The Midnight Star (The Young Elites #3)(28)

As it does, a wave of ocean water soaks my legs. I suck in my breath.

Sergio had mentioned earlier that something in the water seemed to be making the baliras sick. Now I know what he means. The ocean feels wrong. There is a poisonous presence here, a darkness that seems at once familiar and sickening. I shiver at the feeling and frown, trying to pinpoint what it is. I have sensed this darkness before in my nightmares. I know it. The whispers in my head stir, excited.

My thoughts scatter as the tether between Enzo and me suddenly pulls taut. I gasp. At the same time, Magiano yanks back on the balira’s harness and launches us into the sky. He veers us sharply to the right, one of his arms locked tightly around my waist. I’m about to cry out when a burst of fire hits the space where we had been just a moment ago.

Enzo appears in the sky a short distance from us. His dark hair whips back from the wind and rain, soaked through, and I’m reminded instantly of the last battle between us, when I’d stared into the void of his eyes. My heart aches, even as I find myself hating him. I gasp again as his power pushes hard against mine, digging its claws in. The whispers snap at the threads as they threaten to turn me into a puppet.

Then Magiano strikes back at Enzo. He mimics the Reaper’s energy, and I see strings of sparks flash from Magiano’s hands and whip toward Enzo, bursting into lines of fire on impact. Enzo’s balira jerks its head away from the flames, taking him farther from us, and the pressure against my energy lightens. I breathe again. Then I lash out at him.

Enzo cannot kill you without killing himself. He only wants to defeat you. I keep this thought close to me, and it gives me strength.

I pull us sharply around to face him. At the same time, I grasp our tether and flood it with my darkness, my threads hooking into his heart, drowning his energy. He shudders visibly, his eyes squeezing shut—he tugs hard on his own balira’s reins, and the creature veers away from me. He begins to dive. His energy shoves against mine, hot and scorching, the fire burning at my blackness. I flinch. We fly lower and lower, until Enzo skims across the water. Rain beats down on my face, and I wipe desperately at my eye to clear my sight.

Through the tether, Enzo’s energy rushes at me. The edges of my vision turn hazy, dimming for a moment, and a flash of shadowy silhouettes creep forward. No. I cannot afford to succumb to my illusions right now. Amid the chaos, I can sense Enzo’s voice as if he were speaking directly to me.

You don’t belong here, Adelina. Turn back.

His words send a surge of anger through me, and I push us to go faster. We are very close to the shore now, and several of our ships have broken through the Tamouran defense. The thought of victory dances in my mind. I belong wherever I want. And I will take Tamoura, just as I took Kenettra from you.

But Enzo’s fire scorches my insides, wrapping around my own heart, closing it in a fist of his threads. Another layer of sweat breaks out all over me as my vision blurs even more. I can see myself reaching out and beginning to weave something in the air. No. I cannot let him control me.

You are mine, Adelina, Enzo growls. Turn your powers against your own fleet.

I cannot stop him. My hands lift, ready to do his bidding. Then I feel the world rip through me, and I toss my head back in agony. A cloak of invisibility snaps over the Tamouran fleet, hiding them from my own. At the same time, I cast a veil of imaginary pain and hurl it at my own riders in the air.

They shriek. I look on helplessly, unable to breathe through my surge of power, as my riders fall from their baliras. I struggle for air. The world becomes hazy. I force myself to focus on the tether. It is as if Enzo’s own hands were tight around my heart, squeezing and squeezing until I am ready to burst. I have to break his hold.

A clear voice calls out above us. “Adelina! Stop!” Even before I can lift my head and see him, I know that it is Raffaele.

But he is not alone. In front of him on the balira’s back is a small, delicate figure lying limply against the giant creature’s hide. It’s Violetta, her hair a dark streak of silk in the wind. Raffaele’s arms are wrapped securely around her.

She is here. With them.

For a moment, everything around me disappears. All I can do is look on as Raffaele turns in my direction and opens his mouth to say something.

Something streaks past my vision. A white cloak. One of my Inquisitors. I have time only to glance to my side before I see one of my own soldiers on a balira, barreling toward us with a club raised. I don’t have time to think—or even throw my arms up in defense. No one does. The Inquisitor swings his club and it catches me hard on the shoulder, the force lifting me clear off my balira. The whispers in my head shriek. The world closes in, growing darker and darker, until I see nothing and hear only Magiano’s shouts coming from somewhere far away.

Then, everything goes black.





Thus we agree, should the day ever come, my troops,

the Aristans, shall take possession of eastern Amadera to the

river’s mouth, and your troops, the Salans, shall take possession

of western Amadera to the same. No blood will be shed.

—Treaty between the Aristans and Salans before Amadera’s Second Civil War, 770–776





Adelina Amouteru




I wake at the sound of clinking chains. It takes me another moment to realize that the chains are on my wrists. The world sharpens and blurs over and over again, so I can only tell that my surroundings are dark gray and silver, that the stone beneath me is cold and damp. For an instant, I am back in the Inquisition Tower’s dungeons; my father has just died, and I am destined to burn at the stake. I can even hear his chuckle in the corner of the room, see a hazy mirage of him leaning against the wall there, the gash in his chest torn open and bleeding, his mouth twisted in a smile.