Page 44

V

Matteo arrives at the palazzo an hour after she does.

Sabine sits in the salon, thumbing her prize—a single fabric petal, painted gold, peeled from the lily on Bianca’s mask—when he sweeps past the door, his clothes stained red, and his eyes dark, his mustache plastered to his cheeks with blood.

As if he did not drain his prey so much as tear them limb from limb.

Her host says nothing, only vanishes down the hall into his borrowed room. When he emerges half an hour later, he looks so hale and put together that Sabine begins to doubt herself. To wonder if the man she glimpsed so briefly in the doorway was someone else.

His clothes are clean, his face is washed, the easy air returned and the affable smile fixed neatly on his face as he crosses to the grand windows, watches the last embers of Carnevale burn to nothing.

“So,” Matteo says at last, turning back to face Sabine, “you did not starve.” He inclines his head. “Tell me, did you enjoy the hunt?”

“It was diverting, ” she admits, fixing the gilded petal on a cord around her neck. “I’ve come to claim my prize.”

“Tonight?”

Sabine rises to her feet. “Why wait?”

She expects him to put it off, offer some excuse, but Matteo only nods and strides into the center of the room. There he stops, and spreads his hands.

“Bricks and boards may build a house,” he says, “but it’s a man’s intent that makes it his.

The conviction that a place, any place on this green earth, can be laid claim to.

The strength of will behind the word mine.

” His hands glide through the air. “Take this room. I have allowed you in, but it does not change the fact that it is mine. And if I decide you are no longer welcome—”

Matteo barely moves, nothing but the slightest incline of his head on that last word, and yet Sabine finds herself thrown backward by that sudden unseen force.

She gasps as her body moves against her will, a terrible sensation, the air before her turned to stone, the air behind a dragging weight, like hooks sunk into her skin.

Before she knows it, she is up against the wall, half expects for it to crack and crumble, the bones inside her body grinding from the force.

“You’ve made your point,” she growls through gritted teeth, but Matteo simply folds his arms, and she realizes that he does not plan to welcome her again. He is waiting for her to find her will. To claim the space herself. Or be forced out. Sabine tries to shake away a spike of panic, and focus.

Mine, she thinks desperately.

But nothing happens.

“This room is mine, ” she says aloud, to no avail.

Sabine can barely think through the dragging force, the crushing pressure of Matteo’s will, his smug amusement churning up her temper.

She squeezes her eyes shut, focuses not on the house, or even the salon, but the small square of stone against her back, the floor right beneath her bare feet. This, right here, she thinks, is mine.

The weight against her weakens. The hooks release. She sags a little in relief.

“Congratulations,” mocks Matteo. “You own roughly a dinner plate of space.”

And sure enough, when Sabine tries to take a forward step, the wall is there again. The whole wretched process must be repeated. She focuses on the floor just before her toes and thinks, Mine, the word a little stronger in her head. The air gives way another foot.

And another.

And another.

Inch by inch, she carves her trench back through Matteo’s salon until she is right there, before him, close enough to see the wax in his mustache, the filaments behind his eyes, the way one brow quirks up slightly as if to say, What now?

Sabine looks down, focuses on the floor beneath his boots, and thinks, with every measure of conviction she can muster: Mine.

Matteo’s amusement falters.

To her delight, so does his stance. She has not laid a hand on him, and yet, he stumbles slightly, as if pushed, retreats a single heavy step.

Sabine lets out a delighted sound. Matteo grins.

“Well done,” he says as the air in the salon goes slack again. He turns to leave. “Enjoy your room.”

“Wait,” she says as he turns to go. He pauses in the doorway. “You promised to show me how to lay claim to any space, no matter the size.”

“I did,” he answers wearily.

“Then how did you lay claim to all of Venice?”

Matteo meets her gaze. “The same way,” he says, with a shrug. “Stone by stone, and step-by-step.”

Sabine thinks that is the end of it.

She’s won his game and claimed her prize. She considers leaving, but the next night, Matteo strolls into the salon and says, “Shall we play again?”

And to her surprise, the words stir something in her, anticipation rising at the prospect of another game.

It is harder, during Lent.

The masks are gone, the shroud of drunken revelry removed. The city draws in on itself again, and in response, Matteo draws her out. Introduces her as his niece, and his ward. Widowed young, so sad, he knows.

Sabine plays the part as her gaze slides over these gatherings, searching for her newest mark. She has been warned never to pick the oldest children of the wealthy, or the public faces, anyone whose death would cause a scandal or a scene.

Matteo’s rules are cumbersome, but she does see the merit in them, the freedom they afford, and the thrill of hunting in plain sight.

One night he hosts a dinner in the courtyard, the doors of the palazzo flung open on the summer air. Alessandro plays the part of friend, except in certain, trusted company. And when Sabine’s attention is not hanging on the guests, it is on Matteo.

How easily he moves among them.

How well he’s known, and liked.

How casually he lifts a glass, as if to sip, and makes the food vanish from his plate.

How seamlessly he blends into this world, as if it’s his.

Two weeks, he announces when they play again, then three, pushing the threshold of her thirst a little more. Each time, Sabine expects to find her limit, and each time, she is surprised, and glad to learn it isn’t there. That she is stronger than she thinks.

Each victim is a kind of courtship.

A prelude to pleasure.

And she does take pleasure in them all.

Again, they play. Again. Again.

Until Alessandro throws a fit at the prospect of losing his lover to another game, of being forced into a celibacy he did not choose, and after that, Matteo does not always join her in the play. But he does reward her every time.

And so Sabine discovers not only how to appease her hunger with the hunt, but how to bend a human will, both the way it wants to go, and then, the ways it doesn’t. How to close her mind, and pry open someone else’s.

Matteo’s lessons, doled out like laurels.

Back in the courtyard, the guests around his table chat and drink. Sabine lets the sound wash over her as she twists a token around her finger, thinking of her latest prey.

In time, the charms around her neck have taken on a special air, each a memory no longer of a moment’s kill, but a month’s slow pursuit. A stranger courted into friendship, into trust.

Her host meets her eye across the table. He lifts his glass toward her as if to toast.

“Does it never make you hesitate?” Matteo asked the night before. “Getting to know your mark so well? Spending so long in their company? Do you ever think to let them live?”

But Sabine smiles now, as she did then.

Because the truth is, the knowing never holds her back.

If anything, it makes the killing sweeter.