A new plan came like lightning, hitting the ground before I even saw it, illuminating the skies on its way back to heaven.
“This doesn’t have to be our ruin,” I said, cuffing Cielo’s arm with a gentle hand and pulling him away from the window. “There is one thing we can do, but it must be done quickly. Study the papers on the desk. Write a note in Oreste’s hand, explaining that he wishes for his child to take over the great work of leading a unified Vinalia. We’ll go downstairs and tell everyone you are the heir to the Capo’s line. It helps that we already told Father you are a Malfara. And there is your recent marriage, of course. That will get the five families to swallow the situation a bit more smoothly.”
Cielo blinked a few times. Rain had turned his dark eyelashes into a shining set of spikes. “You misunderstood me. When I said what do we do, I meant should we cut him down or pull him up? Not, from what new angle we should scheme now that my father is dead.”
I sighed, but even my breath was chopped short by my haste. “I wish we had time for proper mourning, but . . .”
“No, you don’t,” Cielo pushed out.
“Do you want my unvarnished thoughts?” I asked, pointing to the rope. “That man has abandoned the people he loves at every turn. Vinalia could have been a much better place if he’d stood against his brother all those years ago. Think of the suffering that could have been stopped before it ever came to pass.” I took a deep breath, scouring my lungs. “You wanted to change things, Cielo, and now you will. You can be the leader that Oreste never could.”
Cielo stared at me with two fingers digging into his knotted brow, as if he’d gone mad and somehow that was the least of our problems.
“You are suited to this!” I cried. “I know you to be loyal, strong-minded, fair . . .”
“Are you describing me, or yourself?” Cielo asked. “You seem to have gotten us tangled up, and not in the good way.”
My strega was skilled at evasion, but I would not let him slip away from his fate. “You are capable of withstanding the great loneliness and pain that come with being a leader. At times, you can be so clever that it almost hurts,” I said. “What is more, you are not so hungry for power that you will rip it out of the hands of those who starve.”
I crossed my arms, locking the vaults of my reasons. I had given him plenty and now he would have to agree.
There was no other way.
“Even if all you said is true, you’re missing an important detail,” Cielo said, his voice growing cold as the rain outside. “I want to save Vinalia from the scourge of great men, not become one.”
“If you love Vinalia half as well as you love me, the world will be better for it,” I said.
Cielo went over to his father’s little table, still set for tea. He braced himself and took a sip, wincing against the overbrewed leaves. He mumbled something into the cup, but it was too low, and with my dull ear, I could not hear it.
“What?” I asked.
Cielo’s voice leapt, skipping over reasonable volumes and rising to a shout. “I will not do it.”
He reached for another cup, but my magic was ready. It changed all of the cups on the table to crowns, so that wherever Cielo reached, he found the same answer waiting for him.
Cielo sighed. “There is no amount of flattery or magic that will change my mind, Teo. You think you only have to talk me into it, and that I will be happy. But the life I want has a different shape altogether.”
“Most people never face such a moment. You simply aren’t thinking it through. This is a call to greatness.”
He sat down at the tiny table, picking up one of the crowns I’d made. The gems gave off the green fire of emeralds, but from the way he held it I could tell it didn’t have the convincing weight of gold.
“We should have a baby.”
Ice entered my veins, pushing its way through my heart. “What? This is not the time for a child.”
“And yet I think you should bear one,” Cielo said, leaning back, letting the crown dangle from his finger and drop to the floor.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I said faintly. “What about the milk from the strega in Pavella? We agreed on that.”
“We agreed that a cave wasn’t the right place to start a family. I love babies,” Cielo said. “Or haven’t you noticed?” I thought of Cielo holding Luciano, drumming fingers against his tiny stomach, helping my nephew invent his first laughs.
But as lovely as that moment had been, the truth remained. “I don’t want to carry a child.” It had little to do with present circumstances and nothing to do with Cielo. That was how I’d felt for years.
I couldn’t understand why we were talking about this now, with Oreste hanging outside in the rain. Anger circled back for me. “Why did you choose this moment to make such a demand?”
“We’re newly married, and isn’t that when most people have children?” Cielo asked. “Besides, I think you’re suited to motherhood. It’s a decision I’ve made by myself, with no real need to consult you. If you love the baby half as well as you love me, the world will be better for it. And don’t worry if you’ve never wanted to be a mother before this moment. Calls to greatness must be answered.”
“You’ve made your point,” I said. “Although you didn’t have to twist the knife quite so hard.”
“You weren’t listening to me, Teo,” Cielo said. “You haven’t been listening for some time.” He stood up, scattering the crowns I’d made.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“You do whatever you believe you must,” Cielo said. “I’m going after Veria’s Truth.”
A hundred arguments welled up, a hundred reasons Cielo couldn’t leave me. “But—”
“I’ve been searching this whole time. Did that factor into your plans? Did you tell your father about it?”
I lowered my eyes.
“You pretend you care about the fate of Vinalia,” he added, “but it has always been di Sangro business. You must defeat your brother. You must win back the love of your sister. And by all means, you must make your father proud.”
“What of our marriage?” I asked. “You are my family. My strega.”
“You did not claim me, did you?” Cielo said, breaking toward the door. “You did not tell your family about us.”
I caught him by the wrist. “Oreste told me to keep it secret.”
“And you honored his wishes without a second thought.” He picked my hand off his wrist and dropped it. “You sway to the tune of powerful men.”
I raised my hand and drew it back.
I put it down just as quickly, but the true damage didn’t come from slapping Cielo: it came from being willing to do it in the first place.
Cielo groaned and drew his hand across his lips, as though the words he was about to speak were sickening him but he had to let them out. “No one knows about our wedding but those two soldiers. It would be easy enough to disavow.”
Now it was my turn to rush for the door. “I will go and tell everyone we are married right now.”
Cielo drew out the book, flicked a page, and became a black-furred wolf, running ahead of me, curling into place so that I could not pass, then stalking back and forth. I took a brash step forward, and the wolf let out a howl that went through my muscle and bone.
Cielo came back to girlish form, still pacing in long strides, her eyes glinting with feral instincts. “You want to tell everyone now that it’s to your advantage? Now that my marriage to a di Sangro daughter will put my bid for the throne in a better light? I could always show up in this form—how do you think they would like it?” Cielo tried to smile, but it became a snarl, lips drawing away from her teeth. “You call me your strega, and I am yours, but you are not mine. You are a di Sangro. Always.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, wanting to touch her, afraid to take a step closer.
Cielo flung an arm toward the window. “You forced my father into your schemes. He is dead because you backed him into a corner.”
“He is dead because he is a coward,” I shouted.
Cielo ran a finger along the edge of the book. The pages slipped against each other, releasing a dry rasp. “So, everyone who kills himself is a coward?”
“No! He is. Your mother—”
“Is also dead at her own hand!” Cielo shouted. “What a fine moment to bring that up.”
I gritted my teeth and kept on. “Your mother wasn’t always right, but she was brave. She loved you. She died believing it would keep you safe.”
“She was wrong,” Cielo muttered. “Does that mean she died for nothing?”
Cielo flicked page after page, changes coming on with a fury. Wolf and wind and girl and boy.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Come back.”
Cielo settled into girlish form long enough to look around the room with a touch of dizzied confusion. “I used to do that when I was little. Change and change, wondering if I could find the shape that would bring them back.”
“That man is worse than no father at all,” I said, rushing to the window. Now I was furious with Oreste not just for ruining our plans and thrusting our lives closer to danger, but for hurting Cielo. For never being there for my strega—and leaving the world behind, the moment he got a second chance.
I cast my magic down, along the line of the rope, dropping heavier than the rain. I pulled Oreste up, hand over hand.
I walked back over to Cielo and slapped a small block of unfinished marble in her palm. It was cream white, veined with charcoal gray. “Here,” I said. “It will be less of a weight to carry.”
Cielo stared at me like I was some new breed of monster. “Are you going to change me next? Remember, I can’t rule Vinalia as an olive.” She slid the marble into her cloak and grabbed for the book, which she’d set down on Oreste’s desk. I knew that the moment she flipped to a new page, I would lose her.
Keep Cielo here, I begged.
I could not touch the book, but the magic was clever enough to come up with another way. The desk became a seamless chest of granite in the darkest possible gray, and the book vanished into its stony heart. Cielo ran and threw herself into opening it, but the large box had no lid, no hinges.
“You would keep me here by holding my book captive?” Cielo asked, looking amazed and disgusted. “You know I don’t need it to change.”
“You need it for control, though. Without the book, all of that magic your mother stole from other streghe will run wild.”
Cielo nodded, pursing her lips with decision. Then she flung herself forward, sliding into the air, becoming wind. Unfettered, Cielo pushed me back, and I hit the stone box that held the book. My head cracked against the edge, leaving a line of blood.
Cielo came back to boyish form on the windowsill, poised on his toes, ready to leap. But when he looked back, he saw me holding my head, red seeping between my fingers. He ran back, cradling the wound in both hands. “Are you all right, Teo?”
“Please stay,” I said, kissing him once, then twice, as though it would patch over the things we had just done. I needed the strega, and that need was as terrifying as anything else I had to face. “Please stay with me.”
“I can’t,” Cielo said.
“Then you truly are your father’s son.”
“Look at that.” He lifted one corner of his lips, a smirk weighed down by sadness. “Our fates finally match. You are your father’s son, too.”
Cielo grimaced as he pulled the di Sangro stiletto free from my sleeve. I thought I would face down the point, but the handle was spun toward me, an offering instead of a threat. “Is this what comes next? You hold me here by force? Tell me I must play this role? That there is no other way?”
Cielo pressed the stiletto toward me, the blade pointed at his chest.
I would not take it.
The knife dropped to the floor, and as my tears followed, Cielo grabbed the cloak and crossed to the window. For a moment I thought he might stop there. He held a hand up, and when his fingertips met the rain, he changed into a dark burst of droplets, tumbling along with the green-purple silk to the courtyard below.
* * *
I returned downstairs alone.
“Where is Oreste?” Father asked.
“Did the church bury him for sitting so close to streghe?” Dantae added with a knowing squint.
I had no responses prepared. “No.” My voice doubled over on itself, thick with pain. My breath trembled, as if every time my lungs worked, it reminded me that another moment had passed without Cielo near.
Xiaodan was tugging at my sleeve, asking a question, but she was pouring words into the wrong ear.
“What?” I asked, slipping so I stood on her other side.
“Is something wrong with Oreste?” she repeated.
I saw MacCartaigh and Cinquepalmi, still flanking the door, lean farther into the room to note my answer. If I admitted that Oreste was dead, I might lose the church’s army, which I needed, since magic could not get me close to Beniamo.
I had to pick up my answer with delicate fingers. “Oreste has passed on his right to lead,” I said. “He believes he is not the right man to rule a young nation. He has chosen his only child—Cielo—to take his place.”
I needed to keep this alliance whole, at least long enough to stop Beniamo. The question of succession could be settled after he was dead.
My brother had taken Cielo away from me, just like he had promised, by making the world an impossible place for us to live in without constant fear, terrible choices, the threat of unhappiness sticking to us like a shadow.
Beniamo deserved to die. I did not care if it lit the spark of another war, as long as my brother was not there to blow on the flames.
“We march for Amalia today,” I said. “This very hour.”
“Where is Cielo?” Vanni asked.
I thought of my strega chasing a shard of magic in the drowned grottoes. “Cielo has gone to seek the blessing of the old gods,” I said. “A pilgrimage of sorts.”
“Oh, good,” Favianne said mildly. “I’m sure Beniamo will wait politely on the outskirts of Amalia while Cielo prays.”
“Cielo won’t be gone for long,” I said, knowing that was probably a lie, my lips clenching tight around a last wisp of hope.
“Who is going to lead us until the last Malfara returns?” Dantae asked as MacCartaigh and Cinquepalmi threw open the great paneled door of the Mirana only to prove that it was raining so hard that the sky had turned white as a scar.
“You are going to lead yourselves,” I said. “And I will be here in case anyone needs a reminder of how not to kill each other.”
Vanni claimed a place at my side as we headed out into the drowning day. “Won’t the heir of Vinalia be in danger traveling alone?”
I scoffed to hide a fear so strong, I almost retched instead. “Cielo is a strega of nearly limitless power,” I said. That seemed to satisfy everyone in the room, but I was left with the acid touch of fear at the back of my throat. If Cielo was grand and reckless with all of that magic, it would only turn my strega into a target. And I had stolen Cielo’s control by sealing up the book.
I told myself that Cielo would be fine.
And my magic answered me:
Liar.
Strega.
Thief.
The march to Amalia took us through the muscle and bone of Otto territory. The Otto family ran the central provinces of Vinalia, though Amalia was widely known to be a stronghold of the Malfara family, and the church had long held dominion over Prai. The rest belonged to Ambrogio, and the farther we walked through a collection of small towns and wide fields, the sharper the memory of his betrayal.
From the look on my s
ister’s face, I could tell I wasn’t the only one slicing herself with the rusted knife of the past. Mirella had trusted Ambrogio once. She had taken him into her bed. And then there was the vile possibility that she had loved him.
The thought of love brought Cielo back in a harsh, vivid stroke.
I bandaged yet another invisible wound and kept walking. I kept my eyes on Mirella, who cast far too many glances down every path when we came to a crossroads. She was walking through Ambrogio’s lands with only the hope that he would not claim a father’s right to her child.
He has no such right, my magic hissed. It had already changed his heart to wood once, and that was before I’d taken on the power of the Capo’s streghe. I wanted to promise Mirella I would protect her, but after the hand I’d had in tearing down our home and ruining her wedding, I did not think it would be a welcome vow.
As dusk slithered over the hills, Vanni, who had stayed locked at Mirella’s side, let himself fall back to walk with me. “She looks worse with every step,” he said. “Another day of this might kill her. Why wouldn’t she stay in Prai? Or better yet, Castel di Volpe?”
“A di Sangro woman does not like being left at home,” I muttered.
“I am not going to treat her like a piece of Ovetian porcelain, I promise,” Vanni said. “But . . .”
“You misunderstand me,” I said, pulling my cloak against the damp. It had stopped raining shortly after we left Prai, as if the sky was spent. But now the water seemed to be trapped in the air, hovering. “When I was in Amalia as a di Sangro boy, Mirella was left at home to watch Father waste away. And when we were younger, Father was gone for months at a time. We always wished to be with him.” Not the least because when he wasn’t at home, Beniamo had the run of the house, even if Fiorenza did what she could to keep him from us.
How much did Father know about Beniamo’s little tortures?
How much did he look away from?
I watched his back from his place at the head of the column. Father had insisted on taking the lead, saying he knew the roads that led away from Prai like he knew the sight of his own feet beneath him, but he’d set the pace of an ancient goat. I had subtly asked Xiaodan to walk at his side, where she spoke to him of her time in the opera, and he worked hard to keep up with her broad, even steps. Mimì and Lorenzo followed behind them at the same brisk pace, so Father wouldn’t flag, and Favianne and Pasquale brought up the rear of the party, Pasquale looking at everything in creation but the woman he had once been sworn to.
The Storm of Life Page 22