by Marie Lu
I close my eye. Blood roars in my ears. The dead cannot exist in this world on their own.
I cannot possibly be hearing their conversation correctly. Because if I am, then that would mean that the Daggers are planning on bringing Enzo back. My mind spins. Maeve, Maeve . . . she will bind Enzo to Raffaele.
Hadn’t Raffaele once mentioned rumors of an Elite who could raise the dead?
That’s what the Daggers are here for. The realization finally makes my invisibility break down, and for a second, I’m exposed.
Instantly I fix it, melting myself back into the scene around me. Gemma’s eyes dart in my direction—she looks confused for a moment, but then she seems to shrug it off and return to the conversation. I swallow hard and try to ignore the thundering of my heart.
The bald boy narrows his eyes. “But—I have seen the queen’s brother. He is not of the living. Will the same not happen to Prince Enzo?”
Gemma sighs heavily at that. “We don’t know. Perhaps. Perhaps not, as he is an Elite. The queen has never brought back anyone else, aside from her brother. But he will walk the world again, with Raffaele at his side.”
Lucent addresses the bald boy. “Leo,” she says. “We need to get Enzo out of the city once he returns. None of us have any idea how he will be—not even Maeve. He may not have his powers at all, or he may be exactly as he used to be. Regardless, he will cause a scene. Maeve said that her brother’s revival caused a whirlpool in the lake where he’d”—she pauses for a moment, and I detect a hint of guilt in her voice—“where he’d originally drowned. Then he was bedridden for a week. Do you think you know your power well enough to distract the Inquisitors at one of the gates?”
The boy named Leo sounds nervous, but he still lifts his chin. “I think so,” he replies. “My poison is temporary, but it will last long enough to weaken them.”
“Maeve will be weak as well,” Gemma adds, turning her attention to the others standing beside Leo. “You need to get her to safety as quickly as possible.”
One of them steps forward. He lifts a hand, and a tiny flash of blinding light sparks in his palm. Another Elite. “We are the queen’s personal Elites,” he says, as if insulted. “We know how to protect her. Just handle your prince.”
“And her navy?” Lucent asks.
“They will arrive soon. Mark my words—it will be a massive siege.”
They exchange a few handshakes and some more words, but I stop listening in order to take in what I’ve already heard.
Raffaele is working with the Beldish queen to bring Enzo back. Meanwhile, Beldain’s navy is coming. In fact, Beldish soldiers—Elites—are already here, perhaps all hiding in plain sight. Pieces are all moving into place to force Giulietta from her throne.
Enzo. Enzo. I place a hand on the tavern wall and guide myself around the corner. I find a dark spot in the next alley. There, I finally shed my invisibility and lower myself into a crouch, then rest my head in my hands. Threads of energy inside me start to rise out of control. The scene changes from a hilly street in Campagnia to a dark hallway back at the Fortunata Court. I’m crouched in one corner, hiding, listening to Dante talk to Enzo. I hear how little the Daggers trust me—how even Enzo hesitates when Dante talks about my disloyalty. The scene vanishes, replaced by a bed and Raffaele sitting beside it, holding my hand and telling me I am no longer one of them.
Adelina.
I look up to see a vision of Enzo standing there. His face is as beautiful as I remember, his eyes scarlet and piercing, his dark red hair tied back in an unruly tail. He leans down, and his ghostly fingers brush my cheek. I want to reach up to him, but I know he’s too far away.
I should be happy to hear all this. This is what I want too—to see Giulietta overthrown and malfettos safe under the rightful ruler of Kenettra. Why am I unhappy? I want Enzo back, don’t I? And yet, the memory returns to me of the child sitting along the stairs, fantasizing about the crown of jewels on her head.
I know exactly why I am unhappy. The Daggers have given themselves to another country. They have put Enzo—and Kenettra’s throne—in the hands of a foreign nation. The thought makes my stomach lurch violently.
This is wrong. Enzo wouldn’t have wanted this, handing Kenettra over to Beldain. How can the Daggers agree to be Maeve’s lackeys? Beldain treats their malfettos well, certainly—but they are not our allies. They have always been Kenettra’s rival.
They shouldn’t be on your throne, the whispers in my head snap, suddenly awakened. They stir in a restless whirlwind, irritated. That is why you are angry. The Daggers don’t deserve to rule, not after what they did to you. Don’t let them have something that is yours. Don’t let them take that revenge from you.
“My revenge is against the Inquisition Axis,” I whisper, my voice so quiet that even I can’t hear it.
It should be against the Daggers, too, for throwing you into the wild. For putting their own prince in Beldain’s hands.
The whispers repeat their words until I can’t understand them anymore, and then, gradually, they fade away. The illusion of Enzo disappears, returning me to the street. To reality.
The sound of footsteps snaps me out of my thoughts. My head jerks up from my hands. Violetta? She’s probably nearby, perhaps listening in on the conversation from somewhere else. But something about the footsteps seems off. There is a certain familiarity between those who have known each other for an entire lifetime—I would recognize the sound of Violetta approaching from anywhere. This is not her.
Even though I’m already exhausted from the invisibility I’d been holding up, I take a breath and weave the net around me again, hiding myself away. Then I move from the edge of the alley, just in case the approaching person accidentally bumps into me.
I see the shadow of a person first. It yawns across the opening of the alley, hesitates, and then moves forward. A girl. Gemma. She stops in the entrance of the alley and looks around. A slight frown sits on her face. I stay completely still, not daring to move or breathe. She’d noticed my illusion flicker earlier, after all.
Gemma doesn’t call out for the others. Instead, she steps slowly into the alley. Now I can see her face clearly—the purple marking across her face is hidden behind a layer of beauty powder, and her waves of dark hair are woven back into a long braid over her shoulder. The cloak’s hood still shades her face. She looks suspicious, though, and moves gradually closer to where I crouch.
She stops barely a foot away from me. I can almost hear her breathing.
Gemma shakes her head. She smiles a little at herself and rubs her eyes. I think back to when she’d ridden a horse in the qualifying races for the Tournament of Storms. To how I’d decided to save her.
I have a sudden desire to lift my illusion of invisibility. I imagine myself getting up and calling out her name. Perhaps she’ll look at me, startled, and then break into a smile. “Adelina!” she’d say. “You’re safe! What are you doing here?” I imagine her hurrying over to take my hand, tugging me to my feet. “Come back with us. We could use your help.”
The thought leaves me warm, rosy with the feeling of a friendship that once was.
What a fantasy. If I were to show my face to her, she’d back away from me. Her expression of confusion would change into one of fear. She’d run to the others, and they would hunt for me. I am not her friend anymore. The truth of this brings a surge of darkness up in my stomach, a smattering of the whispers that call for me to lash out at her. I could kill her right here, if I wanted. Hadn’t I so easily ordered the deaths of those Inquisitors on the ship? I have never known the mind of a wolf hunting a deer, but I imagine it must feel a little like this: the twisted excitement of seeing the weak and wounded cowering before you, the knowledge that, in this instant, you have the power to end its life or grant it mercy. In this moment, I am a god.
So I stay where I am, looking on while Gemma turns one more
time in the alley, holding my breath, wishing I could talk to her and wishing I could hurt her, suspended between light and dark.
The moment passes—a warning horn blares out across the harbor, jolting both Gemma and me out of our thoughts. Gemma jumps a little, then turns sharply in the direction of the piers. “What was that?” she mutters.
The horn blares again. It is the Inquisition; they’ve discovered the Inquisitors’ bodies on board our ship at the docks, as well as gone to investigate their floating ship out in the water. They know I’m here. Somehow, the thought brings me a small smile.
When the horn sounds a third time, Gemma turns away from me and hurries out of the alley, then makes her way back to the street she was on. I don’t move for a few minutes after she leaves. Only when Magiano drops down from a balcony ledge to land nearby do I slowly unravel my illusion. At the other end of the narrow alley, Violetta and Sergio come around toward us.
“I hope you heard everything I heard,” Magiano whispers as he helps me up. The sheer length of time I’ve had to hold the invisibility over myself has taken its toll, and I feel as if I could sleep for days. I sway on my feet.
“Hey,” he murmurs. His breath is very warm. “I’ve got you.” He glances at Sergio. “Sounds like the hunt for the White Wolf is on now, isn’t it? Well, let’s not make it too easy for the Inquisition.”
I find myself clinging to his shirt. From the corner of my eye, I can still see an echo of Gemma fluttering in and out of the world, barely translucent enough to exist, as if her shadow hadn’t quite caught up with her. Ideas churn in my mind, connecting.
“We have to get to Estenzia,” I whisper back. “Before the Daggers make their move.”
Loyalty. Love. Knowledge. Diligence. Sacrifice. Piety.
—The Six Pillars of Tamoura
Adelina Amouteru
After maintaining my invisibility illusion for so long, I’m exhausted. I am half carried to the outskirts of Campagnia while the Inquisition floods the city’s streets. We finally set up camp some distance inside the forestland along the edges of Campagnia. Here, Violetta unhooks our cloaks and rolls them up for me to use as pillows, then sets about wetting cloths from a nearby creek and placing them carefully on my forehead. I stay quiet, content to let her fuss over me. Sergio takes up watch along the border. Magiano counts out our gold, placing them in meticulous little piles on the ground. Even though his lute stays on his back, he taps the ground with his fingers as if in mid-play.
I watch him halfheartedly, distracted by my own thoughts. By nightfall, papers with my name and description on them will be pinned to the wall of every street corner. Word will get back to the capital before long. I picture Teren crumpling a parchment in his hand, sending out more soldiers to hunt me down. I imagine Raffaele getting word of my presence in Kenettra, of him with the other Daggers, plotting my downfall.
As time goes on, several others from our ship’s crew find us. They come creeping in on silent feet, exchanging nothing but quiet stares with Sergio before acknowledging me. Sergio talks in low voices to a few of them. None are pretending to be mere sailors anymore. I catch glimpses of blades at their belts and boots, and notice the way they move. Not all of them stay. Eventually, they disperse back into the forest, as quietly as they’d come. I want to address them, but something about their interactions with Sergio tells me I might be better off letting Sergio guide them, rather than trying to command them myself.
“There are others in Merroutas who want to join you,” Sergio says to me after a while. “Some have already made their way to the lands around Estenzia. You should know that Merroutas is in turmoil at the moment, as no one is sure who will replace the Night King.” He smiles a little. “Some already think that you rule there, even if no one can see you.”
“Not with this little pile of gold, you don’t,” Magiano grumbles from where he sits counting. “I’m impatient to swim in the Kenettran royal treasury.”
“It seems the Beldish queen is a patron of the Daggers,” Sergio says as he sits beside me.
“Beldain has always celebrated malfettos,” Violetta replies. “Adelina and I considered fleeing there for a while.”
Magiano taps absently at the ground. “Make no mistake—Beldain’s not here to help malfettos out of the goodness of its heart. Maeve is a new, young queen. She’s itching to conquer, and she’s probably had her eye on Kenettra for a long time. Watch. If they kill Giulietta and bring Enzo back, Enzo will be their puppet king. The Daggers will be a new branch of their army.” He winks at me. “And that means no crown for you, my love. A shame for all of us, I would think.”
The mention of the Daggers brings their faces into my thoughts again. I hesitate, then look at Sergio. “How long did you know the Daggers?” I ask. “How did you leave them?”
Sergio pulls out one of his knives and starts to sharpen it. He ignores me for a while. “At the time, they’d recruited only Gemma and Dante,” he finally says. “I was their third. Raffaele found me working on a ship as a rigger after he returned from visiting a duchess in southern Kenettra. I refused him, at first.”
My eyebrows lift. “You refused him?”
“Because I didn’t believe him,” Sergio replies. He finishes with the blade he’s working on and moves on to another. “At that point, I was eighteen and still had no knowledge of my powers. I thought of the Elites as rumors and legends.” He pauses to laugh a little. He tilts his head at Violetta. “It is ridiculous, isn’t it, what we can do?”
In this moment, there is little of the mercenary in him, and he seems like a kindhearted boy. A remnant of who he once was, perhaps. His blade sharpening speeds up. “It took Raffaele inviting me to a dinner to change my mind. Afterward, Enzo demonstrated his ability with fire. They gave me a heavy bag of gold. I suppose I became a mercenary first through them, eh?”
Violetta fiddles with a hunk of dry bread. “And so you joined them,” she coaxes him on.
Sergio shrugs, unwilling to repeat the obvious. “I learned that I was drawn to the sky, to the elements that make storms. I learned how to fight from Enzo and Dante. But six months passed, and still I could not call upon my power.” He stops sharpening his knife abruptly, then plunges it deep into the soil. Violetta startles. “Their training turned urgent, and the way they talked to me changed. After another year, I could tell that Raffaele was having private conversations with Enzo about what to do with me. Gemma and Dante had both displayed their powers so early on that they expected the same from me too.”
Sergio sighs at this point. He takes a swig of water from his canteen and regards me with gray eyes. “I don’t know what Raffaele told you. I don’t even know myself all the details of what was said. All I know is that, one evening, Enzo took me aside to train, and cut me with a poison-tipped blade. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the belly of a ship heading south, out of Kenettra. He left a note tucked into my shirt. It was sparse, to say the least.”
In the silence that follows, Magiano sits back and admires his piles of coins before gathering them all up again. “So . . . what you’re saying is that you wouldn’t be too happy with the idea of the Daggers ruling Kenettra.”
I stare at a spot over Magiano’s head. I’m thinking about Enzo, the way he used to be. The hard look in his eyes as he trained me, and then the vulnerability I saw in him whenever we were alone. I don’t need to push Sergio to know that Raffaele had asked Enzo to kill him, just as he did to me. Enzo had spared us both. He had been such a strong leader, such a natural crown prince. He would have been an admirable king.
But if he does come back, he will be tethered to Raffaele. And based on the little that Gemma said, Raffaele will control him. They will let Beldain use him as a puppet king for Maeve, a shadow of what he would have been. The thought sends a shudder through my chest, awakening the whispers again. No, I will not let it happen.
Magiano gives me a sidelong look
. “You’re thinking about him again,” he says. Something flashes in his eyes, narrowing the slits of his pupils. “You think of him a lot, and not just for your political ploys.”
My gaze darts away from the woods and to him.
“The prince, I mean,” Magiano says, when I don’t reply. He pulls the lute off his back and plucks a few sharp notes. “Enzo—”
“He’s not anything of the sort,” I interrupt. The darkness in me flares. Violetta touches my hand, trying to subdue me. I squeeze it back instinctively.
Magiano stops playing his lute to hold his hands up in defense. “Just interested is all, my love,” he says. “There’s still much I don’t know about your past.”
“I’ve known you for the grand total of a week,” I snap back. “You know nothing about me.”
Magiano looks like he’s ready to say something back, but he thinks better of it. Whatever barbed words he meant for me, he now swallows. He smiles a little and goes back to his lute. There’s a strange twist hiding at the corner of his lips, a hint of something unhappy. I stare at him for a while, trying to puzzle it out, but it quickly disappears.
Violetta puts a hand on my shoulder. “Careful,” she murmurs, frowning as she looks me over.
“He’s not,” I say again, softer this time. Violetta shrugs away my response, but as she does, I can tell that she has noticed something I haven’t. She doesn’t say anything, though.
Sergio speaks up again, and this time, his voice holds a grave note. “If they succeed in bringing Enzo back,” he says, “he will not be the same. That’s what the Daggers said in their conversation, isn’t it? It’s what apparently happened to Maeve’s brother. Who knows what kind of monster he may be, with what kind of power?”
A monster, a monster, the whispers in my head chime in, parroting him.
And suddenly, I know what to do.
“They will succeed in bringing him back,” I say. “And perhaps he will come back forever changed, a . . . monster, with fearsome powers.” I pause here, then look at each of them in turn. “But in order to live, Enzo must be bound to Raffaele.”