you can take. I am not going to have you ruin your eyes, no matter what the Maleovellis say.’ He disappeared through the door, muttering away.
I paused and peered into the bucket again. I blinked. The colour had almost fled but for just a brief few minutes I’d possessed a pair of eyes from which people would not turn in fear or disgust. Dark like the night sky, they’d reminded me of someone else’s, someone who had once stared at me with such love and devotion; not in the calculated way that the Maleovellis just had, or as Baroque was wont to. I shook myself. This would not do. I fixed a smile to my face and tilted my head. In the doorway, Baroque waited.
‘When you’re ready, Signorina,’ he said drolly.
‘Sì. Vero. It’s true,’ I said, more to myself than Baroque as I passed him. ‘This will change more than my eyes. I think if I use the potion directly, drop it into my eyes as your lady would, instead of extracting, it will last longer. I will try that.’ My voice was confident, but my insides were quivering like the houses Jacopo made from cards. With practice, I could, if I was careful, enter the world of Serenissima.
The puzzle of what to do about my eyes had been all that was ever going to prevent me from being seen in public; it was all that had been holding back the Maleovellis’ grand plans. Now that obstacle was all but removed.
Baroque had been right: even something that on the surface seemed evil contained some good. Another lesson learnt.
Not only had I solved a very serious problem, I had unwittingly engineered the next step in my education.
DANTE WIPED THE SWEAT FROM HIS BROW and adjusted his stance. He lifted his sword in challenge. ‘Again,’ he demanded. ‘I want satisfaction.’
Alessandro bent over, hands gripping his knees, his blade lying at his feet. ‘No.’ he panted. ‘I surrender. I don’t know how you came up with that manoeuvre, but you’ve bested me once more.’
‘Alessandro,’ reasoned Dante, ‘you can’t surrender. I haven’t drawn blood.’
‘Not this time.’ Alessandro scooped his sword off the ground and wiped his hand across his brow. Dark streaks marked his forehead. ‘But you’ve still managed to shred my shirt.’ He held it away from his body and groaned. ‘Are you sure you never learnt to fence in Serenissima?’
‘You keep asking me that!’ laughed Dante and, with practised smoothness, sheathed his sword. He ran towards Alessandro, giving him a friendly slap on the back. ‘I tell you, I never lifted a sword until I came here. I was a chandler … and not a very good one. You just don’t like the idea that you’ve had hundreds of years to practise and a novice beats you.’
‘I wouldn’t describe you as a novice, Dante, not anymore,’ said Alessandro stiffly, but the twinkle in his eyes belied his apparent offence. His eyes followed Dante as the young Rider strode to one of the numerous ponds that dotted the landscape. Kneeling at the edge, he unlaced his shirt and pulled it over his head. He dipped his face into the water and threw handfuls over his chest. The water flattened his dark hair and trickled over his torso and arms. Alessandro noticed how sinewy Dante was becoming; his daily workouts with the sword and general hand-to-hand fighting with daggers and a battle-axe were changing him. While his skin had taken on the hue of the Limen, it lacked the sickly pallor that defined so many of the Riders. His shoulders had filled out, his back had hardened and his muscles were becoming more pronounced. The scars that marked his body were also healing nicely, even the large puckered one across his palm, the one Katina had given him.
Alessandro couldn’t help the stab of betrayal that pierced him every time he thought about what she’d done, how she’d deliberately concealed her plans. He knew it was to protect him and Debora. But he’d thought their relationship was different, that they shared everything. He should have known better. Once the possibility of a Bond being fulfilled is realised, a Rider is subsumed. Everything else, even lovers, become secondary.
Watching Dante revelling in the water, unaware of the looks of admiration and envy he attracted, he knew the young man had a role to play yet. What he feared most was that it might be all too brief. So much rode on what the Council would decide. That