Enzo stops and turns to look at me, his eyes still hard. I smile at him. My giant wings shatter into a million pieces—each piece morphs into a shard of dark glass. I send them hurtling at Enzo. They pass straight through him, hit the wall, and break into an explosion of glitter.
Enzo doesn’t flinch, but he does blink. The shards had looked real enough to make him react. He folds his hands behind him, then regards me. “Better.” He walks toward me again. Wherever he steps, the black lines on the ground creep upward, turn into skeletal hands, and try to grab at his legs. I drink in the exhilaration of it all, the millions of threads glistening before me, ready for my command.
“Weave the threads together,” Enzo commands as he draws closer. Flames appear behind him. I pull myself to my feet and step away from him until my back touches the cavern wall. “Go ahead. Make something for me that is more than a dark silhouette. Make something with color.”
Still drowning in my fury and fear, I take the threads I see and cross them, painting what appears in my mind. And just like that—slowly, painfully—a new creation emerges before me. Enzo has almost reached me. Between us, I paint something red, so crimson red that the color of it blinds me. The red changes into petals, each one layered on top of the other, covered in dark dewdrops. Beneath it spiral green stems covered in thorns. Enzo stops before the hovering illusion. He observes it for a moment, then reaches out to touch it. I pull on strings in the air. Blood blooms on his gloves, dripping from his palms to the ground, mimicking my own real blood on my injured palm. Reminding me of the day when I’d closed my hand around the rose thorns in my father’s garden.
I am learning imitation from reality.
Enzo steps forward. He passes through the rose illusion, then stops a foot away from me. The blood disappears from his gloves. I glare at him defiantly. I keep my heart wide open, relishing the flood of dark emotions that fill me to the brim. The heat of his fire turns my cheeks red.
Enzo nods once. “Very good,” he murmurs. For the first time, he looks impressed.
“I am ready,” I reply angrily. To my dismay, my tears are still wet on my face. “I’m not afraid of you. And if you give me a chance, I can show you what I’m capable of.”
Enzo simply watches me. I search his eyes, seeing once again the odd expression lurking behind his cold features, something that goes beyond his desire to exploit my power. Something that almost looks like . . . familiarity. We gaze at each other for a long moment. Finally, he reaches up and gently wipes away one of my tears.
“Don’t cry,” he says, his voice firm. “You are stronger than that.”
When the world was young, the gods and goddesses birthed the angels, Joy and Greed, Beauty and Empathy and Sorrow, Fear and Fury, sparks of humanity. To feel emotion, therefore, to be human,
is to be a child of the gods.
—The Birth of the Angels, various authors
Adelina Amouteru
The storm finally passes, leaving a devastated Estenzia
in its path—broken roof shingles, flooded temples, wrecked ships, the dead and dying. As people flock to the temples, others gather in Estenzia’s squares. Teren leads the largest of these gatherings. I can see it all the way from the Fortunata Court’s balconies.
“We let a malfetto win the qualifying races,” he calls out, “and look at how the gods have punished us. They are angry with the abominations that we allow to walk among us.” People listen in grim silence. Others start to shout along, raising their fists in response. Behind Teren are three young malfettos—one of them barely out of childhood. Probably dug them out of the city’s ghettos. They are tied together to a stake erected in the center of the square, and their mouths are gagged. Their feet are hidden in the midst of a pile of wood. A pair of priests flank them, lending their silent approval.
Teren lifts the torch in his hands. The firelight casts an orange hue across his pale irises. “These malfettos are accused of being Elites, for being among those that attacked Inquisitors during the races. The Inquisition has found them guilty. It is our duty to send them back to the Underworld, to keep our city safe.”
He throws the torch onto the pile of wood. The malfettos disappear, screaming, behind curtains of fire.
“From this day on,” Teren calls out above the sound of the flames, “all malfetto families and shops will pay a double tax to the crown, as reparations for the bad fortune they bring upon our society. Refusal will be seen as reasonable cause for suspicion of working with the Young Elites. Offenders will be detained immediately.”
I can’t see the Daggers from here, but I know they are watching the burning from the roofs. I know that right now Dante is notching arrows to his bow, getting ready to put each of the malfettos out of their misery. I try not to dwell on why they don’t risk saving them.
The next day, an angry mob tears down a malfetto family’s shop. Broken glass litters the streets.
My lessons speed up.
Enzo takes me under his tutelage, coming to the court late at night or early in the morning. Not until Gemma whispers it to me do I learn that Enzo has never trained anyone like this before. Her words are meant to be encouraging, but all I can do is lie awake at night, dreading the moment when I will have to see Teren again.
To hone my illusion skills, Enzo calls on Michel, the Architect. “Ridiculous,” Michel says during our first session together. He brings the painter’s eye, and his painter’s eye critiques my work. “You call this a rose? The shadows are all wrong. The petals are too thick and the texture is too harsh. Where’s the essence? The delicate touch of life?”