SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Fifty-Six
“But why?” I pleaded. “What’s the meaning of it?”
Duccio drew me into the antechamber of our suite, shutting the doors with care so as not to disturb the injured man. Pietro was his name—Duccio had said it aloud to calm him after drawing it from his thoughts. Pietro had fallen to sleep almost at once when Duccio commanded it. Some trick of the mind had quieted the poor man’s chaotic and terrified thoughts.
“Describe it to me again,” Duccio whispered.
I told him everything: how the color of blood stole my vision, how I left the opera at a full run and made my way into the night.
“You witnessed what happened when he came to—the nausea, the way it brought me to my knees. That was him, that was because of Pietro. I felt his anxiety and fears, but I also felt his physical pain. At first, I felt it from a mile away. It drew me to him. And the closer I got, the more it overwhelmed me. It crippled me, and I nearly slipped off a roof. It was only when he fell unconscious that I regained my balance.”
Duccio scrutinized me, but I could tell he believed me.
“Is he the only one?” he asked. “Have you had such an experience before? Heard a human’s thoughts?”
“No,” I pressed, “never, only through your mind. But this was different. Even when I’ve heard the surrounding humans through your mind, I never felt…”
“It never made you sick? You didn’t feel their physical pain.”
“Exactly,” I answered. “What I hear through your mind does not differ from hearing a lycan. I hear their emotions—their joys and frustrations and sorrows. I’ve never felt I, too, would be sick because their stomach hurt. But with that man, I felt every blow as they beat him. His emotions were a distant echo in comparison.”
Duccio put his arms around me. If he’d meant the gesture to calm me, it worked. My breathing slowed, and I stopped the near mania of my explanation.
After a moment passed, I again asked him, “But why? What is this?”
“I don’t have a name for it,” Duccio whispered as he released me. “It’s been explained to me that the mind and the brain sit together, a part of each other. The mind is us: our dreams and hopes—the brain is the center of physical feeling. Perhaps you can hear both, and it’s nothing more complicated than that. Perhaps they are different sides of the same coin. Father didn’t use the word ‘soul’ as we do; it was not an idea of his time. He insisted the brain housed the mind. But perhaps the mind and soul are the same, and the brain is indeed where they reside. And you somehow have the power to feel all of it.
“Father felt the physical suffering of others—I’m sure of it,” Duccio continued. “But it never affected him in the same way. Or maybe it did at first—we never discussed it. There was so much we never discussed. He told me my gifts would come when they came, no sooner. He promised to guide me through each of them as they arrived.”
I felt a slight pang from Duccio, a moment of sorrow that disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.
“But your mother had this gift,” Duccio continued. “She could feel the suffering of women and children—their physical suffering just as much as their anguish and fears. She told me the sensation was overwhelming, leading her to discover the worst of evildoers. Once, I hunted with her as she felt a child being harmed, a young boy. But I didn’t feel the child’s physical pain through her thoughts. She told me afterward how she’d felt the sting of a blade slice through the boy’s throat when his rapist was done with him.”
I saw Gabrielle in Duccio’s mind as he explained this to me, and I glimpsed her fury in describing the matter with him. Her eyes glistened with agony. It was an intimate moment, something she needed for him to understand.
Duccio had shared little of my mother directly with me before, not in this way. Their relationship had been that of siblings, but little more. There was not that much to share, he once admitted. They’d only known each other for a few years. But by this memory, the shimmering light in her eyes as she confided her truth, I felt she was with me again, and I almost wept.
Gabrielle had tried to tell me something about her perceptions of humans once. Instead of listening to her every word, I interrupted her again and again to clarify some aspect of her story that intrigued me. I was obsessed with my interests in other matters, and I knew in hindsight that I missed so much of what she tried to tell me because of my persistence. Now gone, with only this glimpse of her soul poured out through Duccio’s mind, I wished I’d never interrupted Gabrielle. I would give anything to return to her study and sit there as quietly as a statue, listening to every word, allowing her to open her mind in her own time.
“But why her? Why did she have this gift? And why me also?”
Duccio took me in his arms again at the sound of my eager impatience, and the gesture calmed me once again. However, he said nothing in response.
“She told me the answer,” I said in time, nearly laughing at the irony. “Sempronio said the gift came to her because she once needed it. Men had harmed her as a girl similarly. Her wolf hadn’t been able to protect her before her lycan nature emerged, but her wolf remembered how those men had raped her. And when she faced physical cruelty again as a woman, her wolf was ready to answer.”
At once, I thought I saw the parallel. A group of men had beaten me for the same reason—one had urinated in my mouth as I lay barely conscious. Had that been the moment that led me to receive this power, to hear the suffering of other men of my type?
They had raped Gabrielle. Several men, including her husband, had forced themselves upon her. And she heard that suffering from the minds of other women. Indeed, she had felt their physical pain.
For a moment, I remembered what Duccio had done to me. A flash of that searing pain as he split me open shot through my mind. But I stopped it. I would allow myself to equate the two. I wouldn’t accept that the two were the same.
“Perhaps it’s just that she was the one who awakened your lycan faculties,” Duccio whispered, still holding me. “Who’s to say we don’t inherit a little of what our makers possess?”
“But my father released my wolf,” I answered.
“Yes, but all your true nature lay dormant until you came into her vicinity—until her mind awakened you. Perhaps there is a transfer there, in the same way your birth mother gave you her large hazel eyes. Why shouldn’t you have something of Gabrielle inside you?”
I sighed into Duccio’s neck at his last question. Yes, that was enough, I thought. That is the reason for it all. Part of Gabrielle was inside of me, and that was as much explanation as I needed to satisfy my need to know.
I held tight to Duccio, grateful for this moment and how he’d been here to comfort me.
“Don’t tell anyone about this,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The others won’t look upon your actions tonight with favor,” Duccio said.
“My leaving the opera that way? The commotion I made as I ran out?”
“That you placed yourself in danger to save a human. That one sleeps in our bed at this very moment.”
“Surely, Guccia will understand—”
“No one here will understand,” he stopped me. “Don’t be confused. These lycan are beholden to their beliefs, to the tenants of their religion.”
From his mind, I saw Guccia’s face, and then her father’s.
“They will not perceive this gift as being of divine origin. Try to remember the reasons they hunted your mother—why they called her a heretic. Our father taught us to revere and protect humans, but the rest of the world loathes that idea. We mustn’t test their graciousness because these Venetians seem welcoming and tolerant of our past. Don’t allow yourself to forget who they are.”
He took my face, pulled me to his lips, and ran his hands through my unruly hair.
“Now, call for your valet,” he said. “You must get ready. Your friend is expecting us.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. “Too much has happened. I can’t think of that now.”
“You must,” he said with his deep, matter-of-fact voice. “She needs us there, and she will not forgive us unless her doctor reports finding you on your deathbed. And perhaps not even then.”