Raffaele’s eyes stay fixed on Lucent’s wrist. “She’s here for the throne,” he replies. His voice is distant and calm. “The alignment in her to ambition has grown far stronger than I remember. It is a storm in her chest, poisoned by her other alignments. She will have her revenge, or she will die trying.”
“She also seems to have strengthened her relationship with her sister,” Gemma adds. “I’ve never experienced someone wrenching my power away like that. Violetta is learning fast.”
Leo, who leans against the wall and rubs a healing cream into a jagged cut on his arm, looks up. “Not to mention their mimic. Magiano.”
“Good thing you stopped him before he could try to copy you,” Lucent mutters.
Maeve grabs her mug and flings it at the wall. Gemma jumps. It nearly breaks the porthole, but instead hits wood and clanks to the floor. “The bond between Adelina and Enzo is weak,” she snaps, “but like a vine, it will grow rapidly. She will learn to control him—and then she will have another formidable ally at her side. That, along with her sister and her Elites?” She takes a deep breath to calm herself. Her eyes close. The rush of bringing Enzo back returns to her now, and she trembles at the memory. When she closed her eyes and pulled Enzo’s soul from the ocean of the dead to the living, she had felt the darkness seeping out of his chest, threatening to taint everything around him. He is no longer just a Young Elite. He is something else entirely. Something more.
Lucent curses under her breath as the servant secures the splint of her broken wrist. “What a strange break,” the servant remarks, shaking his head. “The wrist is broken as if twisted from within, rather than caused by some outside force.”
“We should be hunting down Adelina right now,” Lucent snaps at Maeve. “Should’ve followed her instead of running away with our tails between our legs.”
“Is there any way to undo Enzo’s bond to her?” Michel asks.
Maeve scowls at Lucent, then shakes her head. The beads in her hair clack against one another. “Adelina is now Enzo’s only link to the living world. If we sever that bond, he will die immediately, and there will be no bringing him back a second time.” She pauses to glance at Tristan. “But there is one difference,” she says in a quieter voice. “He is an Elite. I am able to control Tristan at my whim, because Tristan was a normal boy, with an innate energy of a normal man that cannot hope to rival mine. I can therefore overpower his energy with my own. But Enzo is an Elite. Whatever powers he once had, he now has tenfold.” She nods toward Raffaele. “Adelina may be able to control Enzo … but Enzo is so powerful that he may also control Adelina.”
Raffaele’s eyes dart away from Lucent’s wrist for the first time. He looks at Maeve. “You want Enzo to turn his power against Adelina?” he says. Again, that calm voice.
“It is our only way to win him back to our side.” She nods. “I heard the way her voice broke at the sight of him. Adelina is in love with the prince—”
“What haven’t you told us about your brother?” Raffaele suddenly interrupts. Beneath the calm is an undercurrent of anger, something Maeve has never heard in him. She blinks, surprised.
“What do you mean?” she asks, narrowing her eyes.
Raffaele nods at Tristan, who stares out the porthole with his soulless expression. “He has deteriorated since you first brought him back, hasn’t he?” he says, his voice turning raw now. “I should have known it from the instant I first sensed his energy. He is not alive—he is just a shadow of what he once was, and the Underworld will slowly claim him until he is nothing but a shell.”
Maeve’s eyes have turned into dangerous slits. “You forget your place, consort. He is a prince of Beldain.”
“We should not have brought Enzo back!” Raffaele suddenly snaps. All of the Daggers freeze. “He is not of the living—not one of us! I did not even have to see him emerge from the arena—I could feel the unnatural state of his energy from where I was in the tunnels. I felt that abhorrent, dead energy in him, the taint of the Underworld coating him. It does not matter if it amplifies his powers tenfold—it is not him.” His face contorts in fury and anguish. “Your brother is a true abomination, a demon of the Underworld. And now you have turned Enzo into one.”
Maeve rises from her resting place. She gathers her furs around her neck, turns away in stony silence, and walks toward the door. When she reaches it, she glances once over her shoulder. “Your White Wolf happens to be in love with that abomination,” she replies. “And it shall be her undoing.”
Raffaele’s jaw tightens. “Then you don’t know Adelina, Your Majesty.”
Maeve glares at him for a moment. Then she throws open the door and strides out of the room. Behind her, Lucent hops to her feet. “Wait,” she calls out. But Maeve ignores her. Everything seems muted, the world blurred, and the young queen suddenly needs to get off this ship.