The Rose Society

  They linger for a long moment. Finally, they break away.

  “I will not be your mistress,” Lucent says, meeting Maeve’s eyes. Then she looks down again. “I cannot be so close to you and know that a man will have you every night.” Her voice turns quiet. “Don’t make me bear that.”

  Maeve closes her eyes. Lucent is right, of course. They stand together in silence, listening to the distant roar of the waterfalls. What would happen after all of this ends? Maeve would take Kenettra’s throne with the Daggers at her side. She would return to Beldain. And she would have to birth an heir. Lucent would stay with the Daggers.

  “It cannot be,” Maeve agrees in a whisper. She turns her eyes toward the cliffs from which they’d come. The two stand together, not talking, until the wind changes directions and the clouds overhead start to move away.

  Lucent breaks the silence first. “What do we do now, Your Majesty?”

  “I’ll send my men out to hunt down Adelina,” Maeve replies. “Nothing changes. Raffaele has damaged Teren’s relationship with his queen, and my navy shall arrive soon.” Her eyes harden. “We will have this country.”

  Raffaele Laurent Bessette

  The others pound on Raffaele’s door that night, asking if he is all right, and Leo tries to bring him a plate of soup and fruits. But Raffaele ignores them. They will talk about Enzo. Raffaele‘s heart aches at the thought. He cannot discuss the prince yet. Instead, he pores through his old parchments, his years of careful study on how threads of energy work in each new Elite he comes across, his meticulous recording of Elite history and science to be left for future generations, his journals attempting to understand all there is to understand about Elites, where they had come from and where they will go. All that he had managed to save from the Fortunata Court’s secret caverns.

  His notes are full of sketches: long, delicate lines of the thread patterns he sees woven around each Elite in a halo, the countless ways that they shift as the Elite uses her energy; then, the Elites themselves, fleeting, hurried sketches of them in motion. He now lingers in particular on notes he took during Lucent’s training, peering closely at what he had written beside his sketches of her.

  The Windwalker’s energy pulls from her bones. She has a marking invisible to our eyes—her bones are light, like a bird’s, as if she had never meant to be human.

  It was a single note, one he never touched upon again, and a detail that he had largely forgotten about. Until today. Raffaele leans forward in his chair, thinking back on the tangle of energy he had been observing around Lucent’s broken wrist earlier.

  What a strange break, the servant wrapping Lucent’s wrist had muttered. As if twisted from within.

  A cold dread seeps into Raffaele’s mind. Outside his door, Gemma calls for him, asking whether he wants any supper, but he barely hears her voice.

  Lucent’s bones are not just light anymore. They are brittle, more so than they should be for someone her age . . . and they are hollowing out.

  He wanted to live in a house built on delusion, would rather believe in a million lies than face one truth.

  —Seven Circles Around the Sea, by Mordove Senia

  Adelina Amouteru

  Enzo looks the same. I can’t stop staring at him.

  Magiano watches us from the doorway while he tunes the strings of his lute. The house we’re staying in sits somewhere in the Estenzian countryside, an old, crumbling barn that roving bands of thieves must have started using as a stopping place. True to Sergio’s word, other mercenaries have secured this place for us. I can hear them talking in low voices downstairs, taking stock of the horses they have. A few soft neighs float up to us.

  From the window, I can see the beginning of the malfetto camps. Sergio’s storm has finally cleared, and what clouds remain are painted a brilliant red by the setting sun.

  “How long is he going to sleep like this?” Magiano finally mutters, plucking a few strings. His song sounds agitated, the notes harsher than usual and oddly off-key.

  Violetta, seated on the other side of Enzo’s bed, frowns. She rests her chin on one hand and concentrates harder on Enzo’s energy. “He’s stirring,” she replies. “It’s hard to tell, though. His energy is nothing like any of ours.”

  We settle into a long, silent wait. Magiano props himself up by the door again and plays a little song, then wanders out into the hall right by the door. Time drags on.

  “Adelina.” I look up at my sister as she rises from where she’s sitting and comes to my side. She crouches down and leans toward my ear. I sit back. “Enzo’s link to you is growing stronger by the minute. Like he is strengthening himself by tying himself closer and closer to you.” There is uneasiness in her voice as she says this. “Can you feel it?”

  I do, of course. It’s a pulse that rises and falls, pulling and pushing at my chest. It makes my heart feel like it’s beating in an uneven rhythm, and it makes me short of breath. “What is his energy like?” I whisper.

  Violetta bites her lip in concentration. She tilts her head at Enzo’s sleeping figure. I can tell that she is reaching out toward him, testing him. She shudders. “Do you remember when we learned needlework together?” she says to me.

  Violetta had learned it faster than I did. She’d once switched our two pieces so that our father would praise mine for once. “Yes. Why?”

  “Do you remember one time when we each picked out a color of thread, then sewed a pattern together, and our two colors were so interwoven that they looked like a completely new color?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, the way Enzo’s energy is tied to yours, the link between you two . . . it feels like that.” Violetta turns her frown on me. “A new form of energy. His threads are so tangled with yours that it’s almost like you two have become one. For example, I cannot take away his power without taking yours, nor yours without his.” She hesitates. “His power feels like ice. It burns me.”

  How ironic. I return to staring at Enzo, trying to get used to the new link between us.

  “He’s not the same, you know,” Violetta adds after a while. “Don’t forget that. Don’t . . .”

  “Don’t what?” I reply.

  Violetta purses her lips. “Don’t be blinded by your old love for him,” she finishes. “It might be dangerous for you to get too caught up. I can tell.”

  I cannot sense what Violetta senses. I know I should believe her, and take her warning. Still, I can’t help staring at him, imagining him awake. When I first met Enzo, he was the Reaper, and I was tied to a stake and left to burn. He had materialized out of smoke and fire as a whirlwind of sapphire robes, a long dagger gleaming in each of his gloved hands, his face hidden behind a silver mask. Now, he looks more like he did on the night we kissed in the Fortunata Court. Vulnerable. Waves of dark hair framed by light. Not a killer, but a young prince. A sleeping boy.

  “You’re right,” I finally say to Violetta. “I promise I’ll be careful.” She doesn’t look like she believes me, but she shrugs anyway. She gets up and returns to the other side of Enzo’s bed.

  From the corner of my eye, I can see Magiano returning to hang out in the doorway. I don’t know if he heard any of what was said between us, but he keeps his eyes turned away. The song he plays sounds sharp, jolting.

  More minutes pass.

  Then, finally, Enzo shifts. My own energy twists at the same time, and I can feel our new bond turning with him. The tether is buried deep in my chest, entwined around my heart, and when he moves, his energy flares to life, feeding me as mine must feed him.

  His eyes flutter open.

  They look just like how I remember.

  He’s not the same, Violetta had said. But now he’s here. Saved somehow from the waters of the Underworld. Suddenly, all I can think is that perhaps nothing has changed at all—that we can go back to the way we once were. The thought forces a smil
e onto my face that I haven’t worn in a long time, and for a moment, I forget my mission and anger. I forget everything.

  His eyes turn to me. It takes a moment for the light of recognition to appear in them—when it does, my heart leaps. With it leaps the tether between us. The spark that the new energy gives off makes me want to draw closer to him, as close as I possibly can, anything in order to further feed this new energy.

  He tries to sit up, but winces immediately and settles back down. “What happened?” he says. A shiver runs down my spine at the deep, velvet voice that I know so well.

  Magiano lifts an eyebrow as he plucks away at his lute. “Well. This may take some explanation.” He pauses when Sergio calls out his name from the barn’s lower floor. I turn to say something to Magiano before he leaves, but he purposefully avoids my stare. I hesitate, knowing what’s bothering him, and feel guilty again. Violetta shoots me a knowing look. Then Enzo utters another groan of pain, and my attention returns to him.

  I reach for Enzo’s hand. They are both gloved, as always, and underneath the leather I know I will see the hideous layers of burned, scarred tissue. When I touch his hand, the tether sings. “What do you remember?” I ask, trying to ignore it.

  “I remember the arena.” Enzo falls silent for a moment. He stares up at the ceiling. Again, he tries to sit up—this time, he does so easily. I blink. Just a few minutes ago, he seemed as if he would take weeks to recover. Now he looks nearly ready to stand up and walk. “I remember a dark ocean and a gray sky.” He’s quiet. I imagine the Underworld as he describes it, thinking back to my nightmares. “There was a goddess, with black horns twisting out of her hair. There was a little girl walking on the ocean’s surface.” His eyes turn back to me. The link between us soars again.

  “Give me some space,” I murmur to Violetta, before fixing my gaze back on Enzo. “I have something I need to tell you.”

  Violetta tugs once on my energy. I suck in my breath. I know Violetta meant nothing by it, nothing more than a gesture to comfort me—but something about her tug feels like a threat, a reminder to me that she is now more powerful than I am. She gets up and walks out of the room.

  “Tell me what?” Enzo asks quietly.

  He looks so natural, as if he had never died at all. Perhaps the ominous things we overheard from Gemma about the dangers of bringing him back were unfounded. His energy is darker, true, a strange and tumultuous mix, but there is life under his brown skin, a glow to the bright slashes of scarlet in his eyes.

  “Teren stabbed you at the arena,” I say. “When you dueled with him.”

  Enzo waits patiently for me to continue.

  I take a deep breath, knowing what to tell him next. “There is an Elite who has the ability to bring us back from the dead. To pull us straight from the Underworld. That Elite is the Queen of Beldain.”

  The scarlet lines in his eyes glow brighter. He hesitates, then says, “You are telling me that I died. And that I was revived by an Elite.”

  Here is the moment I’ve been dreading. I made a promise to myself that if Enzo came back from the Underworld, I would have to set things right between us. And to do that, I must tell him the truth. I lower my gaze. “Yes,” I reply. Then, in the silence, I add, “It is my fault that you died.”

  Suddenly, the weight of the air in the room feels unbearable. Enzo frowns at me. “No, it’s not,” he replies.

  I shake my head and reach out to brush his hand. “It is,” I say, more firmly this time. The confession pours out of me. “In the chaos of that final battle, I mistook you for Teren. I had disguised you as him and I couldn’t tell the difference. I lashed out at you with my powers, and I brought you to your knees, thinking you were him.” My voice turns soft, meek. “I am the reason Teren was able to deliver a killing blow, Enzo. It is my fault.”

  Telling the story makes me revisit it, and revisiting it stirs my energy enough that I start to unconsciously paint the arena around us—the blood under our feet, the image of Teren standing over Enzo, his sword dripping scarlet.

  Enzo straightens. He leans forward. I forget to catch my breath as he touches my hand, returning my gesture. I search his eyes for anger and betrayal, but instead find only sadness. “I remember,” he finally says. “But our powers are dangerous, as is what we do.” He gives me a grave look, one I know well. The same look that cuts through every shield I can put up, that weakens me at the knees. Immediately I am reminded of our old training sessions together, when he surrounded me with walls of fire and then stood over me as I cried. Broken so easily, he’d said. That was the push I’d needed to keep going. “Do not blame yourself.”

  The complete lack of doubt in his voice makes my heart beat faster. Before I can respond, he looks around the room and settles on the door. “Where are the others?”

  This is the second piece of what I must tell him—the harder piece. The one that cannot be all truth. If I tell him what I did to Raffaele at the arena, if I reveal to Enzo that I had twisted an illusion of pain around Raffaele that left him unconscious on the ground, I will never be forgiven. He’ll never understand that. So instead, I tell him this. “The Daggers aren’t here. It is only me, my sister, and several Elites you may have heard of.”

  Enzo narrows his eyes. For the first time, he looks wary. “Why are the Daggers not here? Where am I?”

  “Everyone thought you were dead,” I say softly. This, at least, is the truth. “The entire country mourned you, while the Inquisition rounded up all malfettos and began a massive hunt for the Daggers.” I pause again. “Raffaele and the Daggers blamed me for your death. They cast me out,” I say. The memory of my last real conversation with Raffaele haunts me. “Raffaele thinks I helped Teren and the Inquisitors, and that I betrayed the Daggers.”

  “And did you?” Enzo’s voice is quiet, the calm before a predator’s strike. His trust in Raffaele runs so deep that he knows there must be a good reason why Raffaele cast me out. I think of the way he’d once tilted my chin up with his gloved hand, how he’d told me so firmly not to cry. That I was stronger than that. I remember the way he once pushed me against the rocky wall of the training cavern, and how, when he left, a scorched handprint remained on that wall. I tremble. This is my Enzo.

  “No,” I reply. “I wish I could convince the Daggers of that.” I sound more certain than I feel. The lies come more easily now. “I don’t know where the Daggers are now, or what they plan to do next. All I know is that they will certainly strike the palace.” I steady my trembling voice and I give Enzo a determined look. “We can still take the crown.”

  Enzo studies me for a moment. I sense him searching for buried truths in my story. His gaze wanders from the scarred side of my face, to my lips, then to my good eye. How strange that I should be the one sitting here now, and he is in bed. I think of when he had first come into my chambers on the day we officially met, how he’d smiled and asked me if I wanted to strike against the Inquisition. What does he see now?

  Can we rule together?

  The whispers in my head hiss at me. They are upset, I realize, with Enzo’s presence. There is no rightful heir to Kenettra’s throne. You deserve it, as much as anyone. I try to silence them, annoyed.

  At last, Enzo sighs and softens his gaze. “When I mentioned what I remembered from the Underworld,” he says, “I left something out.” His hand closes around mine. This time, I jump at his touch. His fingers are scalding hot, the energy underneath them overwhelming. A delicious, familiar heat rushes through me. His ability with fire churns under his skin, stronger than I remember it ever being. He leans toward me.

  “What?” I whisper, unable to turn away.

  “I saw you, Adelina,” he whispers. “Your energy wrapping around me, pulling me through the black ocean and up to the surface. I remember looking up and seeing your dark silhouette in the water, framed by the quivering glow of the moons through the ocean’s surface.”
br />   The moment when Maeve tied him to me, forever.

  “And do you remember me well?” I ask. “Do you remember all that has happened in our past?”

  “I do,” he replies. And I wonder whether he is remembering the last night we spent together, when he told me of his darkest fears, when we slept side by side for comfort.

  “I’ve missed you,” I say, my voice hoarse, and the truth in those words burns me until I’m raw. It takes me a moment to realize that my cheek is wet. “I’m sorry.”

  Enzo tightens his fingers around mine. Heat rushes from his hand and through me in a current, and for a moment, I’m helpless. The whispers’ protests fade away into nothing. The tether wraps tightly around us both, entangling us as surely as if a rope had tightened around our hearts, and I lean toward him, unable to resist the pull. This is something different altogether, the strength fueled by the history between us, the passion I once felt for him, that I still feel. Did Enzo ever love me? He must have. He looks at me now with a strange hunger in his eyes, like he can feel the pull of the tether too.

  “What is this?” he whispers. His lips are very close to mine now. “This new tie between us?”

  But I can’t think straight anymore. My energy lurches, and my passion sparks wildly out of control, fed by the strength of our connection. I had not expected this. All I know is that the tether is hungry to join its two ends together, and that it pulls us tighter and tighter together, the energy growing more and more powerful the closer we get. Violetta’s warning echoes in the back of my mind.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper back. I put one hand against his face. He doesn’t pull away. A small sound comes from his throat, and before I can do anything else, he puts a hand against the back of my neck and pulls me forward. He kisses me.