in the air—mist from the ocean, ice crystals high in the sky. It requires so much concentration.”
I smile as I watch Violetta. She has grown more sensitive to the energy of others, to the point where Raffaele would have been proud of her. She will be a powerful weapon against the Daggers when we meet them again.
I’m about to ask her to explain how she has managed to figure out so much about Sergio’s powers, but then Sergio stirs for a moment, and his movement prompts Violetta to get up and hurry back over to him. She asks him something else I can’t hear, and he laughs softly.
It takes me a moment to notice Magiano watching me. He leans back on his elbows, then tilts his head curiously at me. “How did you get your marking?” he asks.
Familiar shields go up over my heart. “The blood fever infected my eye,” I reply. That’s all I want to say. My gaze goes to his eyes, the pupils now round and large in the darkness. “Do you see differently when your eyes slit?”
“They sharpen,” Magiano says. Right after the words come out of his mouth, he contracts his pupils, giving them their catlike appearance. He hesitates. “That’s not my main marking, though.”
I turn my body to face him. “What is your main marking?”
Magiano looks at me, then leans forward and starts to pull up his shirt. Underneath the coarse white linen is smooth, brown skin, the lean lines of his stomach and back. My cheeks start to redden. The shirt slides higher, revealing all of his back. I gasp.
There it is. It’s a mass of red and white flesh, scarred and raised, that covers almost his entire back. Rough ridges outline the mark. I stare at it with my mouth open. It looks like a wound that should have been fatal, something that never healed right.
“It was a large, red, flat marking,” Magiano says. “The priests tried to remove it by peeling off the skin. But of course that didn’t work.” He smiles bitterly. “They only replaced one marking with another.”
Priests. Did Magiano grow up as an apprentice in the temples? I cringe at the thought of them cutting into his flesh, tearing it back. At the same time, the whispers stir, drawn to such a painful image. “I’m glad it healed,” I manage to say.
Magiano tugs his shirt down and goes back to his leaning posture. “It never really heals,” he replies. “Sometimes it breaks open.”
The shields on my heart start to lower. When I look back up at him, he is staring at me. “What brought you into this life?” I ask. “Why did you become … well … Magiano?”
Magiano tilts his head to the stars. He shrugs. “Why did you become the White Wolf?” he says, tossing the question back at me. Then, he sighs. “In the Sunland nations, malfettos are seen as links to the gods. This doesn’t mean anyone worships us—it only means that the temples like to keep malfetto orphans in their care, believing that their presence will help them speak to the gods.” He lowers his voice. “They also liked keeping us hungry. It’s the same reason why a nobleman might keep his tigers on a lean diet, see? If we’re hungry, we’re alert, and if we’re alert, we are a better link to the gods. I was always hunting for food in that temple, my love. One day, the priests caught me stealing food that was meant to be offerings to the gods. So they punished me. You can bet I ran away after that.” He gestures at his back, then grins at me. “I hope the gods forgave me.”
His story is so familiar. I shake my head. “You should have burned that temple to the ground,” I say bitterly.
Magiano gives me a surprised look, then shrugs again. “What good would it have done?” he says.
I don’t argue, but silently, I think, It would have warned them all of what happens when you defy the children of the gods. I shift, drawing an idle line in the dirt near my boots. “We must have different alignments,” I mutter, “to think such opposite thoughts.”
Magiano tilts his head again. “Alignments?”
I wave a hand in the dirt to ruin the line I’d drawn. “Oh, it’s just something that Raffaele used to talk about,” I reply, irritated with myself for thinking of the Daggers again. “He studies the energy of every Elite he comes across. He believes that