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Enzo endeavored not to disappoint him.
“Lucrezia’s hand governs the realm,” he began.
If the non-sequitur confused Fiore, he didn’t show it.
Enzo continued. “Giovanna’s fields feed it. Our mother’s fleet enriches it. Which leaves very little left over for me to do.” His fingertips worried the bedclothes as he fought against the anodyne to connect his disparate thoughts. “My father perished in the plague when I was small. I sickened but recovered. My mother removed me from the city to our vineyards for the remainder of my youth.”
A coughing fit seized him. As if the mention of his father had summoned his ghost to choke his surviving son. While Enzo had inherited his father’s deep bass voice, his pneumonia coughs didn’t sound quite like the horrible, withered, wet hacking of his father’s final hours.
A concerned furrow marked Fiore’s perfect brow. “Perhaps this story might be better saved for another time.”
Enzo shook his head. In a wheeze, he explained, “Coughing is good. It breaks up the mucus and expels the infection from my lungs. Keeps it from taking root.”
He wouldn’t have blamed Fiore for feeling disgusted at that description. Most would, outside of the medical profession. Yet Fiore didn’t flinch. Instead he plucked his handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to Enzo. The moment Enzo accepted it from him, Fiore leapt up to pour a glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand and held it patiently whilst Enzo hacked up whatever dregs his speech had dislodged. When Enzo could breathe free again, Fiore handed him the glass. He drank deep and gasped out his thanks as he came up for air. Fiore simply smiled and stroked his hair.
Yet even this couldn’t ease all of Enzo’s nerves when it came to divulging his history.
Enzo plunged on. “The fact of my recovery in contrast to my father’s death perplexed and vexed me. My guardians told me the answer lay in the field of medicine.”
He paused to see how Fiore took it—if he realized where this story must inevitably lead.
But Fiore simply served him an encouraging smile. And from it, Enzo drew courage enough to continue.
“As I grew older I knew nothing I learned in that vein could save my father now, but I thought perhaps if I studied something more of disease I could spare others from my father’s fate. Furthermore, I had a certain interest in anatomy, even as a youth.” The reason poised on the tip of his tongue, ready to fall into Fiore’s waiting ears. And yet he checked himself, as he always did, or as he always had until… “This grew into an interest in medicine, and so, when I passed the age of private tutelage and my family agreed I might be sent to university, I convinced them to allow me to pursue that particular interest.”
Fiore regarded him curiously for a long moment. When he spoke at last, his voice emerged low and steady—Enzo could glean nothing of his thoughts from it.
“To become a physician,” Fiore asked, “or a chirurgeon?”
Enzo swallowed hard. “A chirurgeon.”
This, of all his myriad secrets, was the one he’d most dreaded revealing. He’d kept silent on the precise subject of his education only partly for his family’s sake. The truth of Fiore’s past, and all he’d suffered under the guise of chirurgical necessity, drove Enzo’s own truth deeper down into the darkest pits of his heart. Now that heart leapt up into his throat, its pulse pounding in his ears with anxiety. Bad enough that his sister’s children feared him. If Fiore should flee from him—and with tenfold good reason—then he knew not what he’d do.
Fiore continued to regard him with an expression he couldn’t quite read. Then the ghost of that familiar handsome smile flickered at the corners of his perfect lips. “Well. That certainly explains how you knew enough to save my life.”
Relief flooded Enzo’s veins. Fiore didn’t hate him. Fiore would not abandon him. He knew not how to even begin expressing his infinite gratitude.
“But you were saying,” Fiore murmured.
And Enzo realized the best way he could thank him now was to finish giving him the full account he’d asked for.
“Chirurgy is not a trade fit for a duke to practice,” Enzo went on, echoing his own mother’s words. “But I thought perhaps by learning something in that vein I might write a treatise or make an experiment or devise something that might, in some small way, contribute to the field and therefore assist in healing the city.”
Fiore appeared to think far better of this plan than his own family had. His soft smile encouraged Enzo to speak on.
“Whilst at university,” Enzo said, forcing his way through the urge to hesitate, “I made a friend.”
A glance showed Fiore understood the full meaning of that fateful word.
“His name was Orazio,” Enzo continued. “A baron engaged in the study of ancient literature. We met through the fencing society and together joined the secret dueling club within it.” Even as he spoke he could hear the inadequacies in his own description. The bare facts of the case didn’t suffice to show Fiore or anyone else who Orazio had been to him. Enzo tried again. “He came from the north. Golden eyes.” Words didn’t suffice. How to explain how softly those strong arms had enfolded him—how those eyes had flashed whenever they caught Enzo’s gaze—how oft he’d made Enzo laugh, and how Enzo cherished the few moments when he could make Orazio laugh in turn, when no one else seemed to understand him. He hadn’t Orazio’s lyrical gift. Yet still he kept trying. “He used to whisper poetry to me as we lay together, both ancient verses and those composed by his own hand for my ears alone.”
The tightening of his throat at the memory set off another coughing fit. Fiore’s hand clenched in his. The other stroked his hair and smoothed its way down through the strands to rest its warm palm against Enzo’s chest, bracing, steadying him. When Enzo’s eyes ceased watering, he blinked them open to meet Fiore’s somber gaze fixed on his own face, infinite solace in the dark depths of his eyes and the ghost of a wistful smile on his perfect lips.
“We got on very well for two years,” Enzo continued, his voice hoarse for reasons beyond his infirmity. “Through our academic work and the fencing society we made a wide circle of acquaintance. We likewise made a few rivals. One in particular, a viscount of the Delfin bloodline, disliked how quickly I disarmed him in a sparring match. His ire was not doused by the mocking verse Orazio penned in commemoration of the event.”
Fiore chuckled. Enzo suppressed his own answering laugh, lest he cough again. Still he smiled despite the turn his story must now take.
“Orazio had likewise begun work on his thesis—a body of writing,” Enzo added as Fiore’s eyebrow raised in silent enquiry. “To prove all one has learnt at university and to argue a point that adds to the collective body of knowledge. It’s a requirement for taking a degree and grueling work, subject to rigorous examination and ruthless critique. Orazio had several dozen pages of which his professors and advisors had finally approved. Then it vanished. Disappeared from his own chambers somewhere between dusk and dawn. And, as he’d yet to copy out the final drafts for the committee to review—”
