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III

By night, Venice is transformed.

The Piazza San Marco, the city’s grandest square, with its colonnade of arches, has been remade by joyful revelers.

Jesters and acrobats, flame-eaters and musicians.

Torchlight burns to every side, carriages jostle, and spilled wine makes rivers on the ground.

People lean out of windows, their arms flung wide, dried petals raining down onto the crowd.

Ordinary clothes have been abandoned, traded for costumes at once ornate and absurd.

It is a spectacle unlike anything Sabine has ever seen.

For human senses, the scene must be a feast. For hers, it is cacophony.

So many bodies pressed together, the air clouded with their urges and intents, and their faces hidden behind masks.

Some sprout feathers, and others horns, tricorne hats perched over plaster or porcelain brows.

A handful of rictus grins and garish scowls flash among the horde, but most are strangely expressionless, their painted lips pressed together as if holding back a secret or a smile.

Sabine’s own mask rests against her face, gold and white and framed by pearlescent peacock eyes. Beside her, Matteo has opted for one with the jet-black feathers of a crow. Alessandro strolls at his other side, his mask ornamented with the pristine plumage of a swan.

A set of mismatched birds who’ve flocked to the festivities.

Sabine studies the crowd like a guest arriving at a banquet.

She is hungry. She is always hungry, of course, but she has not fed, not since last night when Matteo accosted her on the canal, and their time in the sun has left her feeling hollowed.

No bother, she thinks, she will soon be satisfied.

It is only a matter of choosing who to take.

There are so many revelers, one or two will surely go unnoticed.

But Matteo looms like a jailer at her side, that invisible hand hovering behind.

Perhaps, if they had lingered in the crowded square, she might have found a way, but he leads them across it, to the Palazzo Ducale, produces a gilded card, and a pair of servants at the doors, clad head to toe in white, ushers them inside.

And so they trade one Carnevale for another.

Here, the dresses are far finer, the masks ornamented with real gold instead of paint, the jesters and jugglers replaced by acrobats who twirl in rings suspended between the chandeliers, while music ricochets against the stone.

Servants drift through the ballroom, their masks like phases of the moon, and ferry trays of glasses fizzing with Prosecho, while dancers fill the center of the room, and Alessandro murmurs something in Matteo’s ear, and peels away to join the throng.

And when Sabine insists that she can easily amuse herself, suggesting that he follow in his lover’s wake, Matteo’s expression darkens. “Some things are frowned upon,” he says, “even during Carnevale.”

Instead, he slips his arm through hers, suggests they take a turn around the room.

It is less crowded than the piazza outside, but not by much, and so they skirt the very edges of the hall, while the revelers spin and twirl and laugh within.

Their faces may be tucked away behind their masks, but Sabine can smell their wealth, taste the ostentation of the air, along with the heady scent of wine, knows that if she bit into any of them she would instantly feel drunk.

The thought makes her teeth feel sharper in her mouth.

“Pick one,” says Matteo, his voice so low it reaches only her. “And let us play a game.”

“A game?”

“You may stalk your prey, hunt them, seduce them, learn as little or as much about them as you like—”

Sabine’s mood brightens, her hunger rising with it.

“—but you cannot take their life till Lent.”

Her good humor shatters into a brittle laugh. “ Lent? ” She scoffs. It is ten days away.

“Take heart,” he presses on. “There are other ways to occupy your thirst. To satisfy the urge. Direct your hunger, and draw the pleasure out far beyond the moment of the kill.” His slate eyes shine behind his mask, and for the first time, she glimpses something darker there, understands that no matter how well he plays the part of gentleman, there is a monster in him, too.

And yet. Ten days? Sabine has never gone more than a night or two. She shakes her head. “It is too long,” she says. “I’ll starve.”

“How do you know?” he asks. “Have you ever tried?”

“Why would I?” she says, nodding at the bodies crowded in the ballroom. “When there is so much to eat?”

Matteo’s grip tightens a fraction on her sleeve. “Because every corpse that falls in the canal makes ripples. And I know for a fact you will not starve. I did it once. I promise, it took much longer than a fortnight. And I learned a valuable lesson.”

“Which is?”

“We need less than we think.”

Sabine purses her lips. “Desire and necessity are different things.”

Matteo clucks his tongue. “Then you refuse to play?”

“Do I have a choice?” she asks.

“The road to Rome is always open.”

She frowns, surveying the crowd as one song ends and another starts, this one faster, brighter than the last. The dancers spin and she glimpses a flash of crisp white feathers just before they turn away. “What would Alessandro think of your game?”

“He is my partner, not my prey. As such, there are certain urges he cannot understand. Ones he cannot satisfy.”

They have made a full turn of the ballroom now, are right back where they started.

“As entertaining as it sounds,” says Sabine, “I have never been a fan of other people’s rules.”

“Alas,” he says, “the world is governed by them.” He bends his head toward hers, black feathers tickling her cheek. “The difference is that games have prizes.”

Her interest kindles. “Oh? What would I win?”

“Besides the knowledge that it can be done?” He hums softly, as if considering. “If you can last till Lent, I’ll show you how to lay claim to any place, and make it yours.”

Her mouth twitches. At least it is a worthy prize. “And if I lose?”

“Then you learn nothing,” he says coolly. “But you do not strike me as the losing type.”

He is right, of course.

“Well then,” says Sabine, surveying the crowd. “Let the games begin.”

Another turn around the room, and they have each chosen their mark.

Matteo selects a man similar to him in build, broad-shouldered and square-jawed, though his dark hair, where it shows at the edges of his stark white mask, is shot through with strands of gray.

Sabine chooses a woman with a narrow waist but ample curves, a cascade of black curls spilling down her back. Her whole face is hidden behind a white mask, a gilded lily blooming on one side.

How tempting it is, to walk right up to the woman, under some invented pretense, draw her away into the dark. And yet, she cannot rush. Nine more nights stand between this one and Lent.

Between Sabine and victory.

And so instead, she dances. With Alessandro first, and then Matteo, and all the while watching the white lily.

Sees the moment when the woman turns and slips out of the ball, is swallowed by the swell of costumes in the dark, and in that instant, the game begins to feel at once thrilling and impossible.

It takes three nights just for Sabine to spot her mask again amidst the crowds of Carnevale.

Three nights, and all the while the hunger is a rising beat beneath her skin, and the glaring absence of one.

The too-still space behind her ribs. She wants.

She wants. She wants. It is hard to think of anything else, and so she doesn’t.

Instead, she spends three days, three nights, holding the image of her prey like a cherry on her tongue.

The way she did a century ago, when she was a girl named María, when the season was ending, and the fruit almost gone, and she let the last few morsels go soft between her teeth as she resisted the urge to bite down.

Back then, she never lasted very long.

Now Sabine chews the inside of her cheek until she tastes the bitter sweetness of her blood. And carries on.

Three nights, three different gatherings, and then, at last, she spots the gilded lily mask, surrounded by that raven hair, and the relief is so bright Sabine has to stop herself from rushing over and clamping a hand onto the woman’s arm before she can disappear again.

But there are still six nights till Lent, and so instead, she watches.

Notices the way the woman holds her glass, the way she lifts her mask, just so, to steal a sip of wine, revealing the edge of a round face, a dimpled cheek.

How she stands rapt, right in front of the performers, as if the show they’re putting on is just for her.

How she chats cordially enough with those around her, and yet belongs with none of them.

Sabine watches, and notices when her prey leaves, just after midnight.

And this time, she doesn’t simply watch the woman go.

She follows. Slips off her shoes and walks, barefoot, down the cobbled road, silent in the woman’s wake.

And the game might have ended then and there, her hunger is so sharp, so great, but a group crashes drunkenly between them, and by the time Sabine has woven past, the woman is ducking through a door into a darkened house.

And so, Sabine walks back to Matteo’s place alone.

On the fourth night, she skips the celebrations altogether, and returns to the same road, and waits.

It is nearly midnight when she sees the door swing open, and the gilded lily steps into the dark, alone.

Sabine bows her head, waits until she’s close before crouching over and swearing softly at her shoe.

“Oh dear,” says the lily, stopping by her side. “It looks as though the heel is broken.”

Sabine feigns annoyance, as if she did not break the shoe herself. She sighs, and tugs off her mask as if in need of air. The lily gasps.

“Your hair,” she fawns. “What a magnificent shade. Did you color it for Carnevale?”

Sabine shakes her head, but the woman is already reaching up to touch a coil, and her skin smells of lilies, too, the veins pulsing on the inside of her wrist. They are alone, and she is right there, and Sabine’s mind is going blank with thirst, her will splintering beneath the weight of want.

The only thing that holds her back is the fact she is sure Matteo will find out.

Will smell the failure on her. And Sabine refuses to give him the satisfaction of it.

She clamps her jaw shut and tallies the remaining nights till Lent.

And then, as if to mock her hunger, the gilded lily points back at the nearby house and says, “I’m staying right there. You should come in. I’m sure I can find something that will fit.”

Sabine almost laughs. She is making it so easy. Too easy. It takes all her strength to shake her head and kick off her ruined shoes and say, “Thank you, but it’s all right. I don’t live far.” Sweeping them into her hand, before wishing the woman she will kill a pleasant night.

At dawn, when Sabine falls into bed, she dreams about her prey, the pieces she has so far glimpsed: her narrow wrists; her dimpled cheek; her long, smooth throat. The way the milky skin will tear beneath her teeth. The sound the heart will make inside her chest.

Sabine wakes hungrier than ever.

She stands before a mirror in the hall and examines her reflection, convinced that she’ll find herself wasting away. She expects to be confronted by sunken cheeks and hollowed eyes, her skin shriveling around her bones as it did in the graveyard all those years ago.

But somehow, she looks exactly as she always has.

Which is to say, unchanged.

Matteo, meanwhile, seems engaged with his own quarry.

To keep it fair, he has agreed to abstain from Alessandro’s blood, and soon the color returns to the young artist’s face, though his mood worsens by the day. It is not only that he cannot seem to paint, but that Matteo has apparently eschewed his bed as well.

“I thought you were the picture of control,” she chides her host when she finds him emerging from another chamber.

Matteo lifts his chin. “Control is knowing yourself well enough to know your limits.” His eyes drift toward the stairs. “Better to avoid temptation.”

As if on cue, the studio door slams shut below.

Sabine rolls her eyes and says, “You’d think he is the one who’s starving.”