I freeze on the threshold, letting the wind swirl through me. Beneath the chaos of Florence, the chatter, the music, the horses, the river, I find it again. That lethal note on the cold air. I would know it anywhere.
I step into the night.
The city stretches before me in layers of gold and shadow. Lanterns sway over the narrow streets, lighting the way toward the Arno. At speed too fast for human eyes to follow, I chase the scent, gliding through the alleys where laughter mingles with prayer, where every heartbeat sounds like thunder in my ears.
She’s close. I canfeelher.
At the Ponte Vecchio, a procession of masked revelers passes, candles flickering in their hands. Some wear painted skulls, others veils, all pretending to honor the dead. Fools. If they knew what walked among them, they’d run screaming.
The figure catches my eye…veiled in black, her movements too graceful, too deliberate. She pauses to drop a handful of lily petals into the river, watches as they float away, glowing like embers in the water.
My heart stops.
“Elara…”
She turns.
It’s…not her. Just a mortal girl with painted lips and kind eyes, staring up at the stranger who’s forgotten how to breathe.
I turn away, disgusted by the hope clawing at my insides. After centuries of ashes, I should know better.
But… the scent remains. Even stronger now. It threads through the streets, leading me deeper into the heart of the city. Past candlelit chapels and silent gardens.
Finally, I find myself once more before the gates of my ownpalazzo.
Home. Or the closest thing I have to it.
The scent puzzlingly stops here.
For a long moment, I stand at the gates, staring up at the windows where light flickers and laughter drips like honey. My unwanted masquerade ball. My unwanted celebration.
And then I understand.
She’s here.
Inside.
Was here all along.
The realization hits like sunlight through glass, brilliant and painful and impossible.
I cross the courtyard in silence, descend into the ballroom.
Chandeliers drip light over the masked and the beautiful who part instinctively as I move through them, as if the air itself warns them what I am. They see a patron. They feel a predator.
But I seeher.
Not an imposter or a fae or a ghost.
“Elara.”
3
WHEN SHE TURNS
At first, I think I’ve imagined her.
That the night has finally cracked open my mind, letting madness bleed into the present.
