The Young Elites (25 page)

Enzo pushes against Teren’s blade. His muscles bulge under his sleeves. Teren is simply too strong—I can see Enzo’s strength slowly ebbing away. Still, I can hear Enzo’s voice ringing out over the melee. “Perhaps you do it because you love your powers,” he shouts, mocking, “and you want to be the only one with such a gift.”

Teren’s smile vanishes. “How little you know about me, Your Highness,” he replies. “Even after all these years.”

Enzo lunges forward and slashes at Teren’s eyes. This time, his blade manages to cut the edge of Teren’s eyelid before he darts away. When he looks at Enzo again, blood smears the film over his left eye, turning the pale iris bright red.

Teren launches himself at Enzo. He sidesteps with him, then plunges a dagger deep into Enzo’s shoulder. I gasp. The flames around them falter. He shudders—but still manages to yank himself away. The blade tears out of his shoulder. Violetta and I are now so close that I can feel the heat from the fire. We are in position.
Is everyone else too?

Teren’s eyes burn. Enzo steps in front of Raffaele and turns to face Teren again, ready for another attack. Blood drips from his shoulder. Then—he raises a dagger high in the air and waves it once.

Our signal.

Several things happen at once. Arrows hit the two Inquisitors holding Raffaele down. A curtain of wind smashes into the other Inquisitors nearest Raffaele—it flings them all into the water in a chorus of shrieks. From deep within the lake, two baliras explode from the surface, translucent bodies arcing over the path where Violetta and I are crouching. I flatten against the stone. My sister follows. The baliras send tides crashing against the platform, and rain down glittering water across the entire arena. Their eyes are black with fury, their calls thundering. One of them flips in midair, its enormous fleshy wings coming down on a line of Inquisitors at the end of the stone path. They are swept into the water. Another enormous wing sweeps right over our heads, flinging away the Inquisitors closest to us.

The other balira has a rider on board. Gemma. I look on as her creature turns, allowing her to reach down and clasp Raffaele’s arm. She pulls him to safety on board the balira’s back.

Our turn. Violetta reaches out with her energy at the same time I reach out with mine. She pulls Teren’s powers away from him. Out on the platform, Teren’s eyes bulge—he stumbles backward a step, then crouches down on one knee as if someone had struck a violent blow. Violetta sucks her breath in sharply. She won’t be able to hold his powers back for long.

I drop our invisibility. For the first time, we are exposed in the arena. I focus all my concentration and reach out for Enzo’s energy. In a flash, he transforms from himself into an exact copy of Teren.

The arena bursts into a scene of chaos. All across the stands, patrons and their fighters leap into combat, attacking Inquisitors wherever they stand, sending the people into a panic. Some of the Inquisitors still on the stone pathway in the arena’s center look poised to join the duel between Teren and Enzo—but with the two now identical, they can’t seem to tell which one is which.

Enzo doesn’t wait. He leaps forward, dagger raised. Teren manages to hold up his sword just in time to meet Enzo’s blade, but in his sudden weakness, he can’t deflect it. The two tumble backward onto the ground—Teren shrieks as Enzo’s blade finally makes contact, white hot and sharp, slicing deep into Teren’s shoulder and burning his flesh. Enzo’s second blade seeks out his heart. In a rage, Teren slashes out at Enzo. Even now, he still manages to force the prince to dance away. He staggers to his feet. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s laughing. He notices Violetta and me crouched at the edge of the platform. He scowls.

“About time you made your move,” he shouts through the chaos.

The words have scarcely left his mouth when I notice that Inquisitors, hundreds—
thousands
—of them, are flooding into the arena. We were ready for him—but he was ready for us too. The people around us leap to their feet, screaming, and scramble for the nearest exit, but Inquisitors fence everyone in. It will be a bloodbath in here, whether or not we win.

I narrow my eye. The darkness building in me is overwhelming now, feeding on an entire arena’s worth of terror and fury. I reach out, take hold of that energy, find Teren, and
pull.

He freezes in mid-attack, then falls to his knees. He shrieks in pain as I conjure the most agonizing illusion I can muster. Enzo engulfs him in flames, then lunges forward, aiming at his eyes.

This is it.
My heart leaps in anticipation.
He’s going to kill Teren.

Something cold pushes violently back against my energy. I gasp. Teren’s fighting me. My illusion on him wavers, then breaks. Violetta puts a hand on her forehead and stumbles backward. “I can’t hold on,” she says hoarsely to me, before collapsing to her knees. Out in the arena, Teren sucks in a deep breath of relief as his burned skin starts to heal over. He starts fighting back. The window to fatally injure him is closing. I look at my sister. Her eyes roll back, and, exhausted, she faints on the path. My concentration flickers.

“Violetta,” I shout, grabbing her arm. Then I glance to where Enzo is fighting Teren. My illusion over Enzo has vanished too, and his dark-robed figure contrasts starkly against Teren’s white uniform.

“Leave her!” When I look up, I see Michel standing over us, his eyes wild. He has joined us on the platform. He hoists Violetta up against him. “We’ve broken through one of the entrances—I’ll get her out. Go!”

I hesitate for a split second before nodding. Then Michel spirits her away, and I turn back to the arena. Never in my life have I seen so many Inquisitors. Their figures swarm the stands, clashing with Enzo’s fighters. In the chaos, I climb over the short wall separating the seats from the arena’s center, land on the stone path dividing the water, veil myself in invisibility, and rush toward where Enzo and Teren are fighting. My concentration snaps back into place, fueled by the panic, and Enzo again turns into a mirror image of Teren.

But I’m getting tired too. My powers are starting to slip out of my control.

I stop a short distance from them. Then I press my hands together, reach out, and weave a circle of energy threads around Teren. I conjure a dozen versions of himself, identical in every way, each of them lunging at the real Teren with daggers drawn. The illusion is brief, but it works. Teren hesitates for a moment, suddenly unsure of where to look. His enemy is everywhere all at once.

Enzo—the real Enzo—grabs Teren around his neck. He tries to stab at his eyes, but Teren manages to twist his face away at the last second. Enzo’s blade slices across his neck, leaving a deep gash. Immediately, it starts to heal. Teren lets out a gurgling growl and slams his head backward, forcing Enzo off him, then staggers forward and spits blood from his mouth. I can’t hold the dozen illusions anymore. The figures disappear, once again leaving Enzo alone with Teren.

Teren is breathing heavily. Even he has his limits. His eyes lock on to me again. I realize that I’m too tired to hold my own invisibility illusion.

“There you are,” he says, his voice low and raspy, his chiseled face turned into a frightening snarl. His attention flickers away from Enzo as he dashes for me. “Little illusion worker.”

Then it happens.

Teren lunges for me. His sword slashes me deep across my chest, slicing through my robes and into my skin. Pain hits me everywhere. I fall. My head hits the ground hard enough to send the world spinning. Suddenly, everything slows. I lift my hand and see it stained with my own blood. I try to reach for my energy, but everything moves too slowly, and my thoughts form in disjointed pieces. Broken illusions flash around me, my powers gone unsteady and uncontrolled. Through it, Enzo rushes forward to step between the two of us.
I have . . . hit my head . . .
Teren rushes at me with his sword. All I see are his pale, furious eyes. A nightmare.

I strike blindly out with my illusions. Teren’s there, blurred before me. I try to scream at him—but I cannot form the thought. My powers spark wildly out of control. Teren’s face changes into Dante’s, then back again. A memory clicks into place. I suddenly see before me a million glittering threads.
I killed him in that dark alley, on the night the king died. I killed with an illusion of extreme pain.

I reach down into my chest, find the last of my strength, and pull on Teren’s energy. Let him feel agony like he’s never known. Let him suffer. I put everything I have into this, letting my hatred of him go unchecked.

Teren lets out a wrenching cry of pain. He falls to his knees.

Wait. This isn’t right.

I blink, confused, trying to clear my hazy thoughts. My illusions continue to work on him, wild and uncontrolled and untethered, blind.
Blind.
Then I realize—why am I able to affect Teren? He cannot be injured. And Violetta isn’t here to stop him.

And that’s when I realize, in horror, that I have attacked
Enzo
instead. Enzo was the one who had blurred toward me—he had moved toward me in an attempt to protect me.
Enzo
is the one that I sent staggering to his knees.

I yank my powers back instantly, but it is too late. Teren—the real Teren—seizes the moment. He takes his sword. He plunges it deep into Enzo’s chest. It runs all the way through, the bloody point emerging from Enzo’s back right between his shoulder blades.

No.

Enzo lets out a terrible gasp. Teren’s mouth tightens in triumph. He clutches Enzo’s robes in one fist, then yanks him closer, shoving the sword in deeper. I cannot move. I cannot think. I can’t even scream. My shaking hand reaches out for him, but I am too weak to do anything else. All my powers—undone in the one moment when they would have mattered the most. I struggle to regain control, but it makes no difference now. Enzo trembles on the blade. Teren pulls him close and bends toward his ear. Somehow, in the midst of the arena’s chaos, the Lead Inquisitor’s words sound clear.

“I win,” he says. For a moment, their eyes lock—Teren’s, pale, pulsing, mad; Enzo’s, dark, scarlet, dying. Then he pulls his blade out. Enzo collapses to the ground. I run to his fallen figure, as if
this
might just be an illusion—but he stays still and unmoving. Somewhere, Teren’s voice reaches me. “Thank you for your help,” he says.

I put my hands on Enzo’s face. His name falls from my lips, hoarse with pain. I had lashed out at him with all of my fury—but was it rage meant for Teren, or was it really my internalized anger at
Enzo,
for using me, for leading me on?
Maybe there’s still a chance.
He fights, with the last of his strength, to return my gaze. What do I see there? Is it betrayal? I’m sobbing now—tears fill my vision and spill down my cheek. There is nothing to be done.

Enzo looks at me. He blinks rapidly as he tries to say something, but blood froths at the edges of his mouth. He coughs. Red speckles land on my arm. I look on in disbelief as his eyes meet mine one last time. Then his life fades away. Just like that.

My mind goes blank. The world turns silent.

The sky above us flickers, then turns a furious shade of scarlet, a vision of blood, deep and dark. I crouch, my hands ripping at the ground, my emotions unwinding, my energy surging to a level I’ve never felt before. My gaze fixes on Teren. I hurl myself helplessly against his invincible power, trying desperately to grasp on to him in some way, to
hurt him, hurt him, hurt him.
But I can’t. I’m useless.

He could slay me right now, if he wanted to. But he no longer wears his eerie smile or his cold amusement. He looks serious, grave, and thoughtful.

“You don’t belong with them, Adelina Amouteru,” he says. “You belong with me.”

Somehow, somewhere—a curtain of wind lifts me up into the air. I struggle against it, wanting to stay in the arena. I want to destroy Teren. But I feel Lucent’s arms wrap around me, then her pulling me up onto the back of a balira. Below us lies the wreckage of the arena, the dead and dying, the smoke and carnage, the white cloaks littered in clusters, the bodies of the dead who had fought for Enzo.

None of that matters now. The prince is dead.

T
eren looks up at the fleeing Elites as they spirit away the prince’s body. Behind them are Inquisitors on the backs of baliras, chasing them down. Teren watches a moment longer, picturing Enzo’s dead face as they go. The young prince’s face was gray and lifeless, eyes shuttered, heart still. Blood stains the ground of the arena’s platform.

Teren stays quiet. He does not smile. Enzo, whom he remembered from childhood, the boy who always defended him in front of his father. What a shame that he was the Reaper, all along.
It had to be done. Dirty
malfetto.
Now the world is a better place, and Giulietta can rule.
Teren’s face remains a portrait carved from stone, but deep in his chest, he feels a twinge of loss.

What a shame.

Trust is when we plummet into the depths of an abyss and
reach out for each other’s hands.

—Amaderan Poetry,
various authors

I
fade in and out of a strange, disturbed sleep filled with ghosts. Or illusions? I can’t tell the difference anymore.

Maybe there is none.

Sometimes I see my father hovering over me, his face distorted and smiling. Other times, Violetta’s tear-streaked face appears. And Enzo.
Enzo.
He hovers there, a little too far away, and I cry out for him, struggling against invisible bonds to reach him.
He’s alive. He’s right there.
Shouts come from somewhere in the distance.
Hold her down!
I’m in too much of a daze to dwell on anything other than the enormous creature carrying us across the sky and the silence and stillness of those riding with me. I want to open my mouth and say something. Anything. But my state of half consciousness muzzles me. I run a hand along my chest and feel a thick bandage there, trying gamely to lessen my blood loss.

My vision blurs as I try to look around at the others, but I can’t focus enough to see who they are. I look back up into the evening sky and close my eye. The world has faded to gray with Enzo’s passing. The only feeling I’m aware of is Violetta’s hand in mine, squeezing, and I squeeze back with what little strength I have. A few strands of my hair crisscross over my vision—they are dark gray, the darkest they’ve ever been.

I have a vague recollection of us leaving the balira’s back, and of my changing surroundings. Evening light slants through tree canopies, and fireflies dance in the darkness. Occasionally, I glimpse a rolling hill, a gentle valley full of deepening green. The gates of an estate. The outskirts of Estenzia?

A wave of nausea hits me, and I close my eye again. Sleep threatens to pull me under.

The next time I come to, I’m lying in a twilit bedchamber, the air blue and waning, turning into night. For an instant, I think I’ve gone back in time—I’ve returned to the moment when the Daggers first saved me and took me to the Fortunata Court. It even looks like the same chamber. If I wait long enough, I’ll see the maid come in and smile at me, and Enzo will follow in her wake, his dark eyes pensive and wary, lit with slashes of scarlet. He will lean forward and ask me if I want to hurt those who have wronged me.

Slowly, the chamber shifts until it looks like an unfamiliar room. My illusions are happening spontaneously again. It takes me a long moment to realize that this is not the Fortunata Court, but some strange estate I’ve never been in, and that I’m not alone at all, but surrounded by the Daggers. I groan, then turn to look at the person sitting closest to me.

The instant I move, everyone backs cautiously away. Blades appear in their hands. I freeze. Their gesture sends a brief course of excitement through me, their fear stimulating my energy. Then the feeling vanishes, replaced with a sharp pain. My former friends.
They’re afraid of me.

The person sitting closest to me is Raffaele. He is the only one who doesn’t jump away. His bruises and injuries are still prominent, his cheekbone blue and purple, his lip marred by a thin cut. Scars circle his neck. When Gemma approaches to pull him away from me, though, he holds up a hand and wordlessly stops her. She backs away. I look at them all silently.

“Where’s my sister?” I finally whisper. My first words.

“Resting.” Raffaele nods once at me when he sees my alarmed expression. “She’s well.”

The divide between me and the other Daggers is thick in the air. I realize through the fog in my head that they still aren’t sure what role I played in Enzo’s death. The words make me wince. My energy stirs, and Raffaele tightens his jaw.

“You killed Dante, didn’t you?” Lucent says. Her voice holds none of the wry amusement that I remember, none of the reluctant friendship and trust that I’d started to earn from her. Now there’s nothing but anger, held back only in deference to Raffaele. I’ve lost her completely. “How’d you do it?”

I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. I had indeed killed Dante. I did it by twisting his pain illusions so severely that his heart bled. My silence is all that Lucent needs—her lips tighten, and a veil of fear and unease blankets the room.

“It was an accident,” I choke out. The only thing I seem able to say, apparently.

“Were you working with Teren?” Lucent snaps. “Is that where you disappeared to when you ran away? Did you go off to see the Inquisition? Did you make some sort of pact with them?” Her voice rises. “He
thanked
you over Enzo’s body.
You—
”

“No! I can explain.” The thought makes the anger rise in me, and my illusions threaten to veer out of control again. I clamp down on them in time. But the gesture makes Raffaele turn concerned eyes on me. Gemma studies me while chewing her lip. Fear comes off her too. My heart twists. “I would never. It was an accident. I swear to the gods.”

“Well, Raffaele?” Michel says, cutting through the silence that follows. “What do we do with her now?”

The way Michel addresses Raffaele and the way Gemma obeyed Raffaele’s simple hand gesture tell me that the Daggers have anointed a new leader. Raffaele shakes his head at me once. His eyes are heavy with sadness. “You said you could explain,” he says. “So tell us what happened.”

I start to tell Raffaele about how I’d cloaked Enzo in invisibility, but he stops me with a subtle hand. “No,” he says. His voice turns firm. “Tell us what happened, from the
beginning.
”

My lips tremble. The truth. I hesitate, as always.

But then I crumble. In a stammering voice, I finally do.

I tell Raffaele about the evening at the Fortunata Court, when I first saw him perform. I tell him how Teren came to me in the audience and threatened me with my sister’s life. I tell him how I took advantage of the qualifying races to go to Teren and tell him about the Tournament of Storms. I tell him how Teren found me again during the Spring Moons, and how I overheard Enzo and Dante’s conversation about me. How I fled to the Inquisition Tower to free my sister. How I killed Dante in a dark alley. The release of all of my lies and secrets is a relief, exhausting me. I tell them how Teren lunged for me in the arena, how I threw up my hands in defense and conjured an illusion of indescribable pain on him. How I realized I was not attacking Teren at all, but Enzo.

My voice falters here. The retelling leaves my heart so pained that I can barely breathe, and in my sorrow I see a ghost of Enzo flickering in and out of the room, his dark eyes turned toward me, his expression haunting. I can feel the suspicion emanating from everyone, their unspoken thought that I am responsible for what had happened. That I am a monster.

I am so sorry. So very sorry.

Perhaps Teren had always known that I would do something like this.

When I finish, they are quiet. Lucent stares at me with an expression both disgusted and frightened. Gemma has retreated behind her, and Michel looks ready to stop me in case I try to hurt them here. I know what they’re thinking, even though they don’t say it out loud. They want me dead. It would make them all feel much better. A thick, dark anger begins to build inside me. I claw for it. More fog lifts from my mind. I feel sparks of strength growing in me, pushing past the weakness of my blood loss and grief.

Finally, Raffaele speaks. There is a certain reverence the group gives him—with his words, the others quiet immediately, turning to him as if hoping he has the power to set everything right again. His voice is weak, but steady. “When I first tested you,” he begins, taking one of my hands, “you aligned with fear and fury, passion and curiosity. Do you remember?”

He is using his energy on me.
I can feel his soothing pull on my heartstrings, the gentle tug that warms me to him, calming me. I find myself leaning into his touch, squeezing his hand harder. That afternoon when we’d first met doesn’t seem like so long ago. “I remember,” I reply.

Raffaele goes on. A certain sadness enters his voice. “Your reaction to the nightstone and amber, to darkness, frightened me. It frightened me very much. Still, I wanted to believe that, somehow, you would be able to tame it to your will. Do you know how powerful you could be, if you mastered these two emotions and learned how to use them both in yourself and in others? I believed. I thought . . .” He hesitates for a moment. “I thought your alignment to passion would save you. Passion’s energy is bright and warm, just like the color of its gemstone. It is a light in the darkness, a fire in the night. I thought at first it would make you
safer,
that if you were around those whom you loved, you would be able to use your darkness to your advantage. I thought it would help tame you, and subsequently, that it would help you.”

Tears prickle the corner of my eye. I know what path Raffaele’s words are going down.

Raffaele lowers his jewel-toned eyes. “I was wrong. Passion is bright and warm . . . but passion has a dark side too. It links with fear. Our hearts fill with terror at the thought of harm coming to our loved ones, don’t they? You cannot have love without fear. The two coexist. In you, your alignment with passion instead
fed
your fear and fury. It made you
darker.
The more you love someone, the more unsteady your powers become. Your growing passion for Enzo made you volatile. It led to you losing control over your powers, powers that had grown to dangerous strengths. That, coupled with your anger and bitterness, has made you incredibly unpredictable.”

“What are you saying?” I whisper through my tears.

Raffaele continues to pull on my energy, and his gentle touch sends waves of sadness washing over me. He feels guilty, I realize. “Adelina,” he murmurs.
Oh.
I gasp in sudden pain. I’m surprised that
this
is what finally breaks my heart. He has never, ever called me just
Adelina
before, not even when we first met. He is breaking his affectionate ties with me. “I advised Enzo from the very beginning to kill you. He refused.”

I begin to cry. A memory comes to me of my afternoon with Raffaele, when we sat together along the golden waters of Estenzia’s canals and watched the gondolas go by, when he sang me my mother’s lullaby.
Dante was right.
Raffaele, kind, beautiful, sensual Raffaele, whom I cared about with all my heart, the only person in the world I thought I could trust entirely, the person I returned to the Daggers to help save, had never trusted me in return.
Kindness with strings attached.
He was the last thread suspending me in the light. Without him, I can feel myself spiraling downward, falling to a place where I can no longer pull myself back up.

“Even you,” I whisper through my tears. “How could you?” I don’t need to ask to know that Raffaele must have also suggested that Enzo kill the boy who couldn’t control the rains. In some ways, Raffaele had always been the Daggers’ leader. “Were we ever friends?” I say in a small voice. “Did you ever care about me?”

Raffaele winces. I can tell it pains him to tell me this truth, that even as he yearns to give me some comfort, he holds back and hardens his heart. “I stand by my advice to him. I trained you slowly because I didn’t want you to embrace your full powers. I knew, early on, that it could bring all of us suffering—including you.”

Who will ever want you, Adelina? Did you honestly think you could escape who you are? You will never fit in anywhere.
My father’s ghost materializes beside me, his breath heavy and cold against my skin, his familiar voice hissing in my ear. No one else reacts to his presence, though. He is an illusion that tortures only me.

“We can fix it,” I say. My hand clenches harder around Raffaele’s. One last, frantic attempt. “You told me once that there were rumors of an Elite who could bring the dead back to life. Right?”

Raffaele shakes his head. “You’re deluding yourself, Adelina,” he says gently, and I know that he isn’t talking about the impossibility of bringing Enzo back. He’s talking about Enzo’s love for me.

He cared. He risked his life for me.
In desperation, I reach out with my energy and conjure an illusion of emotions around Raffaele, trying to convince him that Enzo loved me, if even briefly, if even in a moment of weakness—trying to convince him that
he
cares for me. My words come faster. “I’ll learn how to rein in my powers—I promise, I can do it next time. Just give me one more chance.”

Raffaele closes his eyes. I feel him resisting the illusion being woven around him. “Don’t,” he whispers.

“Please,” I whisper back in a breaking voice. “You’ve always been kind to me. Don’t leave me behind, I beg you. I will be lost without you. What will I do? How will I learn?”

When Raffaele opens his eyes again, they look glossy with unshed tears. He reaches out to smooth hair away from the ruined side of my face. “You have goodness in your heart,” he says. “But your darkness overwhelms it all; your desire to hurt, destroy, and avenge is more powerful than your desire to love, help, and light the way. I have reached the limits of my knowledge. I don’t know how to train you.”

Beauty and pain go hand in hand,
my father always said. For an instant, I fantasize about making Raffaele feel the pain that he’s giving to me, forcing him to cower before me in agony. How satisfying that would be. My energy swells in anticipation. Then I recoil in horror at the spark of joy I felt at such a depraved act. He’s right about me. He’s always been right.

Raffaele tightens his lips. Tears no longer shine in his eyes. Maybe I imagined them all along. “You can stay the night here,” he says. “But in the morning, you and your sister need to leave. It is my job to protect the Daggers, and I no longer feel that we can be safe with you among us. I’m sorry.”

He’s casting me out. I’m no longer one of them.

Darkness swirls within me, washing at the shores of my consciousness. I see all the times I trained with Enzo, how he saved my life and took me in, how we kissed, the glow of his silhouette in the darkness, the way his hair would fall, loose and unruly, over his shoulders, his gentle expression. Then I see the stormy night when my father made a deal to sell me, the first time I called on my illusions in the middle of pouring rain, the real reason why Enzo chose to save me on my execution day, all the times I was hurt and abused, left behind and abandoned, the iron stake and the fire and the people chanting below, wishing me dead and gone, Teren’s pale eyes staring back at me, the Daggers, my training, Dante’s sneering face, Raffaele’s betrayal. The ambition churning in me reaches its peak, displacing my sorrow, fusing with my anger and hate and fear, my passion and curiosity. The whispers that lurk in the back of my mind now claw their way out into the open, their fingers long and bony, gleeful for the freedom I’m giving them.
Are the Daggers any different from your father, who wanted to sell you to settle his debts?
they hiss at me.
From Teren, who wanted to use you to get to the Daggers?
Even the training cavern, hidden underground, was not a far stretch from the Inquisition’s dungeons.