Enzo did not touch him on his bidding night.
He has not touched him since.
Raffaele closes his eyes as his prince asks him to. He stands in the dim darkness and feels for a tug. A calling, as Enzo describes it.
There is a shimmering thread in the mist. It glows hot and bright. He feels it's power. The dangerous, flaming intensity.
Enzo's heart.
It glows brighter than all the other strands around it. All the people in the city, women and children and men. They dull next to that glowing, burning heart. It steals the breath from his chest.
He see's Enzo observing him.
The weight of all the life around him, it presses on him. Now that he has felt it, he cannot stop. It dances around him, elusive and daring. Different strands flickering in and out.
"You feel it as well?" It is the first thing that comes to his mind. How can anyone live with this weight?
Enzo is thoughtful.
"I feel the weight of the power. Whether it is the same as your's I do not know."
Rafaelle does not understand.
Enzo lays out his palms.
They are covered with burns and blisters. A layer, formed over his hands.
They are the price that Enzo must pay. Just as he must pay.
Raffaelle understands he will never have another moment's peace. That is his price to pay.
"It is unfair, is it not? We bear the burdens of gifts we never asked for." He pleads. It is a plea. For the peace he will never have.
"It is still a gift. I am apt to think that it is the god's way of proving they have not forsaken us. While the people call us malfettos, cursed, inhuman, I think that it is the god's way of proving them wrong."
And there it is - that light that he sees when he closes his eyes.
It is hope. It is fire. It is Enzo.
He cannot tear himself away.
"If we are not malfettos, what are we?" A child's question. One he has asked himself from the dawn of memory. What is he, if not a monster?
Enzo's eyes flash. It is better than a crafted smile, or a kind word. He meet's those burning eyes.
"The Elite." Enzo breathes. "The god-blessed. We are to be the Daggers, use ourselves as weapons against a world that seeks to crush us."
The name is fitting.
The Dagger Society.
