The Midnight Star (The Young Elites #3)(56)

Behind her soldiers walks Magiano. When he sees me, he removes his cloak and wraps it around my shoulders. I relax as it blocks the bite of the wind; the lingering warmth from Magiano feels soothing against my body. “I can’t talk him into getting inside a tent,” he says, gesturing over his shoulder as ice crystals flake from his braids. Some distance from the tents, where the land fades off into the blackness of the mountains, I can see a lone blond figure kneeling in the wind, his head down in prayer. Teren.

I put a hand on Magiano’s arm. “Let him stay,” I reply. “He will talk to the gods until he feels comforted.” But my stare lingers on Teren for a moment longer. Does he, like Raffaele, now feel the pull of the Elites’ origin calling from somewhere deep in the mountains? I can sense a pulse in the back of my mind now, a knot of power and energy lying somewhere beyond what I can see.

Magiano sighs in exasperation. “I’ve told Maeve’s men to keep an eye on him,” he says. “Let’s not have come all this way only to lose him to frostbite.” Then he turns and walks alongside me as we head back into our tent.

It’s warm inside. Lucent sits in one corner, grimacing as she wraps her arm in a hot cloth. She has injured her wrist again during the battle, but when she notices me looking, she quickly glances away. Nearby, Raffaele rises from his chair and bows his head in Maeve’s direction. Maeve stands near the tent’s entrance, her body turned subconsciously toward Lucent, her eyes on Violetta’s bed.

Even in the lantern light, Violetta still looks deathly pale. Her eyelids flutter now and then, as if she were lost in a nightmare, and a sheen of sweat covers her forehead. Her dark waves of hair fan out across the cloak folded under her head.

“Snow is coming from the north,” Maeve says, breaking the silence. “The longer we stay here, the more we’ll risk having our routes cut off. The snow breakers are already heading up to the ranges.”

“Snow breakers?” Magiano asks.

“Men who are sent up to the snow packs. They break up the snow into small, controlled avalanches in order to prevent larger ones. You probably saw them in town, with their ice picks.” Maeve nods at Raffaele. “Messenger.” At the mention of his name, her stony face softens a touch. I’m surprised at the twinge of envy I feel, that Raffaele can so easily draw others to him. “Are you well now?”

“Better,” Raffaele replies.

“What happened?” I ask. “We saw you freeze—you crumpled to your knees.”

Raffaele’s jewel-toned eyes catch the light, glinting a dozen different shades of green and gold. “The energy around me was overwhelming,” he explains. “The world became a blur. I couldn’t think, and I couldn’t breathe.”

The feeling overwhelmed him. Raffaele’s power is to sense each and every thread in the world, everything that connects with everything else. This must be how Raffaele’s powers are deteriorating, the equivalent of my spontaneous, out-of-control illusions, of Violetta’s vicious markings, and Lucent’s fragile bones. Unless we can succeed in our mission, his power will be his undoing, like the rest of us.

I can tell by the look on Raffaele’s face that he is thinking the same thoughts that I am, but he just gives Maeve a tired smile. “Not to worry. I’m well enough.”

“It seems you stumbled across our traveling band at exactly the right time,” Magiano says to Maeve.

In the silence that follows, Lucent pushes herself to her feet, wincing as she goes, and heads for the tent flap. “We should all get some rest, then,” she mutters. She hesitates a step as she passes Maeve. A flicker of expression—something lonely, longing—crosses her face, but nothing more than that, and before Maeve can react, Lucent ducks out of the tent and disappears.

Maeve watches her go, then follows. Her soldiers leave in her wake.

Raffaele meets my gaze and sits back down in his chair. “Your sister is growing weaker,” he says. “Our nearness to the origin of Laetes’s fall has intensified our connections to the gods, and it is ravaging our bodies. She will not last much longer.”

I stare at Violetta’s face. She furrows her brows, as if aware of my presence near her, and I find myself thinking of when we once lay side by side on identical beds, struck down by the blood fever. Somehow, it never has left us.

I glance at Magiano, then Raffaele. “Give me a moment alone with her,” I say.

I’m grateful to Magiano for his silence. He squeezes my hand once, then turns away and steps out of the tent.

Raffaele stares at me, doubt on his face. He doesn’t trust you alone with her. That is what you inspire, little wolf, a cloud of suspicion. Perhaps that’s what the expression is—or perhaps it is guilt, some lingering hint of regret for all that has happened between us, all that could have been avoided. Whatever it means, it disappears in the next breath. He tightens the clasp of his cloak and folds his hands into his sleeves, then moves toward the tent flap. Before he can step out, he turns back to me.

“Let yourself rest,” he says. “You will need it, mi Adelinetta.”

Mi Adelinetta.

My breath catches; the whispers go still. The memory rushes to me, clear as crystal, of an afternoon long ago, when I sat with him by an Estenzian canal and listened to him sing. With the memory comes a rush of wistful joy, followed by unbearable sadness. I hadn’t realized how much I missed that day. I want to tell him to wait, but he has already left. His voice seems to linger in the air, though, words I haven’t heard from him in years . . . and somewhere, deep in my chest, stirs the presence of a girl buried long ago.