We are mistakes.
“Now, Adelina,” he says, soft and coaxing. “Tell me.”
I want to—oh, how I want to—in this moment. Teren can offer Violetta and me such an easy life if I only give him what he wants. The Daggers’ plans are ruined anyway, aren’t they? The king has died of his own accord. I have no reason to stay loyal to them anymore. I open my mouth. Dante’s words are fresh in my mind, and a surge of bitterness rises in me, eager for release. I could destroy them all right now, with just a few choice words.
But the words still don’t come. I am thinking instead of Enzo’s gentle expression, of Gemma’s quick smile. Lucent’s casual friendship, Michel’s art lessons. I am thinking of Raffaele most of all, with his patience and grace, his kind, calm faithfulness that has earned my trust. If he had been at the court tonight, I might have confided in him. He would have helped me. Things could have gone differently if he were there. I have something when I’m with the Daggers, something beyond an unwritten business contract to do what they tell me.
Some spark of clarity emerges through the net Teren’s words have cast over me, a trickle of logic that brings me out of the fog. He says the Daggers are using me. But he is using me too. This is the real reason why I cannot seem to give him what he wants. It is not so much that I am protecting the Daggers.
It is that I am tired of being used.
Teren sighs, then shakes his head. He nods at one of his men. The Inquisitor draws his sword and moves toward Violetta.
I glance at my sister. She realizes I’m about to make a move. I gather my strength. Then I reach out and pull.
A sheet of invisibility shoots up around me, mimicking the wall behind me and the floor beneath my feet. I weave the same around my sister. To the naked eye, it seems as if my sister had suddenly been replaced by empty space.
For the first time, Teren looks surprised. “You’ve improved,” he snaps. He draws his sword, then shouts at the other Inquisitors, “Enough of this. Find her.”
They start in my general direction, but I’m already on the move. I pull again, wrapping each one of them in a vision of nightmares—shrieking demons, their piercing wails the sound of metal ripping against metal, their mouths pulled all the way back. Several Inquisitors fall to their knees, their hands pressed over their faces and ears. Their terror makes me gasp. It feels so good.
Teren and I reach my sister at the same time. He gropes blindly, grabbing at her arm. He yanks her to him and presses his sword against her throat. “Don’t,” he shouts to the air. Even through his anger, he seems to see something in me that fascinates him. I turn my concentration onto him, then seek out his senses, aiming to drown him in illusions with his men.
I hit a wall.
I’ve never felt this in anyone else before—like a block of ice, something hard and impenetrable that shields his energy from my own. I grit my teeth and push harder, but his own energy pushes back. A smile spreads across his face as he senses me struggling. I’d witnessed how Enzo’s fire barely affected him, and heard Enzo talk about how Teren cannot be injured like a normal person. Now, for the first time, I’m feeling it for myself.
“Try that again, and I’ll cut her,” he says.
Violetta squeezes her eyes shut. She takes a deep breath.
And the strangest thing happens. Teren stops cold in the middle of his attack. He shudders. I feel the wall of ice shielding his energy from me crack—then shatter. He lets out a terrible gasp, releases Violetta, and falls to his knees. Suddenly, just like that, I see his energy threads, his fear and his darkness, the threads that tie to his senses that I can now seek out and twist like I did to the others. What happened?
Someone tampered with his abilities.
I glance at Violetta, stunned. She returns my stricken look. That’s when I know. I know it immediately.
My sister is an Elite.
And she just took away Teren’s powers.
While my illusion holds, I hurry over to him and yank the key from around his neck. Then I rush over to my sister and remove her invisibility for a moment. She’s shaking all over, a sheen of sweat on her delicate brow, and her eyes stay fixed on Teren as he crouches on the ground. My trembling fingers attempt to position the key at her iron cuffs. I wince as I force my one crooked finger to work with the others. Gods help me, but I’m so exhausted. I hadn’t even realized how much of my energy I’d used, but now I feel it weighing me down. My fear is the only thing that keeps me going.
Finally, Violetta’s chains fall away and she springs to her feet. She swings one of my arms over her shoulder, steadying me, and together we make for the door. I strengthen our invisibility. I pause right before the door, then glance at Teren over my shoulder. He grins; the wall of ice around him is gradually piecing itself back together.
“Adelina,” he exclaims. “You constantly surprise me.” He laughs again, the sound of a madman. We stagger out into the corridor as Teren shouts for more guards.
We climb the steps in silence, our breaths turning into hoarse gasps. My energy weakens—even my own fear isn’t enough to keep the illusion going. Our invisibility flickers in and out. Inquisitors dash past us. I try to save my strength for when they near us. But by the time we’ve reached the main level of the tower, we appear as ripples moving against the walls.
“Hang on, Adelina,” my sister coaxes. We hurry onto the street and into chaos.
Shattered glass everywhere. Screams in the night. More Inquisitors than I’ve ever seen in my entire life, swarming the streets and dragging malfettos out of their homes—still in their nightgowns—and into the square, beating them senseless, clamping chains on them. I stumble to a halt in a nearby alley. There, I finally release the last of my energy and slide down the wall into a fetal position. Violetta collapses beside me. Together, we look on in horror at the scene unfolding before us. One Inquisitor runs a sword straight through the body of a young malfetto woman with a streak of gold in her black hair. She lets out a broken shriek—her blood spills onto the cobblestones. Cries ring out across the square.