But Raffaele doesn’t make a move. Of course he doesn’t. Instead, he takes a step back and folds his arms into his sleeves. Overhead, several baliras are flying in the balcony’s direction. I recognize the tiny spot of copper hair on one of the riders. It’s Lucent.
Giulietta gives Raffaele a harsh look. She narrows her eyes. Realizes the danger she is now in. She glances at the Inquisitors behind Teren. “Seize him,” she calls out. One of her Inquisitors shouts at her to board a balira, and she starts rushing in its direction.
A tingling begins in my fingers and travels up my arms. My power is so strong now that the edges of my vision are starting to blur, illusions of memories and people flashing in and out of my periphery. I could kill the queen myself, right now. The thought rushes through me with exhilarating speed. Teren and his Inquisitors have gotten us into the palace, and now I stand a mere few feet from the ruler of Kenettra. I could twist her so hard with pain that she could die, writhing, here on the floor. This is what we came here to do. Beside me, Magiano gives me a quick glance. He expects it too.
What are you waiting for, Adelina?
But a better idea occurs to me. I came here for revenge, didn’t I? So, instead, I let Teren move forward. Then I reach out with my threads and coil them around Giulietta’s wrist. I yank hard, weaving.
Giulietta lets out a shocked cry of agony as a sudden, searing pain twists her wrist. She looks down in horror as she sees blood dripping down her hand. I smile, strengthening the illusion. She looks up at me. My illusion wavers as she realizes what I’m doing, but she is not strong enough to see past it.
The Inquisitors behind Teren do not move at Giulietta’s command. For the first time, I sense a flicker of uncertainty in her. Giulietta gathers her strength. “I said, seize him!”
Still, the Inquisitors do not move.
Teren lifts his bowed head to look at Giulietta. I expect him to smile, but instead his eyes are filled with tears. “You sent me away,” he says. “I loved you. Do you know how much I loved you?” His voice trembles. I shudder at the blackness that has started to rise within him.
“You are a fool!” Giulietta retorts back. “Do you still not understand why I sent you away? It is because I am your queen, Master Santoro. You do not disobey your queen.”
“Yes, you are my queen!” Teren shouts. “And yet you no longer act like one! You are supposed to be chosen by the gods. Pure of blood, perfection. But look at whom you surrounded yourself with!” He gestures to Raffaele. “You commanded that abomination to touch you? You accepted the Daggers as part of your army, in exchange for halting the cleansing of malfettos?” Teren’s words turn uglier, his voice harsher and louder. He is entirely oblivious to the hypocrisy of what he is saying.
“And what are you?” Giulietta snaps. “You, my malfetto Inquisitor? Have I not forgiven you for your abomination? You know nothing about how to rule! I would do the same for your fellow malfettos, as long as they recognize their abomination, and serve me as my humble subjects.”
I reach for Teren, feeding his anger with threads of my own darkness. My energy wraps around him, adding to his, weaving an illusion around him. I paint a fleeting image before him of Giulietta wrapped in Raffaele’s embrace, with her head thrown back, Giulietta turning away from Teren and toward Raffaele. Giulietta standing on a balcony, pardoning malfettos of all crimes. I paint all of these images before Teren, flashing them one after another, until he is lost in them.
Teren’s fury lurches higher. The whispers in my head grow and grow, until they are deafening.
Your revenge your revenge your revenge.
Do it, now.
I reach for Giulietta, and I start to weave.
Suddenly, Teren pauses. His eyes widen. They focus on something in Giulietta’s hair … a wide, shining lock of red and gold, prominent against the rest of her dark strands. Teren frowns, confused. In the midst of his rage, swirling in the storm of illusions I’ve created around him, he cannot tell that this is an illusion I’ve just created.
I smile. Look, Teren. Why, how did you miss this marking on her, after all these years?
His eyes dart back to Giulietta’s. “You,” he whispers, blinded by my illusion. “You have a marking?”
“A marking?” Giulietta’s expression shifts for a moment in confusion.
Teren’s focus returns to the unnatural color in her hair. I conjure whispers in Teren’s ears, and they speak to him of betrayal. “You’ve hidden it from me, all this time,” he mutters. “Covered by an apothecarist’s work, hidden by black powder. A marking. I know it.”
“What are you talking about?” Giulietta’s anger is bitterly dark now, a rising tempest. “You have lost your mind, Master Santoro.”
“You are no pure royal. You were tainted by the blood fever, like your brother.” His mouth curls into an ugly sneer. His eyes are glazed, delirious with the illusions I’ve woven around him, and he can focus on nothing but the false marking I’ve painted into Giulietta’s hair. “You are an abomination, a filthy malfetto, just like me. And I gave you my love. And you fooled me.”
“Enough,” Giulietta snaps. She looks again to her Inquisitors and draws herself up to her full height. “This is an order. Seize him.”
Still, the Inquisitors don’t move. Teren stares at Giulietta as if his heart were icing over. “Now I know why you always had such sympathy for those damn malfetto slaves,” he chokes out hoarsely. “Asking for them to be properly fed. Asking for them to return to their homes.” His voice trembles with rage now. “Now I know why you give yourself away to other abominations.”