The Midnight Star (5 page)

When the bugles sounded across the sea, still he ignored them.
When the cavalry reached the gates, still he slept.
When his people cried out, still he called for calm.
Even when the enemy swept his kingdom with fire
and gathered at his castle doors, he paced in his chamber,
refusing to believe it.

—The Second Fall of Persenople,
by Scholar Natanaele

M
emories are funny things. My first recollection of Teren remains crystal clear even to this day—that shining white cloak, a silhouette washed in light by the sun on a brilliant blue day, the profile of a chiseled face, a slender tail of wheat-colored hair wrapped in gold hanging past his shoulders, his hands folded behind his back. How intimidating he looked. Even now, as I stare at this figure lying in chains, dressed like a prisoner, slivers of light now outlining the sinews of his muscles, I can't help but see that first image of him instead.

Sergio leads us forward to the moat. When he reaches it, he leans down to the water and pulls up a rope bridge anchored to the floor. He tosses it to the two soldiers on the island. One of the soldiers hooks the other end of the bridge
to two knobs on the island's floor, and Sergio steps onto the bridge. I follow him.

When we reach the island, Sergio and the other soldiers spread out to either side, giving me a clear path. I walk forward, stopping several paces from where Teren is chained.

“Hello,” I say.

Teren stays crouching on the ground, his eyes fixed on me. He doesn't blink. Instead, he looks on as if he were drinking in the sight of me. His clothes have indeed been replaced by a clean set of robes, and his hair is tied back, his face smooth. He is thinner now, even though time has not worn down the chiseled look of his face or the hard lines of his muscles. He says nothing more.
Something is wrong with Teren.
I look him over, puzzled.

“You look well enough,” I say. I tilt my head slightly at him. “Less filthy than when I last visited you. You've been eating and drinking.” There were several weeks when he refused all food, when I thought he might intentionally starve himself to death. But he is still here.

He says nothing.

“I hear you've not been well,” I continue. “Does the great Teren ever fall ill? I didn't think that was possible, so I came to see you with my own ey—”

Without warning, Teren lunges for me. His heavy chains do not slow him down. They pull taut just short of where I am, and for an instant, we stare into each other's faces, breaths apart. My past visits taught me where to stand safely,
but even so—my heart leaps into my throat. Behind me, I hear Sergio and the other soldiers draw their swords.

“Then have a good, long look, little
malfetto
,” Teren growls. “Do you enjoy what you see?” He cocks his head in a taunting gesture. “What is it these days, Adelina? Queen of the Sealands?”

I tell myself to stay calm, to meet Teren's eyes steadily. “
Your
queen,” I reply.

At that, pain flashes across his face. He searches my gaze, then takes a step back. The chains go slack. “You are not my queen,” he grunts through his teeth.

Sergio sheathes his sword again and leans over to me. “Look,” he whispers, nodding down at Teren's arms.

My focus flickers from Teren's eyes down to his wrists. Something catches my attention there, something deep and red. Dripping from his wrists and down his fingers is a trail of blood. It leaves a smattering of dots on the stone directly beneath.

Blood? I stare at it, trying to follow the trail. It looks like fresh blood, scarlet and wet. “Sergio,” I say, “did he attack a guard? Why is there blood on his arm?”

Sergio gives me a grim look. “He's bleeding from the chains chafing at his wrist. From his
own
wounds.”

From his own wounds? No. I shake my head. Teren is nearly invincible; his power ensures it is so. Any wound he received would stitch together before the blood had the chance to run. I cross my arms and look at him. “So it's true.
Something
has
been wrong with you.” I nod at Teren's bleeding wrist. “When did this start?”

Teren studies my face again, as if trying to see how serious I am. Then he starts to laugh. It is a low rumble in his throat, one that grows until it shakes his shoulders. “Of course something's wrong with me. Something's wrong with
all of us
.” His lips settle into a wide grin that chills me to my bones. “You've known that for a long time, haven't you, little wolf?”

It has been more than a year since Queen Giulietta died, but I still remember her face well. I call on this memory now. Gradually, I weave an illusion of her deep, dark eyes and small, rosy mouth over my own, her smooth skin over my scarred face, her rich dark waves of hair over my sheet of silver. Teren's expression stiffens as he watches my illusion take shape, his body frozen in place.

“Yes,” I reply. “I always knew.”

Teren walks toward me until he can go no farther. I can feel his breath against my skin. “You don't deserve to wear her face,” he whispers.

I smile bitterly. “Let's not forget who killed her. You destroy all that you touch.”

“Well,” he whispers back, returning my smile. “Then we have much in common.” He takes in Giulietta's face. It is amazing, seeing his transformation. His eyes soften, turning moist, and it is as if I could see memories flitting through his mind, his days with the late queen, bowing to her commands, spending nights in her chambers, standing beside her throne, championing her. Until they turned on each other.

“Why are you here?” Teren asks. He straightens and pulls away from me again.

I glance at Sergio, then nod. “Your sword,” I say.

Sergio steps forward. He draws his sword, the sound of the metal echoing in the chamber, and then heads toward Teren. Teren doesn't try to resist, but I see his muscles tense. He used to fight back during the early months of his imprisonment, his furious shouts ringing out through the dungeon, his chains rattling. Sergio had to strike Teren down over and over, with everything from rods to swords to whips, until Teren began to flinch at his approaching footsteps. It is cruel, some would think. But those are the thoughts of someone who has never known Teren's evil deeds.

Now he just waits as Sergio approaches him, grabs his arm, and makes a quick cut on his forearm. Blood gushes out, and I watch, waiting for the familiar sight of his flesh immediately stitching itself back together.

But . . . it doesn't. Not right away. Instead, Teren continues bleeding like any man would, the blood dripping down his arm to meet the wounds from the shackles at his wrists. Teren looks at the blood in awe, turning his arm this way and that. As we watch, the flesh slowly, gradually begins to heal itself, the wound turning smaller, the blood flow lighter, until the gash closes itself up again.

No wonder his wrists are still bleeding. The chafing is a constant reopening of those wounds. I frown at Teren, refusing to believe this. Raffaele's words—Violetta's words—come racing back from when I'd first heard them months ago, one
of the last things my sister said to me.
All of us, all Elites, are in danger.
Our powers are slowly tearing our mortal bodies apart.

No. That's all a lie.
The whispers are upset now, hissing at me. I pass this anger along to the dungeon keeper as I snap at him. “I thought I told you to keep him in decent health. When did this start?”

The keeper bows his head low. His fear of me makes him tremble. “A few weeks ago, Your Majesty. I thought he had attacked someone too, but none of the guards seemed injured or complained of anything.”

“This is a mistake,” I say. “Impossible.” But what Violetta had said to me so long ago keeps coming back:
We are doomed to be forever young.

As Teren stares at me and laughs, I turn away. I cross the moat back to the other side of his cell and storm out, my men trailing behind me.

S
ome days after the storm, when Violetta had first alerted Raffaele to the strange energy in the ocean, the other Daggers follow him down to the shores. A small crowd has gathered near the balira corpses, whispering and muttering. Some children play near the bodies, daring one another to touch the rotting skin, squealing at the size of the creatures. The ocean continues to crash against the bodies, trying in vain to drag them back into the water.

“It's uncommon,” Lucent tells Raffaele as they pick their way over the rocks toward the sand. “But not
unheard
of. Beldain has seen mass beachings before. It can be caused by anything—a warming or cooling of the water, a sparse year for migrating fish, a storm. Perhaps it's the same here. Just a temporary shift of the tides.”

Raffaele folds his arms into his sleeves and looks on as the children run around the bodies. A simple storm or tide shift couldn't explain the energy he'd felt in the ocean last night, that had drawn Violetta out of bed and made him gasp. No, this was not caused by any natural phenomenon. There is poison seeping into the world. Somewhere, there is a crack, a break in the order of things.

The eerie energy lingers, but Raffaele has no way of explaining it to those who cannot sense it. His eyes stay fixed on the water. He hasn't slept, having spent the night at his writing desk, poring through what papers he still kept from his recordings, trying to solve the puzzle.

Lucent looks like she is trying hard not to show the ache in her bones. “Well, some of the villagers are saying there are reports of a similar event along the Domaccan shoreline.” She finds a comfortable spot amongst the rocks and sits down. “Sounds like it's not just concentrated here.”

Raffaele leaves Lucent's side and heads down to the edge of the water. He pushes back his sleeve and dips a canteen into the surf, letting it fill. The touch of the ocean makes his stomach churn just as much as it had the night of the storm. When the canteen is full, Raffaele hurries out of the water to shake off its poisonous touch.

“You're pale as a Beldish boy,” Michel exclaims as Raffaele passes him.

Raffaele holds the canteen with both hands and starts making his way back toward the palace. “I'll be in my chambers,” he replies.

When he returns to his quarters, he pours the contents of the canteen into a clear glass, then sets it on his desk so that it is drenched in light from the window. He opens the desk's drawers and removes a series of gemstones. These are the same gemstones he once used to test the other Daggers, that he had used on Enzo and Lucent, Michel and Gemma. On Violetta. On Adelina.

Raffaele lays the gems in a careful circle around the glass of ocean water. Then he steps back and observes the scene. He reaches out with threads of his energy, searching for a clue, coaxing the stones.

At first, nothing happens.

Then, slowly,
very
slowly, several of the gems begin to glow from within, lit by something other than the sunlight. Raffaele pulls on the energy strings as he would when testing a new Elite, his brow furrowed in concentration. Colors blink in and out of existence. The air shimmers.

Nightstone. Amber. Moonstone.

Raffaele stares at the three glowing stones. Nightstone, for the angel of Fear. Amber, for the angel of Fury. Moonstone, for Holy Moritas herself.

Whatever presence Raffaele felt in the ocean, it is this. The touch of the Underworld, the immortal energy of the goddess of Death and her daughters. Raffaele's frown deepens as he walks over to the desk and peers at the water in the glass. It is clear, shining with light, but behind that is the ghost of Death herself. It is no wonder that the energy feels so
wrong
, so out of place.

The Underworld is seeping into the living world.

Raffaele shakes his head. How can that be? The gods' realm does not touch the world of mankind—immortality has no place in the mortal realm. The only connection the gods' magic has to the living world is through gemstones, the sole, lingering remnants of where the gods' hands had touched the world as they created it.

And the Young Elites,
Raffaele adds to himself, his heartbeat quickening.
And our own godlike powers.

Even as he stands there, turning the mystery over and over in his mind, he finds himself looking in the direction of Enzo's chambers, where the ghost of his prince still lingers after having been pulled up from the Underworld.
After having been
torn
from the Underworld.

A Young Elite, ripped from the immortal realm and dragged to the mortal.

Raffaele's eyes widen. Queen Maeve's gift, Tristan's resurrection, Enzo's . . . could it have caused all this?

He goes to his trunks and pulls out several books, stacking them in a precarious pile on his desk. His breathing has turned shallow. In his mind, the resurrection plays over and over again—the stormy night at the Estenzian arena, the appearance of Adelina disguised as Maeve, shrouded behind a hooded robe, the explosion of dark energy he'd felt in the arena's waters that came from somewhere beyond. He thinks of the lack of light in Enzo's eyes.

The goddess of Death had punished armies before, had
taken revenge on princes and kings who became too arrogant in the face of certain death. But what would happen if a Young Elite, a mortal body doomed to wield immortal powers, one of the most
powerful
Elites Raffaele had ever encountered, was taken from her domain? Would that tear the fabric separating the living and the dead?

Raffaele reads late into the night. He has ignored the others' knocks on his door all day, but now it is silent. Books strewn around him, volumes and volumes of myths and history, mathematics and science. Every time he flips a page, the candle on his desk flickers like it might go out. He is searching for a specific myth—the only reference to a time when the immortal realm touched the mortal that he's heard.

Finally, he finds it. Laetes. The angel of Joy. Raffaele slows down and reads it aloud, whispering the words as he goes.

“Laetes,” he murmurs, “the angel of Joy, was the most precious and beloved child of the gods. So beloved was he that he became arrogant, thinking only himself worthy of praise. His brother Denarius, the angel of Greed, seethed with bitterness at this. One night, Denarius cast Laetes from the heavens, condemning him to walk the world as a man for one hundred years. The angel of Joy fell from the light of the heavens through the dark of night, into the mortal world. The shudder of his impact sent ripples throughout the land, but it would take more than a hundred years for the consequences of that to manifest. There is an imbalance in the world, the poison of the immortal touching the mortal.”

Raffaele's voice trails off. He reads it again.
There is an imbalance in the world. The poison of the immortal touching the mortal.
His finger moves down the page, skimming the rest of the story.

“. . . until Laetes could look up at the heavens from the place where they touched the earth, and step through once more with the blessing of each of the gods.”

He thinks of the blood fever, the waves of plague that had birthed the Elites in the first place.
The blood fever.
Ripples throughout the land. Those plagues had been the consequence of immortality meeting mortality—they had been caused by Laetes's fall. He thinks of the Elites' powers. Then he thinks of Enzo, returning to the mortal world after having visited the immortal.

How had he not seen this before? How had he not made this connection until now? Until the poison in the ocean had given him this clue?

“Violetta,” Raffaele mutters, rising from his chair.
She will understand—she felt the poison in the ocean first.
He throws on his outer robe, then hurries to the door. As he goes, he thinks back to when he had first tested Adelina's powers, how her alignments to the Underworld shattered the glass of his lantern and sent the papers on his desk flying.

This energy feels like Adelina's,
Violetta had said when her feet touched the ocean's water.

If what he thinks is true, then they would not only have to face Adelina again . . . they would need her help.

When Raffaele turns the corner and enters the hall where
Violetta's room sits, he halts. Lucent and Michel are already standing outside her door. Raffaele slows in his steps. Even from a distance, he can sense a disturbance behind Violetta's door.

“What is it?” Raffaele asks the others.

“We heard a wailing,” Lucent says. “It didn't sound like a normal human cry . . . Raffaele, it was the most haunting sound I've ever heard.”

Raffaele turns his attention to Violetta's door. He can hear it now too, a low moan that makes his heart clench. It does not sound like Violetta at all. He glances at Michel, who shakes his head. “I don't want to see,” he mutters, his voice soft. Raffaele recognizes the fear in his eyes, the wish to avoid the image of what he is hearing.

“Stay here,” Raffaele says gently, putting a hand on Michel's shoulder. Then he nods at Lucent and steps into the room.

Violetta is awake—or she seems to be, at first glance. Her dark waves of hair are soaked with sweat, strands plastered against her forehead, and her arms are bare and pale against her nightgown, her hands desperately clutching her sheets. Her eyes are open, Raffaele notes, yet she is unaware that he and Lucent now stand beside her in her room.

But what holds his attention the most are the markings covering her arms.

This girl, the Elite who was once unmarked, now has markings that stretch all across her skin. They look like bruises, black and blue and red, irregular maps that crisscross her arms and overlap one another. They stretch up to
her neck and disappear down her nightgown. Raffaele suppresses the gasp in his throat.

“She doesn't seem fully conscious,” Lucent says. “She was fine yesterday—she was walking around, talking, smiling.”

“She was tired,” he replies, running a hand in the air over her body, thinking back to how weary her smile had seemed. The threads of her energy tangle, weaving and unweaving. “I should have sensed it last night.”

But even he could never have guessed how drastically this could happen, how Violetta could go to bed an unmarked Elite and appear this morning as if she had been beaten. Was this triggered by her wading into the poisoned ocean?
It is all coming to pass.
The thought floods his mind even as he tries to ignore it.
It is the same phenomenon that is hollowing out Lucent's bones, that had killed Leo by turning his venomous power back on himself, and that will eventually happen to the rest of us. A side effect directly related to her power.
For Violetta, whose ability had once protected her from markings like the others', is now facing the opposite—her power has turned viciously on her.

Raffaele shakes his head as he studies her energy.
She will die. And it will happen sooner than for any of us.

I have to tell Adelina. There is no other choice.

He straightens and takes a deep breath. When he speaks, his voice is calm and unwavering. “Bring me a quill and parchment. I need to send a dove.”