Maeve grabs her mug and flings it at the wall. Gemma jumps. It nearly breaks the porthole, but instead hits wood and clanks to the floor. “The bond between Adelina and Enzo is weak,” she snaps, “but like a vine, it will grow rapidly. She will learn to control him—and then she will have another formidable ally at her side. That, along with her sister and her Elites?” She takes a deep breath to calm herself. Her eyes close. The rush of bringing Enzo back returns to her now, and she trembles at the memory. When she closed her eyes and pulled Enzo’s soul from the ocean of the dead to the living, she had felt the darkness seeping out of his chest, threatening to taint everything around him. He is no longer just a Young Elite. He is something else entirely. Something more.
Lucent curses under her breath as the servant secures the splint of her broken wrist. “What a strange break,” the servant remarks, shaking his head. “The wrist is broken as if twisted from within, rather than caused by some outside force.”
“We should be hunting down Adelina right now,” Lucent snaps at Maeve. “Should’ve followed her instead of running away with our tails between our legs.”
“Is there any way to undo Enzo’s bond to her?” Michel asks.
Maeve scowls at Lucent, then shakes her head. The beads
in her hair clack against one another. “Adelina is now Enzo’s only link to the living world. If we sever that bond, he will die immediately, and there will be no bringing him back a second time.” She pauses to glance at Tristan. “But there is one difference,” she says in a quieter voice. “He is an Elite. I am able to control Tristan at my whim, because Tristan was a normal boy, with an innate energy of a normal man that cannot hope to rival mine. I can therefore overpower his energy with my own. But
Enzo
is an Elite. Whatever powers he once had, he now has tenfold.” She nods toward Raffaele. “Adelina may be able to control Enzo … but Enzo is so powerful that he may also control Adelina.”
Raffaele’s eyes dart away from Lucent’s wrist for the first time. He looks at Maeve. “You want Enzo to turn his power against Adelina?” he says. Again, that calm voice.
“It is our only way to win him back to our side.” She nods. “I heard the way her voice broke at the sight of him. Adelina is in love with the prince—”
“What haven’t you told us about your brother?” Raffaele suddenly interrupts. Beneath the calm is an undercurrent of anger, something Maeve has never heard in him. She blinks, surprised.
“What do you mean?” she asks, narrowing her eyes.
Raffaele nods at Tristan, who stares out the porthole with his soulless expression. “He has deteriorated since you first brought him back, hasn’t he?” he says, his voice turning raw now. “I should have known it from the instant I first sensed his energy. He is
not alive
—he is just a shadow of what he
once was, and the Underworld will slowly claim him until he is nothing but a shell.”
Maeve’s eyes have turned into dangerous slits. “You forget your place, consort. He is a prince of Beldain.”
“
We should not have brought Enzo back!
” Raffaele suddenly snaps. All of the Daggers freeze. “He is
not
of the living—
not
one of us! I did not even have to
see
him emerge from the arena—I could
feel
the unnatural state of his energy from where I was in the tunnels. I felt that abhorrent,
dead
energy in him, the taint of the Underworld coating him. It does not matter if it amplifies his powers tenfold—it is not
him
.” His face contorts in fury and anguish. “Your brother is a
true
abomination, a demon of the Underworld. And now you have turned Enzo into one.”
Maeve rises from her resting place. She gathers her furs around her neck, turns away in stony silence, and walks toward the door. When she reaches it, she glances once over her shoulder. “Your White Wolf happens to be in love with that abomination,” she replies. “And it shall be her undoing.”
Raffaele’s jaw tightens. “Then you don’t know Adelina, Your Majesty.”
Maeve glares at him for a moment. Then she throws open the door and strides out of the room. Behind her, Lucent hops to her feet. “Wait,” she calls out. But Maeve ignores her. Everything seems muted, the world blurred, and the young queen suddenly needs to get off this ship.
Her soldiers step hastily out of her way as she storms across the deck and down the gangplank. Her horse stands
ready and waiting near the shore. She unties its reins from the post, then puts a foot in the saddle and swings up onto its back.
“Maeve,” Lucent calls out behind her. “Your Majesty!” But Maeve has already guided the horse around and tapped its hindquarters with her heels. She doesn’t turn around at Lucent’s voice. Instead, she leans down to the horse’s ear and whispers something. She kicks its hindquarters again. The horse startles to life and takes off down the path.
Behind her, Lucent hurries to her horse and swings up. Then she hunches down over its back and takes off down the path in close pursuit. Her copper curls stream out behind her, whipping in the wind in unison with its mane. Maeve pushes her horse faster. She used to ride like this with Lucent when they were young, when Maeve was just a little princess and Lucent one of her guard’s daughters. Lucent always won. She would push her horse until the two of them became one, and her laughter would ring out across the Beldish plains, teasing Maeve to ride faster in order to catch her. Maeve wonders now whether Lucent remembers those moments. The wind whistles in her ears.
Faster,
she urges the horse.
Lucent calls the wind. A sudden gust seems to hit Maeve, and the gap between their horses narrows. They race up the path until it leads them to the top of the cliffs, then race along the edge of a plain, hugging the edge of the land where the canals open into the sea. Maeve shifts her attention from the path ahead to where it curves along the cliff side.
Suddenly, Lucent steers her horse off the course and races to cut off Maeve. Maeve looks over her shoulder. It’s a familiar move, and somehow, it brings a slight smile to Maeve’s lips.
Faster, faster,
she urges her horse. She bends so low over its neck that it seems like they blend together into one.
The world disappears into streaks. Lucent’s shouts pierce the tunnel, until it seems like they have gone back in time to the day when Tristan first drowned.
Help him!
Lucent had screamed that fateful night. She shook Maeve with a tearstained face.
I didn’t mean it—the ice was too thin! Please—help me get him!
Maeve lets out a startled shout when Lucent suddenly cuts into the path beside her. The childhood version of her voice vanishes, replaced by the voice of the woman she has become.
“Stop!” Lucent shouts.
Maeve ignores her.
“
Stop!
”
When Maeve still doesn’t listen, Lucent pushes her horse one more time. She tries in vain to steer her horse away. Maeve glances over. “Your wrist—!” she starts to shout, but the warning comes too late. Lucent forgets her broken wrist, and flinches away with a yell. For a moment, her concentration breaks—right as her horse leaps. She loses her balance. Maeve has no time to reach out as she sees Lucent topple from her stallion and vanish from sight.
A rush of wind cushions her fall, but she still rolls once.
Her stallion gallops on. Maeve looks over her shoulder to where Lucent lies in the dirt, then pulls her own horse to a halt. She dismounts and runs over to her side.
Lucent pushes her away when she tries to help her up.
“You shouldn’t have come after me,” Maeve snaps. “I just needed to think.”
Lucent looks up at Maeve with flashing eyes. Then she pushes herself up from the ground and starts to walk away. “Never in my life have I seen Raffaele raise his voice like that to anyone. We all knew that Tristan would never be wholly like how he was before … but it’s worse than that, isn’t it? He is
dying
, all over again.”
“He is
not
dying,” Maeve calls angrily to her. “He is exactly the way he’s supposed to be.” She runs a hand along her high braids. “Don’t tell me I should have done differently.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Lucent shakes her head. “Tell
me
?”
Maeve scowls at her. “I am your queen,” she says, lifting her head high. “Not your riding confidant.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Lucent blurts out. She extends her arms, as if she can no longer feel the pain in her injured wrist. “We haven’t been riding partners for a long time, Your
Majesty
.”
“Lucent,” Maeve says quietly, but the other girl goes on.
“Why didn’t you write more?” she says, stopping in her tracks. She shakes her head in despair. “Every time you wrote, it was business and politics. Tedious matters of the state that I never wanted to know.”
“You needed to know,” Maeve replies. “I wanted to keep you updated on the affairs of Beldain, and on when I thought you could return from your exile.”
“I wanted to hear about
you
.” Lucent takes a step closer to her. Her voice sounds anguished now. “But you just went along with your mother, didn’t you? You know what happened with Tristan was an accident. I dared him to walk out on the ice—he fell through. I never meant to hurt him! And you just stood by and let your mother decide my fate.”
“Do you know how hard I begged my mother to not execute you?” Maeve snaps. “She wanted you dead, but I insisted that she spare your life. Do you ever think about
that
?”
“Why didn’t you ever
tell
me about Tristan?” Lucent says. “
Why?
You let me live with the guilt of thinking that my actions almost caused his death! You never even told me about your power!”
Maeve narrows her eyes. “You know why.”
Lucent looks away. She swallows hard, and Maeve realizes that she is trying to hold back her tears. She starts to walk away again, back in the direction that they had come. Maeve follows beside her. They walk in silence for a long time.
“Do you remember when you first kissed me?” Lucent finally murmurs.
Maeve stays silent, but the memory comes back to her, clear as glass. It was a warm day, a rarity in Beldain, and the plains were covered in a sheet of yellow and blue flowers. They had decided to follow an old, mythical trail through
the woods that the goddess Fortuna was rumored to have once taken. Maeve remembers the sweet smell of honey and lavender, then the sharpness of pine and moss. They’d stopped to rest by a creek, and in the middle of their laughter, Maeve had suddenly leaned over and gave Lucent a kiss on the cheek.
“I remember,” Maeve replies.
Lucent stops in her tracks. “Do you still love me?” she asks, her face still turned toward the sea.
Maeve hesitates. “Why do we even try?” she replies.
Lucent shakes her head. The wind blows strands of hair across her face, and Maeve can’t tell if the wind is of Lucent’s creation or of the world itself. “You are queen now,” she says after a moment. “You will have to marry. Beldain needs an heir to the throne.”
Maeve takes a step closer to her. She touches Lucent’s hand softly. “My mother married twice,” she reminds her. “But her true love was a knight she met much later. We can still be together.” In this moment, Lucent looks so much like the girl Maeve used to go hunting with in the woods, with reddish-gold curls and a straight stance, that she pulls her forward. She kisses her before Lucent can stop her.
They linger for a long moment. Finally, they break away.
“I will not be your mistress,” Lucent says, meeting Maeve’s eyes. Then she looks down again. “I cannot be so close to you and know that a man will have you every night.” Her voice turns quiet. “Don’t make me bear that.”
Maeve closes her eyes. Lucent is right, of course. They
stand together in silence, listening to the distant roar of the waterfalls. What would happen after all of this ends? Maeve would take Kenettra’s throne with the Daggers at her side. She would return to Beldain. And she would have to birth an heir. Lucent would stay with the Daggers.
“It cannot be,” Maeve agrees in a whisper. She turns her eyes toward the cliffs from which they’d come. The two stand together, not talking, until the wind changes directions and the clouds overhead start to move away.
Lucent breaks the silence first. “What do we do now, Your Majesty?”
“I’ll send my men out to hunt down Adelina,” Maeve replies. “Nothing changes. Raffaele has damaged Teren’s relationship with his queen, and my navy shall arrive soon.” Her eyes harden. “We
will
have this country.”
Raffaele Laurent Bessette
The others pound on Raffaele’s door that night, asking if he is all right, and Leo tries to bring him a plate of soup and fruits. But Raffaele ignores them. They will talk about Enzo. Raffaele’s heart aches at the thought. He cannot discuss the prince yet. Instead, he pores through his old parchments, his years of careful study on how threads of energy work in each new Elite he comes across, his meticulous recording of Elite history and science to be left for future generations, his journals attempting to understand all there is to understand about Elites, where they had come from and where they will go. All that he had managed to save from the Fortunata Court’s secret caverns.
His notes are full of sketches: long, delicate lines of the thread patterns he sees woven around each Elite in a halo, the countless ways that they shift as the Elite uses her
energy; then, the Elites themselves, fleeting, hurried sketches of them in motion. He now lingers in particular on notes he took during Lucent’s training, peering closely at what he had written beside his sketches of her.
The Windwalker’s energy pulls from her bones. She has a marking invisible to our eyes—her bones are light, like a bird’s, as if she had never meant to be human.
It was a single note, one he never touched upon again, and a detail that he had largely forgotten about. Until today. Raffaele leans forward in his chair, thinking back on the tangle of energy he had been observing around Lucent’s broken wrist earlier.