The Young Elites (The Young Elites #1)(67)
Author: Marie Lu

None of that matters now. The prince is dead.

Teren Santoro

Teren 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

Adelina Amouteru

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.