“Why are you here?” Teren hisses. All hints of his taunting nature are gone now, replaced by raw anger. “What do you want? What do you want?”
I take a step toward him and bend down to his eye level. “Teren,” I say softly. “There is something happening to the world. To you, to me, to everyone here. The immortal Underworld is seeping into the real world, poisoning everything in it.” I explain what Raffaele had told me, about the poison in the dark waters, the dying baliras, his wounds that now heal more slowly than they ever have before. “We believe we are the only ones who can stop it. The Elites. And you align with the immortal world in a way that we still need.” Teren’s head stays bowed, and somehow, a part of me aches in understanding. What had Raffaele forced up from his past? “I want you to come with us.”
Teren lets out a broken laugh. He lifts his head, and my breath catches as his colorless eyes find mine, windows full of madness and tragedy. “We have an unpleasant history together, little wolf,” he says. “What makes you think I have any desire to help you?”
“The last time we worked together, there was another standing in the way,” I reply.
Teren leans forward. He is so close that I can feel his breath against my skin. “The one standing between us is you,” he snaps. “We can only be enemies.”
I suppress my hatred of him. “When we first met, you told me that I deserved to return to the waters of the Underworld. That all Elites are abominations, never meant to walk this world.” I narrow my eye at him. “But tell me, Teren. If you are a demon, and I am a demon—abominations in the eyes of the gods—then why have the gods given me the Kenettran throne? Why do I rule the Sealands, Teren, and all armies fall before me? Why, Teren, do the gods keep rewarding me?”
Teren glares at me.
“You were born the son of a Lead Inquisitor,” I say. “You have been taught all your life that you are lower than a dog, and you have believed it. Even the woman you once loved told you that you were nothing. She turned her back on you, in a way that makes me pale by comparison.” Then I lift my head and look straight at him. “What if you are wrong? What if the gods sent you, and indeed the rest of us, not because we were never meant to be, but because we were always meant to be?”
“It’s not possible,” Teren replies calmly. But he does not answer my question.
“Is it possible that the gods created us in order to save the world, instead of destroy it?” I press, knowing the words that will weaken him. “Is it possible that they created us in order to undo something broken, so that we may one day sacrifice ourselves?”
Teren stays quiet. “So,” he finally says, “you want me to join you in this quest to fix the break between worlds? Why would I do this?”
“Because we need you,” I reply. “And you are still the strongest Elite I know.”
Without warning, Teren lashes out and grabs my wrist with one of his hands. His grip is iron, painful, unyielding. I suck in my breath sharply at his touch. Sergio pulls his sword halfway from its sheath; Magiano utters a sharp warning. “I could kill you right now, Adelina,” Teren whispers. “I could break every bone in your body, could crush them into powder, and there is nothing your men can do to stop me. Let that prove to you that the gods are not on your side. You are still the same quivering little girl I tied to the stake that morning.”
My hatred for Teren seethes, black and churning, rising above my fear and the pain in my wrist at his grip. Behind me, Magiano’s energy stirs. I stare levelly back at Teren. “And yet, here I still stand before you. Your queen.”
My words have stirred doubt in him—there’s a flicker in his eyes that I have never seen before. He is wondering whether I could possibly be right. And I am right, aren’t I? The gods have blessed me. They’ve rid this world of the Kenettran king who despised us, then his queen who had used and manipulated us. The gods put on the throne a girl born to a father who wished her dead. They have spared my life again and again. They’ve given me everything.
And you pushed your sister away. You murdered a man you once loved. You are an empty vessel. Nothing. The gods have given you a power that is killing you.
“Teren, we are going to hand our powers back to the gods. We will fix the world by giving up our abomination. It is the only way, and it is the only mantra you have ever followed.” I say it as if I were also trying to persuade myself to join this journey, that I do not fear the loss of my power, that I am not still attempting to cheat the inevitable. “I have no other reason to stand beside Raffaele. Nor you.” I take a deep breath. “This is what you’ve always wanted.”
Teren studies me for a moment. His expression shifts from one extreme to the next, settling at last into a look I can’t understand. There is a light there, behind his madness, a glimmer of something that lures him forward. This is what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it, Teren? I think.
He releases me. Sergio loosens his grip on his sword, and the others in the chamber shift their stances. I relax, letting out my breath, trying to keep my composure. My heart hammers in my chest.
Teren gives me a slow smile. “We will see who is right, mi Adelinetta,” he says.
Teren Santoro
In the first memory, Teren was seven years old.
He was in the uniform of an Inquisition Axis apprentice, a simple gray tunic and trousers, a student training to join the white cloaks that his father presided over. His hair was cut short and clean, and his eyes were still the color of the ocean. He’s in one row with a dozen others, looking out at a crowd of young apprentices gathered in a courtyard of the palace, fenced in by tall statues of the twelve gods and angels. His father addressed them all. Teren stood tall, his head held high. He was the only son of the Lead Inquisitor of Kenettra, and that made him better than the others—so his father said, anyway.
“Our order has always existed to protect the Kenettran crown,” his father was saying, “to protect the superiority of our people above all others, and to protect the purity of our heritage. By pledging your lives to the Inquisition’s order, you promise to forever dedicate yourselves to the royal family, and to guard the throne with your lives.”
Teren felt his little chest swell with pride. The Inquisition Axis was the most esteemed army in the world—and his father led them. He hoped that, one day, he could look as regal as his father did in his Lead Inquisitor armor and cloak.
“We wage a noble war against those who are impure. Remember this, and go forth with it in your minds: Protect your country, at all costs, at whatever sacrifice.”
Teren closed his eyes and took a deep breath, internalizing the words. A noble war against those who are impure.
“Teren Santoro.” His father was calling his name now. “Come forward.”
Teren needed no second calling. He immediately stepped out of his row and made his way forward. When he reached his father, the man nodded for him to kneel, handed him his first sword, and told him to look out into the crowd. Teren obeyed. The other apprentices, who were instead given wooden practice swords rather than Teren’s steel one, followed his example and knelt. Teren bowed his head and closed his eyes as his father read out the Inquisition Axis oath.
He was pure. Superior. And he would follow in his father’s footsteps.
Teren was eleven years old in the second memory.