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Enzo took up his sword and grinned back.
~
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The crowds packed the opera house to the gills on opening night. Fiore couldn’t see them from the stage—the mirrored lights blinded him—but he could hear them, rustling silks, fluttering fans, whispering together in a hideous chorus. He peered into the shadows regardless, desperate for a familiar face. If he could only find Enzo then he would be rescued.
But then the orchestra struck up.
And he knew he must sing.
Fiore drew breath. He opened his mouth. An aria emerged.
His voice cracked.
A gasp rippled through the crowd. Then came the hisses. Whispers raised in anger to speech and then to shouts.
Before Fiore could even attempt to placate them, someone stormed onto the stage from the wings.
Nascimbene.
Fiore stumbled backward. Nascimbene advanced, scolding him for his vocal inferiority. A knife appeared in the maestro’s hand.
“We must fix your voice,” Nascimbene declared.
Fiore protested—his voice had already changed; mutilating him now wouldn’t turn it back; there was nothing to be done—but in vain. Enraged patrons leapt onto the stage to pin down his limbs. Fiore thrashed in their grasp. Yet he could not loose their hold. If he could but find Enzo amongst them—
He found only the glass-eyed, beak-hooded chirurgeon staring down at him.
Nascimbene’s knife pierced his flesh.
Fiore bolted upright with a haggard gasp.
The opera house was gone. The harsh glare of the stage had been replaced by the soft green glow of the foxfire lantern in the darkness. He sat abed in Ca’ Scaevola. The ache came not from his groin but the scars in his gut. Every breath pained him so he could hardly catch it. His heart flung itself against his ribcage. The night’s silence deafened him. There was no one here save his Enzo asleep beside him.
Fiore had found him at last.
Enzo’s chiseled, handsome features looked rapturous in repose. Even the dashing scar that cleaved his face in twain appeared softer in the foxfire’s glow. One arm lay thrown over his head. The other had clasped Fiore before the nightmare dragged him out of reach. Even now the whole of Enzo’s lean frame still curled towards where Fiore had lain. Luna herself could not find more beauty in her Endymion than Fiore saw in Enzo now.
Fiore drank in the sight of him, more soothing than any anodyne. He knew not how long he spent drawing ragged shuddering gasps. At length the ache in his abdomen ebbed. He supposed he’d aggravated his wounds in sitting up so suddenly. But he could breathe properly again.
Yet he could not quite match the slow and steady rising and falling of Enzo’s broad chest.
Nor was he the only one awake. As he slipped out of bed, he found Vittorio poking his head up from where he’d curled up on his fur rug, his black silhouette limned in foxfire green. The hound’s ears pricked, and the tail made a few cautious muffled thumps against the rug. Fiore put a finger to his lips lest the noise wake Enzo. The tail ceased, but Vittorio continued to watch with foxfire glow glinting in his eyes as Fiore discarded his nightgown and drew on shirt, hose, breeches, and waistcoat in its place.
Enzo kept their rapiers in the bedroom ever since Fiore had made an off-hand comment one morning after practice that he felt much safer to see a blade in Enzo’s hand. It worked; Fiore slept far easier knowing they lay within reach.
Still, merely having them to hand hadn’t banished the nightmare this night. And so he took up his sword before he made for the door.
Vittorio watched his progress all the while. As Fiore laid his fingers on the doorknob, the hound cocked his head. He glanced between awake Fiore and sleeping Enzo, seemed to decide something in his bestial brain, and got up to follow Fiore, silent and dark as a shadow. Fiore supposed Vittorio must think him more in need of guarding than Enzo.
The whole palazzo remained quiet as the grave. Fiore passed not a single servant as he made his way down into the central courtyard. Moonlight bathed all in silver. His own footsteps resounded in his ears despite his stealthy tread—as did the ring of steel as he drew his rapier.
Vittorio left Fiore’s side to take up his post by the marble bench like he did every morning.
Outside guard. Inside counter-guard. Inside guard. Outside counter-guard. Fiore ran through the fencing drills, over and over, everything he knew and many things he didn’t, imagining foes leaping out of the courtyard’s dark shadows and striking them all down, until his arm ached with the weight of his blade, until sweat ran in rivulets down his spine, until the twinge returned to his gut beneath his sash, until—
“Fiore?”
