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III

“It’s too cold for gelato,” declares Charlotte.

“Nonsense,” says Giada, dragging her toward the shop, open despite the winter chill. She orders a scoop of lemon, spoons it in her mouth and shivers, half in cold and half delight, closes her eyes and holds the sugar on her tongue until it melts.

Charlotte shakes her head.

Falling for Giada is the easiest thing she has ever done.

It shouldn’t be, and yet it is.

In hours, they are tangled. In weeks, they are bound. Their days and nights take on a rhythm. The first half of the day belongs to Giada and her modeling. The last half of the night to Charlotte and her needs. The rest of the time, they are together.

And for the first time in years—so many years—Charlotte knows what it feels like to be happy.

For the first time, she doesn’t even dream about Sabine.

Giada takes another bite and moans in pleasure, and then as if on cue, a frigid breeze whips down the road and she yelps and turns up the collar of her coat.

Charlotte laughs, even as she pulls her close, wishing she had some warmth to give.

Instead, she peels off her own scarf, a prop, since the cold never really bothers her, and knots it around Giada’s neck.

Loops an arm through hers, if only to shield her body from the wind.

They walk like that, hooked at the elbows and heads bent together, Giada stealing lemon mouthfuls with the little wooden spoon, and for once Charlotte doesn’t feel self-conscious—it’s not such a strange sight, two young women walking arm in arm, in a culture full of so much passion.

“What do you think?” muses Giada as she brings the last bite to her lips. “Will it make me taste even sweeter?”

Charlotte grins, nudging her beneath an awning. “Let’s find out.”

Giada laughs, that bright, full-throated sound, as Charlotte presses her into the wall, lips trailing down her throat.

Just then, someone hisses.

A horrible, phlegmatic sound.

Nearby, an old man has stopped to glare at them.

He snarls something under his breath, and Charlotte doesn’t need to know the words to feel their weight.

To see the way they land like an open hand on Giada’s golden cheek.

The way she reels back, face contorting into anger, before she launches into a fury of Italian.

The way she pushes off the wall, lunging toward him, and Charlotte has to sling an arm around her waist to hold her back.

“Leave it,” she warns as he backs away, shaking his fist.

“Why?” demands Giada as he shuffles off, still muttering under his breath. She twists in Charlotte’s arms, her face burning hot with rage, a sight at once foreign, and beautiful, and frightening. “Why should I? Why should you ? Why should he get away with it?”

Because they always have, thinks Charlotte. Because they always do. Be cause that is the way of the world.

But the world is supposed to be changing. Some years, it seems it does, in leaps and bounds. Others, the progress is so scant it hardly registers. And in that moment, Charlotte realizes that she is as tired as Giada is mad. And unlike Giada, there is something she can do about it.

“Go home,” she says. “I’ll be there soon.”

Giada shakes her head, a gleam of violence in her eyes. “I want to stay. I want to watch.”

But Charlotte refuses. Giada sulks a little, but in the end, she goes.

Charlotte watches her coat bob away, waits until it’s gone.

Then turns and makes her way back across the square.

“What was it like?” Giada asks that night, when Charlotte sinks onto the bed.

She runs her fingers over Giada’s skin, and doesn’t say that he was just a dying man with a dying mind, that his blood tasted like cheap wine, that he never even begged her for his life, that his heart didn’t even linger in her chest, that when it was done, all she felt was tired, sad.

A sadness that reminds her of another life, the last years in London, the ones that made her wake with tearstained pillows, made her heart feel like it was wrapped in lead.

And she never wants to feel that way again.

Instead, Charlotte climbs beneath the covers and pulls Giada close, wondering if she would still taste of lemon and sugar or if the flavors have already melted, when Giada says, “I want to be like you.”

Charlotte closes her eyes. The words don’t take her by surprise. The last few days the air around Giada has been laced with questions, wonder, want.

“No,” she says. “You don’t.”

“I do,” presses Giada.

“Is this because of that man?”

A rare gravity sweeps over Giada’s face. Her eyes have gone from blue to gray. “No. And yes. It is because of this world, and how it treats us. It is because of how we’re expected to let it. So maybe yes—maybe I want to know what it’s like, to not be afraid.”

And Charlotte cannot blame her—not when she’s spent her life carrying a purse full of rocks—but she doesn’t understand that what’s she asking for is heavier.

Charlotte shakes her head.

“Mia Carlotta—” protests Giada.

“ Don’t, ” she pleads, rolling over.

“Why not?” asks Giada.

Because, thinks Charlotte, there’s no such thing as immortality.

Because I love you as you are, and I cannot bear to change you.

Because I saw the venom in your eyes tonight.

I felt the violence in your limbs, the way your passion became rage, and I know that it would bloom like rot inside your heart.

Because of Sabine.

“Because it is a curse,” she says instead. “And I would not wish it on you.”

“Curse,” scoffs Giada. “A word used by those burdened with something others want. You call it a curse. I call it a gift. To stay young, and beautiful, and strong. To live forever.”

“Bound to the night.”

She shrugs. “The sun is overrated.”

“And hunger.”

“I am hungry.” She nips Charlotte’s shoulder. “I am ravenous.”

“Giada—”

“And I love you,” she says into her skin. “I love you, Carlotta, and I don’t want it to end.”

Grief and guilt wind like thorny limbs through Charlotte’s ribs, and she curses this day, that man, herself. But she knows what she must do. She sits up and turns toward Giada, reaches up to cup her face.

“I love you, too,” she says, looking into her eyes, past the light, to the shadows behind. “I love you,” she says, when what she thinks is, Let it go.

It is an easy thing to bend a mind the way it wants to lean. Far harder to push it the other way. Sabine was always better at coercing. But Charlotte does her best.

Let it go, let it go, let it go, she wills.

And by some miracle, Giada does. She flings herself onto her back among the sheets.

“Fine,” she says dramatically. “But just you wait. I will get old, and ugly, and you won’t want me anymore.”

Charlotte wilts in sheer relief.

“Never,” she swears, sweeping over Giada like a blanket.

“I will always want you,” she says.

Always, always, always, Charlotte thinks as she kisses the questions away.