“The Overseer said he was a thrall. So were all the guards. He pointed to the brand on his cheek and said Giovanni would turn us into thralls, too. I thought he was just…” Dante shook his head. “I thought he was fucking with me one last time, but now… now, I wonder.”
I shook my head automatically. “Enthrall an entire Dynasty… that’s just… not possible…” The words were no sooner out of my mouth than my mind went quiet.
Hadn’t the Overseer hinted that my uncle was capable of terrible things?No, little princess, if you knew what your uncle intended to do to your kind, you would hide somewhere he would never find you.
“What else did he say?” I asked, and Dante’s jaw flexed.
“He told me I was lucky I hadn’t bled into the Basin these past fifty years like everyone else. Like I was better off for it.” Dante’s eyes met mine, filled with worry. “He wasn’t raving,tesoro.” He smoothed his hands down my goose-pimpled arms. “I looked straight into his eyes, and he welcomed death like a reprieve. Ever since, I can’t stop thinking. About the Blood Compact. About bloodmagic.”
“Outside of the DiSange Covenant, blood magic is forbidden. And Emilia is the only necromancer in the Dynasty.” I sat up slowly, winding the sheet around me.
“That we know of,” he cautioned, tracing one of my curls where it fell over my shoulder. “Thralls are created through blood magic, and everyone in the Dynasty bleeds for the Compact.Everyone.”
One of my father’s favorite sayings was, “Only a dying man betrays the secrets he kept while alive”.
And the Overseer seemed like just the sort of asshole who would feed my husband a line of bullshit before he died to fuck with him, but… there was truth to my father’s words.
The Basin held centuries of blood.
Generationsof blood.
And, as I’d wondered before, I wondered now about where all that blood went after the Basin absorbed it.
“Nobody knows how the Basin even works… except Emilia,” I mused.
Emilia, who controlled the council. Emilia, who’d had her fingers in every Dynasty decision as far back as our records went. Emilia, who dealt in favors and secrets and would be just the sort to switch sides if it served her purposes.
“What if…” I snorted, shook my head. “Never mind; it’s stupid.”
“What if…” Dante tipped his head to the side. “What are you thinking,tesoro? You know him better than anyone. If you have any idea of what he might be up to, just say it.”
“What if Gio’s preoccupation with the whole religious thing isn’t some eccentricity? What if he’s not actually interested inhumanreligion?” Now that I thought about it, the monk costume was the only remotely human thing about my uncle’s whole obsession. “I’ve never seen him read a Bible, never seen him wear a cross, and all those supposed jaunts to the old Benedictine Abbey on Isola della Cenere… who said he’s there for religious reasons?”
“You think it’s cover for something else?”
“Why not? All I know is he would always come home smelling of cedar and limestone and incense and…” I stopped, hit by a realization so obvious it took my breath away.
“What?”
“Have you ever seen the abbey?” I asked slowly. “Ever been to Isola della Cenere?”
“I haven’t had much time in the past fifty years to go sightseeing, so no.”
I slanted him a look. “Smartass. You know where else I’ve been that smells of cedar and incense? Emilia’s temple. And I find that to be a curious coincidence.”
32
GABRIEL
Sitting beside Marcello’s bed, I waited for his next breath.
And waited.
All night, I’d watched my father slowly wither away, the healers doing what they could for flesh that was too far gone.We did all we could, they intoned with the somber surety of creatures who dealt in death not life.
The breath finally came—a wheezing inhale, full of phlegm and pain.
I let out a breath of my own. The moment Marcello was dead, everything—the weight of the Dynasty, the responsibility of exposing Giovanni, the impending war—all fell fully on my shoulders. I’d trained for this. Prepared my entire life, and yet… I didn’t feel ready.
