Teren’s fury lurches higher. The whispers in my head grow and grow, until they are deafening.
Your revenge your revenge your revenge.
Do it, now.
I reach for Giulietta, and I start to weave.
Suddenly, Teren pauses. His eyes widen. They focus on something in Giulietta’s hair … a wide, shining lock of red and gold, prominent against the rest of her dark strands. Teren frowns, confused. In the midst of his rage, swirling in the storm of illusions I’ve created around him, he cannot tell that this is an illusion I’ve just created.
I smile. Look, Teren. Why, how did you miss this marking on her, after all these years?
His eyes dart back to Giulietta’s. “You,” he whispers, blinded by my illusion. “You have a marking?”
“A marking?” Giulietta’s expression shifts for a moment in confusion.
Teren’s focus returns to the unnatural color in her hair. I conjure whispers in Teren’s ears, and they speak to him of betrayal. “You’ve hidden it from me, all this time,” he mutters. “Covered by an apothecarist’s work, hidden by black powder. A marking. I know it.”
“What are you talking about?” Giulietta’s anger is bitterly dark now, a rising tempest. “You have lost your mind, Master Santoro.”
“You are no pure royal. You were tainted by the blood fever, like your brother.” His mouth curls into an ugly sneer. His eyes are glazed, delirious with the illusions I’ve woven around him, and he can focus on nothing but the false marking I’ve painted into Giulietta’s hair. “You are an abomination, a filthy malfetto, just like me. And I gave you my love. And you fooled me.”
“Enough,” Giulietta snaps. She looks again to her Inquisitors and draws herself up to her full height. “This is an order. Seize him.”
Still, the Inquisitors don’t move. Teren stares at Giulietta as if his heart were icing over. “Now I know why you always had such sympathy for those damn malfetto slaves,” he chokes out hoarsely. “Asking for them to be properly fed. Asking for them to return to their homes.” His voice trembles with rage now. “Now I know why you give yourself away to other abominations.”
“You are a madman,” Giulietta says. I shiver at how her voice reminds me of Enzo’s. “You cannot tell sympathy apart from strategy.”
Teren shakes his head. “You cannot be a pure-blooded queen chosen by the gods.” He holds out a gloved hand and gestures at the Inquisitors. They shift their crossbows from Teren to the queen.
Giulietta narrows her eyes at Teren as she takes a step back. “What have you done to my men?” she demands.
“They are my men,” Teren says. “They have always been mine. Not yours.” He raises his voice. “You are under arrest, for corrupting the crown.”
My powers surge out of control. The world turns black, then scarlet. The whispers claw to the surface, seizing my mind. I feel my rage and fear surge forward in unison. Giulietta lets out a strangled cry as the pain in her wrist spreads to the rest of her arm, then to her entire body. At the same time, I wrap my illusions harder around Teren, caressing his subconscious thoughts, reminding him of everything Giulietta has done to betray him.
Look, Teren. She is a malfetto queen. You cannot let this go on. The whispers turn into a roar in his ears. End this now.
End this. End this!
Teren draws his blade. His eyes pulse with madness, hypnotized. He steps toward Giulietta. She backs away, puts her hands out in defense, calls his name, calls once again for her traitorous Inquisitors to listen to her—but it is too late. Teren seizes her by the arm, pulls her toward him, and stabs her straight through the heart.
“Now, are you happy? Have you finally achieved all you set out to do? What will you do next, little assassin, with no one left to see you?”
—One Thousand Journeys of Al Akhar, various authors
Adelina Amouteru
I flinch, even though I knew it was coming. The whispers in my head burst into delight.
Teren grits his teeth and plunges the sword deeper into her chest. My threads of energy tighten around him, blinding him, continuing to feed his frenzy. I’m not sure whether I’m even controlling my energy anymore. “I do this for Kenettra,” he says through clenched teeth. Tears stream down his face. “I cannot let you rule like this.”
Giulietta clings tightly to him. Her knuckles turn white, the color of his cloak that she clutches in her fist—and then, gradually, she starts to slip, sliding toward the floor like a flower meeting the frost. Teren keeps his arms wrapped around her. He lowers her gently, until she crumples to her knees beneath him, blood soaking her traveling cloak.
Only then do I unravel the illusion I’d woven into Giulietta’s hair. The red-gold lock shifts back to dark brown. I pull back the curtain I’d woven over Teren’s eyes. The throne room comes back into clear focus for him—gone are the images I’d painted of Giulietta with Raffaele¸ of Giulietta pardoning the malfettos. I pull all of it back, leaving Teren alone with his thoughts again.
Teren breathes hard. He blinks twice, then shakes his head as the fog clears. He seems suddenly unsure of himself. He stares at the darkness of Giulietta’s hair, as if finally regaining some semblance of his sanity. I feel his energy shift violently from one extreme to another, his hatred and grief transforming into rage, and then fear. Sheer terror.
He finally realizes who it is that trembles on his blade, bleeding and dying.
Teren looks sharply at her. “Giulietta?” he says. Then he lets out a wrenching cry. “Giulietta.”