by Marie Lu
The Underworld is seeping into the living world.
Raffaele shakes his head. How can that be? The gods’ realm does not touch the world of mankind—immortality has no place in the mortal realm. The only connection the gods’ magic has to the living world is through gemstones, the sole, lingering remnants of where the gods’ hands had touched the world as they created it.
And the Young Elites, Raffaele adds to himself, his heartbeat quickening. And our own godlike powers.
Even as he stands there, turning the mystery over and over in his mind, he finds himself looking in the direction of Enzo’s chambers, where the ghost of his prince still lingers after having been pulled up from the Underworld. After having been torn from the Underworld.
A Young Elite, ripped from the immortal realm and dragged to the mortal.
Raffaele’s eyes widen. Queen Maeve’s gift, Tristan’s resurrection, Enzo’s . . . could it have caused all this?
He goes to his trunks and pulls out several books, stacking them in a precarious pile on his desk. His breathing has turned shallow. In his mind, the resurrection plays over and over again—the stormy night at the Estenzian arena, the appearance of Adelina disguised as Maeve, shrouded behind a hooded robe, the explosion of dark energy he’d felt in the arena’s waters that came from somewhere beyond. He thinks of the lack of light in Enzo’s eyes.
The goddess of Death had punished armies before, had taken revenge on princes and kings who became too arrogant in the face of certain death. But what would happen if a Young Elite, a mortal body doomed to wield immortal powers, one of the most powerful Elites Raffaele had ever encountered, was taken from her domain? Would that tear the fabric separating the living and the dead?
Raffaele reads late into the night. He has ignored the others’ knocks on his door all day, but now it is silent. Books strewn around him, volumes and volumes of myths and history, mathematics and science. Every time he flips a page, the candle on his desk flickers like it might go out. He is searching for a specific myth—the only reference to a time when the immortal realm touched the mortal that he’s heard.
Finally, he finds it. Laetes. The angel of Joy. Raffaele slows down and reads it aloud, whispering the words as he goes.
“Laetes,” he murmurs, “the angel of Joy, was the most precious and beloved child of the gods. So beloved was he that he became arrogant, thinking only himself worthy of praise. His brother Denarius, the angel of Greed, seethed with bitterness at this. One night, Denarius cast Laetes from the heavens, condemning him to walk the world as a man for one hundred years. The angel of Joy fell from the light of the heavens through the dark of night, into the mortal world. The shudder of his impact sent ripples throughout the land, but it would take more than a hundred years for the consequences of that to manifest. There is an imbalance in the world, the poison of the immortal touching the mortal.”
Raffaele’s voice trails off. He reads it again. There is an imbalance in the world. The poison of the immortal touching the mortal. His finger moves down the page, skimming the rest of the story.
“. . . until Laetes could look up at the heavens from the place where they touched the earth, and step through once more with the blessing of each of the gods.”
He thinks of the blood fever, the waves of plague that had birthed the Elites in the first place. The blood fever. Ripples throughout the land. Those plagues had been the consequence of immortality meeting mortality—they had been caused by Laetes’s fall. He thinks of the Elites’ powers. Then he thinks of Enzo, returning to the mortal world after having visited the immortal.
How had he not seen this before? How had he not made this connection until now? Until the poison in the ocean had given him this clue?
“Violetta,” Raffaele mutters, rising from his chair. She will understand—she felt the poison in the ocean first. He throws on his outer robe, then hurries to the door. As he goes, he thinks back to when he had first tested Adelina’s powers, how her alignments to the Underworld shattered the glass of his lantern and sent the papers on his desk flying.
This energy feels like Adelina’s, Violetta had said when her feet touched the ocean’s water.
If what he thinks is true, then they would not only have to face Adelina again . . . they would need her help.
When Raffaele turns the corner and enters the hall where Violetta’s room sits, he halts. Lucent and Michel are already standing outside her door. Raffaele slows in his steps. Even from a distance, he can sense a disturbance behind Violetta’s door.
“What is it?” Raffaele asks the others.
“We heard a wailing,” Lucent says. “It didn’t sound like a normal human cry . . . Raffaele, it was the most haunting sound I’ve ever heard.”
Raffaele turns his attention to Violetta’s door. He can hear it now too, a low moan that makes his heart clench. It does not sound like Violetta at all. He glances at Michel, who shakes his head. “I don’t want to see,” he mutters, his voice soft. Raffaele recognizes the fear in his eyes, the wish to avoid the image of what he is hearing.
“Stay here,” Raffaele says gently, putting a hand on Michel’s shoulder. Then he nods at Lucent and steps into the room.
Violetta is awake—or she seems to be, at first glance. Her dark waves of hair are soaked with sweat, strands plastered against her forehead, and her arms are bare and pale against her nightgown, her hands desperately clutching her sheets. Her eyes are open, Raffaele notes, yet she is unaware that he and Lucent now stand beside her in her room.
But what holds his attention the most are the markings covering her arms.
This girl, the Elite who was once unmarked, now has markings that stretch all across her skin. They look like bruises, black and blue and red, irregular maps that crisscross her arms and overlap one another. They stretch up to her neck and disappear down her nightgown. Raffaele suppresses the gasp in his throat.
“She doesn’t seem fully conscious,” Lucent says. “She was fine yesterday—she was walking around, talking, smiling.”
“She was tired,” he replies, running a hand in the air over her body, thinking back to how weary her smile had seemed. The threads of her energy tangle, weaving and unweaving. “I should have sensed it last night.”
But even he could never have guessed how drastically this could happen, how Violetta could go to bed an unmarked Elite and appear this morning as if she had been beaten. Was this triggered by her wading into the poisoned ocean? It is all coming to pass. The thought floods his mind even as he tries to ignore it. It is the same phenomenon that is hollowing out Lucent’s bones, that had killed Leo by turning his venomous power back on himself, and that will eventually happen to the rest of us. A side effect directly related to her power. For Violetta, whose ability had once protected her from markings like the others’, is now facing the opposite—her power has turned viciously on her.
Raffaele shakes his head as he studies her energy. She will die. And it will happen sooner than for any of us.
I have to tell Adelina. There is no other choice.
He straightens and takes a deep breath. When he speaks, his voice is calm and unwavering. “Bring me a quill and parchment. I need to send a dove.”
And they say she loathed everyone in the whole wide world,
except for the boy from the bell tower.
—Lady of Dark Days, by Dahntel
Adelina Amouteru
It is only early afternoon, but a cold drizzle has settled over the city, bringing with it a layer of mist that dampens the light. Sergio has retired to his chambers, complaining of dizziness and thirst, his lips parched. I step out into the city streets alone, clad in a white hooded cloak shielding my hair from the elements. I’m completely hidden behind an illusion of invisibility. The rain dots my face with tiny pinpricks of ice, and I close my eye, savoring the feeling.
I’ve made it a habit to visit the bathhouse
after my visits with Teren, so that I can wash away the flecks of his blood on my skin and cleanse myself of the memory of his presence. Even so, the look in his pale eyes lingers long after I leave his cell. Now I point my boots in the direction of the palace’s bathhouse. I could reach it from the corridors within the palace—but out here, the grounds are peaceful, and I can be alone with my thoughts under a gray sky.
A pair of men are standing across the bridge that leads to the palace’s entrance, their eyes fixed on the main gates. They are whispering something to each other. I slow my steps, then turn to watch them. One is tall and blond, perhaps too blond to be Kenettran, while the other is short and dark-haired, with olive skin and a weak chin. Their clothes are damp in the drizzle, as if they’ve been standing outside for a long time.
What are they whispering? The words creep out of the shadows of my mind, their claws clicking. Perhaps they are whispering about you. About how to kill you. Even your sweet thief warned you of rats that could slip through the cracks.
I turn away from the path leading to the bathhouse and decide to follow the men. As I cross the bridge, still hidden behind my invisibility, they finish their conversation and continue on their way. My White Wolf banners, the new flags of the country, hang from windows and balconies, the white-and-silver cloth stained and soaked. Only a smattering of people walk the streets today, all huddled under cloaks and wide-brimmed hats, kicking up mud as they go. I watch them suspiciously, even as I trail behind the two men.
As I walk, the world around me takes on a glittering sheen. My whispers grow louder, and as they do, the faces of people I pass start to look distorted, as if the rain has blurred my vision and smeared wet streaks across their features. I blink, trying to focus. The energy in me lurches, and for a moment I wonder if Enzo is pulling on our tether from across the seas. The two men I’m following are close enough now that bits of their conversation drift to me, and I quicken my steps, curious to hear what they have to say.
“—to send her troops back to Tamoura, but—”
“—that difficult? I’d hardly think she would care if—”
They are talking about me.
The blond man shakes his head, one hand held out as he explains something in obvious frustration. “—and that’s it, isn’t it? The Wolf couldn’t care less whether the markets sold us rotting vegetables. I can’t remember the taste of a fresh fig. Can you?”
The other man nods sympathetically. “Yesterday, my littlest daughter asked me why the fruit merchants have two piles of produce now—and why they hand the fresh food to malfetto buyers, the rotten food to us.”
A cold, bitter smile twists my lips. Of course I had designed this law precisely to make sure that the unmarked suffered. After the ordinance first came into effect, I’d spent time walking the markets, relishing the sight of unmarked people grimacing at the rotten food they brought home, forcing it into their mouths out of hunger and desperation. How many years have we waited for our own fair treatment? How many of us have been pelted in the streets by blackened cabbage and meat filled with maggots? The memory of my own burning so long ago comes back to me, and along with it, the smell of the spoiled food that had once struck me. Take back your rotting weapons, I vow silently, and fill your mouths with them. Eat it until you love it.
The men continue on, oblivious that I’m listening to every word. If I revealed myself to them now, would they fall to their knees and beg forgiveness? I could execute them here, spill their blood right in the streets, for daring to use the word malfetto. I let myself indulge in the thought as we turn a corner and enter the Estenzian piazza where the annual horse races of the Tournament of Storms are held. The square is mostly empty this morning, painted gray by the clouds and rain.
“If I saw her right now,” one of the men says, shaking water from his hood, “I’d shove that rotten food back in her mouth. Let her taste that for herself, and see if it’s worth eating.”
His companion lets out a bark of laughter.
So brave, when they think no one else is listening. I stop in the square, but before I let them go about their day, I open my mouth and speak.
“Careful. She is always watching.”
Both of them hear me. They freeze in their steps and whirl around, their faces taut with fear. They search for who might have said it. I stay invisible in the center of the piazza, smiling. Their fear spikes, and as it does, I inhale deeply, relishing the spark of power behind their energy. I’m tempted to reach out and seize it. Instead, I just look on as the men turn pale as ghosts.
“Come on,” the blond man whispers, his voice choking with terror. He has begun to tremble, although I doubt it’s from the cold, and a hint of tears beads in his eyes. His face blurs in my vision, smearing like the rest of the world, and for an instant, all I can see are streaks of black where his eyes should be, a slash of pink where his mouth once was. The two hurry off through the piazza.
I look around, amused by my little game. Rumors have spread throughout the city about how the White Wolf haunts the air, that she can see straight into your homes and into your souls. It has left a permanent sense of disquiet in the city’s energy, a constant undercurrent of fear that keeps my belly full. Good. I want the unmarked to feel this perpetual unease under my rule, to know that I am always watching them. It will make any rebellions against me harder to organize. And it will make them understand the fear that the marked suffered for so long.
Other people pass me by, unaware of my presence. Their faces look like ruined paintings. I try to push past the blurriness, but a dull headache creeps in, and suddenly I feel exhausted. A patrol of my white-cloaked Inquisitors march by, their eyes searching for unmarked people who might be breaking my new laws. Their armor looks like an undulating wave in my vision. I grimace, clutching my head, and decide to return to the palace. The rain has soaked through my own cloak, and a warm bath sounds enticing.
By the time I arrive at the steps leading up to the bathhouse, the drizzle has turned into a steady rain. My bare feet create a faint slapping sound against the marble floor as I go inside. There, I finally drop my invisibility. Usually, two maidens are trailing behind me when I come here, but I just want to sink myself into warm waters and let my mind wander away.
As I approach the bath hall, I hear a pair of voices drifting out from within. My steps slow for a moment. The bathhouse isn’t empty, as I had thought. I should’ve sent a servant ahead of me to clear the halls. I hesitate a moment longer, then decide to continue on. After all, I am queen—I can always order whoever they are to leave.
The pool stretches out in a long rectangle from where I stand to the other side of the hall. A fog of warmth hangs in the air, and I can smell the moisture. At the other end of the pool come the voices I’d heard a moment earlier. As I slip off my damp robes and dip my toes into the warm water, I hear a low rumble of laughter that makes me pause. Suddenly, I recognize who it is—Magiano. He did say he was going to be at the baths.
He has his back turned to me, and it’s difficult to see him clearly through the warm mist in the air. But it’s unmistakably him. His brown back is bare and slick, his muscles gleaming, and his braids are piled high on his head in a knot. He leans casually over the edge of the pool, and standing nearby on the stones is the same maiden I’d seen with him by the palace. She is kneeling down, her hair falling over one shoulder, a shy smile on her face as she hands him a glass of spiced wine.
Ah, the whispers say, stirring. And here we thought he was your plaything.
Again, bitterness rises in my chest—and my illusions weave an image before me once more. The maiden, no longer dressed, bathing with Magiano, water glistening on her skin, him reaching for her, running his hands along the outline of her body. Illusion. I close my eye, take a deep breath, and count in my head, trying to still my thoughts. It takes so much more effort than it once did. I feel a violent urge to get out of the pool, throw my cl
othes back on, and rush to my chambers, to leave them here to whatever they want to do. But I also feel an overwhelming need to hurt the maiden. My pride pushes back. You are the Kenettran queen. No one should force you to leave. So instead, I lift my chin and wade into the water, letting the warmth envelop my body.
At the sound of my approach, the maiden glances in my direction. Then she freezes as she recognizes me. I can tell that her gaze goes immediately to the scarred side of my face. A surge of fear comes from her, and I have to push down my desire to frighten her even more, to taunt her with my power. Instead, I just smile. She jumps to her feet and drops into a bow.
“Your Majesty,” she calls out.
At that, Magiano shifts slightly in my direction. He must have sensed my energy the instant I entered the hall, I realize—he must have known I was here. But he pretends to be surprised. “Your Majesty,” he says, echoing the maiden. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you enter.”
I flick one hand at the maiden. She needs no second urging. She scurries off toward the closest door, not daring to bid Magiano farewell.
Magiano watches her go, then turns to me. His gaze goes from my face to the water lapping around my bare shoulders.
“Do you wish to bathe alone, Your Majesty?” he asks. He makes a move to get out, and as he does, he rises halfway out of the pool. Water runs down his taut stomach.
I have never seen Magiano undressed before. My cheeks warm. I also notice, for the first time, his marking fully exposed. It’s a dark red patch that runs along the length of his side, where Sunland priests had so long ago tried to cut off his marking, an attempt to fix him. The first time I saw a glimpse of that old scar, it was the night we sat together by the campfire, when Violetta was still with me. I remember Magiano’s lips on mine, the silence surrounding the crackle of the fire.
“Stay,” I reply. “I could use some company.”