I dig my boots into the grass and search to the limited tree cover for anywhere away from people. Away from lights, and needle pricks, and consorts, and patrons, and even away from the Ring.
It’s tiring, day after day, to beg for comfort in something that won’t even let me know it’s rejected me. It’s tiring to pass my thoughts through it, and feel nothing. It’s so tiring to moralize everything according to a list of rules I was never even given.
“Catarina?”
I about-face. “Vincenza?”
Chapter 25
Sharing Warmth
“I can see you shivering. Do you want to join me?” She lifts up her layers of blankets, revealing a scratchier hemp sheet which covers the ground under her.
I blink. It’s just her, three trees at most, and a bounty of warm fabrics.
“I didn’t know you were here,” I stammer.
“Piero made a big deal of it, and you were going; I thought it would be fun.”
“Is it?” I slowly join her under the blankets.
Her warmth radiates under them like I’m caught in an oven. Every direction is a hug fromher.
“I got to see my favorite hazel eyes, so I think so.”
I cinch my eyes shut and lower my head to the ground. “I nearly got hit on.”
“How did it go?” she asks, so much excitement pervading her voice.
“She stopped when I said I was a consort.”
“I’m sorry, Kate.”
I feel the blanket bend and stretch as she lays next to me, barely not touching. “She was so forthright, desperate.”
“You’ve felt how much magic has changed you; people will do anything and try anything to get it. Her desperation doesn’t say anything about you.”
“I wasn’t desperate…” I roll over to face her, pink eyes glimmering with a blue flare from lights hanging in the trees. “I had to do so little to gain access to the Ring. I barely tried, was barely even interested in magic when you told me I would become a necromancer. I wanted something else, tried pathetically little for it, and you gave me everything.”
Just like the Great Ring, picking its favorites and uplifting them.
Vincenza shudders. “Nobody else came to the parlour. I didn’t want them to.”
“What?”
“I didn’t advertise in any newspaper. I didn’t have posters up while the parlour was open. I didn’t turn even turn the lights on. I was aggressive to you and hoped you would quit.”
“I don’t understand. W-why did you have me in for an interview at all if you didn’t want an apprentice?”
“I promised Nascia—“ Her words seize. “You don’t deserve to deal with this story. Not on such a beautiful night. Don’t waste your time with me.”
I ride an arm over her torso, nearly halfway into a hug. “No moment I spend with you is a waste. Can you tell me? I don’t mind if it’s sad.”
Her mouth cycles open and shut before settling on any words. “I promised my wife… I promised Nascia that I would try to keep the parlour going. It was our dream. But, I was tired of being alive without her.
“I thought I would give it one chance, and I did everything I thought of to sabotage it. I was waiting to say that I tried. I promised her I would try. Then, I could be with her.”
Suddenly, I feel like I’m looking at a ghost, and all my nerves simultaneously numb like it. “Vincenza…”
