Page 63 of Just for a Taste

I rolled to the side, brush shifting around me. When I looked up, a trio of purple stellate blooms were dangling above my head. I pushed away the borage flowers and sighed. “Even during the day, the stars are taunting me.”

At the sound of my voice, something in the distance shuffled audibly. “Signorina Bowling?” a familiar, deep voice called out just as I sat up to see her.

“Oh, uh, hello, Signora Carbone.” I quickly pulled the grass from my hair and straightened my skirt. “What are you doing here?”

It was a stupid question, considering the shears in her hands, but it felt better than nothing.

“Tending to the graveyard,” she answered, a frown creasing her shaded face. “And you?”

I tried to formulate a straightforward answer, but the second I opened my mouth, questions poured out. “What’s going on with Zeno?” I asked, sitting up. “Why is he avoiding me? What’s going to happen to me?”

I thought she would avoid my gaze like she had for the last few days, but she returned it, both her eyes and voice razor sharp. She thrust the shears into the ground and tossed aside a glove to offer me a hand.

I took it hesitantly, and she pulled me to my feet.

“For once in all my time working here, Signorina Bowling, I do not know what is happening under this roof. Do you understand how that feels for me?”

“No,” I replied just as quickly. “I have no clue whatsoever what you’re feeling. But honestly, I care much more about what you’re thinking. Or, if not a guess,anyshred of information about what’s going to happen to me.”

The woman looked to the side, watching a deer lap at the pond with a strangely serene expression. No, not serene—hopeless.

“No one knows what’s going to happen to you, not even Duca de’ Medici,” she muttered. “All I can tell you is that I have been given orders to pack and unpack your bags several times.”

To hear it said so candidly brought a chill down my spine. For a long, extended silence, all we could hear was the mild breeze and the deer lapping water. It looked up at her, seemed to see something fearsome in her face, and quickly dashed away into the forest.

When Signora Carbone looked back at me, eyes ablaze, I could empathize with the creature.

“You’re going to need to talk with him soon,” she said. “Otherwise, I have a feeling I’m going to be packing your bag for the last time.”

∞∞∞

The room was even darker than usual when I entered, a feat I hadn’t known was possible. The only thing preventing pitch darkness was the distant candle in the lounge.

After grabbing the unlit lantern on the table, I navigated the room by memory into what little light there was.

Zeno’s shoulders rose and fell slowly as I approached, as though breathing became burdensome upon my entrance. The candle’s flame flickered in response to his audible, breathy sigh, and the light shifted dramatically across his features. His coral eyes gazed at me intently from above his arm, reminiscent of Cabanel’sThe Fallen Angel.

“Cora.”

That single word, a strange greeting of sorts, sounded heavy in his mouth. Heavy and bittersweet.

“Zeno,” I whispered back, mouth taut around his name. I took a few steps forward, closing in on him. “What’s going on?”

With yet another sigh, he formed his fingers into a triangle, lowering his chin onto his thumbs and pinching the bridge of his nose with his forefingers.

“I told you already.” His voice was hoarse, that specific hoarseness that emerged from hours of not speaking. “You don’t belong in that world, or at my side.”

I restrained myself and placed the lantern on the piano instead of slamming it down, then further restrained myself to speak in a low voice. “Why? Because I grew up poor? Or because I’m not Italian?”

Zeno sat up and looked at me as though I had said the sun was out at midnight, then flattened again. “Of course not!” he responded. “You deservebetterthan those worlds. You deserve so much better than being torn apart by shitty, two-faced people and rotting in this abbey.”

“I’m not rotting! I haven’t felt this at home in years.”

“Maybe right now,” he mumbled, returning to his former pose. “But I told you before, Cora, I’m a husk. That feeling won’t—”

I folded my arms tightly against my chest and cut in sharply, “Do you think I haven’t seen your eyes go empty? Do you think I’m not aware that I’m living in your casket? Look, if this is just some self-sacrificing bullshit—”

“It’s not,” he snapped, emotion finally returning to his voice. “I don’t have a sacrificial bone in my body. Every ounce of flesh beneath my skin is as selfish as a man can be.”

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