from somewhere to my left. The pad of leather against wood. Someone else is in the room, approaching me.
I want to call out, Who are you? But all that comes out is a strangled sob.
Suddenly, I sense the warmth of another body beside my cheek. Someone is very close, I can tell. The panic is almost overwhelming now. I wait for the sensation of cold metal against my throat.
“Hello, Laura.” No blade, just a voice. But a voice I know all too well, even if the words are slurred.
A ghost from my past has returned.
“Carina?” I gasp.
29
The hood is ripped from my head, and I stare around. An anonymous room; I could be in any apartment in Venice. Empty flagons are piled in a corner, and the fireplace is stacked with logs, waiting to be lit. The chair I sit on is in the center of the room. There’s no other furniture, barring a low wooden sideboard.
Carina stands behind me, the evil of her presence filling the room. I crane round to try to get a glimpse of her, but the ropes cut into me. She kicks the back legs of my chair, and I nearly tip onto the floor, but she catches the chair and rights it. To my shame, I cry out in fear.
My old enemy laughs. “What a sniveling fool you are,” she says. A corner of her cloak swishes out to one side of me, then I spot the hem of a skirt, and finally she comes to stand before me. The cloak’s hood hides her face, but there’s a dull flash of silver from deep inside its folds.
“Show yourself,” I say, sounding bolder than I feel.
“Gladly.” She tears back the hood. Before me stands the person I thought was dead. Carina, my sister’s oldest friend and the woman who betrayed me. She’s wearing a silver mask, behind which flow red locks of hair. The mask seems to be made of some kind of filigree, light enough to wear, but sparkling with curling threads of silver on which are threaded tiny jewels. How long has she been following me around the city, watching from behind her mask?
“You were in the church, weren’t you?” I ask.
She dips her head in acknowledgment. “You made such a beautiful mourner,” she says, her tone of voice mocking. “Almost worth Nicolo dying, to see you looking so wan and pale.”
My lip curls in disgust.
“What would your father say?” she teases. “To see you like this?” She once asked me the same question when she caught me talking to a lowly painter. That was before I knew he was the Doge’s son, and before I realized how deeply evil ran in Carina’s veins. Now, I know better. She reaches out a gloved hand, and I flinch away. But she doesn’t strike me. Instead, she strokes my cheek gently. “Such beautiful skin,” she says.
“I thought you were dead,” I say.
Carina walks around my chair in a tight circle, her skirts brushing against my legs.
“Sometimes I wish I were,” she says. Her voice is light. “It would suit many people if that were the case. Wouldn’t you agree?” I daren’t respond, but it doesn’t matter—she barely catches a breath before continuing. “After the accident on the boat, I often begged God for my pulse to still. The pain … You can hardly imagine. I yearned for death!” Now her voice turns darker. “But no one was listening.”
She smacks a hand against the back of my chair, and I can’t help jumping. Carina bursts out laughing. She leans over to whisper in my ear. “Calm yourself, little bird.”
I shudder to feel the warmth of her breath on my neck. “How did you survive?”
She straightens up again. “God saw fit to spare me,” she says.
I think about screaming, but with every other able-bodied Venetian at the scene of the trial, would anyone hear? I flex my hands. The knots don’t budge. It was a man, perhaps two, that brought me here. They could be waiting outside.
“What do you do with yourself?” I ask.
She casts out a hand to indicate the window looking over the bay. “I watch! People come and go. You wouldn’t believe the gossip that takes place beneath my windowsill. I watch from afar and laugh at Venice’s pride. Your petty longings for wealth and beauty. Following around handsome fiancés in the hope that they’ll bring you happiness.” She stares at me, her head cocked. “Don’t feel sorry for me. My life has new