My hatred for Teren seethes, black and churning, rising above my fear and the pain in my wrist at his grip. Behind me, Magiano’s energy stirs. I stare levelly back at Teren. “And yet, here I still stand before you. Your queen.”

My words have stirred doubt in him—there’s a flicker in his eyes that I have never seen before. He is wondering whether I could possibly be right. And I am right, aren’t I? The gods have blessed me. They’ve rid this world of the Kenettran king who despised us, then his queen who had used and manipulated us. The gods put on the throne a girl born to a father who wished her dead. They have spared my life again and again. They’ve given me everything.

And you pushed your sister away. You murdered a man you once loved. You are an empty vessel. Nothing. The gods have given you a power that is killing you.

“Teren, we are going to hand our powers back to the gods. We will fix the world by giving up our abomination. It is the only way, and it is the only mantra you have ever followed.” I say it as if I were also trying to persuade myself to join this journey, that I do not fear the loss of my power, that I am not still attempting to cheat the inevitable. “I have no other reason to stand beside Raffaele. Nor you.” I take a deep breath. “This is what you’ve always wanted.”

Teren studies me for a moment. His expression shifts from one extreme to the next, settling at last into a look I can’t understand. There is a light there, behind his madness, a glimmer of something that lures him forward. This is what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it, Teren? I think.

He releases me. Sergio loosens his grip on his sword, and the others in the chamber shift their stances. I relax, letting out my breath, trying to keep my composure. My heart hammers in my chest.

Teren gives me a slow smile. “We will see who is right, mi Adelinetta,” he says.

Teren Santoro

In the first memory, Teren was seven years old.

He was in the uniform of an Inquisition Axis apprentice, a simple gray tunic and trousers, a student training to join the white cloaks that his father presided over. His hair was cut short and clean, and his eyes were still the color of the ocean. He’s in one row with a dozen others, looking out at a crowd of young apprentices gathered in a courtyard of the palace, fenced in by tall statues of the twelve gods and angels. His father addressed them all. Teren stood tall, his head held high. He was the only son of the Lead Inquisitor of Kenettra, and that made him better than the others—so his father said, anyway.

“Our order has always existed to protect the Kenettran crown,” his father was saying, “to protect the superiority of our people above all others, and to protect the purity of our heritage. By pledging your lives to the Inquisition’s order, you promise to forever dedicate yourselves to the royal family, and to guard the throne with your lives.”

Teren felt his little chest swell with pride. The Inquisition Axis was the most esteemed army in the world—and his father led them. He hoped that, one day, he could look as regal as his father did in his Lead Inquisitor armor and cloak.

“We wage a noble war against those who are impure. Remember this, and go forth with it in your minds: Protect your country, at all costs, at whatever sacrifice.”

Teren closed his eyes and took a deep breath, internalizing the words. A noble war against those who are impure.

“Teren Santoro.” His father was calling his name now. “Come forward.”

Teren needed no second calling. He immediately stepped out of his row and made his way forward. When he reached his father, the man nodded for him to kneel, handed him his first sword, and told him to look out into the crowd. Teren obeyed. The other apprentices, who were instead given wooden practice swords rather than Teren’s steel one, followed his example and knelt. Teren bowed his head and closed his eyes as his father read out the Inquisition Axis oath.

He was pure. Superior. And he would follow in his father’s footsteps.

Teren was eleven years old in the second memory.

The blood fever had swept through Kenettra earlier in the year, so his eyes were no longer a pure ocean blue, but pale, so pale that they were inhuman, a complete lack of color. He stood with a bowed head and heavy heart before the funeral pyre upon which his father’s body lay. The fire had spread now from the kindling to the late Lead Inquisitor’s clothes. Teren stayed silent as the flames roared. His father had gotten sick only after Teren did—but while Teren had managed to survive, the blood fever had killed his father in only two days.

Teren knew it was his fault. It had to be. The gods did not make mistakes, and he knew he had to have been marked by the fever for a reason.

Later that night, Teren crept out of his chambers and fled down to the palace temple. There, in the dark recesses and pools of candlelight, he knelt before the gods and sobbed. The Inquisition Axis doctrine specifically taught that survivors of the blood fever were abominations, a punishment from the gods.

He was a demon now. What had he done? He whispered to the temple floor as he knelt. Before him loomed a statue of Holy Sapientus, the god of Wisdom. Why my father? Why didn’t you take me too?

He knelt there for three days, until he was thirsty and starving. How far I’ve fallen, he thought to himself, over and over again until the thought seemed embedded in his very being. I was once superior—and now I’m nothing. My father is dead because of me. Trash. Filth.

Suddenly, in a fit of desperation, Teren grabbed the hilt of his sword and pulled it out. It was the same sword his father had gifted him on the day he joined the Inquisition as an apprentice. He took the sword, placed its blade against one of his wrists, and slashed as hard as he could. He cried out at the jolt of pain. Blood bloomed instantly against his skin.