“And what are you?” Giulietta snaps. “You, my
malfetto
Inquisitor? Have I not forgiven you for your abomination? You know nothing about how to rule! I would do the same for your fellow
malfettos
, as long as they recognize their abomination, and serve me as my humble subjects.”
I reach for Teren, feeding his anger with threads of my own darkness. My energy wraps around him, adding to his, weaving an illusion around him. I paint a fleeting image before him of Giulietta wrapped in Raffaele’s embrace, with her head thrown back, Giulietta turning away from Teren and toward Raffaele. Giulietta standing on a balcony, pardoning
malfettos
of all crimes. I paint all of these images before Teren, flashing them one after another, until he is lost in them.
Teren’s fury lurches higher. The whispers in my head grow and grow, until they are deafening.
Your revenge your revenge your revenge.
Do it, now.
I reach for Giulietta, and I start to weave.
Suddenly, Teren pauses. His eyes widen. They focus on something in Giulietta’s hair … a wide, shining lock of red and gold, prominent against the rest of her dark strands. Teren frowns, confused. In the midst of his rage, swirling in the storm of illusions I’ve created around him, he cannot tell that this is an illusion I’ve just created.
I smile.
Look, Teren. Why, how did you miss this marking on her, after all these years?
His eyes dart back to Giulietta’s. “You,” he whispers, blinded by my illusion. “You have a marking?”
“A marking?” Giulietta’s expression shifts for a moment in confusion.
Teren’s focus returns to the unnatural color in her hair. I conjure whispers in Teren’s ears, and they speak to him of betrayal. “You’ve hidden it from me, all this time,” he mutters. “Covered by an apothecarist’s work, hidden by black powder. A marking. I know it.”
“What are you talking about?” Giulietta’s anger is bitterly dark now, a rising tempest. “You have lost your mind, Master Santoro.”
“You are no pure royal. You were tainted by the blood fever, like your brother.” His mouth curls into an ugly sneer. His eyes are glazed, delirious with the illusions I’ve woven around him, and he can focus on nothing but the false marking I’ve painted into Giulietta’s hair. “You are an
abomination, a filthy
malfetto
, just like me. And I gave you my
love
. And you
fooled me
.”
“
Enough,
” Giulietta snaps. She looks again to her Inquisitors and draws herself up to her full height. “This is an
order
. Seize him.”
Still, the Inquisitors don’t move. Teren stares at Giulietta as if his heart were icing over. “Now I know why you always had such sympathy for those damn
malfetto
slaves,” he chokes out hoarsely. “Asking for them to be properly fed. Asking for them to return to their homes.” His voice trembles with rage now. “Now I know why you give yourself away to other abominations.”
“You are a madman,” Giulietta says. I shiver at how her voice reminds me of Enzo’s. “You cannot tell sympathy apart from strategy.”
Teren shakes his head. “You cannot be a pure-blooded queen chosen by the gods.” He holds out a gloved hand and gestures at the Inquisitors. They shift their crossbows from Teren to the queen.
Giulietta narrows her eyes at Teren as she takes a step back. “What have you done to my men?” she demands.
“They are
my
men,” Teren says. “They have always been mine. Not yours.” He raises his voice. “You are under arrest, for corrupting the crown.”
My powers surge out of control. The world turns black, then scarlet. The whispers claw to the surface, seizing my mind. I feel my rage and fear surge forward in unison.
Giulietta lets out a strangled cry as the pain in her wrist spreads to the rest of her arm, then to her entire body. At the same time, I wrap my illusions harder around Teren, caressing his subconscious thoughts, reminding him of everything Giulietta has done to betray him.
Look, Teren. She is a
malfetto
queen. You cannot let this go on.
The whispers turn into a roar in his ears.
End this now.
End this. End this!
Teren draws his blade. His eyes pulse with madness, hypnotized. He steps toward Giulietta. She backs away, puts her hands out in defense, calls his name, calls once again for her traitorous Inquisitors to listen to her—but it is too late. Teren seizes her by the arm, pulls her toward him, and stabs her straight through the heart.
“Now, are you happy? Have you finally achieved all you set out to do? What will you do next, little assassin, with no one left to see you?”
—
One Thousand Journeys of Al Akhar
, various authors
Adelina Amouteru
I flinch, even though I knew it was coming. The whispers in my head burst into delight.
Teren grits his teeth and plunges the sword deeper into her chest. My threads of energy tighten around him, blinding him, continuing to feed his frenzy. I’m not sure whether I’m even controlling my energy anymore. “I do this for Kenettra,” he says through clenched teeth. Tears stream down his face. “I cannot let you rule like this.”
Giulietta clings tightly to him. Her knuckles turn white, the color of his cloak that she clutches in her fist—and then, gradually, she starts to slip, sliding toward the floor like a flower meeting the frost. Teren keeps his arms wrapped around her. He lowers her gently, until she crumples to her knees beneath him, blood soaking her traveling cloak.
Only then do I unravel the illusion I’d woven into Giulietta’s hair. The red-gold lock shifts back to dark brown. I pull back the curtain I’d woven over Teren’s eyes. The throne room comes back into clear focus for him—gone are the images I’d painted of Giulietta with Raffaele¸ of Giulietta pardoning the
malfettos
. I pull all of it back, leaving Teren alone with his thoughts again.
Teren breathes hard. He blinks twice, then shakes his head as the fog clears. He seems suddenly unsure of himself. He stares at the darkness of Giulietta’s hair, as if finally regaining some semblance of his sanity. I feel his energy shift violently from one extreme to another, his hatred and grief transforming into rage, and then fear. Sheer terror.
He finally realizes who it is that trembles on his blade, bleeding and dying.
Teren looks sharply at her. “Giulietta?” he says. Then he lets out a wrenching cry. “
Giulietta.
”
Giulietta’s grip on his cloak softens. I can sense the energy shimmering around her, the strings of light fading, going dim, leaving her and returning to the world, seeking the dead ocean. Her face twists for a moment, but she is too weak to speak now.
The energy within her fades then, and she goes limp.
Teren shakes her shoulders. His head stays bowed over her, and his voice cracks. “We were supposed to fix the world together,” he says. I can barely hear him. He sounds confused, still shaking off the remnants of my illusion. “What have you made me do?”
Giulietta just stares back at him with empty eyes. Teren lets out a choked sob. “Oh gods,” he breathes as he finally realizes what he has done. My darkness swirls, and the whispers in my mind coo at the sight. From the corner of the room, my father’s ghost laughs, his shattered chest heaving in amusement. He keeps his stare focused on me. I see for an instant what Teren might have been like when he was younger, a little boy in love with an older girl, watching her dance while he hid in the palace’s fruit trees, infatuated with an idea that he could never become. My smile turns savage.
I could have killed Giulietta myself … but this is better.
“I suppose she is a pure-blooded royal, after all,” I say aloud. I give Teren a bitter smile. “
Now you know how it feels.
”
In the midst of his grief, he lifts his head to look at where Raffaele is now on a hovering balira’s back. A spark of fury burns in him. No, not fury. Madness. The madness in him is growing. It fills him until it threatens to spill out. “
You,
” he snarls. He turns back to me. “You did this to her.” His rage grows and grows, until it seems to blind him. I gasp at the rush of it.
He shouts for his Inquisitors to attack me. Magiano whips out a dagger and braces himself. But we stand our ground. I glance at the Inquisitors walking behind Teren, then smile and gesture to them.
Some of the Inquisitors aren’t Inquisitors at all. They are my
mercenaries
, in disguise.
They break rank with the real Inquisitors, draw their
weapons, and attack. Two Inquisitors fall, screaming, clutching at their throats.
Raffaele reaches for the balira’s reins. The creature shudders, startled, and before the few Inquisitors with him can react, the balira surges forward, hitting its back against the balcony’s marble railings. It crushes two Inquisitors against the railings with a sickening crunch of bones and flesh. Another is flung, screaming, out into the air. The last one tries gamely to hang on to Raffaele, but I see Raffaele reach down in one fluid motion, pull a dagger from the Inquisitor’s belt, and stab it grimly through the man’s neck. At the same time as the man falls, the balira pushes its fleshy wings down and shoots up.
I suddenly realize that Gemma must be nearby, calling Raffaele’s balira forward.
Enzo must be nearby too.
I rush forward.
Outside, heavy drops of rain have started to fall. I nearly slip on the balcony’s slick surface. A blast of icy cold air hits me. As I reach the edge of the railing and look down, I see a sight that lifts my heart. Magiano is riding on the back of one balira, while Sergio and Violetta are on another. Magiano whistles to his, and the creature rushes upward toward me.
“Jump!” Magiano shouts at me.
I don’t think. I just act.
I push myself up onto the railing until I’m straddling it. The fall down to the courtyards below makes me dizzy,
and I teeter for a moment, lost in a sudden haze of fear. My power floods my chest and mind. I clench my teeth, then swing my other leg over and fling myself out into the open space. I fall.
The balira glides up to meet me. I land against cold, slick flesh. I almost slip off, but Magiano’s warm hand seizes my arm and yanks me up. He pushes me forward until I can grasp the edge of the saddle next to him. I pull myself into a sitting position, then grab the reins with him.
He turns the creature sharply in the direction of Raffaele’s balira. Now I can see others in the air, dozens of them, some ridden by the Daggers, others by my own mercenaries. I focus my energy on the Daggers and the Beldish queen: my next targets.
Behind us, baliras carrying Inquisitors stop to hover at the balcony, and Teren and his men board. Magiano whistles at ours, and it surges forward. Rain whips against my skin.
“We have to keep up with your Star Thief,” he shouts. “I can’t mimic her if I can no longer see her.”
I squint against the rain and look over my shoulder. Teren and his Inquisitors are on our tail.
Black clouds have now completely covered the sky, blocking any sign of the sun from view, and the rain comes down in torrents. Lightning forks ahead. Sergio’s storm is building quickly now, likely out of his control. The baliras fly low, as unnerved by the charge in the air as we are. I can feel a
steady pulse of unease from the balira beneath us, and the sheer intensity of its fear makes me light-headed.
Beside us, Violetta shouts at me. I turn instinctively in her direction, as if I’ve always known where she is. She points to a balira some distance before us. “Star Thief,” she calls out over the storm.
My attention darts to where she gestures. Now I can see a rider on the balira’s back, her hair whipping behind her in a long sheet. It’s Gemma. For an instant, I think back to the day I’d seen her race a horse, her head thrown back in sheer joy, hair streaming out, and I realize that even if I cannot see her face, I can recognize her by the life in her movements. She urges on her balira. Arrows sing toward her from Inquisitors flying nearby, but her creature turns in a spin, narrowly avoiding the weapons.
Magiano whips our reins, guiding our own balira. It speeds up.
We soar over Estenzia’s piers, and suddenly we’re out over the bay. The entire siege comes into view below us. A line of Beldish warships blockade the entrance of the bay, while others are engaged in battle against Kenettran ships—cannon fire looks like orange and white balls of light against the dark ocean. I can barely tell the sounds of their explosions from the roar of thunder overhead. Above them, baliras armored with silver plates glide through the air, their white-cloaked riders gleaming against the dark sky.
The tether hums, tugging at my chest. We are drawing
very near to Enzo now. I can feel him turning his attention in my direction, too, sensing me in the same way that I sense him.
Even in the melee, I can see the Beldish queen riding on one of the baliras, her high braid in plain sight, her face protected behind a metal guard. She fires arrows one after another, taking down every Inquisitor rider in her path. Another rides with her—one of her brothers—no,
Lucent
. As I look on from a distance, Maeve leaps to her feet as an Inquisitor suddenly drops onto their balira, trying to throw them off course. Her sword flashes through the air. A spray of blood follows it, and the Inquisitor plummets from the balira’s back.
Then they veer away sharply, until they’re lost in the midst of riders.
“Adelina!” Magiano’s shout jolts me back. Gemma’s balira flies straight into our line of sight. We pull closer behind her. She glances over her shoulder at us—we are near enough that I can make out the familiar purple marking stretched across her face. Our eyes lock.
She recognizes me. And suddenly my power wavers.
Why am I hunting her down? She has always been kind to me, and perhaps she would be kind to me even now. A strange, wild hope grows in my chest—out of everyone, Gemma would accept me despite what I’ve done.