Page 100 of My Dark Fairy Tale
And I was not sure anything or anyone could change the way she thought about herself except for Guinevere.
She had found fertile soil here in Florence to dig her roots into, soaking up nourishment she had been looking for all her life, tipping her head to the sun until she blossomed. Her confidence grew every day, and along with it her sense of self.
It was gorgeous to behold.
There was a difference, though, between growing from what you were and changing entirely. And she would have to do that if she wanted to stay and be my woman.
She would have to become the Queen Below to my King.
The thought of her royal and clothed in shadow by my side, Proserpina to my Pluto, made my throat tight with a hope so big it threatened to choke me.
I was about to open my mouth to declare I would tell her at the end of the night, after our guests had left, when Carmine entered the room looking slightly disheveled. He immediately made for a carafe of wine on the counter and poured himself a large glass.
A moment later, a friend of Martina’s appeared, a small bruise at the hinge of her neck and shoulder.
Martina, Renzo, and I chuckled, ignoring Carmine’s smug grin. He swallowed a hefty gulp of expensive wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Dehydrated?” Martina teased.
Carmine winked. “I hope you don’t mind, Raffa. We used the bench in the gym for some X-rated exercise.”
I rolled my eyes at him, but my mood was so good I couldn’t be even slightly irritated.
“Oh,” he mentioned. “You should fire whoever you used for the flowers, boss. They left an arrangement of chrysanthemums in the foyer.”
He made a sign to ward off the devil, but I was too preoccupied with his words to pay it any mind. Annella, my housekeeper, had hired people to decorate the house for the party, but the decorations were mostly Florentine banners and huge urns filled with white and red flowers.
Not chrysanthemums.
They were only used on graves and at funerals in Italy, and as a superstitious people, we avoided them on any other occasion.
“Show me,” I demanded.
Carmine set his wineglass on the counter, sobering instantly. Martina and Renzo followed behind me as we moved through the first floor and down the stairs to the foyer.
The flowers were in a large, low bowl on the marble table at its center.
I searched the blooms and came up with a small card perched on the edge of the bowl.
“I did not die, yet I lost life’s breath.”
You will not die. You will not go gently.
So I will take your breath instead and watch you suffocate.
San Marco
As if the quote from Dante’sDivine Comedymade it so, I could not breathe.
Terror was a noose cinched too tightly around my neck, all my blood rushing to my head and inducing dizziness so severe I had to brace my hand on the table.
Of course, there was only one choice for who my breath could be.
And she was laughing upstairs with her friends at a party.
Renzo plucked the card from my hand and read it before cursing savagely and passing it off to Martina.
“She leaves in two days,” Carmine soothed after reading it himself. “You just have to be careful until then.”
