Raffaele keeps his eyes downcast, and doesn’t answer.
Giulietta gives him a cold smile. “I didn’t think so,” she murmurs. She nods at her Inquisitors, and they hoist their crossbows higher. Raffaele stays very still, careful not to make a move that will set off one of the Inquisitors. His heart pounds. The queen tilts her head at him. “Are you afraid of death, Messenger?”
Raffaele can hear the breath of string against wood, the tightening of the Inquisitors’ grips on their crossbows. “Of course, Your Majesty,” he answers in a tight voice.
“Then tell me why I shouldn’t execute you right here. What do you want, Messenger? Or did you really become so
incompetent as to be captured like this? Why did the Beldish queen bring you here?”
Raffaele stays silent for a moment. “I let myself get captured,” he says, “because I knew you would never agree to an audience with me otherwise. You are too clever a queen to meet Elites out in the open. This is the only way to talk to you and make you feel safe in the process.”
Giulietta raises an eyebrow. “How considerate of you. And what do you need to tell me that is worth risking your life?”
“I came to ask your mercy for the
malfettos
in Kenettra.”
Teren stiffens at that. Raffaele can feel the surge of his temper.
This is a good test.
How will Giulietta react to his request? What will Teren do?
Giulietta gives Raffaele an amused smile. “
Malfettos
were traitors to my crown. They tried to put my brother on
my
throne.”
“But now your brother is dead,” Raffaele replies. He moves closer to Giulietta and leans toward her, letting his lips brush her cheek. His eyes dart briefly to Teren. “And the leader of your Inquisition is an abomination. You are a practical queen, Your Majesty, not a radical one. I can see this quite plainly.”
Giulietta searches his face, looking for evidence that Raffaele feels pain at talking about Enzo’s death. She doesn’t find it.
“The Daggers have always fought for security,” he continues. “For survival. It is the same thing
you
fight for.” His
eyes harden for a moment. “Your husband was the one that the Daggers wanted gone. He was a fool—we all knew this. If you show mercy to
malfettos
in your kingdom, then what reason would we have to fight you?”
“Mercy,” Giulietta muses. “Do you know what I do to those who betray me?”
“I have seen it, yes.”
“So, what makes you think I will grant the Daggers or the
malfettos
mercy?”
“Because, Your Majesty,” Raffaele replies, “the Dagger Society is a group of powerful Elites. We can bend the wind to our will, can control the beasts, can create and destroy.” He doesn’t take his eyes off her. “Wouldn’t you like to have that power at your command?”
Giulietta laughs once. “And why would I trust you to pledge me your powers?”
“Because you can give us the one thing we want, the only thing we have ever fought for,” Raffaele replies. “Spare your
malfettos
. Let them live peacefully, and you may gain for yourself a society of Elites.”
Giulietta looks serious now. She studies Raffaele, as if searching to see whether or not he’s lying. A long silence passes. Behind them, Teren’s energy churns, a dark blanket across the room. He stares at Raffaele with eyes full of hate.
“This whore is a liar,” Teren says in a low voice. “They will turn on you the instant—”
Giulietta holds up a lazy hand to stop him. “You told me you would find the White Wolf and bring me her head,”
she says over her shoulder. “And yet, I received word this morning that Adelina Amouteru overpowered a ship of my Inquisitors in Campagnia. Left them dead. Rumor has it that she has gathered supporters, that she is sending us a message of her approach. So, does that not also make
you
a liar, Master Santoro?”
Teren flushes a dark scarlet at the same time Raffaele frowns. For a moment, Raffaele’s careful demeanor cracks. “Adelina is here?” he whispers.
Giulietta looks at him. “What do you know of the White Wolf?”
A hundred memories flash through Raffaele’s mind. Adelina, scared and furious at the burning stake, uncertain during her testing, timid and sweet in their afternoon training sessions … cold and hateful in their final farewell. What is she doing back in Kenettra, and what does she want? “Only that she has betrayed enough of us,” he replies. He hides the twinge of guilt in his heart.
And that I once betrayed her too.
Teren bows his head to Giulietta. “We are hunting for her relentlessly, Your Majesty. I’ll not rest until she’s dead.”
It is Teren who is spearheading the hatred of all
malfettos
,
Raffaele realizes.
He is the executioner, while she is the politician. Giulietta has no reason to annihilate them now that she is queen. This is the wedge between them that can drive them apart.
Finally, Giulietta shakes her head. She steps closer to Raffaele. “I do not grant mercy easily,” she whispers as she admires his jewel-toned eyes. Raffaele hears the clicks of crossbows around the room. One wrong move from him,
and he will die. Giulietta studies him a moment longer, and then turns away and waves a hand. “Take him back to the dungeons.”
Inquisitors seize his arms. As Raffaele leaves the chamber, he reaches out one more time for Giulietta’s energy. She is suspicious of him. But at the same time, his words have stirred a new emotion from her, something that Raffaele had not sensed earlier.
Curiosity.
Only the beautiful young Compasia dared to defy Holy Amare. Even as he drowned mankind in his floods, Compasia reached down toward her mortal lover and changed him into a swan. He flew high above the floodwaters, above the moons, and then higher still, until his feathers turned to stardust.
—“Compasia and Eratosthenes,” a Kenettran folktale, various authors
Adelina Amouteru
Getting to Estenzia will require traveling by land. We can’t afford another round of inspections while on board a ship, and from what we’re hearing, the harbor at the capital is teeming with Inquisitors and workers, all preparing for the celebration in honor of Maeve’s arrival.
Early the next morning, we set out on horseback along the road from Campagnia to Estenzia.
Two days,
says Magiano. He plays his lute the entire way, humming as he goes, and by nightfall he has composed three new songs. He creates with an intensity I haven’t seen since I first met him. He seems preoccupied, but when I try asking him what’s on his mind, he only smiles and plays a few measures of music for me. Eventually, I stop asking.
The first night, Sergio sits away from us. I watch him as
he looks up at the night sky, studies the sheet of stars, and closes his eyes. Only Violetta stays at his side, her attention riveted on him. Occasionally, she asks him a question, and he answers her in low tones, keeping his body turned toward her in a way that he doesn’t do for us.
After a while, Violetta rises and makes her way back over to us. “He’s calling the rain,” she says as she approaches. She sits next to me, her side pressed against mine. I lean against her. She used to do this when we were little, I recall, as we rested together underneath the shade of trees. “Weaving it, you might say.”
“Can you imitate that too?” I ask Magiano, my stare still fixed on Sergio.
“Not well, but I can strengthen him,” Magiano replies. He glances over his shoulder to where Sergio still sits, then up at the sky too. He points to one glittering constellation. “See that? The shape of a swan’s neck?”
I follow the curve of stars. “Isn’t that Compasia’s Swan?” There are dozens of folktales about this constellation. My mother’s favorite was about how Amare, the god of Love, brought endless rain to the land after mankind burned down his forests, and how Compasia, the angel of Empathy, saved her gentle human lover from drowning by turning him into a swan and then putting him in the sky.
“It is,” Magiano replies. “It aligns with the three moons—which I assume helps him know which direction to pull from.”
Violetta’s attention stays on Sergio as he works, her eyes riveted on his still posture. “It’s fascinating,” she says, not to anyone in particular. “He is actually gathering individual threads of moisture in the air—mist from the ocean, ice crystals high in the sky. It requires so much concentration.”
I smile as I watch Violetta. She has grown more sensitive to the energy of others, to the point where Raffaele would have been proud of her. She will be a powerful weapon against the Daggers when we meet them again.
I’m about to ask her to explain how she has managed to figure out so much about Sergio’s powers, but then Sergio stirs for a moment, and his movement prompts Violetta to get up and hurry back over to him. She asks him something else I can’t hear, and he laughs softly.
It takes me a moment to notice Magiano watching me. He leans back on his elbows, then tilts his head curiously at me. “How did you get your marking?” he asks.
Familiar shields go up over my heart. “The blood fever infected my eye,” I reply. That’s all I want to say. My gaze goes to his eyes, the pupils now round and large in the darkness. “Do you see differently when your eyes slit?”
“They sharpen,” Magiano says. Right after the words come out of his mouth, he contracts his pupils, giving them their catlike appearance. He hesitates. “That’s not my main marking, though.”
I turn my body to face him. “What
is
your main marking?”
Magiano looks at me, then leans forward and starts to pull up his shirt. Underneath the coarse white linen is smooth,
brown skin, the lean lines of his stomach and back. My cheeks start to redden. The shirt slides higher, revealing all of his back. I gasp.
There it is. It’s a mass of red and white flesh, scarred and raised, that covers almost his entire back. Rough ridges outline the mark. I stare at it with my mouth open. It looks like a wound that should have been fatal, something that never healed right.
“It was a large, red, flat marking,” Magiano says. “The priests tried to remove it by peeling off the skin. But of course that didn’t work.” He smiles bitterly. “They only replaced one marking with another.”
Priests. Did Magiano grow up as an apprentice in the temples? I cringe at the thought of them cutting into his flesh, tearing it back. At the same time, the whispers stir, drawn to such a painful image. “I’m glad it healed,” I manage to say.
Magiano tugs his shirt down and goes back to his leaning posture. “It never really heals,” he replies. “Sometimes it breaks open.”
The shields on my heart start to lower. When I look back up at him, he is staring at me. “What brought you into this life?” I ask. “Why did you become … well … Magiano?”
Magiano tilts his head to the stars. He shrugs. “Why did you become the White Wolf?” he says, tossing the question back at me. Then, he sighs. “In the Sunland nations,
malfettos
are seen as links to the gods. This doesn’t mean anyone worships us—it only means that the temples like to keep
malfetto
orphans in their care, believing that their presence will help
them speak to the gods.” He lowers his voice. “They also liked keeping us hungry. It’s the same reason why a nobleman might keep his tigers on a lean diet, see? If we’re hungry, we’re alert, and if we’re alert, we are a better link to the gods. I was always hunting for food in that temple, my love. One day, the priests caught me stealing food that was meant to be offerings to the gods. So they punished me. You can bet I ran away after that.” He gestures at his back, then grins at me. “I hope the gods forgave me.”
His story is so familiar. I shake my head. “You should have burned that temple to the ground,” I say bitterly.
Magiano gives me a surprised look, then shrugs again. “What good would it have done?” he says.
I don’t argue, but silently, I think,
It would have warned them all of what happens when you defy the children of the gods.
I shift, drawing an idle line in the dirt near my boots. “We must have different alignments,” I mutter, “to think such opposite thoughts.”
Magiano tilts his head again. “Alignments?”
I wave a hand in the dirt to ruin the line I’d drawn. “Oh, it’s just something that Raffaele used to talk about,” I reply, irritated with myself for thinking of the Daggers again. “He studies the energy of every Elite he comes across. He believes that we all align with certain gemstones and gods, and those alignments influence our powers.” I take a deep breath. “I align with fear and fury. With passion. And with ambition.”
Magiano nods. “Well, I can certainly see that.” He smiles a little. “What do I align with?”
I look at him. “Are you asking me to guess?”
His smile widens, turning playful for an instant. “Yes, I suppose so. I’m curious what you think you know of me.”
“All right.” I straighten and lean back, taking in his face. The fire gives his skin a golden glow. I pretend to squint at him. “Hmm,” I murmur. “Prase quartz.”
“What?”
“Prase quartz. For Denarius, the angel of Greed.”
Magiano throws his head back and laughs. “Fair enough. What else?”
His laughter brings a trickle of warmth to me, and I find myself savoring it. I smile back. “Kunzite. The healing gem. For the god of Time.”
“Holy Aevietes?” Magiano raises an eyebrow and gives me a sly look.
“Yes.” I nod. “A thief must be both patient and impatient to be good, must have impeccable timing. Right?”
“Solid reasoning.” Magiano leans closer, then gives me a teasing look. His hand brushes against the edge of mine. “Go on, then.”
“Diamond,” I continue, unable to stop smiling. “For the goddess of Prosperity.”
He draws closer. There is no hint of wildness in his eyes. His lashes shine in the light, then lower. Suddenly I am aware of his breath warm against my cheeks. “And?” he murmurs.
“And … sapphire.” My voice fades into a whisper. “For the angel of Joy.”
“Joy?” Magiano smiles, gently this time.