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Giovanna looked appropriately horrified. She cast this gaze on her brother.
“Temporarily,” Enzo emphasized again. “Just until his pulse steadies.”
Giovanna didn’t appear altogether convinced but returned to Fiore regardless. “Well! Until then—perhaps Bettin might tempt you with some sanguinaccio dolce?”
Fiore smiled. “She might.”
~
To watch Fiore begin to thrive again after languishing on the brink of death was a far better reward than Enzo dared dream of.
On the dueling field, with Fiore cradled in his arms, he’d feared the worst. Then he’d found the antidote close to hand, and Fiore had slipped into mere sleep rather than true death, and still Enzo couldn’t bring himself to allow the thing with feathers to carry his heart further than a few scant moments into the unknown future. Then Fiore had awoken, and Enzo felt as if he’d awoken beside him, breathing for the first time since the duel. And that would’ve been enough, just to see him open his eyes again and hear his voice.
Then, slowly yet surely, Fiore began to improve.
His pulse steadied. His limbs strengthened. He ate heartily. He walked—leaning heavily on Enzo’s arm, but walked all the same and smiled and talked and laughed and kissed him and demanded to be kissed in return, and all of Enzo’s hopes danced in the light shining in Fiore’s eyes. The wound dehiscence in his abdomen, while alarming, was not surprising, given the recent vintage of the original injury, the vigorous exercise building up to the duel and during the duel itself, and cantarella’s known-if-little-dwelled-on property of dissolving scar tissue. The fact that it hadn’t torn through skin or the entrails themselves was a sure sign of Fortuna’s favor.
All told, Fiore had got off extraordinarily lightly. Enzo could not even begin to express his gratitude for it.
And so, after a se’en-night in which Fiore’s pulse did not waver, Enzo broached the subject of Lucrezia’s suggestion over dinner.
“Would you care to go to Drakehaven?” Enzo asked Fiore.
A light which Enzo had long missed ignited behind Fiore’s eyes. A coy half-smile tempered it. “The self-same Drakehaven of which you are the duke?”
Enzo cleared his throat, much to Fiore’s evident amusement. It’d been far too long, in Enzo’s estimation, since Fiore had felt playful enough to bother teasing him. He’d gladly endure a hundredfold darts at his own expense if it earned him another smile flickering across Fiore’s paled lips. For the moment, however, he still had a point to make and an invitation in need of answering. “The orchards and gardens are particularly beautiful this time of year. And the weather very fine.”
Fiore’s impish look became something more contemplative. “Would the chirurgeons permit it?”
“I did ask them already,” Enzo admitted—and then, realizing how presumptuous this might sound, added, “I didn’t want to offer you something you couldn’t actually accept.”
“Oh.” Another smile stole over Fiore’s features, this one smaller, shyer, more tentative, and yet more hopeful. “They said yes, then?”
“They did,” Enzo assured him. “Fresh air is quite healthful.”
Fiore laughed. A mere abbreviated breathless huff, but a laugh nonetheless, and one which sufficed to make Enzo’s heart rejoice a hundredfold.
“It’s three leagues by sea,” Enzo explained. “And thirty miles over land afterward. If we keep a leisurely pace it oughtn’t take more than three days to reach it.”
“And if we don’t keep a leisurely pace?”
Enzo hesitated. “One day. But I would strongly advise a leisurely pace.”
“As you like,” Fiore replied with a smile. “I’m eager to see it nonetheless.”
~
They set out from the city not in a gondola but in a proper ship.
Fiore hadn’t sailed on a proper ship since his first arrival to Halcyon so many years ago. Many of his sailors and sea-captains had invited him to do so. He’d demurred. None had offered him enough coin to tempt him from his berth.
Carlotta and Dr. Venier accompanied them, as did Giovanna. As it so happened Giovanna’s lands adjoined Enzo’s, and in her own words she thought she might as well journey with them to Drakehaven on her way home just in case she might prove helpful.
Fiore dashed off a note to Artemisia just prior to their departure, telling her where he was going, inviting her to come visit, and reminding her that—never fret—her last sketch of him remained hideous.
The nautical leg of the journey went by very smoothly. While Fiore had sat with his back to Halcyon on his last departure from the city, this time he had no such pride and instead stood atop the hind-castle with Enzo’s arms around him to watch the wistful sight of the islands growing smaller and smaller until the lagoon’s fog obscured them altogether, as if they’d faded into the aether.
The party split up when they made landfall. Giovanna went ahead with Carlotta; they could travel far faster without a convalescent in tow and make the villa ready for Enzo and Fiore’s arrival. Dr. Venier would remain with her patient.
