past her own lips, or not so that they sounded genuine. Even as she formed the sentence in her mind—I love you—it sounded artificial to her. She had tried to explain that to him, and she could see in his eyes that he understood.
She leaned her head on his shoulder, felt his lips in her hair.
“How do you do it?” she asked, looking into the distance.
“Do what?”
“Be the way you are. Still like me in spite of everything I’ve just told you.”
“That’s got nothing to do with us. What your grandmother did—it’s so long ago. We can’t help what our ancestors did.”
She raised her head. The horizon was reflected in the green of his gaze. For a few heartbeats she saw the world through his eyes. Larger, wider, and yet so close that you could put out your hand and grasp it. To him, nothing was beyond his reach.
She had told him everything. About her horrifying discovery in the cellar, and also about her visit to Trevini and the agreement she had made with him. And how Valerie was a captive in his hotel.
“I have to get rid of the whole thing,” she said, adding quickly, in case he misunderstood, “I don’t mean her; I mean the stuff in the basement. But if I have the furs burned, there’s a danger that someone could see the names on them.”
“We can tear the labels off first.”
“Open all those containers? Take out every single fur?” She shook her head. “I’d rather move somewhere else and have the whole palazzo blown sky-high.”
“By somewhere else you mean—”
“Not here. That wouldn’t be a good idea…and not safe,” she added a moment later. “It’s strange enough that they let us see each other at all.”
“Most of them have other things on their minds right now.”
“The Hungry Man?”
Alessandro nodded. “Some of them are more worried than ever that he’ll return. And others can’t wait for it. The mere possibility that he might come back to Sicily from the mainland has them at one another’s throats. I’ve seen them sitting in a conference room in Catania…worldly men in expensive suits. If the rest of us hadn’t separated them, they’d have torn one another apart. They shifted shape, the idiots. Luckily there were only Arcadians in the room, or else—”
“It’s getting out of control, right? The old rules of the dynasties, the laws of the tribunal, all the agreements to keep the peace…before long, none of that will mean anything anymore.”
He smiled sadly. “I know some who claim that our relationship is already part of it. Nothing’s the way it used to be. Alcantaras and Carnevares hand in glove. A package deal.”
She plucked at her blanket. “Two of them. Dammit.”
He turned to her and put one hand under the soft bedspread. His beautiful, long fingers touched her bare thigh. Moved farther up. She was wearing only a large T-shirt and a pair of his shorts. They had been in the pool down in the castle, and after that in the sauna. Her own black clothes were lying crumpled somewhere down by the edge of the pool.
“Wait,” she said, and almost choked.
His hand stopped moving. “Snake alarm?”
“That too. But I have to talk to you. First, I mean. Talk—normally.”
His smile widened. A wind from the plain, from the south—maybe from Africa, as he always claimed—blew through his tousled hair. It wasn’t its usual nut brown, but almost black. He didn’t have his transformation under much better control than she did, no matter what he said the big cats in the zoo had taught him.
“Valerie,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with her.”
He let out a sigh. She felt his fingertips move back like velvet paws. “And you think she’s responsible for what happened?”
“Partly, anyway.” Why didn’t she tell it as it was? Valerie had handed her over to Tano, Michele, and the others. There was no ignoring that.
“Then let her rot away with Trevini.” He meant exactly what he said, as she could tell from looking at him.
“I can’t,” she replied. “I can’t give someone orders to kill her. Or simply act as if I don’t know about it. It feels like she’s next to me all the time. Even when I look at Iole, I see Valerie.” A cold breeze blew against the walls and got under the fabric, and she pulled her blanket close. “We both freed Iole because your family was keeping her captive. Am I going to do something like that to Valerie now?”
“Iole