The Rose Society (The Young Elites #2)(85)

“You are a fool!” Giulietta retorts back. “Do you still not understand why I sent you away? It is because I am your queen, Master Santoro. You do not disobey your queen.”

“Yes, you are my queen!” Teren shouts. “And yet you no longer act like one! You are supposed to be chosen by the gods. Pure of blood, perfection. But look at whom you surrounded yourself with!” He gestures to Raffaele. “You commanded that abomination to touch you? You accepted the Daggers as part of your army, in exchange for halting the cleansing of malfettos?” Teren’s words turn uglier, his voice harsher and louder. He is entirely oblivious to the hypocrisy of what he is saying.

“And what are you?” Giulietta snaps. “You, my malfetto Inquisitor? Have I not forgiven you for your abomination? You know nothing about how to rule! I would do the same for your fellow malfettos, as long as they recognize their abomination, and serve me as my humble subjects.”

I reach for Teren, feeding his anger with threads of my own darkness. My energy wraps around him, adding to his, weaving an illusion around him. I paint a fleeting image before him of Giulietta wrapped in Raffaele’s embrace, with her head thrown back, Giulietta turning away from Teren and toward Raffaele. Giulietta standing on a balcony, pardoning malfettos of all crimes. I paint all of these images before Teren, flashing them one after another, until he is lost in them.

Teren’s fury lurches higher. The whispers in my head grow and grow, until they are deafening.

Your revenge your revenge your revenge.

Do it, now.

I reach for Giulietta, and I start to weave.

Suddenly, Teren pauses. His eyes widen. They focus on something in Giulietta’s hair … a wide, shining lock of red and gold, prominent against the rest of her dark strands. Teren frowns, confused. In the midst of his rage, swirling in the storm of illusions I’ve created around him, he cannot tell that this is an illusion I’ve just created.

I smile. Look, Teren. Why, how did you miss this marking on her, after all these years?

His eyes dart back to Giulietta’s. “You,” he whispers, blinded by my illusion. “You have a marking?”

“A marking?” Giulietta’s expression shifts for a moment in confusion.

Teren’s focus returns to the unnatural color in her hair. I conjure whispers in Teren’s ears, and they speak to him of betrayal. “You’ve hidden it from me, all this time,” he mutters. “Covered by an apothecarist’s work, hidden by black powder. A marking. I know it.”

“What are you talking about?” Giulietta’s anger is bitterly dark now, a rising tempest. “You have lost your mind, Master Santoro.”

“You are no pure royal. You were tainted by the blood fever, like your brother.” His mouth curls into an ugly sneer. His eyes are glazed, delirious with the illusions I’ve woven around him, and he can focus on nothing but the false marking I’ve painted into Giulietta’s hair. “You are an abomination, a filthy malfetto, just like me. And I gave you my love. And you fooled me.”

“Enough,” Giulietta snaps. She looks again to her Inquisitors and draws herself up to her full height. “This is an order. Seize him.”

Still, the Inquisitors don’t move. Teren stares at Giulietta as if his heart were icing over. “Now I know why you always had such sympathy for those damn malfetto slaves,” he chokes out hoarsely. “Asking for them to be properly fed. Asking for them to return to their homes.” His voice trembles with rage now. “Now I know why you give yourself away to other abominations.”

“You are a madman,” Giulietta says. I shiver at how her voice reminds me of Enzo’s. “You cannot tell sympathy apart from strategy.”

Teren shakes his head. “You cannot be a pure-blooded queen chosen by the gods.” He holds out a gloved hand and gestures at the Inquisitors. They shift their crossbows from Teren to the queen.

Giulietta narrows her eyes at Teren as she takes a step back. “What have you done to my men?” she demands.

“They are my men,” Teren says. “They have always been mine. Not yours.” He raises his voice. “You are under arrest, for corrupting the crown.”

My powers surge out of control. The world turns black, then scarlet. The whispers claw to the surface, seizing my mind. I feel my rage and fear surge forward in unison. Giulietta lets out a strangled cry as the pain in her wrist spreads to the rest of her arm, then to her entire body. At the same time, I wrap my illusions harder around Teren, caressing his subconscious thoughts, reminding him of everything Giulietta has done to betray him.

Look, Teren. She is a malfetto queen. You cannot let this go on. The whispers turn into a roar in his ears. End this now.

End this. End this!

Teren draws his blade. His eyes pulse with madness, hypnotized. He steps toward Giulietta. She backs away, puts her hands out in defense, calls his name, calls once again for her traitorous Inquisitors to listen to her—but it is too late. Teren seizes her by the arm, pulls her toward him, and stabs her straight through the heart.





“Now, are you happy? Have you finally achieved all you set out to do? What will you do next, little assassin, with no one left to see you?”

—One Thousand Journeys of Al Akhar, various authors





Adelina Amouteru