Not that that seemed to matter.
He heard her cry, and his head came up, unthinking. And, in his panic, he forgot to blur his vision. Or maybe it was deliberate, the desperation of a man wanting one last glimpse of the life he’d lost.
And the woman he loved.
Despite the cold, her skin was as pale as the snow on the hillside. She looked so small, even next to Horatiu, who had never been a tall man and was now starting to bend with age. With her hair tumbled down her back and a blanket wrapped around her for warmth, she almost looked like a child. But there was a woman’s pain in her eyes as she listened to the old man’s soft words.
Mircea should have been able to hear them; he could hear them, their voices muffled by the trees and the falling snow, but audible for all that to his new senses. Yet he couldn’t seem to make out the words. It felt like it had on the battlefield once, when a Turk had gotten close enough to bring a heavy sword down on his helmet, half bashing in his brains.
He’d kept his seat on his horse somehow, and gotten away. But he hadn’t been himself the rest of the day, and his men later told him that, when he’d spoken to them, it hadn’t made sense. It felt like that now, their voices washing over him, waxing and waning, but mostly unintelligible.
“You lie!”
Until the words, flung at Horatiu, finally broke through the fog, coming clearly to Mircea’s ears.
“No, my dear, I promise you—”
“You promise me nothing. You tell me the truth!”
“I have—”
“Liar! You tell me what happened to him. Is he dead? You tell me!”
Horatiu said something. It was lost in the roar in Mircea’s ears, but he was probably reiterating the story they’d arranged. It was even half true—nobles in the pay of another claimant to the throne had attacked his family, he’d been forced to flee for his life, he didn’t know when he would be back . . . or if he would. Things were too dangerous for him here, and for anyone who knew him. For her own safety, she must pretend they’d never met. . . .
She listened white-faced, one hand gripping the doorframe. She held the purse Mircea had sent with the other and cried, silent tears that streamed down her cheeks. And then she threw it, sobbing, at Horatiu, only to have him pick it up and press it gently back into her hands.
Mircea’s fingers sank into the tree.
But he couldn’t go to her; couldn’t take her with him. And he couldn’t bear to tell her why. Couldn’t tell her of the girl he’d attacked the previous night, when the bloodlust overcame him, the hunger of a newborn combined with the staggering amount of energy it had taken to repair the damage his new body had taken.
He couldn’t tell her of the girl who looked like her. Or of the body he’d left crumpled in the snow, barely alive. And only because in his madness he had hunted near a town, and they’d been discovered.
The hunting party had returned late, the freshly killed deer they bore having slowed them down. He remembered the way the torchlight had thrown moving shadows on the ground, on the girl, on him, with his extended fangs and gory face. And on the men’s expressions as they stared at him, their horror, fear, and disgust hitting harder than their weapons as they drove him away, like the animal he now was.
He couldn’t bear see that look on her face.
He couldn’t risk her being that girl, the next time the hunger took him.
He couldn’t ask her to share his life when he had nothing left to offer but danger and want and a cursed night, and she deserved the day.
He had therefore let Horatiu go in to see her instead, while he waited in the forest outside. And left the bloody imprint of his hands in the bark of a tree, so hard had he gripped it to keep himself still. Especially when she stood, silhouetted in the doorway, after Horatiu left.
And cried his name into the night.
It echoed in his ears, even when the dream snapped. Mircea found himself sitting bolt upright in bed, panting, his hair stuck to his cheeks. One hand knotted in the bedclothes, and one extended, reaching out for someone who was no longer there.
And who would never be there again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Business remained slow the next night, although you couldn’t tell it to look at the house. Every window burned brightly as the storm of cleaning continued, with the cook on a positive rampage. And ordering the “useless ones,” as she termed everyone not under her iron thumb, into the city to get them out of the way.
“Beats scrubbing pots,” was Bezio’s only comment.
“I know a good tavern,” Mircea offered.
“Tavern, hell,” Marte said, coming down the stairs with a gaggle of girls in tow. “We’re going to see the fireworks!”
And so they had.
Everyone except Jerome, who insisted that he hated fireworks. “They give me a headache.”
“You’re a vampire,” Bezio reminded him.
“A vampire who doesn’t want a headache.”
“So you’re going to do what? Stay here and help clean?”
“Maybe. If they ask nicely enough.”
Bezio shook his head and gave up.
But everyone else went. Even Paulo who, of course, tried to organize everything. But the excited group was beyond even his abilities. “Like herding cats,” Mircea heard him mutter, as the brightly dressed throng of giggling girls tumbled into a gondola, leaving no room whatsoever for the boys.
Until Zaneta pulled Bezio down into her seat near the back of the boat, and then sat on his lap. “Mmm, so much softer,” she said, wiggling around coquettishly.
“Not if you don’t stop doing that,” he warned, grabbing her around the waist.
She shot him a glance over her shoulder, blue eyes mischievous behind the silver half-moon mask she wore. “I was talking about old hard wood.”
“So was I.”
She laughed and continued squirming, while the rest of them tried to find seats. Mircea was pulled into a flutter of silks and hooded cloaks, his black and gold mask coming loose and almost landing in the canal before he managed to catch it. And then Danieli, in the big-nosed mask of a fool, was squeezing in alongside.
Even Sanuito had come, Mircea was surprised to see. A mask might cover the marks on his face, but not on his hands as he gripped the side of the boat, white knuckled. Mircea briefly wondered if he was afraid of water.
And then it was too late when they cast off, joining the queue of other gondolas crowding the small canal, all of them filled with masked revelers.
“I thought it was supposed to be illegal to wear masks after dark,” Mircea said, staring around at the sea of anonymous faces. People flouted the convention all the time, of course, especially during carnival. But he’d never seen so many all at once.
“It’s illegal to do everything,” Danieli said, in the world weary voice he cultivated. “Everything fun anyway.”
“They just wanted a law on the books to let them prosecute anyone causing mischief,” Bezio explained, fighting yards of velvet to peer at Mircea from behind his well-dressed armful. “Young idiots used to go around throwing eggs at people while masked—”
“Eggs?”
“They were filled with rose water, but they could still ruin an outfit,” Zaneta said, disapprovingly.