The Cruel Crown (A Young Elites Fanfiction)

Adelina Amouteru ❦

I jerk up with a start, sweat beads my forehead, my hands tremble badly. I take deep breaths. My silver hair glows in the night, and it covers half of my face. I place my face in my palms.

My whispers are leaving me guilty and filling me with spite. I am no longer cleansed, now I fall back into the darkness from which I became.

No! You had your chance to have their heads posted, and you did not seize the opportunity to have them. They were in your palace, beneath your thumb, and all you could manage to spit out was for them to leave? They will be back, and they will not hesitate again. My whispers are angry at me, the anger passes into me.

Magiano said he was dying. He got up so fast it startled me. He was much stronger than he let on, he walked out without me even on his heels and left the rest of us alone. I almost ran after him, but I got the point that he needed his own private time.

Magiano must have meant dying like all Elites are. He must have.

I go to pace my parlor area in part with my chambers. In it there is one opulent chair that is a mix of red and gold—not a throne, though—and a small low golden coffee table to adorn it. There is another exit that is accessible to all, without going through my bedroom.

Pacing gives me some sort of odd solace. It helps me erase my hateful thoughts that still linger.

I freeze very suddenly, my pulse quickens, I feel hallow as my heart drops. Enzo. Why is he leaning against my wall? He does not say anything to me.

My hands fumble to find my dagger. I removed my cloak and left it in my bedroom, not in the parlor. Enzo just keeps staring deeply into me.

"What?" I scream vigorously.

He doesn't reply. Instead, he strides over to me in long, lengthy steps and places his hand tightly around my throat and squeezes hard until I see blackness.

I gasp for a breath over and over. "Enzo!" I scream.

A mixture of fear and fury surge through my veins, making my blood run faster and my heartbeat quickening to match the pace of a cheetah prowling on its prey.

I glance down, barely seeing his unloved hands. His arms are not singed one bit.

"Adelina, I am your reflection now. This is how others must see you play your game of cards. This is who you are. Fury and power. Ambition and fear." When he speaks, it is my own thoughts he breathes. "You don't deserve the crown, you don't deserve to live."

"Stop!" I am angry. I twist and turn, but his grasp is too strong. I can't break away.

My face turns pale white, along with my lips turning a dark plum shade. I feel like I am dying.

This is pain. Pain because it is him who has me held, because I had the opportunity to kill him before, because it hurts for him to be the one to end me.

I swing my arms blindly in front me. Gods, I wish my precious piece of sharp metal was in between my fingertips right now. I would stab him right though the back in the place that touches his heart. I revel in giving pain.

Instead my hands don't make contact with a body, they pass straight through his rigid figure.

This is my work of my imagination reveling up against me. I am hallucinating deeply. I think silently.

But I can't make it stop. I still feel his strong hands choking my throat raw. It feels so real. I have felt my own illusions before—back in the throne room, on the ship; all after I killed.

All of those were uncontrolled and wild, and they all ended because I was shaken start. Magiano's face looms over me now.

"Adelina, are you okay? Are you hurt?" A mixture of worry and dread is his face.

"No, no, just a bit shaken. A nightmare struck me while I was awake." That's a nicer way put that I was hallucinating deeply once again.

"Hallucination? I—I just wasn't sure. I heard a scream."

I screamed?

Magiano cradles me in his arms. We sit on the parlor floor together. His warmth feels nice; I don't want it to end.

"Okay, then if you're unharmed, then I'll go You must want your privacy." He still cradles me, and then sits me down on the love seat behind the coffee table. He turns and is almost through the threshold . . .

"No! Wait, Magiano, please—," I stumble to find the right words, "please stay with me. I don't want to be alone anymore." I am close to tears, my voice almost breaks.

He comes and sits on the seat. I lean into him and he brushes his fingers over my cheek. He is so warm now.

Next time, I won't have anyone to wake me up. But even now, I've already drowned in my own poison, and I'm in too deep; so much that I may as well already be dead.

The nightmare scars my mind. How could I let it get to me?

The image of Enzo Valenciano, of my own fowl illusions, still looms in my vision. His scarred hands, now arms, haunt my thoughts. Almost like a dream, instead of a nightmare. But Magiano rescued me from my nightmare, but could not save me from the deadly poison I've inflicted onto myself.

The day is young now, that long night is over. Enzo is not with me. I failed to keep him as my king. He is not kept at bay, either. He will attack. I was powerless last time the society of Daggers attacked; I pray I am not again, but I'm full of sin. Can the gods even listen to my pleas?

The blood still taints my skin. Enzo lusts to see my lifeless body, with his dagger stabbing my heart, or his fire singing my skin.