The Rose Society (The Young Elites #2)(64)

“Do not resist it,” Maeve commands.

The threads twist, growing tighter and tighter until they seem like they will suffocate me. My own energy responds to the darkness in Enzo. Then something cleaves together. A new bond has suddenly formed, made of threads from the Underworld, a tether that links me to him.

We are bound. I know it as instinctively as I know how to breathe.

Enzo walks toward us across the water. His face is turned toward me now, recognizing our bond, and I cannot bear to look anywhere else. He is exactly how I remember him … all except his eyes, which stay as black as empty sockets. Concentrate, I continue to repeat to myself, but it becomes a constant drone in the back of my mind. I wait as he draws closer, until he steps from the surface of the lake onto the stone path. Fire surrounds us. The heat coming from Enzo goes straight through me, scorching my insides. What a familiar feeling.

I can’t believe how much I’ve missed it.

Enzo stops a foot away from me. Fire loops around us, closing in and rising higher until it forms a funnel up into the air, so that it seems like we are the only two people in a world of flames. He looks down at me.

It takes a moment for me to realize that the water running down my face is no longer from the rain, but from my tears.

Enzo blinks twice. The black pools in his eyes swirl and fade, until they reveal the whites of his eyes, the familiar dark irises and scarlet slashes. Suddenly, he seems less like a phantom risen from the Underworld, and more like a young prince. His strength leaves him. He falls to his knees. There he crouches, shaking his head. The flames surrounding him vanish, leaving a circle of smoke, and the arena comes back into view, the lake returned to dark, stormy waters, the rain still pouring down in sheets.

I kneel too. I reach out with slender hands to touch Enzo’s cheeks. Enzo lifts his head weakly to look at me, and suddenly, I can no longer hold back. I pull Enzo toward me, then touch my lips gently to his.

A second. No more than that.

The kiss ends. Enzo searches my gaze. Somehow, he sees straight through the illusion.

“Adelina?” he whispers.

And that is all it takes to undo me. Raffaele’s face disintegrates into my own, revealing silver and scars. My shoulders hunch in abrupt exhaustion. It feels like all the energy in my body has been sucked away, leaving nothing but the strange, otherworldly threads that now bind me to my prince. I’m exposed before the entire arena, and I don’t care at all.

“It’s me,” I whisper back.





They waged war for decades, never realizing that they were fighting for the same cause.

—Campaigns of East and West Tamoura, 1152–1180, by Scholar Tennan





Adelina Amouteru


The Beldish queen reacts first. She has never met me before, but somehow, she knows who I am.

“White Wolf,” she says. She tries to get up, but she’s still too weak from using so much of her power. She spits out a curse, then glances at the young man standing beside her. Her brother.

“Tristan!” she shouts.

The boy turns to me. I can sense the dark energy building in him, something far more terrifying than anything I have ever felt within me. My darkness is a blanket that shrouds the patches of light in my heart. But this boy—his darkness is his heart. There is no light anywhere.

His eyes turn black. He bares his teeth and rushes at me.

The speed at which he moves is dizzying. One moment he stood a dozen feet away—the next, he has reached me and holds a flashing blade over his head. I’m going to die. No one will be able to rescue me in time. I glance at Enzo, but Enzo has hunched over on the ground, barely conscious.

Tristan slashes at me. The blade cuts deep into my shoulder. I shriek—pain blossoms in me and I stagger back. My illusions ache to lash back. But I am so weak, drained from my disguise as Raffaele, that all I can do is throw a thin black veil at him. It vanishes into smoke.

“Enzo!” I reach for him. He stays crumpled in a heap on the platform.

Tristan reaches me. His hands close around my neck. I fall backward and hit my head hard on the platform. Stars burst across my vision. He’s choking me, pushing down hard with blind, blank rage.

The only thing that saves my life is Maeve. As I struggle, Maeve’s voice reaches my ears. “Do not kill her!” she shouts. There is a frantic note in her words, and in a flash, I realize why.

If they kill me, Enzo’s only link to the living world, then Enzo will return to the Underworld.

Tristan stops immediately at Maeve’s call. Instead, he whirls, his attention shifting to where Enzo lies. The sudden realization that my life isn’t in danger hits me. My advantage. As Tristan turns to pick up Enzo, I stagger to my feet, clutching my bleeding shoulder, and flee off the stone path.

I’m only halfway when a blast of wind hits me hard, then lifts me high into the sky. I struggle in vain. The Windwalker’s work. The world around me spins—I think I see flashes of dark robes among the arena’s seats, the Daggers moving against me and heading down to where Enzo and Maeve are. Where are my Roses? My mouth opens in a scream as the wind suddenly cuts off, sending me plummeting down toward the arena’s rows.

A new current of wind stops me several feet from the stone seats. It flings me to one side, leaving me to tumble along the stairs. I stop there, breathing hard. As my vision clears, I see a Dagger approaching me, her curls tied back high on her head, her face hidden behind a silver mask that sends a ribbon of fear slicing through me. The only part of her face I can see are her eyes, flashing in fury at me. Lucent.