The Young Elites (The Young Elites 1)

“How could you keep that a secret from me?” My voice is raspy with anger. “How could you let me suffer alone?”

“Because I was afraid too,” Violetta shoots back. “I didn’t want to encourage you, and I knew how things would go for me if Father knew about my powers. You had your ways of protecting yourself. I had mine.”

All of a sudden, I understand my sister better. I always thought of her as the sweet, naïve one. But perhaps she wore her sweetness and naïvety as a shield. Perhaps she always knew exactly what she was doing. Unlike me, who pushed people away, she protected herself by making people like her. When people like you, they treat you well. So she stayed quiet at my expense.

“I saw how Father treated you,” she says in a small voice. Another pause. “I was afraid, Adelina. Father seemed to love me . . . so how could I tell him? Sometimes I imagined myself saying, ‘Father, I am a malfetto. I have powers that don’t belong in this world, because I can give and take away Adelina’s powers.’ I was a child, and I was terrified. I didn’t want to lose him. So I convinced myself that I wasn’t like that, that my lack of markings made me better. How could I tell you? You would have wanted to experiment, and Father might’ve discovered us both.”

“You left me to fend for myself,” I whisper.

She can’t look at me. “I’m sorry, Adelina.”

Sorry, always sorry. What in the world can you buy with an apology?

I close my eye and bow my head. Darkness swirls inside me, washing at the shores of my consciousness, hungry for release. All those years, I’d suffered alone, looking on as our father lavished attention on the one daughter he thought was pure and untainted, suffering his tantrums by myself, thinking my sister was unlike me, that she was pristine. And she had let it go on.

“I’m glad you killed him,” she adds quietly. There is something hard about her expression now. “Father, I mean. I’m glad you did it.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I never thought I would hear such a thing from my sister’s lips. It is this that softens the tight knot in my chest. I try to remember that she went to Teren to beg for my life. That she risked everything. I try to remember the way she used to braid my hair, the way she’d sleep in my chambers during a thunderstorm.

I can only nod.

The sound of commotion in the streets above us breaks through my thoughts. The bells at the Inquisition Tower are tolling. Teren must be getting ready to deliver a speech. We both listen for a while, trying to catch words from aboveground, but we can’t hear anything properly. Only the bells and the sounds of hundreds of muffled footsteps.

“Something big is happening,” I say. Then I motion for us to get up. We have to get to higher ground if we want to find out what’s going on. “This way.”

I lead us farther down the catacomb tunnel, until it branches off into three narrow corridors. I pick the left one. When we’ve walked fifteen paces, I stop and search for the small door embedded into the stone. My hand finds the rough gem in the wood. My energy activates it, and the door opens. We make our way up a tiny flight of stairs, until finally we find ourselves emerging through the wall that borders a dark alley at the edge of the main market square. We wander until the alley meets a side street, then peer out from the shadows at where the main square begins.

The square is crowded with people. Inquisitors line the streets, funneling the people down, and in the canals, gondolas sit idle. No water traffic allowed this morning.

“What’s happening?” Violetta asks.

“I don’t know,” I reply as I look from the crowd to the Inquisitors. We’ll have to wait—with my powers sapped, we can’t be out in the open with so many people around and risk being recognized by a guard. I hold my breath as a group of Inquisitors march past our narrow street. My back is pressed so hard against the wall that I feel like I can melt into it.

They pass by without noticing us. I let out my breath again.

I grab Violetta’s hand and pull us through the shadows. We make our way forward, slowly and laboriously, through winding streets until we finally reach the space where the main square opens up. Here, we crouch in the shadows of a canal bridge entrance and look on as more people file into the square.

The space is crowded this morning, as if it were a market day, but the people are all eerily quiet, waiting in fearful anticipation for an announcement from the Inquisition Tower. My eye wanders up to the rooftops, where statues of the gods line the ledges. They are crowded with Inquisitors today, but even now—somehow, hidden behind tile and chimney, the Daggers must be waiting in silence.

I’m still weak, but the square’s energy crackles with fear, vibrant and dark, and it feeds me.

A faint flicker of movement appears on the Inquisition Tower’s main balcony. A flash of gold robes flanked by white, the glimmer of a leader walking among his men. I tense. Moments later, Teren appears.

He wears formal robes, a shining coat of white armor under a flowing robe of swirling white and gold patterns. A heavy cloak is pinned over his shoulders and drapes behind him in a long train. The slant of morning light hits the balcony just right—a part of the palace’s intentional design—and illuminates him in brightness.

Then I notice that he brought a prisoner with him. “Oh,” I breathe, my heart seizing.

Two Inquisitors appear, dragging between them a boy with long dark hair, his slender frame weighed down with chains, his head tilted high as Teren now presses a sword against his throat. The boy’s rich scarlet robes are torn and dirty. His face is solemn, but I recognize him immediately.