The portraits on the walls seem to lean closer, waiting for her verdict like a jury of ghosts.
6
SECRETS OF THE NUNNERY (PART I)
Florence, the morning after All Hallows’ Eve
The dawnI once feared facing without her now hides behind the clouds. Perhaps even it can’t bear to look upon what I’ve become without her, despite her return.
A mercy, perhaps.
Florence lies quiet under the hush of early light. The streets are empty of last night’s revelry, masks and confetti littering the cobblestones like the remains of a hedonistic dream. Somewhere, a church bell tolls for matins. Mortals rise.
They have no idea that death walked among them last night…or that it still lingers here, pacing the upper halls of apalazzooverlooking the Arno.
I haven’t slept.
There’s blood on my shirt cuff and the thick traces of her scent still on my skin—lilies and candle wax and perfume and cum, threaded with something new.
Fear.
Elation.
Magic.
She’s alive. She’s real. She’s here.
And still, I don’t understand.
The fire in my study burns low, the last embers cracking as I lean against the mantel, a glass of blood-wine untouched at my side. The taste of her lips and cunt still linger, sweet and tart and maddening. I can’t stop replaying it: the tremor in her voice when she said she did itfor me.
She saved me, she said.
But at what cost and really,how dare she?
I know, deep in my millennia-old bones that is what infuriates me the most. That she would sacrifice herself for me, throw me into the purgatory of living without her…for me.
I glance at the closed door leading to the adjoining chamber, her chamber because yes, I’m a fucking monster, but no, I will not fuck her to death on the first night she returns to me.
I’d insisted she stay here, in the east wing of mypalazzo, under guard and ward alike. She didn’t fight me on it.
Maybe she’s too exhausted.
Maybe she knows better than to provoke me again.
Or maybe she’s still deciding if I’m worth saving a second time.
I laugh under my breath, a harsh, hollow sound.
After last night, I should feel victorious.Vindicated.
The ghost I chased for centuries now breathes in the next room. But victory is a strange, thin thing when it comes tangled with confusion.
If she’s telling the truth, then every act of vengeance I committed in her name was a sin against her. Every witch I slaughtered, every temple I burned, each was punishment dealt to the wrong enemy.
If she’s lying…
Then she’s even crueler than I ever imagined.
