to listen to me.” She gives him a look that borders on pity. “But you were always an abomination. You always knew, Master Santoro, that this could never last.”
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Teren snaps, pointing in Raffaele’s direction. “He has hypnotized you. It is his power, don’t you understand?”
Giulietta’s eyes harden at that. “Do you insult me?”
Teren swallows, then continues, “It’s true that I am unworthy of you. But you forgave my abomination in return for my loyalty—and I will carry that loyalty with me to my grave. Please, Giulietta—”
Giulietta holds up a hand, and the Inquisitors behind her tighten their grips on their crossbows. Teren stands with his shoulders hunched. “You have until tomorrow night to leave Estenzia. This is a command. Do this, Teren, if you truly love me.”
Tears well in Teren’s eyes. Raffaele grimaces, feeling the Inquisitor’s dark energy twist in the familiar pain of heartbreak. “Giulietta …,” Teren whispers, but he says it this time in defeat.
Finally, he bows his head. He falls to one knee before her. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he says. He stays there until Giulietta dismisses him, and then he storms out. His cloak remains on the floor.
Giulietta watches him go for a moment before she turns back to Raffaele. “Go,” she says. “Gather your Daggers. Remember that if you go back on your word, I will make sure the malfettos suffer for it.”
Raffaele gives her a bow. The capital weakens. We close in. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Sometimes, love can bloom like the tiny flower hidden in the tree’s shadow, found only by those who know where to look.
—The Courting of a Prince of Beldain, by Callum Kent
Adelina Amouteru
Enzo died in the capital’s arena. That is where the Daggers will go to revive him, and so that is where I now go with my Roses.
Violetta and I wait in the shadows of the arena’s lowest pits, where the underground tunnels let baliras into and out of the arena’s center lake. Here, where enormous wooden gates and levers cast strange shadows down the tunnel, we can hear little more than the hollow churning of water and the occasional squeaking of rats. Sergio and Magiano stay elsewhere in the arena, on alert for any signs of approaching Daggers. A full day and night pass. Lightning forks over the sky, and the storm continues on, raging relentlessly in a tirade that Sergio doesn’t have the ability to stop.
On the second night, Magiano drops in and shakes water out of his hair before he sits down beside us with a sigh. “Not yet,” he mutters, tearing into a wet piece of bread and cheese.
“What if the Daggers don’t come?” Violetta whispers to me as she blows her warm breath against her hands.
I don’t answer right away. What if they don’t? They are already late, according to the plans we’d overheard from Gemma. Perhaps Raffaele failed in his mission at the palace, and the queen had him executed. Perhaps the Daggers were captured. But then we would have heard something, I’m sure of it—news like that would never stay secret for long. “They’ll come,” I whisper back. I untie my cloak, drape it around both of us, and we gather it around ourselves as tightly as we can. My toes feel cold and damp inside my boots.
I wish you were here, Enzo, I add to myself. A memory returns of the heat his touch could bring, the warmth that he could send bubbling through me on a cold night. I shiver. Soon, he will be back. Can I bear that?
Magiano sighs loudly and leans back against the canal wall. He sits close enough to me that I can feel the warmth coming off his body, and I find myself savoring it. “Sergio says you have more mercenaries gathering behind you. Why don’t we retreat to somewhere outside of Estenzia and mobilize whatever allies you’ve gathered? Then we can figure out a way to strike at Teren and the queen when they least expect it.” He gives me a wry look. “Do we really need to be here?”
I huddle deeper into my cloak so that Magiano can’t see me blushing. He has been uncharacteristically moody today. “Enzo is an Elite,” I say to Magiano, something I’ve repeated several times in the last day.
“Yes. And also the former leader of the Daggers. How do you know this will work? What if something goes wrong?”
A part of me wonders whether he is acting like this because of what Enzo used to mean