“Enzo!”
A clear voice cuts through my illusion—the Underworld wavers, then vanishes in a whirlwind of smoke. I’m back at the tower, crouched on the edge of the ramparts. Enzo turns around to see Raffaele standing at the stairs behind us, a crossbow in his hands. He is pale, his face drawn with fear, his lips tightened into a determined line. The wind whips his hair into a furious river, and his pale robes stream behind him in waves of silk and velvet. Had he woken, too, at the strangeness of Enzo’s energy? His eyes dart in my direction before returning to the prince.
Raffaele lifts the crossbow higher. He isn’t aiming it at me.
“Enzo,” he says again. His eyes shine wet in the night. “Leave her.”
In the past, Enzo would have wavered. His eyes would clear, the pools of dull darkness making way again for those I know so well, dark and warm, slashed with bright scarlet. But even Raffaele’s presence this time does nothing to clear the death from Enzo’s gaze. I feel nothing of Enzo at all in our tether.
Before I can think anything else, Enzo turns away from me, reaches for a dagger, and lunges at Raffaele. The hands of Death loosen from my heart for an instant, and I recoil in horror from the rampart. Raffaele pauses for the briefest of moments—then he clenches his jaw and fires his crossbow. The arrow strikes Enzo in the chest. He staggers, but doesn’t fall. Raffaele puts his arms up to defend himself, but his instant of hesitation has cost him. Enzo’s strength is far beyond that of any human. He grabs Raffaele by the throat and slams him against the wall. Raffaele lets out a choked cry. Enzo’s dagger flashes in the air.
I don’t think—I just act. I reach out through our tether and yank the threads of Enzo’s energy tight. Then I pull them toward me.
Enzo lets out a snarl of irritation that barely sounds human. He turns his black eyes to me again. A thousand thoughts whirl through my mind. The threads of his energy that I’m holding are so cold, they seem to burn through my consciousness, pulled so taut that they seem ready to break. I think back to the moment when Maeve had summoned him back from the Underworld, how she had tied him to me. Now the tension of the strings of his energy cut at my mind.
This is not him.
Raffaele reloads, tightens his grip on his crossbow, and fires at close range. This arrow hits Enzo in the back. He fires again. Another arrow. Enzo hunches, finally slowed by the attack, but the expression on his face doesn’t change. His attention turns back to me and, again, I feel the hands of Moritas through our tether.
I am not yours yet, I think through the chaos, pushing defiantly against her. The darkness inside me crowds my chest, fighting Enzo’s power—he shudders once at my touch. The steps around us turn black and are stained with illusions of blood, and the sky overhead takes on a scarlet tint.
But I cannot control him this time. Enzo’s soulless eyes lock on mine—his daggers flash toward me.
Then, abruptly, he falls to one knee. His head bows. Behind him, Raffaele lowers his crossbow, and I see one final arrow buried in Enzo’s back, the one that has finally struck true. Blood drips on the stones beneath our feet. A low, labored gasp comes from him as his second knee falls, and the daggers clatter out of his hands. The tether between us trembles violently, and for an instant, I can feel the pain of his wounds as surely as if they were my own. I sink to the floor before him, unable to look away.
He is dying.
It doesn’t matter anymore. The Enzo I once knew died a long time ago.
Enzo looks up at me. Suddenly, the blackness in his eyes seems to fade, replaced by the familiar warm brown of his irises, the red slashes, the glow of life. I see a hint of his old self there, fighting through the darkness of the Underworld to gaze at me one last time. It is the look he’d given me when we used to dance.
This is the real Enzo.
“Let me go,” he whispers. It is his voice. It is the voice that once comforted me, gave me strength. And as I try to take in his words, the final tendrils of the tether linking us unravel from around my heart, freeing me.
Enzo collapses. As the last bit of my life and my light leaves him, he seems to turn gray, as if he could no longer contain the colors of the living world. He turns his head weakly in the direction of the ocean. The black pools in his eyes finally vanish, and a name drifts from his lips. He says it so quietly that I nearly miss it. It is not my name, but the name of another girl, one he had known and loved long ago.
Then, he closes his eyes and sinks to the floor. His body grows still. I know, without a doubt, that he is gone.
Raffaele says nothing. He stays against the wall, eyes fixed on Enzo. Then, he pulls Enzo’s body to him and leans over his head. The silence goes on. I walk forward in a daze, coming to a kneel beside them. Now I am close enough to hear Raffaele’s quiet crying. He doesn’t pay me any attention; in fact, it is as if I were not even here.
After a long moment, he pulls away and lifts his jewel-toned eyes to me, the colors washed green and gold with tears. We stare at each other. I can see the confusion in his gaze as clearly as he must see the same in mine.
You didn’t have to save me.
I am numb. I don’t know what to do. The absence of my link to Enzo is a yawning chasm, a hollowness I first felt when Teren took Enzo’s life in the Estenzian arena. How long had he been a part of my world? How had my life been before he stepped into it? All I can think is that I am losing him all over again, except that I already lost him.
I am not ready to die.
This realization strikes me hard. The terror I’d felt while crouching against the rampart makes me quake uncontrollably, haunting my senses. No, I am not ready to die, and there is only one way I can prevent that from happening.
As the sun starts to rise, I watch as Raffaele bends over Enzo’s body, the two of us mourning the prince we both loved.
Dearest Mother, I am afraid, for there is something he isn’t telling me. It is not to do with our debt, I think, nor his conversation with the king. But it leads him on terrible midnight tantrums.
—Letter from Ilena de la Meria to her mother, the Baroness of Ruby
Adelina Amouteru
First, I have conditions.
I will go with Raffaele and the Daggers on their journey—if I can bring my own crew and my own ship. Sailing alone on a vessel with them is out of the question.
Magiano must be released, alive and unharmed.
Violetta stays with me.
These are my terms.
Tamoura agrees to stand with us in exchange for a truce. I am not finished with my conquests yet, although with Violetta back and our lives at stake—with my life at stake—my attention has shifted away from throwing my army at the Tamourans. It might be nice to have an ally for a change.
Raffaele and the Golden Triad agree to all of these terms. So, a day later, Tamouran soldiers move me from my cell to the bathhouse, where two maids wash me and bind my hair in silks. Then I am taken to a real bedchamber in the palace, where I curl up in the bed and don’t move again until the following afternoon. My hands stay chained, clutched near my chest, as if to fill the new gap there. Enzo had been tethered to me for so long, and the strength of that connection was so persistent that its absence now makes me dizzy, like I’m falling through the air.