The Rose Society (The Young Elites 2)

Raffaele’s pained face.

Images flash before me of my confrontation with Raffaele. He didn’t even try to fight back. He knew he was defenseless against me alone, that his power was useless against mine. He resisted well, I have to admit, much longer than most—he can see the reality behind my games. At least, for a little while.

But I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t bear to do it. I’m not sure why. Maybe a part of me still wishes we could be friends, still remembers the sound of his voice when he sang my mother’s lullaby for me. Maybe I couldn’t bear to kill a creature as beautiful as he is.

Why do you care? the whispers sneer.

“Stay close, Messenger,” Maeve calls over her shoulder. My steps quicken. The damp edges of my robes catch on my feet, threatening to trip me. You must stay calm, I tell myself. I slow to a more dignified walk, something more befitting a high-class consort. Raffaele’s old lessons run through my mind.

We reach the center of the platform. I find myself staring numbly at the ground here. It had once been covered in Enzo’s blood, dripping a pattern on the ground from Teren’s sword, the dark stain spilling out around the prince—my prince—as he lay dying. I can still feel my hands coated with it. But the bloodstains are gone now. Rain and the churning lake have washed the stones clean again, as if no death had happened here.

He is not your prince, the whispers remind me. He never was. He was only a boy, and you’d do well to remember that.

Maeve stops in the center. She turns to face me for the first time. Her eyes are cold, and her cheeks are streaked with water. “Did he die here?” she says, gesturing to the ground beneath her boots.

Strange, how I can remember the exact spot, right down to the stones. “Yes.”

Maeve looks up and around the arena’s top row of seats. “Remember the signal,” she tells me, holding two arms up and out to her sides. “If you see any of the others give this signal, you must take me out of the arena. Do not waste your time waking me from my trance.”

I bow my head in the best imitation of Raffaele I can do. “Yes, Your Majesty,” I reply. I pause to look at both ends of the arena’s stone path. Maeve’s brothers are watching me down here too. I can see them now, barely noticeable in the night, and now and then I can see the gleam of their arrow tips fixed on me.

Maeve pulls the hood from her face. Rain soaks her hair. She takes a deep breath, almost as if she were afraid of what will happen next. She is afraid, I realize, because I can feel the fear building in her heart. In spite of everything, I recall that she has only ever brought her brother back from the dead. We are all venturing into strange territory.

“Come closer,” she commands me.

I do as she says. She gives me a long look for the first time, her eyes lingering long enough that I start to wonder whether she can see through my disguise. She pulls a knife from her belt.

Maybe she does know. And now she will kill me. I lean hesitantly away, ready to defend myself.

But Maeve instead beckons me forward again. She reaches out and grabs a lock of my soaked hair. In one deft move, she slices a length of the lock off.

“Give me your palm,” she says next.

I hold one hand out at her, palm facing up. She murmurs for me to brace myself, digs the blade into my flesh, and makes a small, deep slice. I flinch. My blood wells against her skin. The pain sparks something inside me, but I force it back down. Maeve lets my blood drip on the strands of my cut lock.

“In Beldain,” Maeve says, her voice steady and low, “when a person lies dying, we send a prayer to our patron goddess, Fortuna. We believe she goes to the Underworld as our ambassador, to speak with her sister Moritas and vouch for the life she wants to take. Holy Fortuna is the goddess of Prosperity, and Prosperity requires payment. This is what I did when I brought my brother back—a ritual prayer.” Maeve’s brows furrow in concentration. “A lock of your hair, drops of your blood. The tokens we give to bind a dead soul to a living one.”

She bends down on one knee, then presses the bloody lock against the stone. The blood smears against her fingers. She closes her eyes. I feel her energy grow, dark and pulsing. “Every life I pull back to the surface takes a piece of my own life,” she mutters. “A few lost threads of my own energy.” She turns her eyes up at me. “It will take a piece of yours too.”

I swallow. “So be it.”

She falls silent. All around us, the storm rages on, whipping at Maeve’s cloak and throwing fresh rain into my eye. I squint against it. Up on the arena’s top row, a silhouette with curls of hair turns toward us. The Windwalker, perhaps? She makes a subtle gesture, and a moment later, the wind around us dies down, pushed back by a funnel of wind that shields us in its center. The storm’s gusts rage in vain against the Windwalker’s shield. Maeve’s cloak drapes back down behind her, soaking in the rain, and I wipe water from my face.

Maeve bows her head. She stays still for a long moment. As I watch, a faint blue light starts to glow from under the edges of her hand. I can barely see it at first. But then the light begins to pulse, growing in strength from a faint, narrow outline to a soft glow that stretches all around her hand. Overhead, a streak of lightning brings with it an instant clap of thunder. It echoes around the arena.

A surge of fear emanates from Maeve now. I feel the change like water to a parched man, as intense as the storm. In order to reach the Underworld, one must gain the permission of she who walks the Underworld’s surface, Formidite, the angel of Fear, the same deity I’ve seen before in my nightmares. Somehow, I know that Maeve must be at that surface now, seeking a way in.