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Fiore appeared no better than when Enzo had left him. In many ways he looked worse. Though the chirurgeons had washed away the crackling smears of dried blood across his belly, fresh scarlet streams still trickled from the wounds with every panicked breath that hissed between his tight-clenched teeth. His now-opened eyes rolled wildly in their sockets like a spooked stallion. They came to rest only when they caught Enzo’s own.
“It’s all right,” Enzo murmured. “You’re all right. It’s me. It’s your Enzo. I’m here.”
At first Enzo didn’t think Fiore understood the words themselves; he only hoped the tone of his voice might soothe him. But as he spoke, the frantic fear in Fiore’s gaze dimmed, until his eyes no longer flicked between each of Enzo’s own and instead fixed him with the steady gaze of comprehension.
“I’ll not let them harm you,” Enzo promised him. “But they must do their work.”
Fiore’s jaw unclenched. His lips parted. “Enzo…”
The thin whisper of his voice, as frail as the rest of him, tore through Enzo’s heart. Whatever more he’d intended to say was lost forever as a cough seized him.
Blood splattered across Enzo’s face. He didn’t flinch.
The cough abated, leaving Fiore shuddering in its wake as he struggled to regain his breath. The look he cast up at Enzo was equal parts found and lost.
“They’re here to help you,” Enzo insisted. “They’ll stitch you up and put you back to rights.”
Fiore almost looked as though he believed him.
The muffled pop of an uncorking bottle paired with a wafting scent, half flowering citrus and half spoilt wine with an alchemical undercurrent. Enzo recognized it from university. He turned his head just far enough to behold Dr Venier pouring chloroform onto folded linen. She caught Enzo’s eye and held it out to him. He accepted the charge and held it up for Fiore’s examination.
“May I?” Enzo asked. Begged, more like.
Fiore’s panicked gaze flew from Enzo to the rag and back again.
“I swear,” Enzo continued, working to keep his voice low and calm. “I will not let them mutilate you. All you need do is breathe.”
Fiore’s eyes flicked to the rag again. Then he met Enzo’s gaze and, with a hard swallow, nodded.
Enzo laid the rag over Fiore’s nose and mouth. His other hand stroked through Fiore’s sweat-soaked curls. “It’s all right.”
Fiore’s brow furrowed at his first sniff of the fumes. Enzo couldn’t blame him; the alchemical smell threatened to overpower him, too. But Fiore kept breathing it in, his gaze fixed on Enzo all the while.
“I’m here,” Enzo murmured. “I’ll stay with you while you sleep. I’ll be here when you wake. Just breathe.”
The shallow panicked breaths grew slower and deeper as each one passed. The eyes burning into Enzo’s own took longer and longer blinks, until, at last, they fluttered shut. Enzo wished more than anything to see them open again.
“You’re aware of the convulsions.”
Dr Venier’s voice, soft as it sounded, nonetheless startled Enzo. He turned to give her a nod. As he’d learnt in university, chloroform granted a sleep almost as deep as death, but the body fought it on the way down.
“Can you hold on through them?” she asked.
Enzo nodded again. He would hold on through a hurricane if Fiore needed him to.
Dr Venier went to take up her post holding down Fiore’s shoulders. In her wake, Enzo caught sight of a figure looming on the kitchen threshold just out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head further, expecting to find the maid or some other servant.
Instead, Lucrezia stood in the doorway.
Enzo stared. He’d forgotten her altogether. How long had she waited and watched? Not all this while, surely.
He could read nothing in her face. But perhaps she saw something in his—how all anger had fled his countenance, with fear surging in to fill the lack—for she regarded him for a moment longer before withdrawing in silence. Only her clicking bootheels told of her passage echoing down the hallway and fading off into nothing.
“Hold him,” said Dr Venier.
Enzo whipped his head ‘round again to Fiore. He slipped his free palm beneath his skull. The other remained on the rag over his mouth and throat. He clamped down firmly yet gently.
Just as the convulsions began.
