The Young Elites

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.

He meets my stare with unwavering calm. “I’m not telling you my story so that you can get to know me,” he says. I blush against my will. “I’m telling you to offer you a deal.”

“You’re one of . . .”

“And so are you,” Enzo says. “You can create illusions. Needless to say, you caught my attention.” When he sees my skeptical look, he continues, “Word has it that the temples in Dalia have been overflowing with terrified worshippers ever since the stunt with your father.”

I can create illusions. I can summon images that aren’t really there and I can make people believe they are real. A sickening feeling crawls from my stomach to the surface of my skin. You are a monster, Adelina. I instinctively brush my hand down my arm, as if attempting to rid myself of a disease. My father tried so hard to provoke something like this in me. Now it’s here. And he is dead.

Enzo waits patiently for me to speak again. I don’t know how much time passes before I finally murmur, “I was four years old when I caught the blood fever. The doctors had to remove one of my eyes.” I hesitate. “I’ve only done . . . this . . . twice before. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary during my childhood.”

He nods. “Some manifest powers later than others, but our stories are the same. I know what it’s like to grow up marked, Adelina. All of us understand what it is like to be abominations.”

“All of us?” I ask. My mind wanders again to the black market’s wooden carvings, to the growing rumors of the Young Elites. “There are others?”

“Yes. From around the world.”

The Windwalker. Magiano. The Alchemist. “Who are they? How many?”

“Few, but growing. In the ten or so years since the blood fever died down in Kenettra, some of us have started making our presence known. A strange sighting here, an odd witness there. Seven years ago, villagers in Triese di Mare stoned a little girl to death because she had covered the local pond with ice in the middle of summer. Five years ago, people in Udara set fire to a boy because he had made a bouquet of flowers bloom right before his sweetheart’s eyes.” He tightens his gloves, and my eye again darts to the bloody flecks that coat the leather. “As you can see, I kept my abilities a secret for obvious reasons. It wasn’t until I met another who also possessed strange powers given to him by the fever that I changed my mind.”