“If the Star Thief were near us,” he mumbles, “I could control those baliras. We could fly right over the palace and land on its roofs.”
I stare at the sky, listening to their cries. “The storm has stirred them from their waters,” I reply. “Not even Gemma can control more than one, not in this agitated state.”
Magiano leans against the windowsill. “Do you really think Teren will help us?” he says. “I don’t remember him being great at keeping his word.”
“I know how he keeps his word,” I reply. A fleeting memory comes back to me of his pale eyes and twisted smile, how he’d watch me beg for more time whenever I went to see him in the Inquisition’s tower. I tense at the recollection. “He hates the Daggers more than he hates us. It’s all the advantage we need.”
Magiano nods once. His eyes seem distant tonight.
Behind us, we both hear Enzo rise in the hallway and make his way downstairs. His boots hit ominous notes against wooden floors. Magiano looks over his shoulder, then back to me when the footsteps fade away. “The prince is a moody one, isn’t he?” he says. “Was he always this way?”
“Enzo has always been quiet,” I reply.
Magiano looks at me. Whatever taunts he might have had on the tip of his tongue now vanish, replaced with a grave expression. “Adelina, you keep waiting for him to become what he once was.”
My hands tighten against the windowsill. Even now, I can feel the tether between me and the prince pulling taut, calling for me. The whispers stir restlessly in the back of my mind. “It will take time,” I reply. “But he will come back.” My voice drops to a whisper. “I know it.”
He frowns. “You don’t believe that. I can see the truth on your face.”
“Do you say this to hurt me?” I snap, turning a fiery glare on him. “Or do you actually have a point to make?”
“I’m trying to say that you are living in a world of illusions,” Magiano says, reaching a hand out to touch my arm, “of your own creation. You are in love with something that no longer exists.”
“He is one of
us
now.”
Magiano leans closer. His eyes flash, his pupils black and round. “Do you know what I saw when I passed him in the hall? I looked down at him, and he up at me—I looked into those eyes and I saw …
nothing
.” He shivers. “It was
like staring straight into the Underworld. Like he aches to return to where he came from. He is not really here, Adelina.”
“He is right here, in this building, with us,” I say through clenched teeth. “He is tethered to
my life
. And I will use him as I see fit.”
Magiano throws up his hands. His eyes turn distant, and his pupils turn again into slits. “Yes, I know,” he growls sarcastically. “That’s all you see. Your victory. Your prince. Nothing else.”
I blink, confused for a moment, and then I realize that he’s talking about himself. He is standing before me, confessing something, but I am not hearing it. I’ve forgotten our moment under the stars, when his kiss brought me calm like nothing ever has. I do not
see
him. I hesitate, torn between my anger and confusion, and say nothing.
When I don’t reply, Magiano shakes his head and leaves the room. I watch him go before turning back to the window. The anger continues to churn inside, blackening my heart. I don’t want to admit it, but I find myself aching in his absence, missing the light that he brings.
We shared a moment,
I remind myself.
Nothing more.
Magiano is here because he wants his gold, not because he’s in love with me. He’s a trickster and a thief, isn’t he? The familiar feeling of betrayal wells up in me, memories of how others have turned their backs on me in the past, and I recoil, folding away my thoughts about Magiano. Caring for a scoundrel is a dangerous thing.
When I look down at the soggy grounds below, I can see
Enzo standing near the entrance. Behind him, small fires still dot the scorched earth of the courtyard.
Magiano’s right about this, at least. There is a distance about Enzo that has not faded since he returned. Tonight, it seems as if he were not really here at all—like his thoughts don’t linger with the Daggers, or with us, but with something far, far away, in a realm beyond the living. I watch his dark figure in the night, then push away from the windowsill and head out of the room. I head down the hall, then the stairs. I ignore the mercenaries chatting with one another in the house’s crumbling entryway. I make my way outside, where the rain is still soaking the air. I stop a few feet away from Enzo. It is quiet out here, and I can see only the two of us. I wrap my arms around myself in the cold, then approach him.
He turns to look at me. The tether between us pulls tight.
“What’s wrong?” I ask him.
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he turns back to the storm with a frown, the distance still plain on his face. It takes me a moment to realize that he has turned in the direction of the ocean. I feel a deep ache in my chest.
He is here, but he doesn’t want to be.
He nods once as I come to stand beside him, acknowledging my approach. Even now, he still has the air of nobility, an unspoken sense of authority. It gives me a glimmer of hope. “I am thinking of an old tale,” he says after a long silence. His voice is deep and quiet, the voice that I remember. Why,
then, does he seem so different? “‘The Song of Seven Seas.’ Do you know it?”
I shake my head.
Enzo sighs. “It is a ballad about a sailor who spent his entire life and fortune sailing the oceans, searching for something he’d never actually seen, someone he’d never actually met. Eventually, he reached a place far in the north where the sea was frozen solid. He spent a month wandering through that dark wasteland, before he finally collapsed and died.” He stares off into the forest. “All that time, he was searching for a girl he’d loved in a past life. He had been searching in the wrong lifetime, and he would never be in the right one again. So it would go, until the end of time.”
I stay silent. The rain stings my face with its cold fingers.
“I feel as if I were out to sea,” Enzo says quietly. “Searching for something I don’t have. Something only the sea can give.”
He is searching for the Underworld.
Just as Magiano had said.
I’m suddenly angry. Why must I lose everything that I care for? Why is love such a weakness? I wish, for an instant, that I didn’t need such a thing.
I can win the same things in life with fear, with power. What is the point of searching for love, when love is nothing but an illusion?
I reach through our tether, and he shudders at my touch.
Do you remember, Enzo?
I think sadly.
You were the Crown Prince of Kenettra. All you ever wanted was to save the
malfettos
and rule this nation.
Magiano’s words haunt me.
Did Enzo ever love me? Or do I love something that never existed?
When we stand this close, our tether pulses with life. Enzo turns to me, then takes a step closer. The power between us leaves me dizzy. The threads of my energy dart out and seek him, and he seeks back. It is as if he were clinging desperately to the spirit of life inside me, clawing on top of it as a drowning man would push his rescuer underwater in an attempt to save himself. His soul is alive, but it is not living.
Still, I can’t break myself away from the twisted feeling of this union. I want it too. So when he wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me closer against him, I let him. His hands run through my short hair, tugging at it. I struggle for air, but he pulls me back down by meeting my open lips with his own. Panic shrouds my mind, my illusions burst free, and my alignment to passion roars in my ears. I am caught in the maelstrom. I can feel him overpowering me now, the tendrils of his unnatural energy, tainted by the Underworld, wrapping around my heart and covering it with black threads. This is the danger of our tether, as I always knew. He is too strong.
My energy soars, pushing back against the rush of his. I shove him off me with a violent strength I didn’t know I had. My darkness wraps around his heart and digs its claws in. Enzo shudders, and the whites of his eyes turn black.
Then I blink, and it is no longer Enzo before me. It is Teren.
I open my mouth to cry out, but Teren puts a hand over my mouth and shoves me against the wall. He presses a
sharp knife against my chest. The blade digs in, hurting me.
This is an illusion,
I tell myself over and over.
But why does the blade hurt?
“I will help you,” Teren whispers in my ear. “And when we are done, I will kill you.”
The dagger digs into my flesh. My skin breaks. Blood comes out. I force myself free from Teren’s grasp, clutching the bleeding mark, and run across the courtyard through the rain. Behind me, Teren rises from his crouch and starts to walk forward. Where did Enzo go? I stagger into the court’s corridors, calling for Magiano. For Sergio. For Violetta.
No one answers. I squeeze my eye shut and tell myself to snap out of my illusion. But when I open my eye again and look behind me, Teren is rushing toward me, his blade drawn, his lips pulled back in a demonic smile.
And then it is not Teren anymore, but my father, and I am running through the halls of my old home, trying to escape my father and his knife.
I start to cry. I reach a set of stairs and stumble down them. I trip on one, nearly twist my ankle, and fall a few steps to the lowest level. Up at the top of the stairs, my father’s silhouette appears in the darkness, blood staining the ribs of his ruined chest. His knife flashes in the night. I am ten years old, and he is drunk with wine, out to cut the skin from my body. He calls my name, but I keep running.
“Violetta!” I sob. My voice breaks. “Violetta!” And then I remember that on the night this happened, my sister hid under a staircase and did not make a sound. I see her
crouched there, huddled with her knees tucked up to her chin, her eyes glittering in the darkness. She waves me over, but there isn’t enough space for me to hide with her. We exchange a helpless look. I glance desperately up at the stairs. My father lurches down them toward me. I have no choice. I have to run.
“Adelina!” Violetta screams for me, reaching her arms out. “Hide! He will catch you!” She starts to scramble out of the hiding place in order to give it to me, but I whirl around and bare my teeth at her.
“Stay where you are,” I cry.
Break the illusion, Adelina. You have to. None of this is real.
I tell myself this, but I don’t know how to escape my mind.
I stagger out of my father’s house and into the rain. Silverware glistens on the wet ground all around me. I am sixteen, and I am trying to run away. Behind me, my father emerges from our home’s entrance with a bloodstained knife clutched in his hand. His eyes meet mine. I whirl, looking wildly around for my horse, but there is none. I stagger forward, then trip over the silver candelabras and dishes cluttering the ground. I fall, making a thunderous clatter. I start to crawl on my hands and knees. My father gets closer. My breaths come in ragged sobs.
I just want to get away. I just want to escape. I just want to be safe.
Somebody help me.
A rough hand grabs my ankle. I kick frantically, but it’s no use. Another hand grabs my soaked shirt and yanks me up,
then slams me against the wall. My arms fly up in defense. My father’s snarling face appears before me, rain carving rivers down his cheeks and chin, water making his teeth slick. He grabs my hair tightly in one fist. There is fire around us, distant shouts.
“No—” I cry out.
Break out of the illusion break out of the illusion it’s not real tell me it’s not real.
My father’s knife presses against my chest. He stabs down, hard. I can feel the knife slice into my flesh. It hits deep. My eye widens—my mouth opens in horror. I try to stop him, but my arms are weak and useless. The blade hits my lungs.
I take a deep breath and scream.
“Adelina! Adelina!”
Hands are trying to pull my arms down. I scream and scream, unable to stop.
Stop saying my name.
And then, everything leaves me in a rush. I crumple in sudden exhaustion.
It takes me a long moment to realize that the person calling my name is Magiano, and it is his arms wrapped around me. Beside him stands Violetta. She has taken my power away. Our old home, my father, the silverware littering the ground, the knife, Teren—they’ve all vanished, leaving me huddled at the entrance of the Fortunata Court, drenched in rain. I cling desperately to Magiano. How had my illusions felt so real this time? How can I be sure that Magiano and Violetta are not an illusion? What if they aren’t here at all?
“It’s okay,” Magiano whispers into my hair as I cry. He kisses my face. “You’re okay. I’m sorry.”
I try to say that I’m grateful he’s here, that I hope he’s real, but my words are lost in my sobs. Violetta watches me helplessly, then turns away and looks at Magiano.
“What happened?” she calls out over the rain.
“A group of attackers,” Magiano replies. “They ambushed us.”
Violetta gasps. “Inquisition?”
“No. These were foreign soldiers, with foreign accents.” One of his arms loops under my legs, while the other presses against my back. He lifts me effortlessly. I huddle against his warmth, balling his shirt into my fist. “I don’t know where Enzo’s gone. Some of the other mercenaries have given chase.” He raises his voice. “Hey! A little help here!” A couple of our men run toward us.
I realize, slowly, that the fires and shouting around us are real. Someone had attacked us. The tether between Enzo and me is pulled tight, stretched thin. I reach out through it, but he is too far away for me to control him. The distance sends a sharp pain through me, and I wince, trying to choke that pain down. He’s gone. I blink through the rain, fighting to see the difference between illusion and reality.
Am I truly here?
“Get a warm cloth,” Magiano is saying over me. We head inside and up the stairs, where he places me gingerly on the bed. The rain dripping from my hair soaks the sheets. From here, I can see out the window toward the black sea.