The Young Elites (The Young Elites #1)(10)
Author: Marie Lu

She returns my smile, and I think I see a hint of sympathy behind it. “You don’t need to pretend,” she replies, patting my hand. “I’ll leave the tray here for when you’re ready.”

She pauses at the sound of footsteps down the hall. “That must be him. He must already know,” she says. She releases my hand and offers me a quick bow. Then she hurries toward the door. But before she can leave, a boy steps inside.

Something about him looks familiar. An instant later, I realize I recognize his eyes—dark as midnight, with thick lashes. This is my mysterious savior. Now, instead of wearing that silver mask and his hooded robes, he’s clad in finely spun linen and a black velvet doublet trimmed with gold, clothing exquisite enough to belong to the wealthiest aristocrats. He’s tall. He has the warm brown skin of northern Kenettrans, and his cheekbones are high, his face narrow and beautiful. But his hair holds my attention the most. It looks dark red in the light, so dark it’s almost black, a rich shade of blood that I’ve never seen before, tied back into a short, loose tail at the nape of his neck. It is a color not of this world.

He’s marked, just like me.

The maid curtsies low for him and mumbles something I can’t quite catch. Her face flushes scarlet. The tone she uses now is distinctly different from the tone she’d just used with me—where before she seemed relaxed, she now sounds meek and nervous.

The boy nods once in return. The maid needs no second dismissal; she curtsies again and immediately scurries into the hall. My unease grows. After all, I saw him toy with an entire squadron of Inquisitors, grown men trained in the art of war, with no effort at all.

He walks around the chamber with that same deadly grace I remember. When he sees me struggling to a better sitting position, he waves one hand in nonchalance. A gold ring flashes on his finger. “Please,” he says, glancing at me from the corner of his eyes. “Be at ease.” I now recognize his voice too, soft and deep, sophisticated, a layer of velvet hiding secrets. He seats himself in a cushioned chair near the edge of my bed. Here he leans back and stretches out his body, rests his chin against one hand, and lets his other hand remain on a dagger hilt at his waist. Even indoors, he wears a pair of thin gloves, and when I look closer, I notice tiny flecks of blood on their surface. A chill runs down my spine. He doesn’t smile.

“You’re part Tamouran,” he says after a moment of silence.

I blink. “Pardon?”

“Amouteru is a Tamouran family name, not a Kenettran one.”

Why does this boy know so much about the Sunlands? Amouteru is not a common Tamouran surname. “There are many Tamouran immigrants in southern Kenettra,” I finally answer.

“You must have a Tamouran baby name, then.” He says this casually, idle chitchat that sounds strange to me after all that’s happened.

“My mother used to call me kami gourgaem,” I reply. “Her ‘little wolf.’”

He tilts his head slightly. “Interesting choice.”

His question brings back an old memory of my mother, months before the blood fever hit. You have your father’s fire in you, kami gourgaem, she said, cupping my chin in her warm hands. She smiled at me in a way that hardened her usually soft demeanor. Then she leaned down and kissed my forehead. I’m glad. You will need it in this world. “My mother just thought wolves were pretty,” I reply.

He studies me with quiet curiosity. A thin trickle of sweat rolls down my back. I get the vague sense again that I’ve seen him somewhere before, somewhere other than the burning. “You must be wondering where you are, little wolf.”

“Yes, please,” I reply, sweetening my words to let him know that I’m harmless. “I’d be grateful to know.” The last thing I need is for a killer with blood-flecked gloves to dislike me.

His expression remains distant and guarded. “You’re in the middle of Estenzia.”

I catch my breath. “Estenzia?” The port capital of Kenettra that sits on the northern coast of the country—it’s perhaps the farthest city from Dalia—and the place I’d originally wanted to escape to. I have an urge to rush out of bed and look out the open window at this fabled city, but I force myself to keep my focus on the young aristocrat seated across from me, to hide my sudden excitement.

“And who are you?” I say to him. “Sir?” I remember to add.

He bows his head once. “Enzo,” he replies.

“They called you . . . that is, at the burning . . . they said you’re the Reaper.”

“I’m also known as that, yes.”

The hairs rise on the back of my neck. “Why did you save me?”

His face relaxes for the first time as a small, amused smile emerges on his lips. “Some would thank me first.”

“Thank you. Why did you save me?”

The intensity of Enzo’s stare turns my cheeks pink. “Let me ease you into that answer.” He uncrosses his legs, his boot hitting the floor, and leans forward. Now I can see that the gold ring on his finger bears the simple engraving of a diamond shape. “The morning of your burning. Was that the first time you’ve ever created something unnatural?”

I pause before I answer. Should I lie? But then he would know—he’d been there at my burning; he knew what I’d been arrested for. So I decide to tell the truth. “No.”

He considers my answer for a moment. Then he holds one of his gloved hands out to me.

He snaps his fingers.

A small flame bursts to life on his fingertips, licking hungrily at the air above it. Unlike whatever it was that I created during my burning, this fire feels real, its heat distorting the space above it and warming my cheeks. Violent memories of my execution day flash through my mind. I shrink away from the fire in terror. The wall of flames he pulled from midair during my burning. That was real too.

Enzo twists his wrist, and the flame dies out, leaving only a tiny wisp of smoke. My heart beats weakly. “When I was twelve years old,” he says, “the blood fever finally hit Estenzia. It swept in and out within a year. I was the only one in my family affected. A year after the doctors pronounced me recovered, I still could not control my body’s warmth. I’d turn desperately feverish one moment, freezing cold the next. And then, one day, this.” He looks down at his hand, then back to me. “What’s your story?”

I open my mouth, then close it. It makes sense. The fever had struck the country in waves for a full decade, starting with my home city of Dalia and ending here, in Estenzia. Out of all the Kenettran cities, Estenzia had been hit the hardest—forty thousand dead, and another forty thousand marked for life. Nearly a third of their population, when put together. The city’s still struggling to get back on its feet. “That’s a very personal story to tell someone you just met,” I manage to reply.