The Rose Society (The Young Elites #2)(96)

As Violetta speaks, the sound of her voice changes. The sweetness of it, which reminds me so much of our mother’s voice, is transformed into something eerie, a chorus of off-pitch voices that send a shiver down my spine. I lean away, wary. The whispers in my head shove a memory forward at me—I remember my sister and me, alone in a chamber, her power used against mine.

I think of Enzo’s burned hands. Then, of my uncontrollable illusions. My hallucinations and bursts of temper. My trouble recognizing familiar faces around me, twisting them into strangers. I know it is true, with chilling certainty. My power of illusion is destroying my mind as surely as Lucent’s power is breaking her bones.

No, something hisses in my mind. The hiss sounds urgent, the whispers more agitated than usual. She is lying to you. She wants something from you.

“We will all die,” Violetta says, again in her new, frightening chorus of voices. It sends a jolt of fear through me. Why does she sound like this? “We were never meant to be.”

“This cannot be happening to all Elites,” I murmur. My gaze goes back to her. “What about you? You’ve felt no effects.”

She only shakes her head. “I am not powerful, Adelina,” she replies. Her teeth flash. Did I see that? It seemed for a moment as if she had fangs. “Not like you, or Lucent, or Enzo. I take power away. I don’t even have markings. But someday I may manifest something too. It’s inevitable.”

I move away from her. She is dangerous, the whispers in my mind say, louder now. Stay away from her. “No. We will find a way,” I whisper. “We are chosen by the gods. There must be a way.”

“I have thought about this. The only way will be to remove our powers permanently,” Violetta says.

The whispers let out a deafening howl in my mind at that. The fear crawling along my spine turns from a trickle into a river. It roars through me.

What kind of life will that be, the whispers say to me, without powers?

I try to imagine my world without my ability to change reality. Without the addictive rush of darkness and fear, the sheer power to create anything at will, anytime I want. How can I live a life without that? I blink, and my illusions spark out of control for a moment, weaving for me an image of what my life once was—the helplessness I felt when my father held my finger between his hands and snapped it like a twig; the way I pounded weakly at my locked door and begged for food and water. The way I cowered under my bed, sobbing, until my father’s hands would seize me and drag me out, screaming, to face his bloody fists.

That is life without power, the whispers remind me.

“No,” I say to Violetta. “There must be another way.”

It takes me a moment to realize that Violetta is looking at me. Her face suddenly terrifies me. I push myself up from the steps and back away from her. “You will not touch me,” I whisper.

“Adelina, I’ve seen you deteriorating over the past months.” Violetta speaks now with tears in her eyes. Why do her tears look tinged with blood? I blink. My illusions. They must be getting away from me again … but the whispers in my mind force my thoughts away, filling my head instead with more of my own fear. “I’ve held back many times, I haven’t said nearly everything I wanted to say, all because I don’t want you to be angry with me. I’ve seen your powers spiral wildly out of control, have seen you terrified by illusions that aren’t really there.” Violetta glances to one wall of the chamber, where the gold of the pillars reflects our image. “Just look, mi Adelinetta,” she whispers. “Can you see yourself?”

I barely recognize the girl reflected back at me in the pillar. The scarred side of her face is hollow with anger. Dark circles line the skin under her good eye. There is a savagery in her expression, a hardness, that I do not remember being there before. Behind me float ghosts, fanged creatures with glittering eyes. I know immediately that these are the whispers in my head. They crowd the reflection in the pillar, until they start to claw their way out of it and onto the floor.

I look away from them and back to Violetta. Her eyes are still bloody.

“Those moments are fleeting,” I snap at her, widening the gap between us. I have to get out of here. “Nothing more. I always recover. What Raffaele has learned is a mistake.”

“It’s not a mistake,” Violetta snaps back desperately. “It’s truth, and you don’t want to accept it.”

“He’s lying!” I shout, trying to drown out the whispers that have turned into a roar. The fanged creatures continue to crawl their way along the floor toward us. I try to erase them with my mind, but I can’t. “He has always been a manipulator!”

“What if he’s not?” Violetta replies, throwing her hands in the air. “Then what? Should we all stand by and watch one another fall apart?”

I turn away from her, then whirl back around. She is your sister, the whispers growl at me. How can she understand you so little? “Do you realize what my power means to me? It is my life. There is nothing more important to me than it. It has given me all of this.” I gesture around us at the opulent chamber, the gold-lined marble, the beautiful curtains. The reward for my revenge. “Are you trying to say that you want to take it away from me? Have you forgotten our promise to each other?”

“Our promise was always to protect each other,” Violetta says. “You protect me with your illusions. You comfort me from thunderstorms, you weave illusions around me to protect me from the horrors of war. Our promise was to never use our powers against each other.” She steps toward me. Bloody tears run down her face. “I am not against you!”