AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Fiore, who’d watched him keenly all the while, burst out with a laugh as this realization dawned across Enzo’s own naked features.
“I’m only teasing,” Fiore said, raising his hand to cup Enzo’s scarred cheek.
Enzo leaned into his palm. Every touch of his bare face still sent a shiver of illicit pleasure through him.
“I see what you mean, though,” Fiore continued. “About the mask shielding one from notice even as it courts it. A domino teases the idea of anonymity. A bauta teases the barest hint of identity. One may be perceived without being perceived.”
Just as Enzo had concluded for himself. There remained, however, one singular exception. For even with the mask on, Enzo had felt more seen by Fiore than he had by anyone since he’d first donned it.
Which made leaving Fiore behind all the more difficult.
“I’m afraid I must leave you,” Enzo forced out. He’d dallied long enough. The moment had arrived to speak his piece, however painful.
Indeed, Fiore flinched and shot him a startled look from beneath the mask.
“Temporarily,” Enzo hastened to add. His own heart relaxed alongside Fiore’s shoulders. “My family enacts a ritual to Diana in the countryside each spring. My attendance is required.”
Fiore fixed him with a sardonic gaze worthy of a satyr. “The gods must have their blood.”
Enzo smiled despite himself. “I intend to return as soon as possible—within days, if I may—but I fear filial obligation will detain me for a fortnight at the very least. But, gods willing, I shall not be gone above a month.”
Fiore absorbed this rambling explanation in silence. With the mask on, Enzo couldn’t see how he took it—except that, unless Enzo very much mistook him, there appeared a sort of grief in his dark and beautiful eyes.
This vanished as Fiore whipped the bauta off over his head to kiss him.
The kiss, for Enzo, was equal parts astonishment and serenity. The startled stiffness of his body melted into an easy embrace as Fiore wrapped his arms ‘round him and devoured his scarred mouth in those perfect lips. A kiss very like the multitude Fiore had bestowed upon him since the moment the mask had first left his face—a kiss he would ever hunger for no matter how oft he indulged in it.
Yet part they must. And when they did, Fiore breathed against Enzo’s lips, “Just so long as you promise to return.”
Enzo resolved above all else to do so.
~
The day after Enzo’s departure dawned with rain. This sufficed to keep most of the populace bundled up snug indoors, venturing out only if they must. Fiore, awaking alone and having spent the better part of the last month-and-a-half convalescing in his quarters, felt nothing short of a hailstorm could prevent him from disembarking his ship for the rain-slicked streets. He tried not to let his mind linger on Enzo’s absence, the lack of a warm body beside his own, arising without the scent of coffee filling his quarters. He had his hooded cloak and a pocket to keep his zibaldone dry, and that would suffice alongside a dim inkling of a destination. He might try a bathhouse, perhaps; his chirurgical wound had closed over at last, and Enzo had recommended swimming to restrengthen his weakened muscles. There were certainly enough bathhouses to go around in the crimson sash district, and he knew which ones would actually let a fellow take a plunge undisturbed.
But before he’d trod even half the distance between theKingfisherand the bathhouse he had in mind, he encountered another solitary figure in a hooded cloak rather like his own, though they stood a touch taller than him. Something about their gait seemed familiar as well. And when they took note of him in turn, their pace quickened into a run—a dangerous thing over the rain-slicked masegni—which brought them near enough for Fiore to recognize.
“Artemisia?” he called out as she drew up to him. “Aren’t you supposed to be sculpting Cygnus in the countryside?”
“I was,” she admitted. The gaze she fixed upon him held an unaccountable bewilderment. “I returned just this morning.”
“Then,” Fiore concluded with a smirk, “there must be some romance to call you here from your studio in miserable weather. Who is it, then? Anyone I know?”
Artemisia stared at him. “I came here because I thought you were dead.”
“Oh.” Now it was Fiore’s turn for bewilderment. “Really? Why?”
Artemisia gave him a look which told him without words she thought him unfathomably stupid. “The city is swirling with rumors. An unknown masked figure visits theKingfisher’s male courtesan with a chirurgeon in tow. The courtesan is not seen again for weeks. What conclusion ought I have formed?”
“Corelli saw me,” Fiore pointed out. “And her sons. And Serafina.”
Artemisia snorted. “None of them saw fit to inform me. I had to come find out for myself.”
Fiore smiled. “And are you satisfied in what you’ve found?”
“To a point. What truly occurred? Or is it purely rumor, and nothing at all happened to you in my absence?”
Fiore hesitated. The rain showed no sign of letting up, and despite bandages and anodyne a twinge made itself known in his gut. Enzo’s warnings as he’d left, delivered in pleading rather than condemnatory tones, echoed in his mind. “I’ll tell you all. Only I’m not supposed to stand in one place over-long. Shall we continue on together? To the Crooked Anchor, perhaps?”
