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He neared me and smeared a cream on my hand. I didn’t bother asking what it was, and the lidocaine’s numbness set in soon enough. With my head hung low, I walked to the couch and curled up on it.

Zeno gave me a sad smile and nudged a table beside the couch with his foot. “So, you’ve parsed what’s about to happen.”

I stared into the cushion of the couch as a pair of nitrile gloves audibly snapped beside me, followed by the crinkling of unwrapping. I pinned my hand to the surface of the table and shut my eyes tightly. I recognized the sickening click of a needle holder grasping onto its target. It was easier to not look, to pretend the nearly imperceptible back-and-forth tugging on my arm was simply Zeno pulling on my hand rather than forceps grasping at the needle piercing through my skin.

In a shockingly short amount of time and surprisingly few clicks, there came a final, rough tug, followed by a snip. I slowly opened one eye, then another, to reveal a series of clean, even stitches across the wound.

I held my hand at different angles to marvel at his handiwork. “How did you learn how to do this?” I asked. “It looks almost professional.”

Zeno glanced up at me briefly, then nonchalantly returned to cleaning up the supplies. “I’ve had plenty of practice on myself and Basilio. Who knows how many sets of sutures I’ve done? Noor taught us both when it became apparent they would be required, even in her absence.”

“Were they . . .?” I couldn’t finish the sentence, as my mouth was too dry, and the words were too sharp. He pressed a bandage over the stitches firmly, and I winced even though I couldn’t feel it.

“If you’re wondering if those wounds were self-inflicted,” he murmured, sealing the border, “or afflicted on one another, the answer is no.”

Something about his tone, which mirrored the strange calmness he’d displayed earlier, made me remember the shackles on the wall in his old room. I gestured with a shaking hand. “Does that room have anything to do with it?”

Zeno didn’t bother to follow my motion and instead continued to gather up the trash. He replied, “In an abstract sort of way.”

Frustration furrowed my brows. “What do you mean?”

He sighed with equal exasperation. “Cora, I do not think words suffice, and alas, I am quite poor with them when it comes to this topic. It was the sight of shackles that brought about this line of questioning, and it would be another sight that would best answer it.”

“Then show me already!” I pleaded.

“As you wish.” His fingers went to unbutton the collar of his shirt, and he worked his way down. I widened my eyes at the sight of his bare skin. “Wha—”

“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked, gazing up at me through his lashes. “I’m trying to answer your question, you know.”

Blood rushed to my face, and I tried to keep my thoughts chaste. To my combined confusion and relief, he turned his back to me as he finished the last few buttons. His shirt rippled to the ground, revealing lean musculature.

Despite how smooth and porcelain his skin was elsewhere, long, silver lines covered his back. They formed overlapping, jagged X’s that crossed from the tops of his shoulders down to his hips, with an apex on the prominences. I touched them, and my fear was confirmed. They had the unmistakably silky texture of scars.

Some were deep, others raised, many were merely thin lines. All long-healed but likely years apart in origin. My heart sank.

“Basilio doesn’t have quite as many as I do, and most of his are on his chest,” Zeno said in a strangely lighthearted manner. “And of course, I must brag that his wounds were sutured much more cleanly than my own. He may have a way with words, but I’ve always been keen with a needle.”

I was utterly speechless.

Zeno shrugged his shirt back on and stated, “I assume you still have questions.”

No shit,I thought, but the words could not escape my mouth. Nothing could, not even my breath.

He chuckled, nearing me, and cupped my cheek in his hand. “Ah, Cora. You’re so horrified already, yet I haven’t begun to scratch the surface. Even so, you wish to know the context, the truth, and the foundations of my cruelty? It is a rather wretched truth.”

Frustration broke through horror. “Isn’t it obvious already? I want to know everything about you! I don’t care how wretched!” I fought the urge to tear his shirt back off, to see the proof of a secret that had never truly been concealed.

He took a seat beside me. “What do you recall from what I told you of my past?” he asked, tone soft once more.

“I’m not sure,” I muttered. “Everything you’ve told me, I suppose. I know you are a bastard and that you never knew your mother. I know you and Basilio were close as children, and now, for some reason, you are not.” I halted for a minute, waiting for my words to be corrected or expanded, but Zeno gave me a reassuring nod. “I know your father brought you to the abbey when you were young, and that since then, you wanted to live there. And I know you were in love with Serafina Rosa Salviati—” At her name, silly jealousy burned within me, and I forced it back. “That’s it.”

That wasn’t entirely true. I had seen how easily coldness came to him, and how difficult it was for him to exude radiance. But I had also seen that hecouldplay the game with nobility, say the right words, and generally charm them. I had seen how hollow he was any moment he was not listening to music or looking at me. And of course, I knew he would die in an unknown number of years.

Zeno’s eyes flickered across me, full of mixed emotions. “It seems you have the basics,passerotta. Shall we start then, from the beginning?”

Chapter 38: Vissi d’arte

“You guessed the origins of Enzo Armando correctly. Like myself, he was a bastard child secretly sired from the unholy union of blood relations. How else do you think this horrid combination of mutations that afflict me is possible? Whether my parents were siblings, or cousins, or mother and son, I do not know—and I do not wish to know. More importantly, none outside my immediate family would have ever guessed that the woman who raised me for the first few years of my life was anyone other than the woman who birthed me and raised me for a year before she, too, died.”