The Rose Society, Page 27

  “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 Dagger
s 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.

  Gemma turns back around in her seat. For an instant, I think she’s going to slow her balira so that we can fly along side each other, so that she can talk to us. I open my mouth and start to tell Magiano to pull aside and give her room.

  Then she turns back to face us—and a crossbow is in her hand. She lifts it and fires.

  I’m too shocked to dodge.

  “Move!” Magiano snaps at me. He shoves me hard, and the arrow sings past my neck. I fall flat against our balira’s back. My ears ring.

  Gemma fires a second arrow, this time toward Magiano, but Magiano ducks low and pulls our balira sharply left. The arrow shoots past us and disappears into the darkness.

  Magiano grits his teeth and urges our balira to speed up. “We need to work on your reflexes, my love!” he shouts.

  My fear changes to bewilderment, then betrayal, then anger. White-hot, searing anger, burning the whispers in my head and forcing them out of their cages. They flitter around my mind like a cloud of furious bats until I can barely see. You would have gladly seen me dead, Gemma. A part of me tries to urge that, no, perhaps Gemma had only fired a warning shot, had purposely missed us—but the whispers in my mind shove this thought away. My teeth clench, and my fists tighten so hard against the reins that the rough ropes cut my palms.

  How could you? I spared your life in that alleyway. Don’t you know?

  I should have killed you.

  I can hardly breathe. I don’t even care if what I’m thinking is fair. I should have killed her right there, it would have been so much easier. It would have sped up our goals. Why didn’t I? My power churns with my fury, and I push myself back upright on the balira’s back. I lean toward Magiano.

  “Chase her up,” I shout. Perhaps it is a whisper in my voice that shouts, because in this instant, I no longer have a voice of my own.

  Magiano pushes against the balira’s back. The creature lets out a haunting cry that shudders through our bodies. Then it dives. It dives so sharply that I have to steady myself against the saddle so that I don’t slide off completely. Almost immediately, Magiano pulls it back up, and the balira jerks its head up toward where Gemma flies.

  She senses us. Suddenly our balira shudders off course—she is trying to manipulate our ride’s mind. Magiano grits his teeth. He pushes back. Our balira steadies. Magiano pulls it until its head is turned back up, and then he whispers something to it.

  Gemma sees what we’re about to do, because she pulls hers up too. We charge forward, hurtling higher, leaving the warring bay below us. Rain flies in my face and I feel that old panic again, the fear of not being able to see, and I hastily wipe the water away. Gemma’s balira swings its tail in an arc. Its needle-like endpoint swipes at us, threatening to cut us—Magiano pulls us away at the last second. He forces us to move slower, out of the tail’s reach.

  I grit my teeth and reach out with my energy. The threads shoot toward her, wrap around her like a cocoon, and then, as I concentrate, tighten. I feel her shrink away, her terror jump. From her point of view, it seems as if the world had suddenly rushed up to her, the sky become the sea, and she is upside-down, hurtling into the ocean and submerged in water. She can’t breathe. From where we are, I see her hunch over in her saddle in panic. Her balira veers sharply off course as she tries to turn them around in their illusion of an ocean.

  I grit my teeth and tie my strings tighter and tighter around her. Gemma twitches violently again as she feels like her lungs are filling with water. She’s drowning, and she claws at the air, trying to swim.

  “Adelina.” Magiano’s voice cuts through my concentration like a knife. My illusion wavers, and for a moment, Gemma can see. “We have to pull back!” he shouts. “We’re too close to the storm!”

  I hadn’t even noticed. The black clouds loom far too close, an endless blanket of black that stretches in every direction—and we are about to plunge right into it. I blink, breaking out of my anger. Above us, Gemma shakes her head and realizes the same thing. But her concentration has been thrown off, and her balira struggles against her, refusing to listen. Magiano pulls our own balira so that its nose points down again. The black clouds leave our view, and I find myself staring once more at the bay dotted with fire and warships. We start to dive back down.

  I look, once, over my shoulder, to see Gemma still struggling with her balira. It lets out a shriek of protest.

  Then the dark world lights up, and we all go blind.

  A bolt of lightning—a crack of thunder that splits the sky. The sound explodes all around us. Heat sears us fr
om above. Magiano and I both throw ourselves against our balira’s back as it continues to plummet down. I can’t see anything but light. Something burns. My eye tears up. Magiano somehow manages to pull our balira up as we near the bay—I feel my weight drop down against the creature’s back. I’m trembling uncontrollably. All I can do is turn my face to one side, and through the blur, a streak of light shoots past us.

  It is Gemma, burning, falling to the ocean. Her balira’s enormous, lifeless body hurtles beside her. Struck by lightning.

  I watch her. She falls forever, the shooting-star thief, her light fading from a streak into a dot, then into nothing, then, finally, into the sea with her balira. From the ocean’s surface, I know the impact must look like a tidal wave, pushing all the ships around it outward in a ring. But from up here, it looks like an insignificant splash, like she was here and then she was gone.

  And the world continues as if she had never existed.

  My heart twists, but we have no time to dwell on it. Even as we sit, stunned and suspended in midair, Magiano turns his head toward where a cluster of ships have gathered around a single one. Baliras dotted with white-cloaked figures head toward it. Immediately, I know this must be Queen Maeve’s Beldish ship. Magiano shouts something at me. I nod in a daze. Below us, an anguished scream comes from a voice I recognize all too well as Lucent’s. She is screaming Gemma’s name.

  Magiano turns our balira away, even though all I want to do is stare at the spot where Gemma had hit the water, where ripples have covered her flaming light.

  Mankind has been fascinated with baliras for thousands of years. Countless stories have been written about them, and yet we are still no closer to understanding the secrets of their flight, kin, and life in the deep.

  —A Study of Baliras and Their Closest Cousins, by Baron Faucher