The Young Elites (The Young Elites 1)

I have a vague recollection of us leaving the balira’s back, and of my changing surroundings. Evening light slants through tree canopies, and fireflies dance in the darkness. Occasionally, I glimpse a rolling hill, a gentle valley full of deepening green. The gates of an estate. The outskirts of Estenzia?

A wave of nausea hits me, and I close my eye again. Sleep threatens to pull me under.

The next time I come to, I’m lying in a twilit bedchamber, the air blue and waning, turning into night. For an instant, I think I’ve gone back in time—I’ve returned to the moment when the Daggers first saved me and took me to the Fortunata Court. It even looks like the same chamber. If I wait long enough, I’ll see the maid come in and smile at me, and Enzo will follow in her wake, his dark eyes pensive and wary, lit with slashes of scarlet. He will lean forward and ask me if I want to hurt those who have wronged me.

Slowly, the chamber shifts until it looks like an unfamiliar room. My illusions are happening spontaneously again. It takes me a long moment to realize that this is not the Fortunata Court, but some strange estate I’ve never been in, and that I’m not alone at all, but surrounded by the Daggers. I groan, then turn to look at the person sitting closest to me.

The instant I move, everyone backs cautiously away. Blades appear in their hands. I freeze. Their gesture sends a brief course of excitement through me, their fear stimulating my energy. Then the feeling vanishes, replaced with a sharp pain. My former friends. They’re afraid of me.

The person sitting closest to me is Raffaele. He is the only one who doesn’t jump away. His bruises and injuries are still prominent, his cheekbone blue and purple, his lip marred by a thin cut. Scars circle his neck. When Gemma approaches to pull him away from me, though, he holds up a hand and wordlessly stops her. She backs away. I look at them all silently.

“Where’s my sister?” I finally whisper. My first words.

“Resting.” Raffaele nods once at me when he sees my alarmed expression. “She’s well.”

The divide between me and the other Daggers is thick in the air. I realize through the fog in my head that they still aren’t sure what role I played in Enzo’s death. The words make me wince. My energy stirs, and Raffaele tightens his jaw.

“You killed Dante, didn’t you?” Lucent says. Her voice holds none of the wry amusement that I remember, none of the reluctant friendship and trust that I’d started to earn from her. Now there’s nothing but anger, held back only in deference to Raffaele. I’ve lost her completely. “How’d you do it?”

I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. I had indeed killed Dante. I did it by twisting his pain illusions so severely that his heart bled. My silence is all that Lucent needs—her lips tighten, and a veil of fear and unease blankets the room.

“It was an accident,” I choke out. The only thing I seem able to say, apparently.

“Were you working with Teren?” Lucent snaps. “Is that where you disappeared to when you ran away? Did you go off to see the Inquisition? Did you make some sort of pact with them?” Her voice rises. “He thanked you over Enzo’s body. You—”

“No! I can explain.” The thought makes the anger rise in me, and my illusions threaten to veer out of control again. I clamp down on them in time. But the gesture makes Raffaele turn concerned eyes on me. Gemma studies me while chewing her lip. Fear comes off her too. My heart twists. “I would never. It was an accident. I swear to the gods.”

“Well, Raffaele?” Michel says, cutting through the silence that follows. “What do we do with her now?”

The way Michel addresses Raffaele and the way Gemma obeyed Raffaele’s simple hand gesture tell me that the Daggers have anointed a new leader. Raffaele shakes his head at me once. His eyes are heavy with sadness. “You said you could explain,” he says. “So tell us what happened.”

I start to tell Raffaele about how I’d cloaked Enzo in invisibility, but he stops me with a subtle hand. “No,” he says. His voice turns firm. “Tell us what happened, from the beginning.”

My lips tremble. The truth. I hesitate, as always.

But then I crumble. In a stammering voice, I finally do.

I tell Raffaele about the evening at the Fortunata Court, when I first saw him perform. I tell him how Teren came to me in the audience and threatened me with my sister’s life. I tell him how I took advantage of the qualifying races to go to Teren and tell him about the Tournament of Storms. I tell him how Teren found me again during the Spring Moons, and how I overheard Enzo and Dante’s conversation about me. How I fled to the Inquisition Tower to free my sister. How I killed Dante in a dark alley. The release of all of my lies and secrets is a relief, exhausting me. I tell them how Teren lunged for me in the arena, how I threw up my hands in defense and conjured an illusion of indescribable pain on him. How I realized I was not attacking Teren at all, but Enzo.

My voice falters here. The retelling leaves my heart so pained that I can barely breathe, and in my sorrow I see a ghost of Enzo flickering in and out of the room, his dark eyes turned toward me, his expression haunting. I can feel the suspicion emanating from everyone, their unspoken thought that I am responsible for what had happened. That I am a monster.

I am so sorry. So very sorry.

Perhaps Teren had always known that I would do something like this.

When I finish, they are quiet. Lucent stares at me with an expression both disgusted and frightened. Gemma has retreated behind her, and Michel looks ready to stop me in case I try to hurt them here. I know what they’re thinking, even though they don’t say it out loud. They want me dead. It would make them all feel much better. A thick, dark anger begins to build inside me. I claw for it. More fog lifts from my mind. I feel sparks of strength growing in me, pushing past the weakness of my blood loss and grief.