Page 43 of Just for a Taste

S uperficially, things between us remained the same for the next few days. We didn’t speak of any of it again—not of the contents of the box, not of his morbid words, not even of Leonore. We had our usual conversations and our usual banter. He brought me trinkets and clothes and sweets and fancy dinners from town. He held me close in his arms and whispered sweet words to me in bed every night.

I still cooked for him. While I was in the abbey, my hands had become soft and my technique poor, but I had luckily regained some of my former skills. The trullo felt the safest when I cooked, like I was in an entirely innocuous summer home. But when I caught glimpses of the scar on my hand from where the box had impaled it, the illusion was shattered.

Even if I couldn’t see the scar, the shadow that had overcome our household of two was undeniable. There was a tension beneath all of Zeno’s actions, and I became anxious whenever I was alone, which was becoming more frequent. Zeno left the house often, but for only minutes or, at most, an hour at a time. When he returned, there was always a strange weight upon his shoulders. I had plenty of chances to ask what he was doing, but I never did. He always brightened when asking me about my day, and I didn’t have it in me to deny him that bit of relief.

At one point, I wanted to go with Zeno into the city and go to a bookstore, hoping it would hearken back to old times. I wished for little domestic dates with him, those which the trullo had stolen from me: walks in the park, boat rides, even just grocery shopping. But when I proposed such an idea, I saw his jaw tighten, his eyes following an imaginary line to where I had discovered Leonore’s body.

It wasn’t the trullo that had stolen those small, prosaic dates from us, I remembered, but the Medici name that had lured me into this world in the first place.

“Not now,” he said. “But soon. It will be safe enough soon.”

I forced a smile and forced myself to remain optimistic, if not for Zeno’s sake, then for my own. I didn’t want to dig into the archive anymore, partially because I had everything I needed to support my thesis, but more because I was terrified of what I could find.

Unfortunately, that meant plenty of free time once I finished reading all the novels I had brought with us and run out of drawing supplies. Upon realizing this, Zeno furnished the corner of our bedroom into a small library, which comforted me quite a bit. He filled its shelves with a delicious variety of novels and provided me with plenty of canvases and paint. To my great joy, I began to paint Zeno again, often at night.

One of these nights would be my downfall.

Spring had fully ripened, and the flowers in the courtyard were fragrant in full bloom. The bushes, ever thriving, had become a pleasant challenge to maintain, growing every which way. I circled one of them to decide the best way to prune it while sparing every flower. However, the vibrant azalea consisted more of blossoms than leaves, and it was with a heavy heart that I acknowledged there was no way to spare them all. But how was I meant to choose a sacrifice when every bloom had such an elegant blush and spiced aroma?

I took a step back and noted that the shadow of the plant had grown longer and the tiles had taken on an orange hue. With a smile, I turned to the setting sun and thanked it for prolonging my choice. It’s too dark to see well enough to prune , I argued to my nonexistent detractors. I set my gardening shears aside and plopped beside my satchel to retrieve my sketchpad from its innards. I flipped to a loose sketch of Zeno from behind and filled in his figure with enough detail to become the base of a watercolor. Once it took form, I tilted the pad toward the skyline to imagine how the orange and pinks would play along his shoulder blades and glimmer in his hair, how the low sun would reflect on the edges of the scars revealed by the linen shirt I had chosen.

With a huff, I slammed it shut again. I hadn’t gotten the curls at the nape of Zeno’s neck correct, and no amount of collecting eraser dust would help. I tucked the sketchpad beneath one arm, carried the satchel with the other, and held the pencil in my teeth.

My model waited for me in the bedroom, sitting at a desk with his head curved slightly over a book. From where I stood, the angle and pose were utterly perfect. Even candlelight was hitting him at just the right angles.

The pencil hit the ground with my satchel when I opened my mouth to order, “Don’t move!”

Once I saw Zeno freeze per my command, I gathered my supplies and quickly got to work. The curls that had eluded me moments ago proved easy to capture, but now that he was in front of me, I realized I had gotten the borders of his scars all wrong. Squinting for that extra bit of detail, I neared Zeno, only to find the hues I had hoped to evoke were already present. The outer perimeters of large, yellow splotches freckled in reds and blues peeked out from his collar.

Were those . . . bruises?

How long had it been since he had drunk from me or had any sort of blood replacement? I counted the days on trembling fingers once, then again, getting two different numbers. I didn’t bother with a third time. Both numbers were far too large.

“When was the last time you got blood?” I demanded.

Zeno didn’t turn to me or give any sign he had heard me, but his forced stillness was evidence enough. I forced my hands under his arms and reached around his body. Zeno stiffened at first, then resigned himself to being cooperative as I unbuttoned his shirt and tore it off.

It was the first time I had seen his bare body in the light in weeks. A body which I thought I could have sculpted by memory, which I thought had been fully impressed upon my brain. How hadn’t I noticed before?

Beneath paper-thin skin was purplish-brown mottling. Bruises at various stages had pooled into a yellow gradient on his torso in a way that was impossible to produce with any sort of blunt trauma, and tiny fireworks of red bloomed from burst capillaries. I had seen such bruising once before on my mother, when her liver stopped producing clotting factors.

Just before she died.

Air rushed out of my chest, producing a staggered, horrified exhale. With my vision blurring and hot tears already forming, my arm was little more than a violently shuddering line in front of me. Depth perception rendered nonexistent, I overshot, fingers pressing into a fleshy spot beneath his shoulder blades. He recoiled at my touch, the first acute movement he had made since he returned.

“I wish,” he whispered, tugging his shirt back up in a movement as sharp as his tone, “that you didn’t paint me so many times. Maybe then you wouldn’t have noticed the differences.”

“Why haven’t you—” Some combination of a hiccup and an unwanted sob interrupted my sentence. I wiped my face roughly with my sleeve. After another hic , I tried again. “Why haven’t you drank from me?”

Zeno finally gave me a sideways glance, and there was nothing in his eyes but distant defeat.

“I can’t,” he replied in a soft yet certain tone. “I can’t hurt you, not even that small amount. Not anymore.”

“But I’m your—“

“You’re so much more than just my beniamina , Cora. I will figure things out soon. I can get blood. I will get blood.”

Ice ran through me. I remembered the photograph of the man in the suit, with his throat torn open. Even if that wasn’t Zeno’s doing, it was easy enough to gather blood from corpses. I knew the answer to the next question, but I asked it anyway. “Are you . . . going to go to the hospital to get transfusions, then?”

Silence. Dead silence. I put a hand on his shoulder and implored him with my eyes. He finally acquiesced and answered, “The whole blood transfusions I require take two to four hours on average. I don’t have that sort of time, especially not to leave you alone. Not until I find them. Not until I can ensure your safety.”

Basilio and Vincenzo and the entire Medici army versus the two of us were odds I wasn’t fond of. Especially not when Zeno was visibly falling apart. I bit my lip, furrowed my brow, and made a big show of grappling with inner turmoil. Then I gazed into his eyes, communicating as much trust as I could with them.

“I’ll wait until then, Zeno,” I lied with a smile. “No matter how long.”

“Of course, mia passerotta ,” he whispered, cupping my face in his hand, eyes full of adoration and resolve. “I have no intention of conceding.”

That’s the problem, I thought as I pressed my lips to his and entangled my fingers in his hair. That’s why I have to act on my own.