It’s a risk, but it doesn’t seem like one.

Going outside the hotel, I mean. Fucking Sia might be a risk in that my heart will never recover. She’ll always be walking around with it attached to her sleeve. In the shower, I take her again, up against the wall, gasping and coming around my cock. After that, she’s too sore to play. And besides, it’s our wedding day.

Afternoon is fading into evening when I lead her onto the sidewalk that goes into the heart of downtown Verona. At the next corner, a woman with bright auburn hair burning in the sunlight turns and goes the other direction, disappearing behind a building.

“Reminds me of Portia,” Sia says quietly at the empty space up ahead. “My best friend.” Her voice is quiet, but her joy isn’t dimmed at all.

It’s achingly gorgeous here, not least because Sia’s wearing a pink skirt and a black top. There’s a little swing in her step, in the way she holds herself, that makes my heart swell with pride. We did that together.

The sunlight catches in her hair while we walk, her fingers wrapped through mine. She’s beaming with so much happiness that I don’t care that here, of all places, is a dangerous one.

We could be recognized.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been to Verona. No. My brothers and sister and I were all baptized here. But Father Lawrence is a man of god—he won’t have alerted my father, not now that he knows the danger, and Sia and I will move on in the morning. I still have that sanctuary feeling from the monastery.

It settles over me when we step into a tiny Italian restaurant a block in from Main Street.

“Oh, my god,” Sia says. “Look at this place.”

It’s what you’d find if you looked up Italian restaurant in the dictionary. Dark wood tables dressed in white linen tablecloths. Walls painted to look like Venetian plaster. We’re seated by a mural of an archway that’s so well done that if you’re only glancing, you could be looking out a canal in Venice. The candles on the table reflect in that dark painted water.

Sia can’t stop grinning.

“This is amazing.”

“This is Verona,” I tell her, and hand over the basket of bread. It’s warm and fluffy and with a pat of butter melted in I’m halfway to heaven.

“How have I never heard of this place?”

“Most people haven’t.” I always thought, as a child, that we were driving somewhere magical, and we spend the next dinner talking about it. It’s an abstraction, like my father isn’t the living human who ordered her killed, and somehow by the time I pay the check we’re both laughing.

The breeze is warm when we step back out onto the street.

“Should we walk by the shops?”

A tiny prickle in the back of my neck serves as a warning. No, we shouldn’t walk by the shops. We should step into the shadows and creep around in the hidden parts of town until we’re safe in our room. But I can’t say no to those blue eyes.

Around the corner from the restaurant, Sia slows down outside a jewelry shop.

The inside pours light onto the sidewalk and with a twist of my heart I see it—how Sia pours light into my life. She looks inside, a cursory glance, and tugs at my arm to keep walking.

I stop her.

“Do you want to look inside?” I take her hand in mine, lifting our naked fingers into view. There’s something missing, and that something is a ring for my bride. There was no time, in our midnight flight, to shop for jewelry. “There’s something you need.”

Sia blushes. “Oh, Gio, no.” She squeezes my hand, a gentle pressure. “I have all I need right here.”

Jesus, she’s so fucking sweet. And to think—I narrowly avoided a tragedy.

I have enough money in my pocket to buy her a ring. Maybe not the fanciest ring in the store, but one that will sit proudly on her finger.

I kiss her knuckles. “Not a chance of that.”

There’s a flurry of excitement when we walk into the shop from the man and the woman behind the counters and I hear a whispered “—stay open this late. Finally!”

Sia doesn’t stop at the front cases, glittering with diamonds. She glances over them, the corners of her mouth turning down. It’s not that I wouldn’t move heaven and earth for one of those diamonds, but that’s not what she’s looking for.

At the very back of the store, there’s a single case by itself, and this is where Sia stops.

The rings inside are only metal, but none of them are plain. They’re designed. Braided metal, delicate loops. Sia’s eyes glow in the case’s light. “They remind me of something ancient,” she says, and then she sees it. I know the moment because her eyebrows rise, just a little.

“Something I can take out for you to look at, miss?” The woman approaches with a calm smile.

“That one,” says Sia.

It’s gold, and the top is wrought with three delicate leaves, like ivy. Her hand trembles as the woman slips it on. It’s a perfect fit.

Sia’s pulse flutters in her neck. She can’t stop looking at her hand.

“I’ll give you two a moment,” says the woman.

“Wait.” I’ve seen the counterpart, on the other side of the case. Hammered gold, the same color as hers, a thicker band. “This one as well.”

It takes a little adjusting, finding one that’s bigger, but Sia’s face is pink with joy by the time we’re done. The weight of our love is around our fingers. I pay the woman in cash and add a tip big enough for the both of them.

There. Now everything is perfect.

I love her enough to light up the city when we leave the jewelry store and stroll down the street, my hand relearning how to hold hers with the ring between our skin.

We’ve just stepped out of the jewelry store’s light and into a shadow on the sidewalk when Sia gasps.