Magiano whirls in time to block the sword—but Leo clenches one hand down on his arm. Magiano lets out a shout of pain. He kicks Leo backward, sending him reeling, but then staggers, falling to his knees. I freeze in terror. Magiano turns pale, then leans over and retches.
Leo scrambles up. He points to the top of the arena, where someone I don’t recognize crouches against the stone. He’s making a gesture with both arms out. “The Inquisition’s here,” Leo shouts. “We have to hurry!”
In unison, we all look to the horizon. There, a fleet of baliras is heading toward us.
Magiano manages to glare up at both me and Lucent. “I’m fairly certain none of us like them, yes?” he gasps, wiping his mouth.
Lucent looks torn for a moment. My stare goes to the top of the arena too. I could slit Michel’s throat right now—take one of the Dagger’s Elites away from them permanently. It’d be so easy.
But the Inquisition is coming, and Magiano is hurt. We don’t have time to fight one another and hold off the Inquisitors.
I make a disgusted sound, let go of Michel, and shove him forward. He trips on the stairs and almost falls, but Lucent manages to catch him on a gust of wind. As she rushes to him, I go to Magiano’s side. Together, Violetta and I manage to hoist him up between us. He sways on his feet, his eyes rolling back, but forces himself forward. “Poisoned, I think,” he chokes out. “That little bastard.”
“We’re getting you out of here,” I reply. Up in the sky, Sergio circles back on his balira. The Daggers turn their backs on me again, and we make our way out of the arena, the tenuous bond between Enzo and me still tugging at my chest.
Maeve Jacqueline Kelly Corrigan
In the alcove off a lonely stretch of Kenettran cliffs, several Beldish ships rock in the choppy waters. The dawn has arrived overcast and windy, the remnants of last night’s storm still on the horizon.
On board and belowdecks, the Daggers gather around Maeve and Raffaele. The normally bold queen is subdued today, slumped against a stack of pillows and impatiently waving away her brothers. Tristan sits some distance from everyone, looking on at his exhausted sister with a straight face, as if not quite seeing her. Still, every time she winces, he twitches, ready to defend her and helpless to do so.
Maeve’s eyes are fixed on Raffaele, who has just woken. His skin is deathly pale, and his hands still tremble. Michel wrings out a warm cloth from a basin, and Gemma places it gingerly on his head. She squeezes his arm.
“What do you remember?” she asks him.
Raffaele doesn’t answer for a moment. His attention shifts to Lucent, who sits beside Maeve, gritting her teeth as a servant binds her broken wrist. Raffaele’s thoughts seem to be far away. “Adelina,” he finally says. “She has progressed rapidly in her illusions of touch.” His voice turns quiet. “I’ve never felt pain like that in my life.”
Michel’s hands tense. He squeezes out another cloth until his knuckles look ready to burst. “I’m surprised she didn’t kill you,” he mutters.
“She let me live,” Raffaele replies, his stare fixed on Lucent’s wrist. “She wanted me to know, so that we are even.”
Maeve’s eyes narrow. “This is your White Wolf, then,” she says. “Your traitor. You told me she had fled the country with her sister. Why is she here? What is she trying to prove by tethering Enzo to herself?”
Raffaele’s eyes stay fixed on Lucent’s wrist. “She’s here for the throne,” he replies. His voice is distant and calm. “The alignment in her to ambition has grown far stronger than I remember. It is a storm in her chest, poisoned by her other alignments. She will have her revenge, or she will die trying.”
“She also seems to have strengthened her relationship with her sister,” Gemma adds. “I’ve never experienced someone wrenching my power away like that. Violetta is learning fast.”
Leo, who leans against the wall and rubs a healing cream into a jagged cut on his arm, looks up. “Not to mention their mimic. Magiano.”
“Good thing you stopped him before he could try to copy you,” Lucent mutters.
Maeve grabs her mug and flings it at the wall. Gemma jumps. It nearly breaks the porthole, but instead hits wood and clanks to the floor. “The bond between Adelina and Enzo is weak,” she snaps, “but like a vine, it will grow rapidly. She will learn to control him—and then she will have another formidable ally at her side. That, along with her sister and her Elites?” She takes a deep breath to calm herself. Her eyes close. The rush of bringing Enzo back returns to her now, and she trembles at the memory. When she closed her eyes and pulled Enzo’s soul from the ocean of the dead to the living, she had felt the darkness seeping out of his chest, threatening to taint everything around him. He is no longer just a Young Elite. He is something else entirely. Something more.
Lucent curses under her breath as the servant secures the splint of her broken wrist. “What a strange break,” the servant remarks, shaking his head. “The wrist is broken as if twisted from within, rather than caused by some outside force.”
“We should be hunting down Adelina right now,” Lucent snaps at Maeve. “Should’ve followed her instead of running away with our tails between our legs.”
“Is there any way to undo Enzo’s bond to her?” Michel asks.
Maeve scowls at Lucent, then shakes her head. The beads in her hair clack against one another. “Adelina is now Enzo’s only link to the living world. If we sever that bond, he will die immediately, and there will be no bringing him back a second time.” She pauses to glance at Tristan. “But there is one difference,” she says in a quieter voice. “He is an Elite. I am able to control Tristan at my whim, because Tristan was a normal boy, with an innate energy of a normal man that cannot hope to rival mine. I can therefore overpower his energy with my own. But Enzo is an Elite. Whatever powers he once had, he now has tenfold.” She nods toward Raffaele. “Adelina may be able to control Enzo … but Enzo is so powerful that he may also control Adelina.”