Adelina Amouteru
My first, feverish thought: Dante followed me.
He’d somehow seen me leave the Fortunata Court. He’d tracked me to the Inquisition Tower. And now he knows I must have visited the Inquisition. A flurry of thoughts flash through my mind in the span of a second. If he goes back to the other Daggers, he will tell them about everything. No—they cannot find out in this way. I open my mouth, trying to think of something to say.
He doesn’t give me a chance. Instead, he lunges at me with an outstretched hand, trying to grab my arm. Violetta cries out—my energy roars in my ears.
I fling an illusion of invisibility desperately over us and throw myself to the ground. My powers are fading fast, and we blink in and out of sight. I scramble to my feet right as Dante lunges for me again. This time he attacks with a dagger. My illusion manages to throw off his aim, but the blade still catches the edge of my thigh, slicing through my clothes. I wince at the bite against my skin. Darkness roars inside me, feeding on Dante’s own fury. My strength grows again.
“You traitor.” He points the dagger at me. “Enzo should’ve done away with you the instant you came to us.”
How dare you. I protected you all. “I didn’t do anything,” I shout back. “I told them nothing.”
“You expect me to believe you?” Dante twirls his blade.
“Let me explain,” I say, holding my hands out. “I didn’t give anything to them. What you saw happen at the Spring Moons—”
Dante’s lips curl into a snarl. “I know what I saw. How long have you been working with Teren?”
“I wasn’t working with him! He found me—months ago, at the court—” I don’t know how to tell Dante this, without making it sound like everything is my fault. It is my fault.
“And yet, you told us none of this. Why keep it a secret?”
“I didn’t mean to! I was afraid of getting hurt. My sister—”
Dante sneers. “I knew you were no good. I should carve your mouth right off your face, because it spits out nothing but lies.”
I’m starting to have trouble breathing. My words come in gasps. “You have to believe me. I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Did you tell him about the Tournament of Storms?”
“I—” I hesitate.
Dante catches my pause. He narrows his eyes. “And you betrayed Raffaele to the palace, didn’t you?”
I blink. What? Raffaele? “Raffaele hasn’t returned?”
Dante doesn’t need to speak for me to know the answer. Raffaele was absent at the last meeting, he never returned from his client visit. No, not him. The thought of Raffaele being the first to suffer—
Dante lashes out again. He knocks me to the ground and holds me down. I can’t find my energy to pull on. Violetta lets out a choked scream.
“I’m taking you back to Enzo,” he growls, narrowing his eyes at me. His hand presses down on my neck, choking me. No, you can’t. I should be the one telling him, not you. “You’ll answer to him, you pathetic little coward.”
I’ll kill you before you can ruin this deal.
My father’s words from that fateful night suddenly echo all around me, filling my ears and taking me back to the rain-soaked marketplace where he’d died. Dante’s words to Enzo run through my mind. The darkness that has risen in me ever since I left the Daggers now claws eagerly for freedom—it builds and builds, feeding off the fears and hatred of Dante, the Inquisitors, the terror of the people in the streets, the darkness all around us. Above me, I no longer see Dante . . . instead, I see my father, his lips twisted in a dark smile.
Enough. I twine the glittering threads of energy around myself—there is suddenly so much of it that I feel light-headed from the power, as if I’d left my body. Raffaele once showed me how to create illusions of touch. Can I do that now?
I bare my teeth. And I unleash my anger.
For a single, terrible moment, I can see every single one of the energy threads connecting Dante to myself. From myself to his pain senses. On instinct, I reach out and pull hard.
Dante suddenly scrambles away from me. His hand leaves my neck—I gasp desperately for air. His eyes bulge. Then he drops his weapons and lets out a bloodcurdling scream. The sound sends a flood of excitement through me so intense that I tremble from head to toe. The illusion of touch; the illusion of pain. Oh, I’ve wanted to do this for so long. I pull harder, twisting, increasing his belief that he is in agony—that his limbs are being ripped off one by one, that someone is peeling the skin off his back. He collapses to the ground and writhes. Scream after scream.
At first, all I feel from him is rage. He glares at me with murder in his eyes. “I’m going to kill you,” he spits out amid his pain. “You’ve attacked the wrong Elite.”
I harden my expression. No, you have.
His rage changes to fear. Terror pours from him—it only makes me stronger, and I throw all the extra power back into torturing him. A part of me is horrified at what I’m doing. But the other part of me, the part that is my father’s daughter, delights in it. I’m heady with pleasure—it washes over me until I feel like I am a completely different person. I walk closer to where he writhes and look on patiently with a curious tilt of my head. I open my mouth to speak, and my father’s words spill out of me.
“Show me what you can do,” I whisper in Dante’s ear.
Somewhere in the midst of swirling darkness, I catch sight of Violetta cowering in the corner, her terrified eyes fixed on me. She has the power to stop me, I realize through my haze of exhilaration. But she’s not.
Stop? Why should I stop? This is the boy who told Enzo to kill me. He has threatened my life from the moment I joined the Daggers—he tried to kill me right now. Just like everyone else. I have every right to torture him. He deserves to die at my hands, and I will make sure he feels every last moment of it. All the rage and bitterness I’ve held in my heart for everything now reaches a peak. My father’s image replaces Dante again, his body bent backward in agony. My smile turns dark and I twist harder, harder, harder.
I will destroy you.
“Stop, please!” At first I think it’s Violetta screaming this at me, but then I realize that it’s my father. He has resorted to begging. His heartbeat increases to a violent pace.
Something inside me screams that this is going too far—I can feel the darkness taking over my senses. My father—Dante—gasps. His scream cuts off as his face freezes into a trembling picture of shock. Harder. I try in vain to shove it away, to regain control. I can’t. A real trickle of blood runs from his lips. My heart trembles at the sight. That isn’t supposed to happen. I am a conjurer of illusions. Can even the illusion of pain eventually trigger something real? Again, I reach out to stop myself. But my father’s ghost only laughs, mingling with the gleeful whispers in my head.
Keep going, Adelina, and no one will ever command you again.
I feel something snap in Dante’s heart, a breaking of strings.
He freezes. His mouth stays open in a silent scream; his lips are stained red. His fingers twitch, but his eyes are glazed. The darkness in me that took over my mind now vanishes in a rush—I collapse to my knees, suddenly unable to catch my breath, and lean against the wall in exhaustion. I feel like I’ve returned to my body. My energy shrinks away into nothingness, just like that—my father’s ghostly presence disappears, and his voice melts into the night. Violetta stays where she is, staring in stunned silence at Dante’s body. I do the same. The chaos out in the streets rings in my ears like an underwater scream.
I wanted to hurt him. To defend myself. To get revenge. To escape. But I didn’t just hurt him. I made sure that he will never again lift a finger against me.
In my fury, I killed him.