The Young Elites (The Young Elites #1)(40)
Author: Marie Lu

A sudden impulse hits me. Teren’s face swims in my thoughts, then shifts to a vision of my sister. I don’t know where this impulse comes from, whether it’s my alignments with passion or ambition, but I reach out to him with my energy before I can stop myself. Enzo pauses, then glances back at me with a raised eyebrow. “Yes?” he says simply.

Silence. All of my pent-up tension from the past two weeks now comes to a head, and I find myself struggling to get the words out. Tell him. This is your chance.

Tell him the truth.

Enzo watches me with a patient, piercing look.

The words are right there, right on the tip of my tongue. The Inquisition has forced me to spy on you. Master Teren Santoro is holding my sister hostage. You have to help me.

And then, as I stare into Enzo’s eyes, I remember the heat of his power. I try again to speak. Again, the words halt.

Finally, I manage to say something. But what comes out is, “When do I go on a mission?”

Enzo narrows his eyes at that. He takes several slow steps forward until we are separated by a couple of feet. My heart beats furiously. I’m a fool. Why did I say that?

“If you have to ask,” Enzo replies, “then you’re not ready.”

“I—” The moment is lost. The truth that had sat so closely on my lips now shrinks away again, buried underneath my fears. My cheeks burn with shame. “I’d think you’d want me to come,” I manage to finish.

“Why would I want you with me on a mission, little wolf?” he says quietly.

A surge of my passion courses through me, cutting through the tension warring inside my chest. “Because I impress you,” I reply.

Enzo stays quiet. Then, one of his gloved hands touches my chin, tilting it gently up, while the other rests against the stone wall beside my head. I tremble in his grasp. What is this strange light in his eyes? He looks at me like he has known me before. I fight my urge to cover up the hideous, scarred side of my face.

“Is that so?” he whispers back. He leans closer, so close that his lips now hover right over mine, suspended in the space before a kiss, taunting me. Perhaps he’s testing me again. If I move at all, we will touch. Heat rushes through me from his hand, flooding every vein in my body and filling my lungs with fire. My energy roars in my ears. I am in the middle of the ocean, buffeted on all sides by hot currents. At the same time, I feel a rush of something new, something I’ve only felt a hint of during my first test with the Daggers. The part of me that responded to the roseite gem, to passion and desire, awakens now. The energy from it rushes up into my chest, threatening to burst out of my skin, making my grasp on my powers unstable. Random illusions appear around us, flashes of forest and night and dark ocean. I’m grateful for the wall behind me. If I didn’t have that to lean against, I’m sure I would crumple to my knees.

Is there something I need to know? I imagine Enzo asking. And for a moment, I’m so convinced he says this aloud that I nearly confess everything.

Then Enzo steps away. The heat running through me dissipates as he pulls his energy back, leaving me cold and aching. My illusions vanish. For the first time since I’ve known him, he’s not the cool, confident, deadly Reaper . . . There is a flicker of vulnerability in him, even guilt. I stare back with the same confusion. My cheeks are still hot. What happened between us? He’s the leader of the Dagger Society, the crown prince, a notorious killer, the potential future king. And yet, I’ve somehow managed to unsettle him. He has unsettled me. The unspoken secret sits heavily between us, a dark abyss.

Then his moment of vulnerability fades, and he resumes the aloofness that I’m so familiar with. “We will see about your missions,” he says, as if nothing has happened. Maybe nothing has—perhaps our little moment has been nothing more than an illusion I accidentally conjured, like everything else that popped up around us. Like my father’s ghost.

My shoulders sag at the close call. I say nothing in return. Perhaps I’ve narrowly avoided certain death.

Enzo gives me a courteous nod, then turns his back and exits the cavern, leaving me alone with my pounding heart. When I look to my side, I notice that the wall where he had rested his hand is now blackened and charred with his handprint.

Raffaele Laurent Bessette

Any changes in opinion about her?” Enzo asks in a low voice.

Raffaele turns away from the prince. Today they both stand at the entrance of the caverns, looking on as several of the Daggers train. Both of their gazes are focused on the same thing: Adelina, who sits in a corner with Michel and practices weaving threads of her energy into small, familiar objects. A golden ring. A knife. A piece of lace. With each gesture, Raffaele feels her energy shift. Watching her learn to create illusions reminds him of the energy he feels when he watches Michel at work. Trying to imitate life. As she goes, Michel critiques her work with a string of halfhearted insults, but Raffaele can tell that the young painter is impressed with her. Nearby, Lucent stops training now and then to shout out challenges for Adelina. Make a gold talent! Make a bird! Make a statue! Adelina obliges, her illusions growing in complexity. Lucent nods in admiration.

“Adelina was right,” Raffaele finally replies, noting the growing friendships. Perhaps he had misjudged her in the beginning. “I was training her too slowly for her to work with her powers.”

Enzo nods once in agreement. “She’s learning at a pace I’ve never seen.”

The words make Raffaele uneasy. He thinks back to the way she reacted to the amber and nightstone, how he warned Enzo that night to get rid of her. He thinks of the alarming shifts in her darkness lately, how the new speed of her training is affecting her energy, how frequently she seems anxious, scared, and alone. The emotions seep from her. Something about Adelina . . . there is a frailty underneath the dark shell she has started to build around herself, a small remaining light. A light that wavers precariously from day to day.

“There is a reason I trained her too slowly, you know,” Raffaele says after a moment.

Enzo looks at him. “You were holding her back on purpose.”

“I was holding her back to protect us.” Raffaele chooses his next words carefully. “It’s true, she may become the most powerful of us all. She can already create illusions that trick the eyes and ears. Eventually, she’ll realize that she can also trick one’s taste, smell, and touch.” He casts Enzo a sideways glance. “You know what that means, don’t you?”