The Young Elites (The Young Elites, #1)(44)

But of course he’s teaching me a lesson. This isn’t a game. This is reality. And when I’m in the middle of a fight, this is what it’ll be like. I whimper, shut my eye, curl up tighter, and try to shrink away from the columns of fire that roar around me. Tears run unbidden down my face.

I sense a figure nearby. When I open my eye, I see Enzo on one knee before me, studying my tear-streaked face with a look of bitter disappointment. It is this look, more than anything, that pains me.

“Broken so easily,” he says with disdain. “You’re not ready after all.” The columns of fire vanish. He gets up and walks past me, his robes brushing over me.

I’m left alone on the cavern floor, crumpled in a heap, unable to control my tears. Strands of my hair fall across my face. No. I’m not broken easily. I will never break. I am going to find a way out of the mess I’ve gotten myself into—I will find a way to untangle myself from the Inquisition’s grasp and finally be free. I look up at his retreating figure through a veil of teary anger. The anger fills me, seeping its blackness into my chest until I can feel it spilling out of every fiber of my body, every energy string pulled so tight, they might break. My strength begins to build. From the corner of my vision, I see my hair shift to a bright silver. I tremble; my hands flatten against the ground, then dig against it like claws. Pain shoots up my one crooked finger.

Vicious black lines start to crawl along the cavern floor. They turn into dozens, then hundreds, then millions of lines, until they fill the entire floor and snake up the walls. Between the dark lines drips blood, mimicking the red streaks on my injured palm. An enormous shadow blankets me. I don’t need to look up to know what I created—black wings, ones so large that they seem to fill the entire length of the cavern, growing out from my back like a pair of phantoms. A low hiss fills the cavern, echoing off the walls.

Enzo stops and turns to look at me, his eyes still hard. I smile at him. My giant wings shatter into a million pieces—each piece morphs into a shard of dark glass. I send them hurtling at Enzo. They pass straight through him, hit the wall, and break into an explosion of glitter.

Enzo doesn’t flinch, but he does blink. The shards had looked real enough to make him react. He folds his hands behind him, then regards me. “Better.” He walks toward me again. Wherever he steps, the black lines on the ground creep upward, turn into skeletal hands, and try to grab at his legs. I drink in the exhilaration of it all, the millions of threads glistening before me, ready for my command.

“Weave the threads together,” Enzo commands as he draws closer. Flames appear behind him. I pull myself to my feet and step away from him until my back touches the cavern wall. “Go ahead. Make something for me that is more than a dark silhouette. Make something with color.”

Still drowning in my fury and fear, I take the threads I see and cross them, painting what appears in my mind. And just like that—slowly, painfully—a new creation emerges before me. Enzo has almost reached me. Between us, I paint something red, so crimson red that the color of it blinds me. The red changes into petals, each one layered on top of the other, covered in dark dewdrops. Beneath it spiral green stems covered in thorns. Enzo stops before the hovering illusion. He observes it for a moment, then reaches out to touch it. I pull on strings in the air. Blood blooms on his gloves, dripping from his palms to the ground, mimicking my own real blood on my injured palm. Reminding me of the day when I’d closed my hand around the rose thorns in my father’s garden.

I am learning imitation from reality.

Enzo steps forward. He passes through the rose illusion, then stops a foot away from me. The blood disappears from his gloves. I glare at him defiantly. I keep my heart wide open, relishing the flood of dark emotions that fill me to the brim. The heat of his fire turns my cheeks red.

Enzo nods once. “Very good,” he murmurs. For the first time, he looks impressed.

“I am ready,” I reply angrily. To my dismay, my tears are still wet on my face. “I’m not afraid of you. And if you give me a chance, I can show you what I’m capable of.”

Enzo simply watches me. I search his eyes, seeing once again the odd expression lurking behind his cold features, something that goes beyond his desire to exploit my power. Something that almost looks like . . . familiarity. We gaze at each other for a long moment. Finally, he reaches up and gently wipes away one of my tears.

“Don’t cry,” he says, his voice firm. “You are stronger than that.”





When the world was young, the gods and goddesses birthed the angels, Joy and Greed, Beauty and Empathy and Sorrow, Fear and Fury, sparks of humanity. To feel emotion, therefore, to be human,

is to be a child of the gods.

   —The Birth of the Angels, various authors





Adelina Amouteru



The storm finally passes, leaving a devastated Estenzia

in its path—broken roof shingles, flooded temples, wrecked ships, the dead and dying. As people flock to the temples, others gather in Estenzia’s squares. Teren leads the largest of these gatherings. I can see it all the way from the Fortunata Court’s balconies.

“We let a malfetto win the qualifying races,” he calls out, “and look at how the gods have punished us. They are angry with the abominations that we allow to walk among us.” People listen in grim silence. Others start to shout along, raising their fists in response. Behind Teren are three young malfettos—one of them barely out of childhood. Probably dug them out of the city’s ghettos. They are tied together to a stake erected in the center of the square, and their mouths are gagged. Their feet are hidden in the midst of a pile of wood. A pair of priests flank them, lending their silent approval.