I stagger forward. To my surprise, Raffaele comes to my side. We are standing on wet sand now, and I look on as the waves head toward us. The water and sea foam rush up the beach—I suck in my breath as cold water runs over my feet. Raffaele lets it rush across his legs too, soaking the bottom of his robes.
Instantly, I feel it again. I’d gotten only a quick flash of the ocean’s strange darkness during the battle, and then I’d left it behind. But now, with the world around me quiet enough that I can concentrate, I can feel the death in the water. The ocean pulls away, then rushes forward again. Again, it soaks the bottom half of my legs. Again, I gasp at the cold energy swirling in the depths.
Raffaele looks at me, his eyes shining different colors in the night. “You, more than anyone, should be familiar with this energy.”
I frown. The feeling turns my stomach, nauseating me with its wrongness—but at the same time, I realize that I look forward to each surge of the ocean, hoping for another dose of this dark energy. “Yes,” I say automatically, almost against my will.
Raffaele nods. “Do you remember the day when I first tested your powers?” he asks. “I recall your alignments well. Ambition and passion, yes . . . but most of all, fear and fury. You remain the only person I’ve met birthed from both of the angels that guard the Underworld. Your energy is tied to the Underworld more than anyone I know.”
This power I feel in the water—this is energy from the Underworld.
Raffaele’s expression is grave. “The Elites exist only because of an imbalance between the mortal and immortal realms. The blood fevers themselves were ripples in our world caused by an ancient tear between those realms. Our existence defies the natural order, defies Death herself. Queen Maeve bringing Enzo back has only accelerated the process. There is a merging of the two realms that is slowly poisoning everything in our world.”
I shudder. The water rushes forward again, and I close my eye, both repulsed by and drawn to the dark energy.
“The reason I persuaded the Tamouran royals to release you, on condition of a truce,” Raffaele goes on, his eyes trained on the night’s horizon, “is because we need your help to fix this. Tamoura is already feeling the effects along her shores. If we do not do something soon, then not only will all Elites perish, but so will the world.”
I stare out at the horizon, unwilling to let Raffaele be right. Of course it’s ridiculous. “What do my alignments have to do with any of it?” I finally say.
Raffaele sighs and bows his head. “I think we had better take you to your sister.”
I have tried every root, leaf, and medicine I know, but nothing has worked on any of my patients. Only two have survived, both with discolored hands. You mentioned a six-year-old boy with scars on his face. Does he still live?
—Letter from Dtt. Marino Di Segna to Dtt. Siriano Baglio, 2 Juno, 1348
Adelina Amouteru
Violetta.
I hardly recognize her.
Her skin, once a rich, beautiful olive, looks ashen white—and deep purple, bruise-like markings cover her arms and legs. They even run up along her neck. Her eyes are sunken with illness, and her body is much thinner than I remember. She stirs at the commotion of us entering her chamber. I wonder if she can still sense our powers close by.
Raffaele walks to her side, then sits carefully at the edge of her bed. After a while, I draw near too. Perhaps this isn’t my sister at all, but some girl they’ve mistaken as her. Violetta does not have markings. She does not have pale skin. This can’t be her. I move closer until I am staring straight down at her face, studying her features. Her hair is damp, her skin dotted with sweat. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, as if she can’t quite catch her breath.
Look what they’ve done, the whispers hiss, and I turn on Raffaele.
“You did this to her,” I say in a low, ominous voice. My chains clink together. The soldiers that line the walls of Violetta’s chamber draw their crossbows, the arrows clicking as they aim at me. “These bruises on her arms and legs”—I pause to glance again at the markings that scar her—“you had her beaten, didn’t you? You are using her against me.”
“You know that is not the truth,” Raffaele replies. And even though I don’t want to believe him, I can see in his eyes that he’s right. I swallow, trying to push down my own fright and revulsion at her appearance.
“How long has Violetta looked like this?” I ask.
I’d hoped that Raffaele wouldn’t be able to sense the shift in my energy, but he tilts his head at me in a subtle, familiar gesture, a slight frown on his lips. “When I wrote you that letter, the markings had appeared on her just the night before.”
It’s been barely more than a month since then. “It’s impossible for her to have changed this quickly.”
“Our powers affect each of us in different ways, often opposite that which gives us strength,” Raffaele replies, remaining infuriatingly calm. “Violetta’s abilities kept her immune from the blood fever’s markings, just as Lucent’s powers of flight made her light and strong. Now it has reversed. The meeting of the immortal world with our own is poisonous.”
My stare returns to Violetta. She shifts, as if able to sense my gaze, and as I look on, her face turns on the pillow toward me. Her eyelids flutter. Then she opens her eyes for a moment, and they focus on me. I gape at the color of her irises. They are gray, as if the rich, dark colors that have always been there were now slowly fading away. She says nothing.
I feel a wave of disgust. Raffaele can’t possibly feel pity for Violetta’s condition—his compassion always comes with a price, a request. Because we need your help, he says. Just as he’d needed me when I was a member of the Dagger Society and then cast me out when I no longer suited him.
So why should I help a liar and a traitor? After everything the Daggers have put me through, does Raffaele honestly think I am going to fight for their lives just because he is using my dying sister against me? I am the White Wolf, Queen of the Sealands—but to Raffaele, I am merely useful again, and that has made him interested in me once more.
One of the other Daggers speaks before I can. It’s Lucent, and she rubs her arms incessantly as if trying to stave away an ache. “This is preposterous,” she mumbles. “The White Wolf is not going to help us, not even for her sister’s sake. Even if she does, she’ll betray us, as she always has. She’s interested only in herself.”
I glare at her, and she glares back. Only when Raffaele gives a firm nod to her does she look away, cross her arms, and let out a grunt. Raffaele turns back to me. “You know the myth of Laetes, yes? The angel of Joy?”
“Yes.” The halls of the Fortunata Court had been adorned with paintings of beautiful Laetes falling from the heavens. Teren once recited it to me, when I’d confronted him in the Inquisition Tower and taken Violetta from him. Do you remember the story of Denarius casting Laetes from the heavens, condemning him to walk the world as a man until his death sent him back among the gods? It makes me think of Magiano and his alignment to joy, that Magiano is probably somewhere down in the dungeons right now, where I can’t reach him.
“The stars and the heavens move at a different pace than we do,” he explains. “Something that happens to the gods will not be felt in our world for generations. Joy’s fall to the mortal world tore the barriers between the immortal and the mortal. It was his fall that caused the ripples of blood fever that swept across the land. That birthed the Elites.” Raffaele sighs. “The ever-shifting silver of your hair. The sapphire strands in mine. My eyes. These are lingering touches of the gods’ hands on us, blessings from them. And it is the poison that is killing us.”