The Young Elites

I feel no anger. No jealousy. Just . . . emptiness. A bone-deep sense of loss. Somehow, the echoes of Gemma’s wisecracks and the patrons’ laughter sound menacing to me now. Gemma has treated you well. Raffaele took you under his wing. I hang on to these thoughts in desperation, searching for comfort, trying to convince myself that Dante’s lying. I can’t.

They are only good to me because they need me. Just like Enzo. Kindness with strings attached. Would they have befriended me if I were worthless?

Finally, I rise to my feet and head back to my chamber. My illusion ripples around me. If someone were here in the hall, they would see a current of movement in the air, a strange shadow gliding along the corridor.

I reach my chamber, lock my door, release the illusion, and crouch against the foot of my bed. Here, I finally unleash my emotions. Tears run down my face. So much for thinking that I can tell them everything. Time passes. Minutes, an hour. Who knows? The moonlight shifts its slant through my windows. I am back again in my childhood bedchamber, running away from my father. I am back against the railings of my old home’s stairway, listening to my father sell me to his guest. Or maybe I’m listening to Dante denouncing me before Enzo. They’re talking about me. They are always talking about me. I have made a full circle and I have not escaped my fate at all.

My father’s ghost appears through the wall beside me. He kneels before me and cups my face in his hands. I can almost feel the whisper of his touch, the cold shiver of death. He smiles. Don’t you see, Adelina? he says gently. Don’t you see how I have always looked out for you? Everything I’ve ever taught you is true. Who will ever love a malfetto like you?

I clutch my head and squeeze my eye shut. Enzo is not like them. He believed in me. He took me in and stood up for me. I recall the way he had danced with me at the Spring Moons, the way he protected me from Teren. All our days training together, the gentleness in his kiss, his affectionate laugh. I repeat this to myself until the words blur together into something unrecognizable.

But did he really do those things for you? my father whispers. Or for himself?

I have no idea how late the night has turned. For all I know, dawn could be arriving soon. Or perhaps only a few minutes have passed. All I know is that, as the time drags on, the true part of me is slowly but surely giving way to something bitter. What was once sadness is making way for anger. The darkness creeps in. Exhausted, I welcome it.

I rise from my crouch. My feet move toward the door. I head out into the hallway again, but this time I don’t go in the direction of the others. My feet point instead toward the opposite path, the one that leads me out of the court, into the streets, and down to the canals.

Toward the Inquisition Tower.

Teren Santoro

The lights in the palace burn low tonight. Teren makes his way down the empty halls, tracing a very familiar path. His boots echo faintly against the floors, but he steps lightly, and the sound is almost imperceptible. At the end of the hall is the king’s private bedchambers. But guards are always posted outside of the doors. Teren takes a detour instead, wandering down a narrower hall and pushing through an invisible panel in the wall that will take him directly into the bedroom.

The secret door swings open without a sound. Teren’s eyes go immediately to the bed. By the light of the moons, he can see the king’s snoring figure rising and falling under the blankets. Beside him, Queen Giulietta sits upright in bed. She so rarely visits the king’s chambers that the sight of her in here feels foreign to Teren. She meets his eyes and motions him closer.

The smell of wine is a pungent cloud around the king.

Teren steps closer. He gives the queen a questioning look.

She stares at him levelly in return.

Teren removes a knife tucked at his waist. It is an unusual weapon—so small and thin that it looks like something a doctor would use in surgery. He hoists it in one hand. With his other hand, he produces a heavy wooden mallet from within his cloaks.

Teren learned this as a child, when his father lay on his deathbed and he stood by, crying, while a doctor put his dying father out of his misery. It had been quick and painless. Most important, it had been free of blood or obvious wounds. When the Inquisition buried his father, it was as if he simply died in his sleep, his body intact and seemingly untouched.

Now, Teren positions the needlelike knife over the inside corner of the king’s right eye. He hoists the wooden mallet over the end of the knife, then pulls the mallet back. Giulietta watches him in silence.

Giulietta is the rightful ruler of Kenettra. The gods ordained it by marking Prince Enzo, cursing him as a malfetto. The gods gave Kenettra this weak king, the Duke of Estenzia, a nobleman not even of the royal bloodline. But Giulietta is pure. She should rule Kenettra. With Adelina’s help, Teren will destroy the Young Elites. And with Giulietta’s support, they will rid the entire country of malfettos. Teren smiles at the thought. Tonight, Giulietta will cry out for her guards and tell them the king has stopped breathing beside her. They will pronounce the king dead of natural causes, of excessive wine or of heart attack. And tonight, Teren will begin a true purge of the city’s malfettos.

He gathers his strength. Then he slams the mallet down on the knife’s handle. The knife strikes true. The body goes rigid, twitching. Then, gradually, the movements fade.

The king is dead. Long live the queen.

To love is to be afraid. You are frightened, deathly terrified, that something will happen to those you love. Think of the possibilities. Does your heart clench with each thought? That, my friend, is love. And love enslaves us all, for you cannot have love without fear.