CHAPTER 27
Lexi drove with the concentration of a fleeing felon. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel while they passed red-tiled buildings, relaxed slightly when they reached the rolling countryside. Only the occasional light or exit road marked their passage. Christan opened his eyes once, giving her directions. Then he slept, and she relied on instinct to guide her. Soon the city was lost behind them, and in the place of buildings she saw the cypress trees that grew at the crowns of the hills and along the curving roads. Cypress trees had been brought from Persia thousands of years ago by Etruscan tribes. The trees survived for over 2000 years. They were the iconic trees in every Tuscan photograph; they were the mystical cemetery trees, associated with mourning, used for coffin building and smudging in the ancient burial rites. Lexi shivered and refused to think about death.
There were few cars this time of night. They remained alone on the road, the night remained silent, and when the landscape became a black space the earth called with a seductive voice. It spoke of marauding tribes overlaid by bright green flashes of civilization, the golden pageantry draped around a crimson Rome. Petty intrigue, bloody ambition. Deep love and bitter defeat and the rich, sweet flow of wine.
At one point, Lexi reached out, touched Christan’s shoulder where the wound no longer bled but was hot beneath her hand. His blood on her fingers had not quite dried where it combined with sweat. He opened his eyes.
“Good girl,” he murmured before slipping away, a mystical creature who flew out of reach. He was such a powerful being, so beyond her human experience. He terrified her; she owed him something like loyalty. How could she risk being with him? How could she not?
He woke again, offered an exhausted smile.
“Another half mile,” he said. “There’s a road to the left. Take it.”
Lexi nodded, but wasn’t sure if she could make the turn. She didn’t need to touch the earth to recognize the love and hate, the violence and pain. The emotions overwhelmed her with every passing mile. Voices rose up and crushed her.
“It’s been months,” the woman said. “I wrote letters, I cried, I waited.”
A man’s voice. “You know there is war. When I’m called I have to go.”
Voices changed. The landscape burned. Bonfires flamed with joy, then bent into grief.
“Do you ever love me? Was I land and name and nothing more?”
The road swerved. The earth was screaming with air so thick it was difficult to breathe. Cypress trees crowded, ancient sentinels shouting both a welcome and a warning… come… run. She’d been here before, loved here before. Didn’t want to be here.
“Nico is a friend,” the woman said, desperate, pleading.
“He’s calling himself Nico, now?” The man, angry, threatening. “I have warned you against him.”
“Why? Because you say he kills? You are always gone to war. You kill! Every man I know except the priest kills.”
“Not like him.”
The headlights lost the pavement and Lexi panicked. Slamming on the brakes, she shoved the gear into park and plunged from the still moving vehicle. The car door swung in the dark as she ran, unable to feel the earth beneath her feet, the rocks that tripped her.
A voice was calling in the distance, but it was too elusive and it slipped beyond her grasp. Breath tangled in her throat. Lexi tried to swallow but her mouth had gone dry. She fell to her knees and plunged stiff fingers deep into the soft earth.
But the earth didn’t calm her as she’d hoped. It overwhelmed her.
“You are not to see him again, is that clear?”
Such stunning anger, but the woman did not relent.
“Where were you when the fields caught fire? When the rains came, and the dove-cote leaked with no one to repair it? When the mercenaries were on the roads and he called his men to protect this home—where were you Christan? Here?” A bitter laugh. “A thousand miles from here thrusting between another woman’s thighs?”
“He is not your husband, Gemma.”
“He has acted out of respect, taken on the responsibilities of a brother that I do not have—since I am alone other than you. And you are never here.”
“Do not push me on this.”
“Why should I not push you?” The sarcastic demand became painful. “Why do you lie when I see the truth in your eyes? Am I so awful? Does she hold you in ways I do not?”
“You could never hold me the way she does.”
“Where is your sword, Christan? Your knife? Why not kill me, then? Maybe if I bled out on the floor that would be enough!”
“It would never be enough.”
What fills the heart? What empties it? There was only one moment, that moment. Lexi pushed to her feet but her legs refused to hold her weight. She stumbled, regained her footing and ran toward the trees. Fear surged and she couldn’t think, could only act on the instinct of a wild creature. She was no longer in her body. Leaning against a tree, Lexi reached out to grip the rough bark while harsh voices roared in her head.
“Was he here today?”
“He comes to—”
“Did you eat with him today? Play chess with him today?”
Nothing.
“Did you sleep with him today?”
“You would dare say that to me?”
“I can smell him all over you, in this room, in that bed.”
“Bastard!” The sob of a woman, breaking, her voice filled with such pain. “Ti odio, Christan!”
His voice, with no emotion at all.
“E’ cosi facile da fare.”
Vaguely, Lexi heard someone shout her name.
She was no longer there.
She was in a garden, the garden of childhood, of innocence. The garden where she loved and lost and wanted to love again. She breathed in deep, memorized the sweet fragrance of the flowers, listened to water playing musically in the fountain. Everything carried traces of the past: the coolness in the night, the crunch of tiny stones beneath her feet. Crickets singing in the grass suddenly fell silent. She looked around; it was time to leave.
She had already been to the chapel, stood before the remembrance candles that guttered in the dark. Worked her way through the painful images. A small child, gripping the hand of the older sister, alone while two coffins were lowered into the ground. And later, an uncle, brusque but generous. An aunt, warm and outgoing. Later still, the flowers in a garden, blue delphiniums and white daisies in the sun, a meaning that faded from memory.
The air, even the night seemed to be sobbing as she stood where he’d made her his wife. So simple. Just the two of them and the priest, and two witnesses standing in the shadows. She didn’t remember who they were. But she remembered that her hair had been loose and he’d stroked it from her face. How he’d said the words so deep in his throat she thought they meant something. Those words had meant everything to her until she woke in her marriage bed and realized he’d gone.
For so long she imagined him a soldier. Then perhaps an assassin. Then she feared he’d married her for the land and nothing more, imagined him wrapped in another woman’s arms. She wanted a family, children. But he was never home. Their bed became a battleground where she realized the truth. He did not love her, had never loved her enough to reveal the truth, and when he touched her, she knew. When he rolled her to her back and entered her, she knew. When he walked away, she knew.
Tears formed and she swiped them from her face as if they would burn her skin. She turned to leave the shadowed chapel, but one last memory seared behind her eyes and she stumbled on the stone step, fell to her knees.
This time, when he returned, she found him sitting in the dark and staring into the flames raging in the fireplace as if that rage was burning in his soul. They fought. He said terrible things and she’d fled into the garden beside the chapel. Nico found her, took her into his arms while she poured out all her humiliation, the loneliness and the pain. Nico had offered to help. She knew what he meant and said no.
But Nico wouldn’t let it rest.
He tore her heart apart. Nico was more brutal than Christan had ever been. He told her things, described images she’d always feared to see. She felt a loyalty, the friendship of a sister to a brother, with no male relatives who could defend her. He wanted only to protect her. Hadn’t he always come to her aid while Christan stayed away? Vendetta was honorable and not a sin. If her father or her uncle had been alive they would be taking such an action for her, and Nico would ask for nothing in return.
“Tell me yes, Gemma,” he urged, a dark angel both broken and profane. And in her anger and weakness, she damned herself beyond repair, bending her head in agreement and then lifting it again. It was only later that she tried to take it back.
She had been angry, she said, distraught from the fight. She hadn’t meant it.
Too late, Nico argued. Her body had spoken the words her lips refused and he would not be denied.
Nico had frightened her with the steel of his resolve. But not as much as her own heart had frightened her, breaking beneath the leaden weight of guilt. She could not tell Christan—his rage would burn hotter than before. He would see her betrayal and never understand her pain. She was a coward. Worse, she would compound her sin and run from the final condemnation in his eyes. She had nothing left. There was no way to escape what she’d done.
She went to the chapel, put the flame to one last candle, prayed Nico would fail in his vendetta. In return, her penance would be exile. She was prepared to run. Did run. Silently, as she passed through the dark, reached the moon-shot road where trees would conceal her movements.
But the air shifted. Nico appeared and she was too terrified not to stop.
Her dress was simple, veined with purple shadows. Her possessions were in a bag made of tapestry, shot with threads of green and gold. It sat at her feet, having dropped unnoticed from her hand. Her books were there, the single letter from her parents before they died, the few gold coins her sister sent to her. Everything else she left behind.
“Gemma,” Nico said in a voice she didn’t recognize. “Why are you running? Are you afraid?”
An answer, clawing at her throat. Sweat, liming her skin with ice. She began to shiver, either from fear or the damp, she didn’t know—but it didn’t really matter, not in the grander scheme of things. Because, yes, she was afraid.
“Please, Nico,” she whispered. “I take it all back. Do not stain your soul on my behalf.”
“Too late,” he said. “You cannot save me; my soul is already black.”
His expression turned cruel. She saw the blade at his waist, flinched when his hand cupped her face. He rubbed his thumb across her cheek where tears left wet tracks, then pressed hard. A sound carried from the trees and was echoed by Nico’s sharp triumph. “I knew he would come, once he realized I was here.”
Her heart stopped when she recognized the figure standing hidden in the trees, felt his bitter condemnation on that moon-shot road. There was nothing she could say that would change what he saw—she was here, he was there, with no way to reach across that empty distance. The air had grown cold, the trees moved, and he stood alone in the glow of silver, his body more primitive than she’d ever seen. Ferocity burned through him. All of it, aimed at her.
“She asked me to kill you,” said the man who called himself Nico. “Such a blood-thirsty woman you have.” He kicked the tapestry bag into the road, spilling coins in glittering condemnation. “I don’t think she realized I would do it for free.”
“Did you ask him?” One question, uttered in moonlight, ripping her open and letting her bleed out across the ground.
She could not answer, knew his verdict had been rendered and the question merely the formality. Shapes materialized around him, keeping a wary distance. Violence shimmered in the night air, vicious intent hardened the dark. He was waiting, for what she wasn’t sure, but he frightened her more than he ever had. It was as if he was disappearing into a cold black place from which he would never return.
Nico laughed and his hand moved, the gesture landing her hard on the ground. Her pale hair tangled across her eyes. She thought it was a nightmare, hoped. But the road was dry beneath her palms, the pain in her knees too intense not to be real, and the man who had once been her friend jerked her upright again. His mouth was crushing hers, teeth biting deep into her flesh. She arched back in pain. In answer, his grip in her hair grew so tight she couldn’t twist away.
A scream split the night air, and it was as if the earth had opened and demons emerged. Where Christan once stood monstrous creatures appeared, coming together with such force the branches of nearby trees broke like kindling. The noise was thunder, blood like rain on the ground, the wet ripping of flesh so terrifying she turned to run.
She did not get far.
They were on her in an instant. Desperate, she fell in the dirt. A knife was in her hand, picked up from a pool of blood. She struck out blindly. But it did not end, could not end no matter how she screamed. When a dark form loomed above her, when she felt the blade and the boots she believed she’d fallen into hell. She curled into a tight ball and begged, for forgiveness for her shouted, angry words. Begged, for another chance to repair her sins. Begged, to have that moment back when she had condemned the man she once loved. Loved him still. She begged for one more breath. And then she stopped.