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And for the first time since its violent separation, Fiore beheld his missing finger.
His mind slid away from the notion at the initial glance. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t there. It was some other fool’s appendage. It was a mockery molded out of wax.
Yet the more he stared—for he could by no means tear his gaze away from the sight equal parts horrific and familiar—the more his thoughts settled into truth. His hand throbbed. His stomach felt as if he’d slipped off a precipice. And there his finger remained. Bloodless. Curled. Shriveling. He tried not to look at the stringy matter emerging from the wound at its base.
The weight of a fallen leaf brushed against his shoulder. Fiore recoiled. His eyes shot to Enzo just in time to see him kneeling beside him.
“Forgive me,” Enzo murmured. “I didn’t mean to affright you.”
Fiore had already forgiven him in his heart before a single word had left his lips. He rearranged himself into a more normal pose, dropping his shoulder to replace his good hand on the chair’s other arm and clasping Enzo’s hand already there. Enzo squeezed his in turn with a wan yet hopeful smile.
With Enzo’s grip entwined in his own, Fiore looked back to the jar and found he could gaze upon it without his mind falling into its terrible void. Despite his throbbing hand, he had a marked appreciation for the care Enzo had taken in its preservation and safe-keeping. He could think of no better place for it, besides its original one.
“What will you do with it?” he heard himself ask.
After a moment, Enzo replied, “I leave it to your discretion.”
Fiore hadn’t the least idea what to make of it. Reattachment was, as Enzo had said, out of the question. There his desires ended. He tried his enquiry again. “What would you do if it were your own?”
A thoughtful silence ensued.
“I’d reduce it to bone—wet specimens don’t last,” Enzo added with haste as Fiore’s eyes flew wide to meet his.
“And then?” Fiore demanded.
“I’d commission a master silversmith to armor it in filigree. Something jointed, so it might still move as before. A chain could replace the tendons.”
Fiore knew he ought to feel horrified. Instead he found himself fascinated. The mention of a chain sparked something in his own imagination. “Would you, perhaps, wear it as an ornament?”
“Not where unworthy eyes might see it,” Enzo replied. “But… yes.”
If they had ever been speaking of Enzo’s own hypothetical finger, they certainly weren’t now.
Fiore stared at the thing in the jar. It’d been his once. But it couldn’t last like this. And he had a queer eagerness to see it transformed from a repulsive reminder of his own pain into something beautiful. Something that someone could cherish instead of cast aside. A part of him kept safe in the hands of the only person in the world he’d trust with such a burden. “In that case… I think you ought to keep it.”
Another silence descended upon them. Fiore dared to lift his gaze from the jar to meet Enzo’s glance.
Soft dark eyes glistened down at him. Enzo bent his head. He caught Fiore’s wounded hand in his ever-gentle grasp and raised it to his lips to bestow a kiss on those much-abused knuckles.
And Fiore knew he’d chosen right.
~
CHAPTER THIRTY
Enzo could not begin to measure his relief.
He’d never revealed the alchemy workshop—his haven in a gilded cage of misery—to anyone outside the household since his return from university. He’d braced himself for revulsion, repugnance, rejection. Fiore, however, had looked on it all with curiosity verging on genuine admiration. Enzo hadn’t even dared to hope for so much.
And as for the finger—Fiore seemed to take its loss well. Far better than many others in his unfortunate position. Enzo resolved to look after it as though it were his own. He knew not yet how to resolve his own guilt over the loss of said finger, but his own feelings mattered not, so long as he did right by his Fiore.
But above all else, Enzo was glad that Fiore felt well enough to wander the halls beyond the bedchamber. Though he had to lean heavily on Enzo to do so, it was still a far further distance than he’d yet travelled since his rescue, and he’d managed it with little to no evident discomfort, which boded well for the success of his recovery.
The finger’s fate decided, Fiore looked away from it in a rather deliberate fashion. Enzo took the hint and tucked it back into the secret vault.
“Have you any experiments underway at present?” Fiore asked, his eye trailing over the workshop.
“Yes,” Enzo replied honestly, though with some hesitation.
