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“You’re very solid for a dead uncle,” she announced into my ear.

For the first time in ten years, something inside me broke. Zeno had told me that Tone had a child, but I had not been prepared for a mini Tone.

Raze laughed. Gianni looked down. Tone’s expression cracked, but only for a second, before she corrected herself.

I felt Marigold’s small body against my chest. Warm. Fearless. Heavy with life. The first Cavalho to touch me in ten years was a child who did not know how to punish or judge me for my absence. It nearly sent me to my knees.

“You’re hurting him,” Tone complained, her voice sharper than it needed to be.

Marigold leaned back, still hanging from my neck. “Are you hurt?”

“A little.”

“Did someone shoot you?”

“Not today.”

She considered that. Then she patted my cheek as if I were a toy she had decided to keep.

The stranger stepped forward, his face carefully composed. “Marigold, darling, perhaps we do not assault strangers we have only just met.”

“He isn’t a stranger. He’s family.”

She said the words with all the authority of a child. The sentence entered me and stayed there.

Tone looked away. Archie’s hand settled at the small of her back. Light. Careful.

“Solnyshko,” he whispered softly. She stiffened beside him. He lowered his voice, but we all heard him. “Everyone has reasons for what they do. Even bad ones. Let him speak before you decide which knife to use.”

Tone shot him a look. “Don't burst my bubble when I’m enjoying myself.”

“I would never risk your happiness, Antonella.”

Raze snorted.

The edge in the courtyard eased by one degree. It wasn’t enough, but it was something.

I set Marigold down carefully. She took my hand as if she had every right to it.

I looked at our joined hands. So did everyone else.

Atlas was the one who ended the moment.

“Inside,” he growled. “This is not a conversation for the driveway.”

19

DEMITRI

It shouldn’t have hurt walking back into my childhood home, but it did.

My body remembered before my mind could stop it. The exact give of the floor beneath my shoes. The echo in the entryway. The way voices moved differently beneath the ceilings.

Adriana walked beside me. I could feel her watching. I knew what she saw.

My posture had changed. My speech had changed. Even the silence around me had changed.

In Zeno’s villa, I had been a man returning to an old language. Here, I was the language.