The Young Elites series by Marie Lu

I shake my head.

Enzo sighs. “It is a ballad about a sailor who spent his entire life and fortune sailing the oceans, searching for something he’d never actually seen, someone he’d never actually met. Eventually, he reached a place far in the north where the sea was frozen solid. He spent a month wandering through that dark wasteland, before he finally collapsed and died.” He stares off into the forest. “All that time, he was searching for a girl he’d loved in a past life. He had been searching in the wrong lifetime, and he would never be in the right one again. So it would go, until the end of time.”

I stay silent. The rain stings my face with its cold fingers.

“I feel as if I were out to sea,” Enzo says quietly. “Searching for something I don’t have. Something only the sea can give.”

He is searching for the Underworld. Just as Magiano had said.

I’m suddenly angry. Why must I lose everything that I care for? Why is love such a weakness? I wish, for an instant, that I didn’t need such a thing. I can win the same things in life with fear, with power. What is the point of searching for love, when love is nothing but an illusion?

I reach through our tether, and he shudders at my touch. Do you remember, Enzo? I think sadly. You were the Crown Prince of Kenettra. All you ever wanted was to save the malfettos and rule this nation.

Magiano’s words haunt me. Did Enzo ever love me? Or do I love something that never existed?

When we stand this close, our tether pulses with life. Enzo turns to me, then takes a step closer. The power between us leaves me dizzy. The threads of my energy dart out and seek him, and he seeks back. It is as if he were clinging desperately to the spirit of life inside me, clawing on top of it as a drowning man would push his rescuer underwater in an attempt to save himself. His soul is alive, but it is not living.

Still, I can’t break myself away from the twisted feeling of this union. I want it too. So when he wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me closer against him, I let him. His hands run through my short hair, tugging at it. I struggle for air, but he pulls me back down by meeting my open lips with his own. Panic shrouds my mind, my illusions burst free, and my alignment to passion roars in my ears. I am caught in the maelstrom. I can feel him overpowering me now, the tendrils of his unnatural energy, tainted by the Underworld, wrapping around my heart and covering it with black threads. This is the danger of our tether, as I always knew. He is too strong.

My energy soars, pushing back against the rush of his. I shove him off me with a violent strength I didn’t know I had. My darkness wraps around his heart and digs its claws in. Enzo shudders, and the whites of his eyes turn black.

Then I blink, and it is no longer Enzo before me. It is Teren.

I open my mouth to cry out, but Teren puts a hand over my mouth and shoves me against the wall. He presses a sharp knife against my chest. The blade digs in, hurting me. This is an illusion, I tell myself over and over. But why does the blade hurt?

“I will help you,” Teren whispers in my ear. “And when we are done, I will kill you.”

The dagger digs into my flesh. My skin breaks. Blood comes out. I force myself free from Teren’s grasp, clutching the bleeding mark, and run across the courtyard through the rain. Behind me, Teren rises from his crouch and starts to walk forward. Where did Enzo go? I stagger into the court’s corridors, calling for Magiano. For Sergio. For Violetta.

No one answers. I squeeze my eye shut and tell myself to snap out of my illusion. But when I open my eye again and look behind me, Teren is rushing toward me, his blade drawn, his lips pulled back in a demonic smile.

And then it is not Teren anymore, but my father, and I am running through the halls of my old home, trying to escape my father and his knife.

I start to cry. I reach a set of stairs and stumble down them. I trip on one, nearly twist my ankle, and fall a few steps to the lowest level. Up at the top of the stairs, my father’s silhouette appears in the darkness, blood staining the ribs of his ruined chest. His knife flashes in the night. I am ten years old, and he is drunk with wine, out to cut the skin from my body. He calls my name, but I keep running.

“Violetta!” I sob. My voice breaks. “Violetta!” And then I remember that on the night this happened, my sister hid under a staircase and did not make a sound. I see her crouched there, huddled with her knees tucked up to her chin, her eyes glittering in the darkness. She waves me over, but there isn’t enough space for me to hide with her. We exchange a helpless look. I glance desperately up at the stairs. My father lurches down them toward me. I have no choice. I have to run.

“Adelina!” Violetta screams for me, reaching her arms out. “Hide! He will catch you!” She starts to scramble out of the hiding place in order to give it to me, but I whirl around and bare my teeth at her.

“Stay where you are,” I cry.

Break the illusion, Adelina. You have to. None of this is real.

I tell myself this, but I don’t know how to escape my mind.

I stagger out of my father’s house and into the rain. Silverware glistens on the wet ground all around me. I am sixteen, and I am trying to run away. Behind me, my father emerges from our home’s entrance with a bloodstained knife clutched in his hand. His eyes meet mine. I whirl, looking wildly around for my horse, but there is none. I stagger forward, then trip over the silver candelabras and dishes cluttering the ground. I fall, making a thunderous clatter. I start to crawl on my hands and knees. My father gets closer. My breaths come in ragged sobs.

I just want to get away. I just want to escape. I just want to be safe. Somebody help me.