Page 38 of My Dark Ever After

“I was just trying to protect you back at Fattoria Casa Luna,” Leo argued. “Can you blame me when I have been trying to do that my whole life?”

“Sometimes you should worry more about being a good friend than a good soldier,” Martina snapped.

And it surprised me that she was right.

Renzo, Carmine, Martina, and even Ludo, who was almost as unfeeling as they came, had all made it a point to get to know Guinevere on a personal level because I clearly cared for her, and only Leo had not.

But Leo was also the only one of my inner circle who had not witnessed the man I was allowed to be in England at university and in my financial career before coming home. He did not know I was even capable of falling in love like an ordinary man.

Though there was nothing ordinary in the way I loved my Vera.

“I am sorry for that too,” Leo added, his expression broken open with earnestness. “I will make it up to you both, I promise.”

“Okay,” I said simply. “You can try, and I want you to succeed. But you have to know, Leo, that if it came down to it, I would end your life before I ever let you endanger hers again.”

Leo studied me for a long moment, awe and regret and sorrow playing over his features before they settled into something like resolve.

“I understand.” He spoke quietly. “You have found the kind of love worth ruining the world for.”

“I have,” I agreed, even though I had never been less sure that love would come to mean Guinevere and I would be together in the end. “So you will excuse me while I go to her.”

“Please.” He waved his hand at the stairs. “She wouldn’t even let Carmine or Angela inside to tend to her. I think the only one she wants is you.”

Hope burned a hole in my chest like a bullet wound to the heart.

With a curt nod, I moved swiftly up the stairs toward Guinevere’s bedroom. The light was on under her door, but when I tried to open the door, I found I could not.

“Guinevere?” I called softly so as not to wake the house.

How my sisters had managed to get their children down after such a night, I had no clue, but it was only one of the many reasons I admired them. To think our father had thought women a “lesser species.”

“Guinevere,” I called again, only to be met with silence.

The door locked from the inside, but no one ever bothered to lock their doors unless they were being intimate, and I did not have a clue where the ancient key might be kept.

“I could look for the key?” Martina asked softly from the mouth of the hall, where she had lingered after following me up. “You don’t think ... you don’t think she’s harming herself or anything, do you?”

I had not before she uttered the words. Even though I knew Guinevere was not the kind of woman to self-harm, not when she was so grateful for her health, alarm trilled through me.

Bracing my shoulder against the door, I heaved my weight into it while twisting the painted ceramic knob. The wood shuddered but did not give until I stepped back and threw myself into the panel again.

The door popped open with a sharp crack, the lock having punched through the jamb on the inside of the room.

“Wait here,” I told Martina, who walked toward me and then slid down the wall beside the door to sit on the floor as sentry. “Grazie, amica mia.”

If she was startled by my uncharacteristic heartfelt thanks, she did not show it.

I pushed into the room and closed the door behind me before looking to the perfectly made bed.

It was empty, as was the rest of the room.

I walked toward the closed bathroom door and heard the telltale rush of the shower running. When I tried the knob, it opened easily, steam wafting out in a thick stream. It obscured the bathroom as if the space had been stuffed with wet cotton, but I followed the damp wall until I reached the glass enclosure and then opened the door, stepping inside fully dressed in my bespoke Brioni suit.

Only that close could I see through the steam to Guinevere.

She sat curled in on herself at the base of the rushing water, her skin pomegranate pink from the scalding spray, hair a wet slick of black down her back. Her arms were banded around her legs, face pressed to her knees, and even though she had to be ridiculously overheated—burned, even—she was shivering.

“Mia stella cadente,” I murmured, squatting before her so I could reach out to tip her chin up. “What are you doing to yourself?”