The thought of Enzo returning.
Raffaele pauses again, steadying himself against the wet walls, and closes his eyes. Again, he thinks of the calm surface. He stills, then continues on.
Finally, he reaches a spot in the darkness where the tunnel ends in a wall. Beyond it is an overwhelming pressure, the unmistakable energy of countless drops of water all tied to one another, the lake in the center of the Estenzian arena. Raffaele pauses, then heads back several paces until he finds an uneven set of stones, the hands of Moritas posted at the end of every catacomb path, and then the tiny, winding steps beside them that lead up to the surface.
He emerges into the dark recesses of the arena’s enormous canals, but after so long in complete blackness, the night almost seems bright. The sounds of the storm are suddenly deafening again. Raffaele gathers his soaked cloak tighter, then walks on silent feet up the canal’s steps to the surface.
He is alone here. The other Daggers are nowhere in sight. He folds his hands into the sleeves of his cloak, shivers, and reaches out with his energy to sense whether or not other Elites are close.
Then, he frowns. Something stirs in the air, strings pulled taut.
They are here. At least, someone is.
The energy draws closer. It is a dark, familiar energy, and Raffaele finds himself resisting the urge to pull away from it. He had cringed when he first felt Maeve’s energy on the day he met her, had shuddered at the connection she drew to the Underworld. He looks down the arena’s dark tunnels that lead to the center’s lake, then out into the storm. She must have just arrived. Now Raffaele can hear footsteps. They are faint and light, the steps of someone slender. He turns all the way to face the approaching energy, then folds his hands before him. The footsteps echo faintly down the tunnel. Gradually, he makes out the silhouette of a figure approaching him. The energy grows stronger. Now he can tell that the figure is indeed a girl.
She stops a few feet away from him. Along with the scent of rain, he also detects the copper smell of blood. Raffaele eyes her warily. In the darkness, he can’t quite make out her face. Her energy is strange, too, familiar in its darkness. Too familiar. It is the unmistakable alignment to the Underworld, to Fear and Fury, to Death.
“Are you hurt, Your Majesty?” he says in a low voice. “Did anyone follow you?” If Maeve was injured in the process of getting here, she might not have the strength to pull Enzo from the Underworld. Worse, she might have been attacked by an Inquisitor, and word of her presence here has leaked out. Where are the other Daggers?
But Maeve doesn’t say a word. She reaches up to her hood, lifts it, and pulls it back. The shadows disappear from her face.
Raffaele freezes.
The girl is not Maeve. She has a scarred half of her face where her eye should have been. Her lashes are pale, and the locks of her hair are bright silver tonight, cut short and scraggly. She stares at Raffaele with a bitter smile. For a moment, it seems as if she were glad to see him. Then the emotion disappears, replaced with something wicked. She holds a hand out toward him, weaves a web of threads around him, and twists hard.
“I’m sorry, Raffaele,” Adelina says.
Once every ten years, the three moons all fall under the world’s shadow and turn scarlet, bleeding with the blood of our fallen warriors.
—The New Atlas to the Moons, by Liu Xue You
Adelina Amouteru
There are no moons tonight to fill the Estenzian arena with silver light. Instead, the lake in the arena’s center, fed by canals, is black and churning with the storm’s fury.
The last time I stood in this arena, I was a spectator in the audience, looking on as Enzo stepped forward to challenge Teren to a duel. They fought here. And it ended with me hovering over Enzo’s dying body, sobbing, trying over and over again to hurt Teren in any way I could.
Now the arena is empty. No cheering crowds in this midnight storm. The Kenettran flags up above flap frantically in the wind—several of them have been ripped completely away by the force of the rain. And I am here not as myself, but as Raffaele.
The expression of agony on his face.
The sweat beading his brow.
His anguished cry, erased by the storm’s thunder.
The whispers echo in my mind, delighted at what I’ve done.
I follow Maeve along the stone path. Water crashes against either side of the walkway, soaking the hems of my robes. My heart pounds furiously—the energy of the storm is full of darkness, and when I look up, I can almost see the weave of threads glittering between the clouds, connecting the rain to the black sky, the threat of approaching lightning. Somewhere in the arena, Sergio and Magiano are poised to strike. From down in the arena’s lake come the occasional, muffled calls of baliras. An enormous, fleshy head emerges from the churning water for a moment, then goes under again, as if the creatures of the Underworld have come to watch us too.
Maeve doesn’t look back at me, which is just as well. A gust of wind blows the hood of her cloak back, revealing black and gold hair before she pulls the hood back on again. I admire her marking. In fact, I’ve done nothing but obsess over her energy. She is the first Elite I can actually sense—there is a darkness in her power that reminds me of myself, something deep and black, connecting her to the world of the dead. I wonder whether she ever has nightmares about the Underworld in the way that I do.
The feeling of being watched hits me, and the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I remind myself to stay focused on my disguise. Even though I can’t see them, the other Daggers must be scattered around the arena, watching, along with anyone else who came with Maeve. So far, no one has raised an alarm over my appearance.