The Midnight Star (The Young Elites #3)(55)

I focus my energy on Raffaele. Then I weave invisibility across him. He vanishes. I rush over to him and Lucent as blades flash all around us. When I reach them, I wrap one of Raffaele’s arms around my shoulder and help her lift him. Magiano looks in our direction from where he’s fending off an attacker.

A few steps ahead, Teren suddenly jerks backward as a team of attackers charge at once. One of them manages to get past Teren. We’re invisible now, but even though the attacker can’t see us, he swings his blade in an arc toward us. I only have time to get a glimpse of his silver mask.

An arrow sings through the air from the rooftops. It hits our attacker straight through his throat. He freezes in mid-movement, stunned, and then he drops his weapon and reaches up to clutch in vain at his neck. As I look on, he falls backward onto the steps.

More arrows cut through the air from the roofs. Every single one of them finds its mark. I search the rooftops until I catch sight of a blur of armor darting by. Behind us, Magiano lets out a whoop of laughter—in a flash, he has leapt onto one of the signs dangling in front of a door and swung forward, flinging a dagger down at the attackers.

As I look up to see another figure dart by on the roofs, I finally glimpse a tall young woman with braids woven high on her head, the strands half black and half blond, crouched with one elbow resting on her knee. She has a bow stretched back and pointed down in the direction of one of our attackers. She lets the arrow fly.

The Beldish queen has finally arrived.

More and more of her soldiers appear on the roofs. The Saccorists, now recognizing the crest of her men, start to break apart in their confusion. Several of Maeve’s guards appear at the end of the street. The sight of them seems to be the last straw for the Saccorists. Someone shouts an order to retreat, and the remaining attackers scatter immediately, dropping their weapons and making a run for it. Teren continues to fight, but the battle is already over. The attackers melt away as quickly as they appeared, until all that’s left in the street are the fallen.

I lift the illusion from all of us. My own strength leaves me, and suddenly Raffaele feels overwhelmingly heavy. Magiano hurries to our side and takes Raffaele’s limp body in his arms. My attention turns to Violetta. She is still crouched against the wall where I left her, curled into a tight ball and looking as if she were concentrating on staying conscious. I walk over, then extend a hand to her.

Violetta turns up her face to me. Some of the lingering fear and distance in her eyes that had so defined our last few weeks together has faded, replaced by a familiar glimmer. It is a light I remember from when she used to walk at my side through Merroutas, when we were the only company we needed in the world.

The whispers still haunt the air around me, but I refuse to listen to them, pushing them aside. Violetta takes my hand and I help her to her feet. She leans against me, barely able to stand. “Teren,” I say as he approaches us. There are slashes in his tunic and smears of blood on his armor, but otherwise he seems unharmed. He gives Violetta a cold look, then hoists her effortlessly onto his back without a word.

“We have an encampment,” Maeve calls down to us from the roofs. She has heavy black powder rimming her eyes, and a streak of gold war paint on her cheeks. “You all look like you could use a rest.”

I see Maeve searching for me from her perch, and when our eyes lock, we stare for a long moment. I stiffen—there is an air of uncertainty hovering around her at my presence. I think back to the last time we set eyes on each other, when she had watched me call on Enzo’s power to destroy a devastating number of her fleet. Even now, I can envision the flames roaring all around us.

She straightens and nods in the direction of the city’s outskirts. “My men will lead us there.” Then she disappears over the edge of the roof.





Tragedy follows those who cannot accept their true destiny.

—Crime and Punishment in a Reunified Amadera, by Fiennes de Marta





Adelina Amouteru




Queen Maeve is thinner than I remember, and her face has become harder in the months since we last met. The Elite who aligns with death. With my weary demeanor, sunken cheeks, and hard gaze, I imagine she thinks the same when she looks at me. She and her battalion traveled over the Karra Mountains, the crooked range of long-dead volcanoes that divides Beldain from Amadera, and set up an encampment of sheepskin tents here on the outskirts of Laida, where humanity ends and a horizon rimmed completely by ice-capped mountains begins. Torches light the snow in patches between the camp’s tents. The air has turned cold and cruel, cutting straight through my riding gear. As evening washes the bleak landscape in blues and purples, the Beldish queen makes her way through puddles of slush from her tent to ours, flanked by her soldiers.

I wonder what she has gone through since we faced each other on the seas, and what the state of her navy might be. A part of me calculates whether it will be worth invading Beldain in the future or not. No doubt she wants to do the same to Kenettra—but we both bite our tongues now as she nears. She gives me a stiff nod of greeting.

“We leave at dawn,” she tells me. “If your sister does not wake by then, carry her.”

I return her nod, even though my whispers hiss. This is the closest we will come to civility. “We’ll be ready.”

Maeve walks past me without acknowledging my words. I turn and watch her disappear inside our tent. Show her what you can do, and then she will respect you. The Queen of Beldain and I may be forced allies for now, but there will be a time after this when we will all return to our sides, and our enemy state.