slowly, and the dark calm at her heart grounded her, prepared her. Here was magic to taste. It poured from Heyerdar in waves.
    She put her fingers to her lips as her mouth ached to part. The craving deepened and she denied herself the easy path of eating flesh. With her mouth shut, it was as if the magic was pulled towards her, drawn by the void within her. Magic pressed against her skin, surrounded her and slipped, hot and delicious, through to her greedy soul.
    Ava pulled apart the lick of his bitter magic, finding the shadow of the man within. As the brief flare of it fed her emptiness, her breath caught. Emotion rocked her. Fury and pain hit her hard in the chest, echoes of other emotions fizzling away.
    Heyerdar was a riot of hatred. He wanted Fallon, and Reist had stolen her. Something held him back, but the sliver of magic that had touched her wasn’t enough to reveal more of his thoughts, his soul. Years as a spy for the mages had honed her curiosity. Did the new Highest Mage have something over him?
    Ava wiped a hand across her mouth. The test was over. And the little book had revealed a truth. She could take power without devouring the host’s flesh. It had also brought her something else. A new plan.
    Heyerdar wanted Fallon as she wanted Reist. His pain was as sharp as her own. There was a deal to be done. Heyerdar was elemental. He didn’t follow the strict rules of high magic. He never would. So what she had to offer—the way they would both have what they wanted—wouldn’t have him screaming for the ruling mage to throw her out of the Institute.
    She slipped out of the alcove, her fingers trailing against the stone, her attention fixed on Reist and Fallon. They had eyes for no one else, grabbing time before the Convocation. Her thin boots light and silent, she ran, clinging to the shadows. She had to move before her nerve failed her. Baiting the lion in his den. He’d shoved the apprentices into the wall, only groveling making him release them. She’d have no one to argue her case for her.
    Ava took to the stairs, finding the straight paths and spirals that would take her deep into the lowest chambers of the Institute.
    Each stone was known to her. Even down there. She’d had the time to learn every passage, every room. It was easier to move though the narrow, sconce-lit corridors. She took the maze of minor passages, rather than risk the more-traveled paths and the scorn of mages who saw her as an abomination, a traitor. Her kind were often mercenaries for the emperor’s enemies. And mages had made her very aware of that fact. Her first years had been empty...filled only with Reist.
    Ava pushed back that thought. She had to embrace the thief. Ten years of dedicated service to the mages and the emperor still meant nothing to any of them. She doubted it ever would. Maybe it was the loosened thief in