I tighten my grip around Michel. Michel stays still. I hold the dagger far enough from his throat so that I don’t accidentally hurt him. The storm overhead shifts into a steady downpour.
“Where’s Raffaele?” Lucent shouts. “What did you do with him?”
I can feel the fear emanating from her. She thinks I killed him, perhaps that I slit his throat the way I’m threatening to do right now to Michel. I find delight in that, her fear of what I am capable of doing. “Find him yourself,” I snap back.
Lucent grits her teeth. She makes a move toward me, but stops when Magiano clicks his tongue in disapproval. He flashes his teeth in a grin. “Careful,” he says to her. “I keep my blades very sharp. It’s a nervous habit.”
She gives him a look full of dislike before turning her attention back on me. “Where’d you get your new crew?” she calls over the rain. “What do you want?” She spreads her arms. “We parted ways! You want your darling Enzo back? Is that what this is all about?”
Her taunt about Enzo hits home. I clench my teeth, then throw an illusion of fire around her. It circles her, mimicking the heat of a real fire, and closes in. She shields her face for a second as the scorching heat hits her. I let her think that the fire singes her, then pull it away. The flames vanish.
“I came to take the throne away from you,” I reply. “From Beldain. How dare you all think you can hand our country over to a foreign power! A foreign queen!”
Lucent looks genuinely confused. “You hated the Inquisition! You wanted to see the malfettos saved as much as we do. You—”
“Then why aren’t we allies, Windwalker?” I yell. “If we all want the same things, why are you my enemy? Why did you cast me out?”
“Because we couldn’t trust you!” she yells back. Her anger returns. “You killed one of ours! You betrayed us to Teren!”
“I had no choice.”
The tide of rage over her rises. “Enzo died because of you.”
“He died because of Teren,” I snarl. “Your precious Raffaele wanted me dead too! Have you forgotten that?”
“The throne doesn’t belong to you,” Lucent spits out. She clenches her sword tighter. “It belongs to the rightful king.”
My energy builds with my own fury, surrounding me in a cloud of darkness. “No—it will belong to your Beldish queen, not Enzo,” I snap. “There is no rightful ruler of Kenettra. Can’t you see that?”
I can be the rightful ruler. I can be the greatest ruler there ever was.
Something in my words hits Lucent hard. I feel a sudden rush of darkness in her, a deep hatred for me, and her lips curl up into a snarl. She makes as if to lunge at me, but her broken wrist suddenly jolts in pain, and she winces, clutching it. I keep my stranglehold on Michel.
A movement in the shadows of the arena behind Magiano catches my eye. It’s the bald boy, the new Dagger recruit named Leo. He darts forward toward Magiano, blade drawn, right as I scream out a warning.
Magiano whirls in time to block the sword—but Leo clenches one hand down on his arm. Magiano lets out a shout of pain. He kicks Leo backward, sending him reeling, but then staggers, falling to his knees. I freeze in terror. Magiano turns pale, then leans over and retches.
Leo scrambles up. He points to the top of the arena, where someone I don’t recognize crouches against the stone. He’s making a gesture with both arms out. “The Inquisition’s here,” Leo shouts. “We have to hurry!”
In unison, we all look to the horizon. There, a fleet of baliras is heading toward us.
Magiano manages to glare up at both me and Lucent. “I’m fairly certain none of us like them, yes?” he gasps, wiping his mouth.
Lucent looks torn for a moment. My stare goes to the top of the arena too. I could slit Michel’s throat right now—take one of the Dagger’s Elites away from them permanently. It’d be so easy.
But the Inquisition is coming, and Magiano is hurt. We don’t have time to fight one another and hold off the Inquisitors.
I make a disgusted sound, let go of Michel, and shove him forward. He trips on the stairs and almost falls, but Lucent manages to catch him on a gust of wind. As she rushes to him, I go to Magiano’s side. Together, Violetta and I manage to hoist him up between us. He sways on his feet, his eyes rolling back, but forces himself forward. “Poisoned, I think,” he chokes out. “That little bastard.”
“We’re getting you out of here,” I reply. Up in the sky, Sergio circles back on his balira. The Daggers turn their backs on me again, and we make our way out of the arena, the tenuous bond between Enzo and me still tugging at my chest.
Maeve Jacqueline Kelly Corrigan
In the alcove off a lonely stretch of Kenettran cliffs, several Beldish ships rock in the choppy waters. The dawn has arrived overcast and windy, the remnants of last night’s storm still on the horizon.
On board and belowdecks, the Daggers gather around Maeve and Raffaele. The normally bold queen is subdued today, slumped against a stack of pillows and impatiently waving away her brothers. Tristan sits some distance from everyone, looking on at his exhausted sister with a straight face, as if not quite seeing her. Still, every time she winces, he twitches, ready to defend her and helpless to do so.
Maeve’s eyes are fixed on Raffaele, who has just woken. His skin is deathly pale, and his hands still tremble. Michel wrings out a warm cloth from a basin, and Gemma places it gingerly on his head. She squeezes his arm.
“What do you remember?” she asks him.
Raffaele doesn’t answer for a moment. His attention shifts to Lucent, who sits beside Maeve, gritting her teeth as a servant binds her broken wrist. Raffaele’s thoughts seem to be far away. “Adelina,” he finally says. “She has progressed rapidly in her illusions of touch.” His voice turns quiet. “I’ve never felt pain like that in my life.”
Michel’s hands tense. He squeezes out another cloth until his knuckles look ready to burst. “I’m surprised she didn’t kill you,” he mutters.
“She let me live,” Raffaele replies, his stare fixed on Lucent’s wrist. “She wanted me to know, so that we are even.”
Maeve’s eyes narrow. “This is your White Wolf, then,” she says. “Your traitor. You told me she had fled the country with her sister. Why is she here? What is she trying to prove by tethering Enzo to herself?”
Raffaele’s eyes stay fixed on Lucent’s wrist. “She’s here for the throne,” he replies. His voice is distant and calm. “The alignment in her to ambition has grown far stronger than I remember. It is a storm in her chest, poisoned by her other alignments. She will have her revenge, or she will die trying.”
“She also seems to have strengthened her relationship with her sister,” Gemma adds. “I’ve never experienced someone wrenching my power away like that. Violetta is learning fast.”
Leo, who leans against the wall and rubs a healing cream into a jagged cut on his arm, looks up. “Not to mention their mimic. Magiano.”
“Good thing you stopped him before he could try to copy you,” Lucent mutters.
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 remar
ks, 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.” Luce
nt 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.