I had to keep reminding myself of that one major fact. Just being around him made my memory lapse even greater.
“It was before you came into existence, Cherub.”
“I can help you.”
“And you will.” De Santis turned me around, and we walked back the way we came. “There is a masked ball at the Ca’ Vendramin Calergi Palace tomorrow night. You’ll go as my guest. Marisol and her new beau are hosting it in celebration of their engagement. I believe your father will also be present.”
A date with Damen De Santis? "You know when a mortal is nicked by a love arrow, the effects only last if the two mortal hearts complete each other. There are ways to test the potency of the arrow’s effects.”
He tilted his head, listening, as I got his attention.
“Jealousy.”
Back at the pool, Jace resumed his post at the end of the pergola. He’d been shadowing us the entire time. What did De Santis think I would do? Attack him with my invisible love arrows? Try to escape? Unless he lied about the wards and not getting through the gates, which I wouldn’t put past him. Or perhaps something else my mind couldn’t contrive at the moment.
“Jealousy?” De Santis ran his hands up my arms, and goosebumps followed in the sheer fabric in their wake. “Coming from a cherub, I have to say you surprise me. Careful, you may start to like the thread of darkness I plunged inside you.”
All the blood drained from my face. De Santis moved away, leaving me standing by the pool. Not even the scent of the persimmons or the chocolate cheesecake Agatha placed on the table could calm my racing heart. A thread of darkness. If he wove it into my soul, I’d never get it out.
How could he have gotten it in there? My fingers clenched into a fist. De Santis sat at the table again, pulling out a cloth napkin and putting it over his lap. He picked up a fork, cutting into the cheesecake as I watched. He lifted a brow, but I was at a loss for words.
After taking a bite of the cheesecake, he ran his tongue along his bottom lip. “You should have a taste. It’s sinfully delicious.”
My hand went to my lips. Oh, no, he did not.
5
To prepare for the ball the next evening, I received a new mask. This one was smaller, intricate like lace, and pink. It lay beside an ivory gown, not much different from my lavender dress when I first arrived. It was bare off one of my shoulders, and the skirt angled from my knees to my ankles. Longer, but with the mask and the gold edging around the neckline, I looked like a cherub. At least I wouldn’t have the bow and arrows strapped to my back this evening, or would I?
I started to think no one else lived in the mansion, aside from Jace and Agatha, when Sierra arrived. Jace opened the door. I spent the afternoon soaking in lavender water to calm my nerves. Everything I ate and drank had been laced with bindweed. One dose on its own would last a few hours. I’d tossed my breakfast in the trash, but then Agatha ate lunch with me, and she couldn’t leave until I ate every bite.
It wasn’t her fault she worked for a jerk like De Santis. Why couldn’t I get angry with him? I knew what he was. I knew what he wanted. He couldn’t have it, have her. Not from me, and not from my father.
A tickle of cold in my chest from his thread of darkness had tied me to the Abyss. Only the one who placed it could pull it back out.
Once a heart filled with the bitterness of revenge, it became lost. An offspring of Chaos, De Santis thrived in the disasters of others. He could have a human side. Few of the ancient gods got along with others beyond Aeries and Athena learned to stay long enough in each other’s presence to create love rather than war.
My sister Hope would look for the light inside him if she were in my place. My heart told me I could put a thread there, a spark, if given a chance.
As I sat in front of the dressing mirror, Sierra laid out her irons and tools for tackling my tangled hair.
As she brushed and tilted my head from one side to the other, I sighed. “I would prefer it down this evening.”
Her sympathetic smile couldn’t compare to the cold thread wrapping around my veins. “Count De Santis has instructed I style it up.”
“Did you also used to style the other woman’s hair? You know, the one who isn’t here anymore?” I wasn’t sure how to say it. Did I call her his estranged wife? Were they even married? She was engaged to someone else. Girlfriend?
Maybe De Santis had commitment issues. I wasn’t even sure how long they’d been together. Long, because the statue in the garden was over a hundred years old. That was a long time to wait for a guy to ask a girl to marry him.
“Yes. I am happy for Miss Cantin. It is not always you find true love.”
“So you’re not upset she’s gone?”
“I admit, I worried I would lose my job, but now I style hair for you.” She beamed, her joy radiating through her eyes as she looked at me from the reflection of the mirror.
“But do you miss her?” I winced when Sierra tugged a little too hard on a knot in my hair. She plugged in her heated tools of torture and moved on to check if they’d grown hot enough to tame the wilds of my hair.
I waited to see if she would answer, not sure as she pressed her lips together, fussing over the straightener and curling iron.
“She was not one to talk, like you.” Sierra moved behind me, the straightener in hand. “Sometimes I think she sad. I know she spent much time with Count De Santis, but her heart, it did not beat the same for him as this one who put lights in her eyes. Now, no more talk. I fix hair. The Count will not be able to take his eyes off you. Perhaps you will bring light to his eyes, uh?”
My heart sparked, like a zap of static shock at Sierra’s suggestion. Could I make De Santis’s eyes light up?
Of course I could. It was part of who I was. I thought back to the evening before; I heard it in his voice, saw the flames in his eyes. Those flames flickered in anger, hurt, and loss. What would his eyes look like with the light of love shining from them?
So much darkness filled him; it was part of him. His eyes had been consumed with it and I figured it was part of his heritage. Then my mind tapped my heart, and a flash of blue and gold came to memory. Would De Santis’s eyes turn those colors if he pushed back the darkness within?
By the time Sierra left my room, I looked more like one of the Roman statues of Athena than a masked variant ready for the ball. I liked it. She’d piled my curls up over my head and allowed many to cascade down my back.
I would have to be careful tonight—I’d have men turning heads—and I laughed at the mirror.
A sharp rap came to the door. It opened before I could answer, and Jace stood with a crystal glass of water in his hand. Somehow, I would figure out a way to either become immune to the bindweed or trick Jace and Agatha into not having to ingest it. By my best guess, it wore off in three or four hours. I needed enough of a window to contact my sisters.
My heart ached every time I thought of them thinking I was dead. Cherish wouldn’t give up on me. She’d found me as a baby, rescued me, and put up with me during my teenage years. She wouldn’t write me off this easily. And neither would Hope. Faith, on the other hand?
Just what had they done with my sister’s shoes?
I gave Jace my most menacing stare.
“I don’t have a headache anymore.” I crossed my arms. Sierra had helped me put on my mask, afraid I’d mess up my hair.
“Good.” Jace held out his hand with two red capsules. “It will help wash the medicine down.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t make me force you to take this, Joy.” His voice betrayed his heart. He seemed all tough on the outside, but inside he had the heart of a healer. He couldn’t fix what was broken inside me. But neither had I given up on him yet.
“More bindweed? Or will this keep my memories still locked of what happened?”
He stretched his neck and rolled back his shoulders. “It’s for your own safety. Count De Santis doesn’t want you making a display and risk
ing flying away outside the estate.”
“Flying away?” I murmured. I couldn’t. One, it was forbidden to display our wings to mortals. And second, we allowed our one true love to see our wings. And maybe a third. When De Santis called me a baby cherub, he wasn’t far off from the truth. Until I turned twenty-one, I hadn’t come of age to sprout my wings. Why else would I have needed to take the people mover into Venice if I could have flown there?
Jace’s brows scrunched together, and lines ran across his forehead. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him. Nor would he believe me if I admitted I’d come to the Carnavale to celebrate my coming-of-age week. I had a few more days. Maybe I could use it to my advantage.
“You know I don’t have wings, right?” I turned, exposing my back to him, and lifted my shoulder blades. “See? No wings.”
Then a sharp jab in my arm burned and stung. “Ouch!”
Jace pulled out the syringe. He’d replaced the red pills with a needle, and I cringed. I hated needles.
“Need a Band-Aid?”
I gritted my teeth, baring them in a low growl. The burn in my arm sank deep into the tissue. A cold drip intertwined with the thread around my veins.
“Take a deep breath in and a deep breath out, Joy. It’ll only burn for a few seconds.”
It took every ounce of my control not to tell Jace I hated him. I wouldn’t feed the dark thread inside me.
“Are you going to blow on it too and make it all better?” I fluttered my lashes to hide the pain welling up in my eyes. Sierra would spend another twenty minutes trying to fix my eyeliner and lecturing me if I spilled tears.
Jace tensed. His golden eyes widened. When I turned my back, he set the glass on the ornate dresser against the wall. Lightning fast, he was not at all what he seemed. For the first time, I got a glimpse of his true self. I smiled with the knowledge. He might have bound my ability to sprout wings or communicate with my sisters, but he hadn’t taken away my ability to recognize one’s heart.
Healer in heart, Jace had other desires locked away. Interesting. For all his and De Santis’s efforts, they failed to bind the one thing I could control. The very essence of who I was.
“I didn’t think so.” I let him off the hook.
Jace relaxed, scowling as he motioned toward the door. “Count De Santis is waiting in the foyer.”
“Let’s hope he has a pair of shoes for me. A girl can’t go to the ball without a sweet pair of footwear.” I strode out into the hallway, my head held high. I refused to rub or flinch at the mark forming on my arm.
At the top of the stairs, Sierra came rushing forward. “Wait. Wait.” She hurried, and Jace stopped long enough for her to catch up with us. “Ribbons. Ribbons for your hair. And a feather.”
Jace rolled his eyes, stepping away. Sierra held out the gold feather for me to see it for a moment, then fussed around me. She pulled at the curls slipping in the ribbon, and out of her pocket came hairpins. The feather she attached to the ringlet by my mask.
A quick glance at Jace, and I whispered, “Grazie.” She winked and hurried back down the hall.
I resisted reaching up to touch the gold feather. Could it be? My belly tightened. I focused on the stairs where Damen De Santis stood at the bottom with a pair of shoes dangling from his hand.
6
At the bottom of the stairs, Damen’s brooding eyes glittered as he held golden sandals swinging by their long laces. “Ready?”
I reached for them, but he held them back. “Allow me.”
Damen got down on one knee. Patting his leg, I lifted my foot. My eyes almost rolled to the back of my head as his thumb pressed into the arch of my foot. Then soft leather slid across my toes. I glanced down at him, his eyes locked on mine.
A thousand little butterflies burst in my stomach. Their wings brushed against my heart, my lungs, causing the tiny hairs on the back of my neck to tickle. Damen’s warm hands slid up my calves, crisscrossing the laces. At the tender spot behind my knee, his knuckles sent a soft jolt, and I jumped a little.
“Problem?” He finished tying the lace on one foot and moved to the next.
I shook my head, not able to take my eyes away. “I’m good.”
Really good, I assured myself. Every plan I’d made in my head for the last several hours crumbled with the silken touch of his fingers across the bottom of my other foot. Jace stayed behind me, a pillar. If I fell back, he was there. I could smell the faint scent of pulque from his breath landing on my neck.
Damen tilted his head, his eyes turning black. Jace took a step back. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until Damen put my foot down and rose. Pulque was brewed from the fermented sap of an agave plant. It stunk like sour milk, and I couldn’t imagine the taste any better. It was also the preferred beverage of a lot of satyrs.
“Is our transportation ready?” Damen touched my elbow. I wished he hadn’t. Every time his skin came in contact with mine, it sent another little zap. I couldn’t wait to get out of here and detox from all the crap they messed up my system with. Cherish would be livid.
“How are we going to get there?”
“How else does one travel to Venice? By boat.”
Outside, beyond the pergola, floating on the waters of the pool was a gondola. Its sleek black body made it almost invisible in the dark, except for the gold-trimmed chairs and the navy velvet seats. Jace stepped up on the stem, balancing the boat as he picked up the oar.
“A man of many talents.”
Looking ahead, Jace ignored my comments. I smiled. His time would come.
Damen’s hand brushed down over my shoulder, touching the sore spot from when Jace shot me with his “wing deflator” medicine. I jerked back, the place on my arm still tender. Damen glanced at Jace, and he shrugged. “You said not to keep you waiting.”
I saw it again, the flicker of the flames in Damen’s eyes. They extinguished as soon as they appeared, as if they never happened. Damen reached over again. He took my arm, lower, and held me still. “You’ll have a bruise here before the end of the night.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I am not some delicate flower to bruise easily.”
Damen’s jaw clenched, then relaxed. He guided me on the boat, and we sat.
“Something amuses you?”
When the boat started to sink, warning alarms and whistles went off in my body. I attempted to jump to my feet, but then Damen wrapped his strong arms around me. He pinned me to him and the chair. “I take it you’ve never traveled through a night portal before?”
I tried to swallow down the terror clawing at my vocal cords. The water was coming up. It rose to the edge of the gondola. I leaned into De Santis, and he chuckled. “Relax, baby Cherub. You’re safe enough. For now.”
As the boat sank, the water never came into the gondola. It formed a wall around us, and strangely, we turned upside down, for we came out on the other side, rising into a dark, deserted canal in Venice.
I loved the lights of Venice. If any place in the entire world should be dubbed the place to fall in love, it was here. I loved the way the lights reflected off the waters, blue and green, yellow, and red. The sounds of the water lapping against the buildings mesmerized me. I came from here. Or my mother had, and it’s always been a place I feel most grounded, even though Hope had a habit of teasing me that I could be part mermaid.
And the masks, so many of them, so different. I reached up and touched the one on my face. Damen’s arms stayed around me, my back pressed against his side. His breath tickled against my ear. “We’re close to the bridge.”
I pulled away, a cold breeze coming between us. I should have brought a jacket, for all at once I felt cold. Reaching down, Damen lifted a cloak and placed it up over me.
“The waters here are only three feet deep,” he said in the way of warning. If I were a mermaid, I’d able to slip under the boat and swim away. But I’m not a mermaid. I’m the daughter of Cupid, and knowing why we were here and what I must do cause
d a crack in my heart. I pressed the heel of my hand against it, blinking back the tears threatening to rush forward.
What was supposed to be my last week of enjoying my youth, of celebrating my freedom from responsibilities, would become the death of me.
I could not help noticing the way Damen sat a little straighter, his face and his eyes hidden in the shadows of the lights and reflections of the water. I sensed a small part of him lighten from the weight he carried inside, giving his emotions a bit of wiggle room for me to detect them. Did he know I could feel what he felt when he let his guard down?
I sensed his desires, his passion, his greatest love. He gave me a few seconds to slip into a split fracture of them.
I wanted to open them all, bask in them to guide them all into perfect alignment and harmony. As Damen’s greatest love desires came within grasp, I panicked, and the door of opportunity slammed shut.
I gasped at the same time Jace guided the bow of the gondola up to steps leading out of the water. Damen got out of the boat, and I took his offered hand. He yanked me out, colliding against his chest. I clutched the cloak against me. Leaning close, his eyes burrowed into my mind. I froze. “Don’t ever do that again.”
He took the cloak from my hands, spread it across my shoulders, and fastened it. “Shall we?”
7
Inside the ballroom of the Ca’ Vendramin Calergi Palace, women twirled around the dance floor in traditional Venetian masquerade attire, with their high collars and puffy sleeves. All their clothing stood out in rich and vibrant jades, golds, and burgundies.
Chatter and laughter echoed in the orchestra's background. Tall ornate doors hung open, leading to the hall outside through which we came.
Damen reached inside his long-tailed coat to pull out the traditional white squared mask commonly worn by men. Coming up alongside him, Jace held out the black Capitan’s hat trimmed with gold and topped with feathers.
When Jace reached to remove my cloak, Damen stopped him with the rise of his hand. “Are you still cold, Cherub?”
Joy In Love (Daughters of Cupid Book 1) Page 3