The Young Elites Read Online Free

have no idea how long I stayed there. All I know is that, eventually, I staggered to my feet. I picked up the scattered silverware with trembling fingers, retied the sack, and pulled myself onto my stallion’s saddle. Then I rode away, leaving behind the carnage I’d created. I ran from the father I’d murdered. I escaped so quickly that I never stopped to wonder again whether or not someone had been watching me from a window.
    I rode for days. Along the road, I bartered my stolen silverware to a kind innkeeper, a sympathetic farmer, a softhearted baker, until I’d collected a small pouch of talents that would keep me in bread until I reached the next city. My goal: Estenzia, the northern port capital, the crowning jewel of Kenettra, the city of ten thousand ships. A city large enough to be teeming with
malfettos.
I’d be safer there. I’d be so far away from all of this that no one would ever find me.
    But on the fifth day, my exhaustion finally caught up to me—I was no soldier, and I’d never ridden like this before. I crumpled in a broken, delirious heap before the gates of a farmhouse.
    A woman found me. She was dressed in clean brown robes, and I remember being so taken by her motherly beauty that my heart immediately warmed to her in trust. I reached a shaking hand up to her, as if to touch her skin.
    “Please,” I whispered through cracked lips. “I need a place to rest.”
    The woman took pity on me. She cupped my face between her smooth, cool hands, studied my markings for a long moment, and nodded. “Come with me, child,” she said. She led me to the loft of their barn, showing me where I could sleep, and after a meal of bread and hard cheese, I immediately fell unconscious, safe in the knowledge of my shelter.
    In the morning, I woke to rough hands dragging me from the hay.
    I startled, trembling, and looked up to see the faces of two Inquisition soldiers staring down at me, their white armor and robes lined with gold, their expressions hard as stone.
The king’s peacekeepers.
In desperation, I tried to summon the same power I’d felt before my father died, but this time the energy did not course through me, and the world did not turn black and white, and no phantoms rose from the ground.
    There was a girl standing beside the Inquisitors. I stared at her for a long moment before I finally believed the sight. Violetta. My younger sister. She looked as if she’d been crying, and dark circles under her eyes marred her perfection. There was a bruise on her cheek, turning blue and black.
    “Is this your sister?” one of the Inquisitors asked her.
    Violetta looked silently at them, refusing to acknowledge the question—but Violetta had never been able to lie well, and the recognition was obvious in her eyes.
    The Inquisitors shoved her aside and focused on me. “Adelina Amouteru,” the other Inquisitor said as they hauled me to my feet and bound my hands tightly behind my back. “By order of the king, you are under arrest—”
    “It was an accident”—I gasped in protest—“the rain, the horse—”
    The Inquisitor ignored me. “For the murder of your father, Sir Martino Amouteru.”
    “You said if I spoke for her, you would let her go,” Violetta snapped at them. “I spoke for her! She’s innocent!”
    They paused for a moment as my sister clung to my arm. She looked at me, her eyes full of tears. “I’m so sorry, mi Adelinetta,” she whispered in anguish. “I’m
so sorry.
They were on your trail—I never meant to help them—”
    But you did.
I turned away from her, but I still caught myself gripping her arm in return until the Inquisitors wrenched us apart. I wanted to say to her,
Save me. You have to find a way.
But I couldn’t find my voice. Me, me, me. Perhaps I was as selfish as my father.

    That was weeks ago.
    Now you know how I ended up here, shackled to the wall of a wet dungeon cell with no windows and no light, without a trial, without a soul in the world. This is how