Page 25 of Just for a Taste

W hen I stood, the world spun, and the ground rushed toward me. I squeezed my eyes shut in anticipation of the hard stone against my face, but the blow never struck. Instead, I was smothered in warmth.

Zeno gently separated me from him but still held me up by my shoulders. I squinted but couldn’t read his expression beyond the haze.

“I shouldn’t have let you drink so much,” he sighed.

“Too cold,” I mumbled. I grabbed the back of Zeno’s shirt and pulled him back toward me. He stood rigid and awkward, not comfy like he had been only a few moments ago.

“Hey!” I looked up to glare at him but laughed instead. “Your face is so red! Are you drunk, too, Zeno?”

His eyes widened. “I’m not—Cora, we’re done. You should lie down.”

“No!” I hit his chest with the side of my fist in protest. “Tit for tat! Your turn to talk!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You won’t even remember what I said. I’ll walk you back to your room.”

“Tit for tat! I ain’t going nowhere ’til you tell me everything. I wanna know if you’ve been in love, an’ your favorite food, an’ where you get your clothes.”

“Cora, come on.”

“Not ’til you tell me!”

I tried to stamp my foot for emphasis, but the second one foot was off the ground, the other tried to follow. In a smooth, sweeping motion, Zeno lifted me off the ground. I squealed for a moment, but drunken drowsiness quickly superseded stubbornness. I became a rag doll in his arms, allowing him to carry me bridal style.

How warm, I thought as I nuzzled against his chest and closed my eyes. As Zeno walked, I inhaled his scent and let out a satisfied sigh. My attention turned to his shirt against my face, his breath on the top of my head, and the steady rocking of his even gait.

“To answer your question,” Zeno whispered into the top of my head, “I was in love once, in a sense. Whatever love looks like for someone like me.”

The sober person within me wanted to say and ask so much, but all that came out from my drunken self was a muffled, “Mmmph?”

“I told you I wanted to become a priest. I don’t believe in God in the same sense as others, but to devote my life to Him would have been so much better than fumbling through Medici politics.”

My foot bumped into a wall when we rounded a corner, but I was listening too intently to say anything.

To my joy, he continued, “I stopped trying at that when I was young—why bother being a socialite when everyone knew I was a bastard? A cuckoo, really, trapped in my victim’s nest. To get any closer to truth, or perfection, or whatever ascension a higher being could offer—why wouldn’t I want such a thing? Why didn’t everyone want to become priests? To me, the sacrifice of chastity was irrelevant. Preferable, even.” He paused. “Wait here. I’m going to get you some water.”

“Wait where?”

It took me a moment to realize I wasn’t in his arms anymore. My bed, though soft and more expensive than any bed I had ever slept on, now seemed cold.

A few seconds later, the warmth was back. Zeno slid an arm behind my back and held a glass to my lips. Greedily, I sipped at the icy mineral water.

“There you go,” Zeno whispered, stroking my head. “Good girl. You can lie down now.”

“You’re so sweet.” I grabbed his hand and rubbed it against my face, then kicked my heels off and lay down as told, curled up in a ball. The air felt cool on my legs, pleasant against the heat of the alcohol coursing through me. My fingers were sloppy and inefficient at undoing the buttons of my blouse, but I succeeded in the top few.

“Oh, for fuck’s—”

I huffed in protest when Zeno’s fingers slipped through mine, and the bed squeaked and shifted. He had already made it to the door, redder than I had ever seen him before.

“Come back!” I called after him, sitting up halfway.

Zeno kept his gaze pointed straight at my wall. “N-not until you get dressed.”

I shot him my best glare and cocooned my blanket around myself. “I’m nice an’ decent, alright? Come back.”

Zeno pinched the bridge of his nose and cursed beneath his breath in a combination of Italian and English. He sat on the corner of the bed, his gaze entirely averted from me, hands curled into balls around the edge of my sheets. My eyes felt heavy, and the layer of blanket around me only added to my drowsiness.

“Hold my hand.”

The words escaped without me thinking. A cool, shaky hand lingered above mine, barely touching my skin. I felt my breathing deepen and slow ever so slightly, and the hand over mine tightened, finger by finger. That was the final step to lull me into a gentle sleep.

When I came out of it, sobriety was creeping onto me, along with lucidity. I shifted, emerging slightly from the blanket, and raised my head. Zeno had sunk into the mattress beside me on his side, his hand still holding mine. Studying the rise and fall of his chest, I could tell he was awake, even though his eyes were shut. I tried not to make any sudden movements, for the man at my side was a deer and a wolf. Selfishly, I enjoyed the basic sensation of human touch.

“Feeling better?” Zeno’s hand retreated from mine, and he migrated to the edge of the bed again.

“A bit,” I said to his back. “How long has it been?”

Zeno turned back toward me, his silhouette striking. “I don’t know. A few minutes, maybe?”

It had definitely been longer—long enough that the drunken haze was gone from my head—but I appreciated Zeno attempting to spare me from the embarrassing disclosure that I had actually fallen asleep.

“I’m still a bit tipsy. Can you stay with me a little longer?” I asked, knowing full well it was a lie.

Zeno sighed softly and placed one of my throw pillows between us. “If anyone saw me come in here, they would assume something horrid of me. I’ll stay just a little longer, okay? Just to make certain you don’t get sick.”

“I’ll be good, I promise,” I grumbled at the pillow and its scratchy linen cover. “Just continue what you were saying before.”

He shot me a glance and bit his lip. “You remember that?”

“Yes. I remember all of it. You were talking about wanting to join the church . . . well, I guess you were talking about being in love before that?”

“I was hoping you didn’t remember that.” Zeno flushed. It seemed like since he’d entered my room, his skin was more often red than its usual white. “But yes, I was in love once. I was in my late teens, and a girl from the Salviati family invited me personally to a banquet. I declined, but the invitations continued for six months.”

Salviati. A name known to anyone who researched the Medici, myself included. In the fifteenth century, the family had been rivals with the Medici, both in banking and the church, and were even involved in an assassination. They were banished from Florence and, much like their rivals, nearly died out until the nineteenth century. Slowly but surely, however, the family scrounged back their gold and a more noble reputation.

The photo of the current Salviati heiress I had seen during my research emerged in my mind: Serafina Rosa Salviati, a doll-like Frenchwoman with loose, white-blonde ringlets, crystal-blue eyes, and an ever-present glow not even makeup could replicate. She was tall and slender, with the sort of figure a model could only dream of. She had been a model at one point, if memory served correctly.

“Was she . . .” I trailed off. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t want to know the answer.

“Beautiful?” Zeno filled in the gap, and I nodded eagerly despite the strange feeling in my chest. “Yes. Beautiful and wild and wicked. She only saw me for my name and my wealth, and I loved her for that. She was open about it, at least. It was more interesting than the usual politics anyway.”

“What happened?”

“I left to join the church, as I had originally planned.” He pulled out the medal from his shirt and ran his thumb across it. “I loved her, but I could never have her. Nobody could. She got her wish to gain Medici power anyhow, albeit with my cousin. So I sought out mine. Unfortunately, there was politics there, too, especially when aspiring popes learned I am Medici. I’ve found more of God in this abbey than in any of the ones I studied in. So, here I am.”

“Is this really what you wanted?” I hadn’t even fully processed his words before guilt crept in from my periphery.

“A solitary life, away from noise and people who care only for my name, surrounded by music and everything I love? To be away from the world, to fill my life with beauty and forget its inherent ugliness? That is all I have ever desired.”

Past conversations echoed through my mind, weaving together and connecting into a terrible web. Just don’t tell Zeno. He may find all of this a bit too . . . familiar. Without thinking, I traced my finger into the pillow once again. E.N.Z.O. A vampire who was forced out from the clergy because of his family name, who carried the weight of the Medici family despite being known as a bastard. Who, according to all my research, hated every second he spent amongst nobility. Z.E.N.O. He had loved Serafina because she admitted she saw him for his name. Yet here I was, in his sanctuary away from people like me , who had been drawn in by the name Medici .

“Zeno, I have something to tell you.”

At the solemnity in my tone, Zeno tensed. His eyes searched my face. He remained silent but seemed resolved in some conclusion—this was, I imagined, that I was actually entirely sober. I met his gaze and held it.

“You know I have a thesis, right?”

“Yes. I assumed in literature—possibly the Divine Comedy ?”

“I wish that was it.”

He leaned back and tilted his head to the side. “You came here for access to my library, did you not?”

“I came here because I knew you’re a Medici, because your library is about the Medici. My thesis is on the Medici succession in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I’ve been researching the origins of Enzo Armando.”

“Ah, the famous bastard. I see,” Zeno spoke evenly, with no discernible emotion. “How is it going, then? Has my library serviced you well?”

“Yes. It did, for a long time.”

“And you’ve been so curious about me because I’m Medici? That’s why you’ve been insistent on speaking with me and learning about my past? That’s why you chose to stay in this abbey?”

I clenched the blanket tightly. It sounded so much worse coming from him, especially when he wasn’t yelling, or crying, or reacting at all. There were so many things I wanted to reply, but I couldn’t parse what was an excuse, or what sounded like one.

So I just nodded and said, “Sorry.”

I expected yelling or crying, but Zeno stared at the floor. “No need to apologize.”

“Aren’t you upset?” I asked, almost offended by the lack of impact my treachery seemingly had on him.

But then, looking more closely at his knitted brow and the miniscule quirk of his lips, I realized what I had initially perceived as a lack of feeling from Zeno was instead an overabundance of competing emotions. As some conclusion visibly sorted itself out in his mind, Zeno finally met my gaze and responded, “I can’t be upset because this brought you to me.”

It felt like the floor had fallen out from beneath me, like I had been punched in the gut.

“I enjoy having you here, Cora,” Zeno continued. “As much as I despise being around everyone else, I treasure every second with you.”

The blanket fell from my shoulders, but I felt no more naked.

“I like—” Those first few words came out soft, almost inaudible even to myself, but the rest died on my tongue.

If Zeno expected any further response, he didn’t show it. In fact, I wasn’t entirely certain he had heard me at all until I saw him mouthing the rest of the sentence to himself in my stead: You too.

Zeno’s brow furrowed once more, this time in the same way it did when he was puzzling out a measure of music. “Your research has dried up, has it not? You said my library serviced you for a long time, so I imagine it no longer does. And that’s why you came here in the first place.”

I swore I could hear the gears clicking in his mind as I retreated to the other side of the bed to make myself presentable. Without Zeno’s hand on them, my fingers felt too cold and numb to button up my shirt with any speed. I took my time to finish working my way up to the collar, savoring the brief pause from impassible seas before I had to address the torrent of emotions that had washed into the room.

“Yes,” I finally answered. “I’ve gone through all the Medici documents here several times over.”

It was Zeno’s turn to pause, to force me to wait for a response. How cruel , I thought. I tried to predict his next sentence but failed horrifically.

“I’ve been a pathetic excuse of a vampire,” Zeno said, rising to his feet. “You’ve been my beniamina for nearly six months now. It’s time for your ritus sanguinous .”

I froze at the last few words. Ritus sanguinous —rite of blood. For most beniamini and their vampires, who were typically paired at the cusp of adulthood, this was a rite of passage. The ceremony with the first public feeding was the point of the practice, but what was arguably more important was the burgeoning network that could emerge from such a gathering.

My hands fell to my side, and I stared at Zeno, slack-jawed. “What? Isn’t that the epitome of everything you hate?”

“Gaudy, expensive, ornate—what's worth hating there? Not to mention the hors d’oeuvres. Why, I could hire a private chef!”

I narrowed my eyes into slits and folded my arms. “Loud, busy, socializing . I’m pretty sure your skin would turn inside out.”

Zeno shrugged and leaned against the frame of my door, body as loose as his words. “Pah. We’ll have to see.”

“But why ?”

“I cannot give you more documents, Cora, but I know several people who can. This is the only chance we have to gather them in one space.”

I frowned and shook my head. “That’s not what I asked. Why? Noor told me that having a beniamina was enough to satiate your father. Why would you go so far out of your way for me? What could your reason be?”

To my shock, my question was returned with a laugh.

“Why do I need a reason to go out of my way for a beautiful girl, one who turns every line of a book into its own poem when she reads it? For a girl who brought a garden full of life into the dead room of an abbey, who charmed a dove who trusts no one, and who managed to lure a wretched bastard out from his hiding place?”

My heart rate doubled, maybe even tripled. Perhaps the fluttering in my chest was caused by the beating wings of the butterflies that had started up in my stomach.

“I—uh—” I stammered, not even certain what words I was trying to get out.

Even if I had managed, Zeno was already starting to leave.

“Why would I bother, hmm?” he chuckled to himself just before shutting my door. “What a preposterous question.”