The Young Elites (8 page)

“Wait,” I say. “I don’t understand. Am I not already one of you?”

Raffaele crosses his arms and looks at me. “No, not yet. The Dagger Society is made up of Young Elites who have proven themselves capable of calling upon their powers whenever needed. They can
control
their talents with a level of precision that you cannot yet grasp. Do you remember how Enzo saved you, the way he controlled fire? You need to be your ability’s master. You will arrive there, I’m sure, but you’re not there yet.”

The way Raffaele says all this stirs a warning in me. “If I’m not a Dagger yet, then what am I? What happens next?”

“You’re an apprentice. We need to see if we can train you to qualify.”

“And what happens if I don’t qualify?”

Raffaele’s eyes, so warm and sweet earlier, now seem dark and frightening. “A couple of years ago,” he says gently, “I recruited a boy into our society who could call the rain. He seemed promising at the time—we had high hopes for him. A year passed. He could not learn to master his abilities. Did you hear about the drought that hit northern Kenettra back then?”

I nod. My father had cursed the rise in wine prices, and rumor had it that Estenzia was forced to cull a hundred prized horses because they couldn’t afford to feed them. People starved. The king sent out the Inquisition and killed hundreds during the riots.

Raffaele sighs. “The boy caused that drought by accident, and he could not stop it. He fell into panic and frustration. People blamed
malfettos,
of course. The temples burned
malfettos
at the stake in hopes that sacrificing us would lift the drought. The boy started acting strange and erratic, causing a public scene by trying to conjure rain right in the middle of a market square, sneaking off to the harbor at night to try to pull at the waves, and so forth. Enzo was
not
pleased. Do you see? Someone who cannot learn to control his energy is a danger to us all. We do not operate for free. Keeping you safe here, feeding and clothing and sheltering you, training you . . . this all costs coin and time, but most of all, it costs our name and reputation to those loyal to us. You are an investment and a risk. In other words, you need to
prove
that you’re worth it.” Raffaele pauses to take my hand. “I don’t like to frighten you. But I will not hide from you how seriously we take our mission. This is no game. We cannot afford a weak link in a country that wants us dead.” His grip tightens. “And I will do everything in my power to make sure you are a strong link.”

He is trying to comfort me, even in his honesty. But there’s something he’s not saying. In the brief, silent spaces between his words, I hear everything else I need to know. They’ll be watching me. I need to prove that I can conjure my powers again, and that I can wield them with precision. If for some reason I can’t control my abilities, they won’t just cast me out of the Dagger Society. I’ve seen their faces, where they stay, and what they do. I know that Kenettra’s crown prince leads them. I know too much.
A weak link in a world that wants us dead.
That weak link could be me.

If I cannot pass their tests, then they will do to me what they must have done with the boy who could not control the rain. They will kill me.

M
idnight. The entire Fortunata Court is asleep, and Raffaele sits alone in his bedchamber, turning the delicate pages of a book on the moons and tides. Waiting. Finally, a soft knock sounds at his door. He rises in one smooth motion, his beaded silks glittering in the candlelight, and walks on silent feet to let in the visitor. Enzo enters with a sweep of dark robes, bringing with him the scent of wind, night, and death. Raffaele bows respectfully.

Enzo closes the door behind him. “The Tournament of Storms,” he whispers. “It’s confirmed. The king and queen will make a rare appearance together there. It will be our best chance to strike both of them down.”

Raffaele nods. “Perfect.”

Enzo frowns at him. “You look tired,” he says. “Are you all right?”

Raffaele’s client for the evening had left over an hour ago. “I’m fine,” he decides to reply.

“Did you see Adelina today?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

He tells Enzo about Adelina’s test. How she reacted to each gem. He touches on her alignment with the amber and nightstone, her overwhelming attraction to the twin rocks. As he feared, Enzo narrows his eyes in interest. Raffaele shivers at his expression. He has recruited many Elites for the young prince in the past few years, but none has ever shown Enzo’s same alignment to diamond, such fiery ambition. Being near his energy is intoxicating.

“Fear and Fury,” the prince says thoughtfully. In the candlelight, his eyes gleam. “Well. That’s a first.”

Raffaele takes a deep breath. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks.

Enzo keeps his gloved hands folded behind his back. “What do you advise?”

“Get rid of her. Now.”

“After all that trouble, you are asking me to kill her?”

Raffaele’s voice is pained, but firm. “Enzo. Every single one of her memories was laced with darkness. It is an infection of the mind. Something is
very wrong
with her. She should have manifested early, as a child, but only now has she started to find her power. It has built up inside her, and the energy feels twisted in a way that disturbs me. She doesn’t know it yet, but she is ravenous to use it. I don’t know how she’ll respond to our training.”

“You’re afraid of her,” Enzo murmurs, intrigued. “Or perhaps you’re afraid of your fascination with her.”

Raffaele stays silent.
No. I’m afraid of
your
fascination with her.

Enzo’s eyes soften. “You know I trust you. I always have. But getting rid of her would be a waste. Adelina has the potential to be very useful.”

“She
will
be very useful,” Raffaele agrees. The sapphire strands in his hair catch the light. He casts Enzo a sideways look. “
If
she’ll obey you.”

“I will take back my throne soon,” Enzo whispers. “And
malfettos
will no longer live in fear.” Raffaele could feel the threat of fire emanating from Enzo’s body. “Adelina has the potential to get us there, even if that potential lies within darkness. We’ve all seen what she can do. She has no reason to turn on us.”

Raffaele hesitates. “Tread carefully, Reaper. We don’t know the extent of her energy yet.”

“Then train her. Let’s see how she does. If your opinion of her remains, I’ll get rid of her. But until then,” he says, his eyes hardening, “she stays.”

We are making a terrible mistake,
Raffaele thinks, but bows anyway. “As you command, Your Highness.” As he does, his hair tumbles forward and exposes his neck. Enzo leans closer. Then he reaches out and gently pushes Raffaele’s collar aside.

Ugly red bruises circle the consort’s lower neck, as if someone has tried to choke him. Only now, as Enzo touches Raffaele’s chin and tilts his face in the direction of the light, does the faint purple bruising at the edges of his lips become noticeable.

Enzo looks Raffaele in the eyes. “Did one of your clients do this to you?”

Raffaele’s eyes stay downcast. He adjusts his collar back into place, then brushes his hair across one shoulder in a glossy rope. He says nothing, knowing that his silence answers Enzo’s question.

“Tell me the name,” Enzo murmurs.

Raffaele doesn’t speak for a moment. Most of his clients are gentle with him, even in their passion. But not all. Memories from earlier in the evening return, memories of rough hands on his neck, shoving him against the wall, striking his face, insults whispered harshly into his ear. It happened on very rare occasions, and he did not like troubling Enzo with the details. Raffaele’s work is important to the Daggers, after all—he might not have the same powers that the others do, but while his power cannot kill, it
does
hypnotize. Many of his clients fall so feverishly in love with him that they become loyal patrons to the Daggers. Political alliances are made in his bed.

Still. The work comes with its dangers.
I should tell my madam first; she will privately fine my client for his abuse and ban him from seeing me.
Instead, he meets Enzo’s gaze. His gentle heart hardens.
But not this time.
Some deserve punishment greater than a fine.
“Count Maurizio Saldana,” he replies.

Enzo nods once. His expression doesn’t change, but the scarlet streaks in his eyes burn bright. He presses a gloved finger against Raffaele’s chest. His voice is a quiet command. “Next time, do not keep secrets from me.”

The next morning, Inquisitors find Count Maurizio Saldana’s dismembered body nailed to his front door, his mouth
suspended in a scream, his corpse burned black beyond recognition.

Magic
is a shortened term derived from “Magiano’s tricks,”
coined from the exploits of the famous young charlatan, Magiano,
who was never captured by the Inquisition.

—
Essays
,
by Raffaele Laurent Bessette

V
ioletta was afraid of thunder.

When we were very little, she would sneak into my bedchamber whenever a storm rolled through. She’d climb into my bed, wake me, and curl her little body against mine, and I’d wrap an arm around her and hum our mother’s lullaby as the storm raged outside. I’m not proud to admit it, but I’ve always liked her helplessness. It made me feel powerful. In those small moments, I was the better one.

This is how my dream starts tonight. A dark storm rages outside my windows. I dream that I wake up in my bedchamber to find Violetta huddled beside me, under the blankets, her back turned to me, her body trembling, the curls of her dark hair spread against my pillow. I smile sleepily.

“It’s all right, mi Violettina,” I whisper. I put my arm around her shoulders and start to hum. “It’s only a storm.”

It will get worse,
she whispers back. Her voice sounds strange, like a hiss. Inhuman.

I stop humming. My smile fades. “Violetta?” I murmur. I move my arm and roll her to face me.

Where Violetta’s face should be, there is instead nothing.

The bed collapses beneath me—and suddenly I am falling. I fall down, down, down. I fall forever.

Splash.

I struggle to the surface, gasping, and wipe water from my eyelashes. Where am I? I’m surrounded on all sides by what looks like a still ocean, with no land in sight. Above, the sky is charcoal gray. The ocean is black.

I’m in the waters of the Underworld. The realm of the dead.

I know this immediately because the light here is not like the light of the living world, finished and whole, chasing the shadows away with its warmth. The light here is dead, faint enough to keep everything in a constant state of gray, no colors, no sounds, only a quiet sea. I look down into the dark water. The sight sends a coil of terror through my stomach. Deep, black, endless, filled with the gliding, ghostly silhouettes of monsters.

Adelina.

A whisper calls to me. I look to my side. A child walks on the surface of the ocean, her skin as pale as porcelain, her body skeletal under white silks, her long locks of black hair spread out across the ocean like a web of endless strands, stretching as far as the eye can see. This is Formidite, the angel of Fear, the daughter of Death. I want to scream, but no sound comes out. She leans down toward me. Where her eyes and nose and mouth should be, I can see only skin, like someone has stretched cloth tightly across her face. It had been
her
curled in my bedchamber, not Violetta.

Fear is power,
she whispers.

Then from beneath the water’s surface, a bony hand grabs me and pulls me under.

I sit up in bed, trembling from head to toe. Everything vanishes, replaced with my empty chamber at the Fortunata Court. Rain slaps weakly against my windows.

After a few moments, I lean my head wearily against my arms. Images of my sister linger in my mind, fragments of ghosts. I wonder whether it’s raining where Violetta is, and whether she is sleepless because of the thunder.

What am I going to do?
I try, as I always do, to grasp the energy buried deep inside me and pull it to the surface, but nothing’s there. What if I can never do it again?
Good,
a part of me thinks. Maybe I
shouldn’t
use my powers again. Yet this thought makes my stomach flip.

What if I escape tonight? Run away from the Daggers? Raffaele’s ominous words play over and over in my mind. He had mentioned nations in the cold Skylands that revere
malfettos
and Elites—I could flee Kenettra and sail far north. But even as I consider it, I know it’s dangerous and pointless.
Stay calm, Adelina, and think.
If I were to try running away from a group of Young Elites, how would I manage to stay ahead of them? They have finely honed powers—I don’t. What I
do
have is the Inquisition Axis on my trail, probably combing their way through southern Kenettra at this very moment, waiting for me to make a wrong move. If I couldn’t run from the Inquisition when I first tried to escape, how could I hope to evade the Daggers too? They would never rest until they caught me; they’d silence me before I could potentially give away their secrets. They might catch me before I even reached the harbor—and even if I could board a ship to the Skylands, they may simply tail me there. They’re probably watching me right now. I will forever be watching my back. My chances are close to impossible.

So I contemplate my second option.

What if I
do
become one of them? What more do I have to lose? I’m no safer on my own than if I remain with them. But if I want to survive, I need to stay and prove myself. And in order to do that, I not only need to learn how to control my energy—I also need to make some allies. Some friends. Setting out alone hasn’t exactly worked well for me. I shiver when I remember the reaction I had to the nightstone, how whatever Raffaele did had forced a darkness from within me and brought it to the surface.

What if that’s who I am?
Be true to yourself,
Violetta once told me when I was trying in vain to win Father over. But that’s something everyone says and no one means. No one wants you to be yourself. They want you to be the version of yourself
that they like.

Fine. If I need to be liked,
loved,
then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll win Enzo’s approval. Impress him.

By the time dawn finally creeps into my room and bathes it in pale gold, I’m exhausted. I stir when someone knocks faintly on my door. Probably the maid again. “Come in,” I call out.

The door opens a little. It isn’t the maid who has come to see me, but Raffaele. This time he’s clad in a beautiful black robe trimmed with swirls of gold, his sleeves wide and billowing. Thin gold chains encircle both his forehead and his neck, hiding his throat from view, and his loose braid of hair cascades over one shoulder, strands of sapphire shimmering against the dark like a peacock’s feather. His jewel-toned eyes are rimmed with bold lines of black powder. He looks even more stunning than I remember, and I turn away my stare in embarrassment.

“Good morning,” he says, coming over to me and kissing me on both cheeks. He shows no signs of the hesitation he felt toward me after the gemstone incident. “Enzo and the others have returned.” He gives me a serious look. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”

I dress hurriedly. Raffaele guides me down into the secret tunnel again, the same direction we went when he tested my energy. This time, though, we continue walking past the room’s door and farther down the tunnel, until the darkness swallows us. Our footsteps echo. As we go, the ceiling seems to rise higher and higher. A cold, damp smell fills the air.

“How far does this go?” I whisper.

Raffaele’s smooth voice floats to me from up ahead. “Below the streets of Estenzia lie the catacombs of the dead.”

The catacombs.
I shiver.

“These tunnels lead all across the city,” he continues. “They connect some of our safe houses, the homes and estates of our patrons. There are so many tunnels and tombs under the city that a great number have been forgotten over the ages.”

“It’s wet down here.”

“Spring rains. Luckily, we’re on high ground.”

We finally reach a tall set of double doors. Gems embedded in the ancient wood gleam in the low light. I recognize them as the same types of gems Raffaele used to test me.

“I asked one of our Elites to embed them,” he explains. “Only the heightened energy of an Elite’s touch can bond with gems. Their energy, in turn, moves the switches inside the doors to open them.” He nods at me. “Pay your respects, mi Adelinetta. We are in the realm of the dead now.”

He murmurs a brief prayer to Moritas, the goddess of Death, for safe passage, and I follow his example. When we finish, he closes a hand over one of the doors’ embedded gems.

The gems start to glow. As they do, an elaborate series of clicks sound out inside the wood, as if unlocking from within. I watch in wonder. An ingenious lock. Raffaele looks at me, and a spark of sympathy seems to light his eyes. “Be brave,” he whispers. Then he throws his weight against the doors. They open.

An enormous cavern the size of a ballroom looms before us. Lanterns on the walls illuminate pools of water that have collected along the floor. The walls are lined with stone archways and pillars that look like they were carved centuries ago, most standing tall, some collapsed and scattered on the ground. Glowing reflections of pale light on the water float, webbed and shifting, against the stone. Everything takes on a greenish cast in here. I can hear the drip of water coming from somewhere far away. Illuminated frescos of the gods decorate the walls, worn down from ancient receding water despite the artists’ best efforts. I can tell immediately that the art is centuries old, a style from a different era. Along the walls are niches filled with dusty urns, holding the ashes of forgotten generations.

But what really catches my attention is the small half circle of people waiting down here for us. Aside from Enzo, there are four of them. Each is turned in our direction, wearing a dark blue cloak of the Dagger Society. Their expressions are hard to read, eerie in the dim light. I try to gauge their ages. They must be about my age; those who survived the blood fever were children, after all. One Dagger is enormous, his robes barely masking thick, muscular arms that seem like they could rip a man to pieces. Beside him is a girl who looks small and slight, with a hand resting easily on her hip. She’s the only one who nods at me in greeting. An enormous golden eagle perches on her shoulder. I smile back hesitantly, my stare fixed nervously on the eagle. Beside her stands a lean boy, and last is a broad-shouldered girl with long copper curls, her skin too pale to be Kenettran. A girl from the Skylands, perhaps? She crosses her arms and regards me with a slight tilt to her head, and her eyes seem cold and curious. My smile fades.

Front and center before them stands Enzo, his hair the color of blood, his hands folded behind his back, and his gaze fixed unwaveringly on me. Gone is the hint of mischief in him that I saw when we first talked in my chamber. Today, his expression is hard and unforgiving, the young prince replaced with a cold-blooded assassin. The cavern’s strange lighting casts a shadow over his eyes.

We stop a few feet away from them. Raffaele addresses the group first. “This is Adelina Amouteru,” he says, his voice clear and beautiful. “Our newest potential recruit. She has the power of illusion, the ability to trick one’s perception of reality.”

I feel I should speak, but I’m not sure what to say. So I simply face them with as much courage as I can muster.

Enzo looks at me. I don’t know why, but I can feel myself drawn to him just like the first day we met. It is the straightness of his shoulders, the regal lift of his head. My alignment to ambition stirs at the sight. “Tell me, Adelina,” he begins. His words echo in the cavern. “Have you ever heard the rhyme ‘A newborn babe takes its first breath / and creates a storm that rains down death’?”

“Yes,” I reply.

“Nothing is isolated. Do one thing, however small, and it will affect something else on the other side of the world. In a way, you are already connected to each of us.”

He takes a step closer to me. The others remain still. “You are the first Elite to align so strongly with nightstone. There is a darkness in you, something that gives you immense strength.” He narrows his eyes. “Today, I want to bring that to the surface and find a way for you to call upon it as you wish. Learn how to bend it to your will. Do you accept?”

Do I have a choice?
After a moment’s silence, I lift my chin. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Enzo gives me an approving nod. “Then we shall use everything within our power to evoke yours.”

Raffaele steps away from me. The fact that I’m now standing alone sends a spike of uncertainty through my chest, and I find myself wishing that he, the only person in here who doesn’t frighten me, would stay by my side. The others talk in low voices among themselves. I look around the half circle of their faces, searching for help, but the only kindness I get comes from the girl with the eagle on her shoulder. She sees my anxiety and gives me a subtle, encouraging nod. I try to latch on to that.

Enzo raises one hand in the air. “Let’s begin.” Then he snaps his fingers—and every torchlight in the cavern flickers out at once.

The room goes dark.

For a second, I panic. I’m completely blind. The dizziness that I felt yesterday with the nightstone now floods my senses. This is one of my worst fears, that I might someday lose my only good eye, and that I will then live in eternal darkness for the rest of my life. I look wildly around, blinking. Nothing but silence. Then, occasionally, a gust of cold wind—a murmur of breath—an echoing footstep. My heart pounds.
Please, let there be a little light.
I squint hard into the darkness, trying to force my sight to adjust.

Right as I’m able to make out the faint outlines of the cavern floor, I notice that all of the Daggers are gone.

Suddenly, Enzo’s voice comes from somewhere in the darkness. “Spider. Star Thief.” Its deepness now frightens me.