“Yes.” I look down, overwhelmed by sudden sadness. “Because I can see so much of it in you.”
A warm hand tilts my chin back up. I find myself looking into Magiano’s golden eyes. He doesn’t reply. Instead, he leans toward me. I hear nothing around us but the crackle of the fire.
His lips touch my cheek. It is a soft, careful touch, one that brings a lump to my throat. His lips shift to brush against mine. Then his kiss deepens in earnest, and the strings of my heart pull taut. His hand shifts from my chin to cup my face, pulling me into him. I go willingly. One of his arms encircles my waist. The kiss goes on, as if he were reaching for something within, turning firmer until I’m forced to steady myself against the ground, lest he makes me fall over. A low, sweet sound comes from his throat. I bring a hand up to the back of his neck. Aside from the deep warmth of passion, my energy stays very, very still, and for the first time, I don’t miss it.
His lips finally break from mine. He brushes them against my cheeks once more, then against the line of my jaw, and then, finally, he pulls away. For a moment, all we can do is breathe. My heart thuds in my chest. The complete stillness of my energy is something I have never felt before. I am full of light. I am confused. A strange mix of guilt and wonder swims inside me.
The thought of ruling Kenettra with Enzo at my side—Enzo, who had saved me from certain death, who brought my powers out with a mere touch of his hand on my back, whose own fire awakened my ambitions—thrills me. So why
am I here, this close to a boy who is not my prince? Why am I reacting in this way to his touch?
On the other side of the fire, Violetta’s eyes flick momentarily away from Sergio and toward me. She catches my gaze, then tilts her head once in Magiano’s direction before winking at me. She smiles a little. Suddenly, I realize why she left me alone with Magiano like this. I can’t help sharing in her smile. When did my little sister become so sneaky? I’ll have to ask her later how she knew that Magiano would take advantage of our moment alone. Hiding a laugh in my throat, I turn back to Magiano.
He is observing the ruined half of my face.
A cold wind hits me, and I suddenly blink away the haze of warmth and amusement that had enveloped me just moments earlier. My defenses go up. I lean away, and an edge returns to my voice. “Why do you look?” I mutter.
I half expect Magiano to tease me, spitting back one of his sarcastic phrases. But he doesn’t smile. “We are drawn to stories,” he says in a soft voice, “and every scar carries one.” He lifts a hand and places his palm gently against the ruined side of my face, covering the scar.
I look down, embarrassed now. Instinctively, I reach up to brush some of my hair over my face—only to remember that I no longer have long locks.
“Hiding it makes you more beautiful,” Magiano says. Then he takes his hand away, exposing my scar again. “But revealing it makes you
you
.” He nods at me. “So wear it proudly.”
I don’t know what to say to that. “We all have our stories,” I reply after a moment.
“You are the first I’ve ever met who is willing to take on the Inquisition,” he continues. “I’ve heard plenty of idle threats in my lifetime against those soldiers, and made plenty myself. But you
meant
what you said, when you wanted revenge against them.”
For an instant, I see an illusion of blood dripping down my hands, staining the ground. It is Enzo’s blood, and it is bright scarlet. “I suppose I’m just tired of them being the ones standing over us, as we beg in vain for our lives.”
Magiano gives me a smile that looks sweet … and sad. “Now you are the one who can make them beg.”
“Do I frighten you?” I ask softly.
He seems to think about that. After a while, he leans back and looks skyward. “I don’t know,” he replies. “But I do know that I may never meet another like you again.”
His expression reminds me of Enzo, and all of a sudden, that is who I see before me, my prince who mourned his own lost love. He is close enough now that I can see the slashes of color in his irises.
He is not Enzo,
I remind myself. But I don’t want him to be. With Enzo, my energy yearned for his power and ambition, all too happy to let him take me into the darkness. But with Magiano … I am able to smile, even to laugh. I am able to sit here and lean back and point out the constellations.
Magiano glances at me again, as if he could tell who is on my mind. That strange little twist reappears at the edge of
his lips, an unhappy note that mars his joy. It is there, and then it is gone.
I want to say something to him, but I don’t know what. Instead, he smiles, and I swallow, mimicking him. After a while, we both return to admiring the stars, trying to ignore the kiss that lingers in the air between us.
Dear Father, did you receive my gift? Please let me come home. I no longer recognize this place, and my friends have become my enemies.
—Letter from Princess Lediana to her father, the King of Amadera
Adelina Amouteru
The next day, clouds start to gather in low blankets along the horizon. They build in height as the day goes on. By the time afternoon starts shifting to dusk, and the dirt and grasses of the Kenettran countryside make way for the first rivers of outer Estenzia, the sky is covered in a thick layer of gray, making twilight look more like midnight. There is a spark of lightning in the air, something sharp and tense that promises a storm. The tension grows as we approach the city, until the sky finally opens and a cold, heavy rain starts to drench the land.
I pull the cloak lower over my head. Wind whips at my back.
“How long will this storm last?” Violetta calls out at Sergio through the rain.
Sergio rides up beside us. “At least a day. I can never really tell. Once I set them in motion, they take on a life of their own that not even I can stop.”
We all pause as we reach the first small village clustered outside the walls of Estenzia. Our chances of running into Inquisitors after this point are high. I swing down from my horse, pat its neck, and lead it toward the buildings. Behind me, the others do the same. Time to give up our steeds and go on foot.
Or, more specifically, go by canal.
We leave our horses tied in front of a tavern, and then continue on our way. The village gives way to another, bigger cluster of homes, and then soon the walls fencing in Estenzia loom out of the mist of rain, black silhouettes against a gray sky. Lanterns start flickering to life in the villages behind us. My weathered boots squish against the soaked ground. My hooded cloak is already useless against the rain, and we keep them on only to hide our features. I’d rather save my energy for when we are close enough to the city itself.
Here, the land starts splintering into fragments, disjointed islands clustered close together and connected by canals. Already, the storm has started to flood some of the canals, washing untended gondolas up to the shores. Magiano stops us here, where several gondolas have piled on top of one another at a canal’s corner. Dark canvas covers their tops, and their oars snap back and forth haphazardly in the current, absent their gondoliers.
“Lately, Estenzia has kept her canals locked in order to control the passage of cargo,” he says in a low voice. “But in a storm this bad, the canals in the city will flood too quickly if they don’t pull up some of their gates. They have to help the water drain.” He nods to the piled gondolas.
This is our chance to get into the city.
As the boys flip the first gondola over and Sergio helps Violetta into it, I stare at the city walls. The rain blurs them so that they look like little more than a fog of gray—but even in this downpour, I can make out the dense rows of dilapidated shelters huddled underneath the walls.
“What is that?” I ask Magiano, nodding toward the shelters.
He wipes water out of his eyes. “
Malfetto
slave camps, of course,” he replies.
My heart seizes.
Malfetto
slave camps? The camps wrap all the way around the wall, disappearing only when it curves out of our line of sight. So, this is what Teren has been busy doing. I wonder what kind of slave labor he has forced upon the
malfettos
, and how long he will allow them to live. There is no question that he is only biding his time. A dark tide swells in my stomach, bringing a scowl to my lips.
I will fix this, once I rule Kenettra.
“Come on,” Magiano urges me, snapping me out of my thoughts. He beckons me into the back of the gondola with Violetta. As I accept his outstretched hand, his eyes meet mine and hold me there for a heartbeat, unsure. His hand
tightens. I cling to him, the heat rising fast in my cheeks. The kiss that had lingered between us last night is still here, and I don’t know what to do with it.
Magiano leans closer, as if about to take that kiss again. But he stops a hairsbreadth from my lips. His eyes lower, gentle for a moment. “Watch your step,” he says, guiding me into the boat.
My response is an incoherent murmur. I lower myself in carefully. The boat dips in the water as I crawl underneath the dark canvas and lie in the boat’s belly. It is already rapidly filling with water, but I’m able to keep myself up enough to breathe. Violetta’s boots are a foot away from mine, so that both of our heads are facing the ends of the gondola.
“When we get close enough,” I say up to him, “I’ll veil us. Stay close and keep an eye out for the rest of us.”
Magiano nods. Then he and Sergio give my gondola a push, and the boat jerks forward, taking me with it.
The storm intensifies as we draw closer to Estenzia. I stay low in the boat, keeping my head out of the water. I can barely see anything but the stone lining the edges of the canals, but now and then I get a glimpse of the approaching walls. Ahead of us is the start of the camps. Now we are close enough to see the dots of white scattered throughout the rows of crumbling tents—Inquisitors, their cloaks weighed down in the storm, hurrying back and forth along the camps’ dirt paths. I risk a glance behind me. There is a long distance between our gondola and the one behind us. If everything
went well, Magiano and Sergio should be following us. I reach out with my energy, searching for the beating hearts of excitement, anticipation, and fear in them.
I find them. And I pull.
A net of invisibility weaves across me first, erasing me from the gondola and melting me into the wet wood, the pooling water in the boat’s belly, and the dark canvas. I do the same to Violetta, and then I grit my teeth and reach for the others behind me. It is an imperfect illusion. I can’t know exactly what the inside of their gondola looks like, and as a result, I can only make an estimate. If Inquisitors look too carefully into their gondola, they will see the figures of two hiding Elites underneath the texture of the boat’s bottom.
It’s the best I can do.
As we draw near the camps, Inquisitors come into sharp view along the banks of the canal. One of them notices our gondolas floating with the current toward the city walls. “Sir,” he calls to one of his companions. “More stray boats. Should we pull them ashore?”
Another Inquisitor peers at my gondola first. I cringe, reminding myself to keep a tight hold on our illusions.
“Empty,” the second Inquisitor says. He makes a distracted gesture with his hand and starts to turn away. “Ah, just let them float by and come help me with these
malfettos
. The gondoliers can find their boats piled somewhere in the canals after this storm’s over.”
I can’t move much without risking detection, but as the
Inquisitors turn away, I lift my head enough to see down a path among the shelters. At the far end, I catch a glimpse of disheveled, frightened
malfettos
lowering their heads as the soldiers pass them. The sight of them makes my stomach churn. For a moment, I wish I could do what Raffaele does.
We keep moving. The walls loom closer, until I can see their individual stones washed dark by the rain. By now, night has fallen completely. Aside from the few scattered torches and lanterns holding up against the rain, I can hardly see anything. In front of me, Violetta stirs underneath our shield of invisibility.
“The gate is up,” she says back to me.
I look ahead. The gate is indeed drawn up, allowing the canal to swell, and beyond it I can see the start of inner Estenzia, the cobblestone streets and archways of buildings. The city’s celebrations are subdued by the rain, and broken paper lanterns litter the streets. Brightly colored flags hang limp and soaking from balconies.
Two Inquisitors walk where the canal meets the gate, their eyes trained on the water, but aside from them, we are alone.
We are not as lucky with this second pair of Inquisitors. One of them leans over the edge of the canal as we sail by. His boot stops our gondola with a jerk. I bite my tongue in frustration. In the darkness and rain, he can’t see that the gondola looks empty. He nods to his partner. Behind us, the second gondola carrying Magiano and Sergio comes to a stop.
“Check that one,” the first says to his partner. Then he
turns back to ours, draws his sword, and points it down into the boat—right at Violetta’s crouched body. He lifts the blade. Violetta tries to press herself away, but it will be useless if he stabs down all along the length of the boat.
Behind us, the second Inquisitor lifts his blade at the other gondola.
I yank back my blanket of invisibility. We suddenly come into view.
The Inquisitor pauses for an instant as he sees eyes blinking back at him from where moments ago there had been nothing. “What in—” he blurts out.
I narrow my eye and lash out at him. Threads of energy whip around his body, the illusion hooking into his skin and pulling taut. At the same time, Violetta leaps out of the boat and knocks the Inquisitor’s sword from his hand. It clatters to the ground. The man lets out a half shriek, but I cut it off as my threads tighten around him. The energy in me surges with delight as the man’s confusion changes into terror. His eyes bulge, filling with pain.