“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 His clothes have indeed been replaced by a clean set of robes, and his hair is tied back, his face smooth.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.
Raffaele Laurent Bessette
Some 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.