The Young Elites - Marie Lu

Also by Marie Lu

LEGEND

PRODIGY

CHAMPION

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

978-0-698-17172-5

Version_1

To my aunt, Yang Lin, for all that you do

Contents

Also by Marie Lu

Title Page

Dedication

Map

Epigraph

13 JUNO, 1361

Adelina Amouteru

Enzo Valenciano

Adelina Amouteru

CITY OF ESTENZIA

Adelina Amouteru

Teren Santoro

Adelina Amouteru

Raffaele Laurent Bessette

Adelina Amouteru

Teren Santoro

Adelina Amouteru

Teren Santoro

Adelina Amouteru

Teren Santoro

Adelina Amouteru

Raffaele Laurent Bessette

Adelina Amouteru

Teren Santoro

Adelina Amouteru

Teren Santoro

Adelina Amouteru

EPILOGUE

Maeve Jacqueline Kelly Corrigan

Acknowledgments

Four hundred have died here. I pray that yours are faring better. The city has canceled celebrations of the Spring Moons on quarantine orders, and the typical masquerades have become as scarce as the meat and eggs.

Most of the children in our ward are emerging from their illness with rather peculiar side effects. One young girl’s hair turned from gold to black overnight. A six-year-old boy has scars running down his face without ever having been touched. The other doctors are quite terrified. Please let me know if you see a similar trend, sir. I sense something unusual shifting in the wind, and am most anxious to study this effect.

Letter from Dtt. Siriano Baglio to Dtt. Marino Di Segna

31 Abrie, 1348

Southeastern districts of Dalia, Kenettra

13 JUNO, 1361

City of Dalia

Southern Kenettra

The Sealands

Some hate us, think us outlaws to hang at the gallows.

Some fear us, think us demons to burn at the stake.

Some worship us, think us children of the gods.

But all know us.

—Unknown source on the Young Elites

Adelina Amouteru

I’m going to die tomorrow morning.

That’s what the Inquisitors tell me, anyway, when they visit my cell. I’ve been in here for weeks—I know this only because I’ve been counting the number of times my meals come.

One day. Two days.

Four days. A week.

Two weeks.

Three.

I stopped counting after that. The hours run together, an endless train of nothingness, filled with different slants of light and the shiver of cold, wet stone, the pieces of my sanity, the disjointed whispers of my thoughts.

But tomorrow, my time ends. They’re going to burn me at the stake in the central market square, for all to see. The Inquisitors tell me a crowd has already begun to gather outside.

I sit straight, the way I was always taught. My shoulders don’t touch the wall. It takes me a while to realize that I’m rocking back and forth, perhaps to stay sane, perhaps just to keep warm. I hum an old lullaby too, one my mother used to sing to me when I was very little. I do my best to imitate her voice, a sweet and delicate sound, but my notes come out cracked and hoarse, nothing like what I remember. I stop trying.

It’s so damp down here. Water trickles from above my door and has painted a groove into the stone wall, discolored green and black with grime. My hair is matted, and my nails are caked with blood and dirt. I want to scrub them clean. Is it strange that all I can think about on my last day is how filthy I am? If my little sister were here, she’d murmur something reassuring and soak my hands in warm water.

I can’t stop wondering if she’s okay. She hasn’t come to see me.

I lower my head into my hands. How did I end up like this?

But I know how, of course. It’s because I’m a murderer.

It happened several weeks earlier, on a stormy night at my father’s villa. I couldn’t sleep. Rain fell and lightning reflected off the window of my bedchamber. But even the storm couldn’t drown out the conversation from downstairs. My father and his guest were talking about me, of course. My father’s late-night conversations were always about me.

I was the talk of my family’s eastern Dalia district. Adelina Amouteru? they all said. Oh, she’s one of those who survived the fever a decade ago. Poor thing. Her father will have a hard time marrying her off.

No one meant because

The Young Elites - Marie Lu

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