The Young Elites (The Young Elites, #1)(13)

Enzo twists his wrist, and the flame dies out, leaving only a tiny wisp of smoke. My heart beats weakly. “When I was twelve years old,” he says, “the blood fever finally hit Estenzia. It swept in and out within a year. I was the only one in my family affected. A year after the doctors pronounced me recovered, I still could not control my body’s warmth. I’d turn desperately feverish one moment, freezing cold the next. And then, one day, this.” He looks down at his hand, then back to me. “What’s your story?”

I open my mouth, then close it. It makes sense. The fever had struck the country in waves for a full decade, starting with my home city of Dalia and ending here, in Estenzia. Out of all the Kenettran cities, Estenzia had been hit the hardest—forty thousand dead, and another forty thousand marked for life. Nearly a third of their population, when put together. The city’s still struggling to get back on its feet. “That’s a very personal story to tell someone you just met,” I manage to reply.

He meets my stare with unwavering calm. “I’m not telling you my story so that you can get to know me,” he says. I blush against my will. “I’m telling you to offer you a deal.”

“You’re one of . . .”

“And so are you,” Enzo says. “You can create illusions. Needless to say, you caught my attention.” When he sees my skeptical look, he continues, “Word has it that the temples in Dalia have been overflowing with terrified worshippers ever since the stunt with your father.”

I can create illusions. I can summon images that aren’t really there and I can make people believe they are real. A sickening feeling crawls from my stomach to the surface of my skin. You are a monster, Adelina. I instinctively brush my hand down my arm, as if attempting to rid myself of a disease. My father tried so hard to provoke something like this in me. Now it’s here. And he is dead.

Enzo waits patiently for me to speak again. I don’t know how much time passes before I finally murmur, “I was four years old when I caught the blood fever. The doctors had to remove one of my eyes.” I hesitate. “I’ve only done . . . this . . . twice before. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary during my childhood.”

He nods. “Some manifest powers later than others, but our stories are the same. I know what it’s like to grow up marked, Adelina. All of us understand what it is like to be abominations.”

“All of us?” I ask. My mind wanders again to the black market’s wooden carvings, to the growing rumors of the Young Elites. “There are others?”

“Yes. From around the world.”

The Windwalker. Magiano. The Alchemist. “Who are they? How many?”

“Few, but growing. In the ten or so years since the blood fever died down in Kenettra, some of us have started making our presence known. A strange sighting here, an odd witness there. Seven years ago, villagers in Triese di Mare stoned a little girl to death because she had covered the local pond with ice in the middle of summer. Five years ago, people in Udara set fire to a boy because he had made a bouquet of flowers bloom right before his sweetheart’s eyes.” He tightens his gloves, and my eye again darts to the bloody flecks that coat the leather. “As you can see, I kept my abilities a secret for obvious reasons. It wasn’t until I met another who also possessed strange powers given to him by the fever that I changed my mind.”

“So. You’re a Young Elite.” There. I’ve said it aloud.

“A name the people invented to refer to our youth and our unnatural abilities. The Inquisition hates it.” Enzo smiles, a lazy expression of mischief. “I am the leader of the Dagger Society, a group of Young Elites who seek out others like ourselves before the Inquisition can. But we are not the only Elites—there are many others, I’m sure, scattered all across the world. My goal is to unite us. Burnings like yours happen every time the Inquisition thinks they’ve found a Young Elite. Some people abandon their own marked family members because they’re afraid of ‘bad luck.’ The king uses malfettos as an excuse for his poor rule. As if we are to blame for the state of his impoverished nation. If we don’t fight back, the king and his Inquisition Axis will kill us all, every child marked by the fever.” His eyes harden. “But we do fight back. Don’t we, Adelina?”

His words remind me of the strange whispers that have accompanied my illusions—something dark and vengeful, tempting and powerful. A weight presses on my chest. I am afraid. Intrigued.

“What will you do?” I whisper.

Enzo leans back and looks out the window. “We will seize the throne, of course.” He sounds almost indifferent, like he’s talking about his breakfast.

He wants to kill the king? What about the Inquisition? “That’s impossible,” I breathe.

He gives me a sideways look, something simultaneously curious and threatening. “Is it?”

My skin tingles. I peer closer at him. Then, suddenly, I cover my mouth with one hand. I know where I’ve seen him before.

“You—” I stammer. “You’re the prince.”

No wonder he looks familiar. I’d seen many portraits of Kenettra’s firstborn prince as a child. He was the crown prince back then, our future king. The word was that he had nearly died from the blood fever. He came out of it marked instead. Unfit to be heir to the throne. That was the last we all heard about him, really. After his father the king died, Enzo’s older sister stripped Enzo of his crown and banished him permanently from the palace, never again to set foot near the royal family. Her husband, a powerful duke, became king.