The Young Elites

  “Tomorrow.” His voice is hard as diamond. “Be at the cavern by dawn. Let’s see how fast you can learn.” Then he breaks the stare, steps away from me, and leaves down the hall.

  Windwalker lingers for a moment. She gives me a small nudge and a grudging smile, then extends a hand. “I’m Lucent,” she says.

  I take her hand, unsure what to say in return. Another barrier between me and the Daggers breaks down. I don’t know whether to feel joy or guilt.

  “That’s his way of showing thanks for your help, by the way,” she says before she turns away. “Congratulations. He’s going to train you himself.”

  Teren Santoro

  Do you have any idea who Lady Gemma is?”

  Teren stays bowed before the king. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Do you realize that Baron Salvatore is her father?”

  “I apologize, Your Majesty.”

  “You’re a damn fool of a Lead Inquisitor. I cannot afford to anger a nobleman like Baron Salvatore. And he is furious. You do not allow your Inquisitors to threaten his daughter in public and make an embarrassment of me. Even if she is a malfetto. Do you understand?”

  “But your decree, Your Majesty—”

  The king makes a disgusted sound. “Carry out my decree discreetly.” He leans back in his chair. “And the Young Elites attacked the qualifying races. You still haven’t caught a single one.”

  Teren clamps down on his rising frustration. “No, Your Majesty.”

  “I should throw you in a dungeon cell.”

  Teren keeps his eyes cast down at the throne room’s marble floor. His teeth are clenched. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he says, but furious thoughts swarm in his mind. What a fool of a king. He wants the Elites captured, but he’s too cowardly to jeopardize his political relations. He’s too cowardly to wage real war on malfettos. Teren doesn’t mention aloud that his Inquisitors threatened Lady Gemma on purpose. That it had been the queen’s idea. That the game they play is tightening. Turn the king’s nobles against the king, and he weakens.

  And as soon as Adelina delivers her information . . .

  Beside the king, Queen Giulietta leans over to whisper something in her husband’s ear. The king just waves her off in annoyance. Teren’s temper flares. Giulietta glances briefly at him.

  Patience, my Teren, her eyes seem to say. Everything will fall together.

  “The next time you embarrass me,” the king goes on, “I will have your head.”

  Teren bows lower. “There won’t be a next time, Your Majesty,” he answers loudly.

  The king looks smug and satisfied. He has not understood the double meaning in Teren’s words.

  I hereby pledge to serve the Dagger Society, to strike fear into

  the hearts of those who rule Kenettra, to take by death

  what belongs to us, and to make the power of our Elites known

  to every man, woman, and child. Should I break my vow,

  let the dagger take from me what I took from the dagger.

  —The Dagger Society Initiation Pledge, by Enzo Valenciano

  Adelina Amouteru

  The next morning, when I go to meet Enzo in the cavern, the sky churns with black clouds, and giant raindrops splatter on me as I hurry through the main courtyard toward the secret entrance. I head down the stairs alone, trying not to think about the last time I’d seen a storm like this.

  No disguise on me today. My hair has taken on a dark blue-gray sheen under the stormy sky, the strands pulled tightly away from my face, and my lashes are a dull shade. I’ve even left my porcelain mask behind. My clothing is simple Kenettran garb instead of Tamouran silks, deep blue vest over white linen, dark trousers, dark boots lined with silver trim. I shake water from my hair as I go.

  By the time I get to the cavern, Enzo’s already waiting for me. The rest of the space is empty.

  He’s dressed in a dark doublet, and his Dagger hood is down, revealing his scarlet red hair. The anger that burned in his eyes last night is now replaced with cold sternness. I’m not entirely sure what he expects me to do, so I stop several feet in front of him and bow my head once. Here, alone, I suddenly feel small—I hadn’t realized how much taller he is than I am.

  “Good morning,” I say. “You asked for me, Your Highness, so here I am.”

  Enzo watches me. I wonder if he’ll comment on how I’d controlled my illusions yesterday. The memory makes me puff up a bit with pride. Surely he must be proud of that, regardless of the way I did it.

  “You want a challenge,” he replies after a pause. His voice reverberates in the empty space.

  I lift my chin. “Yes.” I make sure my answer sounds firm.

  A faint spark of red shines in his eyes. “Does it excite you, feeling fear?”

  I don’t answer. But the words remind me of the chaos that had surrounded me at the races yesterday, and I can’t help the rush of power the memory brings.

  “What do you want to learn so badly, Adelina?” Enzo asks.

  I give him a level stare. “Everything,” I reply, surprised by my calmness.

  He holds out his gloved hands. Tendrils of smoke rise from both of his palms. “I am not Raffaele,” he warns. “Brace yourself.”

  Suddenly, two columns of fire explode to either side of me—they roar to the ceiling and rush out in two long lines, imprisoning me in a corridor of fire. I stumble backward a step, then try to focus on Enzo. You did this yesterday; you can do it again now. I pull on the strings of energy I see. A hulking beast of a silhouette begins to rise from the ground.

  But I haven’t concentrated for two seconds when Enzo rushes at me. Metal shines in both hands—his daggers are drawn. He lunges for me. My concentration breaks—my illusion vanishes. I throw myself to the ground and roll out of his way. The edges of my boots hit the wall of fire. I wince at the heat, then scramble frantically away.

  Enzo’s on me again before I can blink. Metal flashes before my eye. I throw up a hand to protect myself, and the blade slashes a thin, shallow line into my palm. Pain blooms from the wound.

  He’s wasting no mercy on me. This is not just an accelerated training session, it’s a lesson.

  “Wait—” I call out.

  “Get up, little wolf,” he snaps. The heat of the fire reflects off his crimson hair.

  I struggle to my feet. My hand leaves a bloody imprint on the ground. The pain and terror in me fuses, giving me the fuel I crave so badly. I pull on my energy, and this time I call forth a wolf of black mist, its eyes gold and its mouth pulled back in a snarl. It charges at Enzo.

  Enzo rushes right through it, dispelling it and my concentration in a puff of dark smoke. The threads slip out of my hands and back into the world. I make a grab for them again—the puff of dark smoke starts to shift into the shape of a hooded demon. Enzo makes a slashing motion at me with his hand. Fire erupts before my face. I lose my footing and fall, hitting my back hard on the ground. My lungs struggle for air.

  Enzo’s dark robes stop beside me. I look up to see his cold, ruthless expression. “Again,” he commands.

  Dante’s words come back to me, but his voice sounds like my father’s. You’ll never master your abilities. Is a mess of black silhouettes and shapes resembling creatures all I can conjure? My anger and fear flood through me again. I drag myself to my feet. I’m past all pretense now—blindly I reach out for the darkness, then raise my hands over my head.

  Enzo attacks me again before I can focus my powers. His daggers reflect the firelight. Another cut, this time a small nick on my arm. The sting of it blossoms against my flesh and sends stars bursting across my vision. I duck down and scramble indignantly out of his path. Fear clouds my mind—the threads of energy are all there, glistening strings hovering inside me and all around me—but I can’t focus long enough to grab on to them.

  I try again. Silhouettes appear in the air. Again
, my concentration breaks. Enzo’s assault is relentless—a blur of motion, knocking me down every single time I struggle to get back up. My hair falls out of its neat bun and strands of it stick against my face.

  “Again,” Enzo orders each time I fall.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  I try, I really do. But each time, I fail.

  Finally, I cry out and dart away from his blades, then turn around and run down the corridor of fire. My mind scatters. I give up trying to call my energy. Ahead of me, I see the cavern entrance, the doors shut tight. Before I can reach them, though, a wall of fire goes up in front of me. I trip, then collapse to the ground. I’m now blocked off on three sides by flames. I whirl around to see Enzo striding toward me, his robes billowing out behind him, his face a portrait of mercilessness. The heat around me burns the edges of my sleeves, blackening them. This time I curl up in a ball, shaking and bewildered. I can’t focus enough to do anything. He stops me every time. How am I supposed to learn if I don’t get a chance to concentrate?

  But of course he’s teaching me a lesson. This isn’t a game. This is reality. And when I’m in the middle of a fight, this is what it’ll be like. I whimper, shut my eye, curl up tighter, and try to shrink away from the columns of fire that roar around me. Tears run unbidden down my face.

  I sense a figure nearby. When I open my eye, I see Enzo on one knee before me, studying my tear-streaked face with a look of bitter disappointment. It is this look, more than anything, that pains me.

  “Broken so easily,” he says with disdain. “You’re not ready after all.” The columns of fire vanish. He gets up and walks past me, his robes brushing over me.

  I’m left alone on the cavern floor, crumpled in a heap, unable to control my tears. Strands of my hair fall across my face. No. I’m not broken easily. I will never break. I am going to find a way out of the mess I’ve gotten myself into—I will find a way to untangle myself from the Inquisition’s grasp and finally be free. I look up at his retreating figure through a veil of teary anger. The anger fills me, seeping its blackness into my chest until I can feel it spilling out of every fiber of my body, every energy string pulled so tight, they might break. My strength begins to build. From the corner of my vision, I see my hair shift to a bright silver. I tremble; my hands flatten against the ground, then dig against it like claws. Pain shoots up my one crooked finger.

  Vicious black lines start to crawl along the cavern floor. They turn into dozens, then hundreds, then millions of lines, until they fill the entire floor and snake up the walls. Between the dark lines drips blood, mimicking the red streaks on my injured palm. An enormous shadow blankets me. I don’t need to look up to know what I created—black wings, ones so large that they seem to fill the entire length of the cavern, growing out from my back like a pair of phantoms. A low hiss fills the cavern, echoing off the walls.

  Enzo stops and turns to look at me, his eyes still hard. I smile at him. My giant wings shatter into a million pieces—each piece morphs into a shard of dark glass. I send them hurtling at Enzo. They pass straight through him, hit the wall, and break into an explosion of glitter.

  Enzo doesn’t flinch, but he does blink. The shards had looked real enough to make him react. He folds his hands behind him, then regards me. “Better.” He walks toward me again. Wherever he steps, the black lines on the ground creep upward, turn into skeletal hands, and try to grab at his legs. I drink in the exhilaration of it all, the millions of threads glistening before me, ready for my command.

  “Weave the threads together,” Enzo commands as he draws closer. Flames appear behind him. I pull myself to my feet and step away from him until my back touches the cavern wall. “Go ahead. Make something for me that is more than a dark silhouette. Make something with color.”

  Still drowning in my fury and fear, I take the threads I see and cross them, painting what appears in my mind. And just like that—slowly, painfully—a new creation emerges before me. Enzo has almost reached me. Between us, I paint something red, so crimson red that the color of it blinds me. The red changes into petals, each one layered on top of the other, covered in dark dewdrops. Beneath it spiral green stems covered in thorns. Enzo stops before the hovering illusion. He observes it for a moment, then reaches out to touch it. I pull on strings in the air. Blood blooms on his gloves, dripping from his palms to the ground, mimicking my own real blood on my injured palm. Reminding me of the day when I’d closed my hand around the rose thorns in my father’s garden.

  I am learning imitation from reality.

  Enzo steps forward. He passes through the rose illusion, then stops a foot away from me. The blood disappears from his gloves. I glare at him defiantly. I keep my heart wide open, relishing the flood of dark emotions that fill me to the brim. The heat of his fire turns my cheeks red.

  Enzo nods once. “Very good,” he murmurs. For the first time, he looks impressed.

  “I am ready,” I reply angrily. To my dismay, my tears are still wet on my face. “I’m not afraid of you. And if you give me a chance, I can show you what I’m capable of.”

  Enzo simply watches me. I search his eyes, seeing once again the odd expression lurking behind his cold features, something that goes beyond his desire to exploit my power. Something that almost looks like . . . familiarity. We gaze at each other for a long moment. Finally, he reaches up and gently wipes away one of my tears.

  “Don’t cry,” he says, his voice firm. “You are stronger than that.”

  When the world was young, the gods and goddesses birthed the angels, Joy and Greed, Beauty and Empathy and Sorrow, Fear and Fury, sparks of humanity. To feel emotion, therefore, to be human,

  is to be a child of the gods.

  —The Birth of the Angels, various authors

  Adelina Amouteru

  The storm finally passes, leaving a devastated Estenzia

  in its path—broken roof shingles, flooded temples, wrecked ships, the dead and dying. As people flock to the temples, others gather in Estenzia’s squares. Teren leads the largest of these gatherings. I can see it all the way from the Fortunata Court’s balconies.

  “We let a malfetto win the qualifying races,” he calls out, “and look at how the gods have punished us. They are angry with the abominations that we allow to walk among us.” People listen in grim silence. Others start to shout along, raising their fists in response. Behind Teren are three young malfettos—one of them barely out of childhood. Probably dug them out of the city’s ghettos. They are tied together to a stake erected in the center of the square, and their mouths are gagged. Their feet are hidden in the midst of a pile of wood. A pair of priests flank them, lending their silent approval.

  Teren lifts the torch in his hands. The firelight casts an orange hue across his pale irises. “These malfettos are accused of being Elites, for being among those that attacked Inquisitors during the races. The Inquisition has found them guilty. It is our duty to send them back to the Underworld, to keep our city safe.”

  He throws the torch onto the pile of wood. The malfettos disappear, screaming, behind curtains of fire.

  “From this day on,” Teren calls out above the sound of the flames, “all malfetto families and shops will pay a double tax to the crown, as reparations for the bad fortune they bring upon our society. Refusal will be seen as reasonable cause for suspicion of working with the Young Elites. Offenders will be detained immediately.”

  I can’t see the Daggers from here, but I know they are watching the burning from the roofs. I know that right now Dante is notching arrows to his bow, getting ready to put each of the malfettos out of their misery. I try not to dwell on why they don’t risk saving them.

  The next day, an angry mob tears down a malfetto family’s shop. Broken glass litters the streets.

  My lessons speed up.

  Enzo takes me under his tutelage, coming to the court late at
night or early in the morning. Not until Gemma whispers it to me do I learn that Enzo has never trained anyone like this before. Her words are meant to be encouraging, but all I can do is lie awake at night, dreading the moment when I will have to see Teren again.

  To hone my illusion skills, Enzo calls on Michel, the Architect. “Ridiculous,” Michel says during our first session together. He brings the painter’s eye, and his painter’s eye critiques my work. “You call this a rose? The shadows are all wrong. The petals are too thick and the texture is too harsh. Where’s the essence? The delicate touch of life?”

  Michel forces me to create small illusions, as tiny as I can. This helps focus my concentration without draining my energy, requiring me to pay attention to everything on a minute scale, on details that I normally do not consider. I learn to make illusions of tiny flowers, keys, feathers, the texture of a wood splinter, the wrinkles of skin on a finger’s joints. He reminds me that when I want to imitate a real object, I need to think like a painter: A smooth stone is not smooth at all, but covered in tiny imperfections; white is not white, but a dozen different shades of yellows, purples, grays, blues; skin color changes depending on what light shines on it; a face is never entirely still, but made up of tiny, endless flickers of movement we never think twice about. Faces are the hardest. The slightest mistake, and the face looks unnatural, eerie and false. Conjuring the spark of life in a person’s eyes is nearly impossible.

  Michel’s words echo Raffaele’s. I learn to see. I start to notice all the things that weren’t there before. With this comes another thought: If I can master my powers, perhaps I can face Teren next time with something other than traitorous information. Perhaps next time, I can actually attack him. The thought spurs me on with feverish intensity.

  I spend every waking minute practicing. Sometimes I practice alone, and other times I’ll watch as Enzo spars with Lucent and Dante. Occasionally Gemma takes me aside, working with me while the others duel. Gemma is the one who teaches me how to still my mind in order to better sense the minds of those around me.