“You killed Dante, didn’t you?” Lucent says. Her voice holds none of the wry amusement that I remember, none of the reluctant friendship and trust that I’d started to earn from her. Now there’s nothing but anger, held back only in deference to Raffaele. I’ve lost her completely. “How’d you do it?”

I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. I had indeed killed Dante. I did it by twisting his pain illusions so severely that his heart bled. My silence is all that Lucent needs—her lips tighten, and a veil of fear and unease blankets the room.

“It was an accident,” I choke out. The only thing I seem able to say, apparently.

“Were you working with Teren?” Lucent snaps. “Is that where you disappeared to when you ran away? Did you go off to see the Inquisition? Did you make some sort of pact with them?” Her voice rises. “He thanked you over Enzo’s body. You—”

“No! I can explain.” The thought makes the anger rise in me, and my illusions threaten to veer out of control again. I clamp down on them in time. But the gesture makes Raffaele turn concerned eyes on me. Gemma studies me while chewing her lip. Fear comes off her too. My heart twists. “I would never. It was an accident. I swear to the gods.”

“Well, Raffaele?” Michel says, cutting through the silence that follows. “What do we do with her now?”

The way Michel addresses Raffaele and the way Gemma obeyed Raffaele’s simple hand gesture tell me that the Daggers have anointed a new leader. Raffaele shakes his head at me once. His eyes are heavy with sadness. “You said you could explain,” he says. “So tell us what happened.”

I start to tell Raffaele about how I’d cloaked Enzo in invisibility, but he stops me with a subtle hand. “No,” he says. His voice turns firm. “Tell us what happened, from the beginning.”

My lips tremble. The truth. I hesitate, as always.

But then I crumble. In a stammering voice, I finally do.

I tell Raffaele about the evening at the Fortunata Court, when I first saw him perform. I tell him how Teren came to me in the audience and threatened me with my sister’s life. I tell him how I took advantage of the qualifying races to go to Teren and tell him about the Tournament of Storms. I tell him how Teren found me again during the Spring Moons, and how I overheard Enzo and Dante’s conversation about me. How I fled to the Inquisition Tower to free my sister. How I killed Dante in a dark alley. The release of all of my lies and secrets is a relief, exhausting me. I tell them how Teren lunged for me in the arena, how I threw up my hands in defense and conjured an illusion of indescribable pain on him. How I realized I was not attacking Teren at all, but Enzo.

My voice falters here. The retelling leaves my heart so pained that I can barely breathe, and in my sorrow I see a ghost of Enzo flickering in and out of the room, his dark eyes turned toward me, his expression haunting. I can feel the suspicion emanating from everyone, their unspoken thought that I am responsible for what had happened. That I am a monster.

I am so sorry. So very sorry.

Perhaps Teren had always known that I would do something like this.

When I finish, they are quiet. Lucent stares at me with an expression both disgusted and frightened. Gemma has retreated behind her, and Michel looks ready to stop me in case I try to hurt them here. I know what they’re thinking, even though they don’t say it out loud. They want me dead. It would make them all feel much better. A thick, dark anger begins to build inside me. I claw for it. More fog lifts from my mind. I feel sparks of strength growing in me, pushing past the weakness of my blood loss and grief.

Finally, Raffaele speaks. There is a certain reverence the group gives him—with his words, the others quiet immediately, turning to him as if hoping he has the power to set everything right again. His voice is weak, but steady. “When I first tested you,” he begins, taking one of my hands, “you aligned with fear and fury, passion and curiosity. Do you remember?”

He is using his energy on me. I can feel his soothing pull on my heartstrings, the gentle tug that warms me to him, calming me. I find myself leaning into his touch, squeezing his hand harder. That afternoon when we’d first met doesn’t seem like so long ago. “I remember,” I reply.

Raffaele goes on. A certain sadness enters his voice. “Your reaction to the nightstone and amber, to darkness, frightened me. It frightened me very much. Still, I wanted to believe that, somehow, you would be able to tame it to your will. Do you know how powerful you could be, if you mastered these two emotions and learned how to use them both in yourself and in others? I believed. I thought . . .” He hesitates for a moment. “I thought your alignment to passion would save you. Passion’s energy is bright and warm, just like the color of its gemstone. It is a light in the darkness, a fire in the night. I thought at first it would make you safer, that if you were around those whom you loved, you would be able to use your darkness to your advantage. I thought it would help tame you, and subsequently, that it would help you.”

Tears prickle the corner of my eye. I know what path Raffaele’s words are going down.

Raffaele lowers his jewel-toned eyes. “I was wrong. Passion is bright and warm . . . but passion has a dark side too. It links with fear. Our hearts fill with terror at the thought of harm coming to our loved ones, don’t they? You cannot have love without fear. The two coexist. In you, your alignment with passion instead fed your fear and fury. It made you darker. The more you love someone, the more unsteady your powers become. Your growing passion for Enzo made you volatile. It led to you losing control over your powers, powers that had grown to dangerous strengths. That, coupled with your anger and bitterness, has made you incredibly unpredictable.”

“What are you saying?” I whisper through my tears.

Raffaele continues to pull on my energy, and his gentle touch sends waves of sadness washing over me. He feels guilty, I realize. “Adelina,” he murmurs. Oh. I gasp in sudden pain. I’m surprised that this is what finally breaks my heart. He has never, ever called me just Adelina before, not even when we first met. He is breaking his affectionate ties with me. “I advised Enzo from the very beginning to kill you. He refused.”

I begin to cry. A memory comes to me of my afternoon with Raffaele, when we sat together along the golden waters of Estenzia’s canals and watched the gondolas go by, when he sang me my mother’s lullaby. Dante was right. Raffaele, kind, beautiful, sensual Raffaele, whom I cared about with all my heart, the only person in the world I thought I could trust entirely, the person I returned to the Daggers to help save, had never trusted me in return. Kindness with strings attached. He was the last thread suspending me in the light. Without him, I can feel myself spiraling downward, falling to a place where I can no longer pull myself back up.

“Even you,” I whisper through my tears. “How could you?” I don’t need to ask to know that Raffaele must have also suggested that Enzo kill the boy who couldn’t control the rains. In some ways, Raffaele had always been the Daggers’ leader. “Were we ever friends?” I say in a small voice. “Did you ever care about me?”

Raffaele winces. I can tell it pains him to tell me this truth, that even as he yearns to give me some comfort, he holds back and hardens his heart. “I stand by my advice to him. I trained you slowly because I didn’t want you to embrace your full powers. I knew, early on, that it could bring all of us suffering—including you.”

Who will ever want you, Adelina? Did you honestly think you could escape who you are? You will never fit in anywhere. My father’s ghost materializes beside me, his breath heavy and cold against my skin, his familiar voice hissing in my ear. No one else reacts to his presence, though. He is an illusion that tortures only me.

“We can fix it,” I say. My hand clenches harder around Raffaele’s. One last, frantic attempt. “You told me once that there were rumors of an Elite who could bring the dead back to life. Right?”

Raffaele shakes his head. “You’re deluding yourself, Adelina,” he says gently, and I know that he isn’t talking about the impossibility of bringing Enzo back. He’s talking about Enzo’s love for me.

He cared. He risked his life for me. In desperation, I reach out with my energy and conjure an illusion of emotions around Raffaele, trying to convince him that Enzo loved me, if even briefly, if even in a moment of weakness—trying to convince him that he cares for me. My words come faster. “I’ll learn how to rein in my powers—I promise, I can do it next time. Just give me one more chance.”

Raffaele closes his eyes. I feel him resisting the illusion being woven around him. “Don’t,” he whispers.

“Please,” I whisper back in a breaking voice. “You’ve always been kind to me. Don’t leave me behind, I beg you. I will be lost without you. What will I do? How will I learn?”

When Raffaele opens his eyes again, they look glossy with unshed tears. He reaches out to smooth hair away from the ruined side of my face. “You have goodness in your heart,” he says. “But your darkness overwhelms it all; your desire to hurt, destroy, and avenge is more powerful than your desire to love, help, and light the way. I have reached the limits of my knowledge. I don’t know how to train you.”

Beauty and pain go hand in hand, my father always said. For an instant, I fantasize about making Raffaele feel the pain that he’s giving to me, forcing him to cower before me in agony. How satisfying that would be. My energy swells in anticipation. Then I recoil in horror at the spark of joy I felt at such a depraved act. He’s right about me. He’s always been right.

Raffaele tightens his lips. Tears no longer shine in his eyes. Maybe I imagined them all along. “You can stay the night here,” he says. “But in the morning, you and your sister need to leave. It is my job to protect the Daggers, and I no longer feel that we can be safe with you among us. I’m sorry.”

He’s casting me out. I’m no longer one of them.

Darkness swirls within me, washing at the shores of my consciousness. I see all the times I trained with Enzo, how he saved my life and took me in, how we kissed, the glow of his silhouette in the darkness, the way his hair would fall, loose and unruly, over his shoulders, his gentle expression. Then I see the stormy night when my father made a deal to sell me, the first time I called on my illusions in the middle of pouring rain, the real reason why Enzo chose to save me on my execution day, all the times I was hurt and abused, left behind and abandoned, the iron stake and the fire and the people chanting below, wishing me dead and gone, Teren’s pale eyes staring back at me, the Daggers, my training, Dante’s sneering face, Raffaele’s betrayal. The ambition churning in me reaches its peak, displacing my sorrow, fusing with my anger and hate and fear, my passion and curiosity. The whispers that lurk in the back of my mind now claw their way out into the open, their fingers long and bony, gleeful for the freedom I’m giving them. Are the Daggers any different from your father, who wanted to sell you to settle his debts? they hiss at me. From Teren, who wanted to use you to get to the Daggers? Even the training cavern, hidden underground, was not a far stretch from the Inquisition’s dungeons.

Perhaps I’d simply switched one dark prison cell for another. No one ever gives me their kindness without hoping for something in exchange.

Are they any different?

Are they all the same?

They all want to use you, use you, use you until they get what they want, and then they will toss you aside.

Everything Raffaele saw in me on my testing day is true. Together, my alignments with energy swirl inside me, shifting and powerful. I am shaking.

Raffaele feels the rising power in me, because a note of fear hovers over him. Still, he doesn’t move. He faces me with grim determination, refusing to back down. Don’t. Concentrate. Control it. The only way to clamp down on my energy is to erase my emotions, and so I fold them each away, one by one. My sorrow turns to anger, then to ice-cold fury. My soul curls in on itself in defense. I am gone. I am truly gone.

I am not sorry.

“You have no right to judge me,” I whisper, looking around at the others. “You belong to a society that thrives on murder. You’re no better.”

Raffaele only returns my look with his level gaze. He nods at the others to leave. Lucent starts to protest, then sighs and casts me one last glare before following Gemma and Michel out the door. Raffaele and I are the only ones left in the room. For a moment, however brief, the gentleness on his face fades away to reveal something hard and dark.

“Murder is a means to an end,” he finally says, tilting his head slightly at me. This time, the gesture looks more cunning than flirtatious. “Not an activity of pleasure.”

If you cast me out of the Dagger Society, then I will form my own. I am tired of losing. I am tired of being used, hurt, and tossed aside.

It is my turn to use. My turn to hurt.

My turn.

“You’re making a mistake,” I say. My voice emerges flat and cold. The voice of someone new. “By not killing me now.”

“No,” Raffaele replies. “I’m not.”

He finally stands. His hand separates from mine. He walks toward the door with his signature grace, then stops right before it.

“Adelina,” he says, turning. The look in his eyes threatens to break me. “I loved him too.”

Then he leaves me, and I am truly alone.

I pledge myself to the Rose Society until the end of my days,
to use my eyes to see all that happens, my tongue to woo others to
our side, my ears to hear every secret, my hands to crush my enemies. I will do everything in my power to destroy all who stand in my way.