The Wolf Esprit: Lykanos Chronicles 3

“It will not matter,” Duccio told me when we were at last in private. “It will be a marriage of alliance. A duty. Nothing more.”

The prince’s secretary had placed us in an apartment of rooms on the northwest side of the palace. It was a temporary arrangement until Duccio made his pick from several homes in the city held by the prince.

I’d said nothing about the Adelchi’s command that Duccio would marry his daughter, but he’d felt my concern.

“Am I a fool?” I asked him. “How would that marriage work when you’re in our bed every night?”

He gave me the beginning of an impatient huff but corrected himself.

“I understand your feelings,” Duccio said, embracing me. “But it won’t matter whose bed I must perform in. I will wake up in yours each morning.”

His words shocked me, and I didn’t answer. I didn’t have a response and became lost in thought. When he said the word ‘perform,’ something changed in me. Perhaps I hadn’t let myself believe the obvious conclusion during the minutes since we’d left the prince’s private salon. But I couldn’t avoid it now—he would no longer be mine, and I felt a shudder of hollowing panic.

“I’m yours because I choose to be,” he whispered. “Not because you own me. No one will ever own me.”

“Doesn’t the prince own you now?” I asked, pulling away from him. “Didn’t you just give your life and name to him until death? Was I stupid to think you’d already promised the same to me? A complete idiot, no doubt.”

Giving no other answer, Duccio sighed with frustration and turned to leave me in the apartment.

There was so much to distract me in this place besides how my one bedrock had dissolved so easily. The impossible beauty of the apartment was torture, bathed in polished mahogany and a dozen hues of red marble that accented the high gothic ceiling. From above, frescos of angels peered back at me with loving approval while I suffered. These chambers were as exquisite a prison as I could hope for.

But then, I was no longer in prison, was I? Duccio had just left me alone in this gilded room. Could I not walk out just the same and take in the city on my own? I no longer needed to hide in plain sight under the mental shield of an elder wolf. I was under the invitation and protection of Prince Adelchi himself, was I not? What had I to fear from any lycan in the man’s domain? How crippled had I become in the past minutes when the one thing I trusted to be permanent had changed?

With anxious excitement, I gathered my sword and coin purse and prepared to leave. I’d find my way out of the palace and back to the city to walkabout alone. I’d breathe this strange and beautiful Venice in by myself. For a moment, I felt that longing for something more that had gripped me while alone in my carriage before arriving at Saulieu.

Turning to the door, I saw a young woman standing at the apartment door. She was striking for many reasons, and all at once, the sight of her stopped my impetuous departure. She stood in a pale blue damask open robe dress, her wrists fringed in delicate white lace, and her shoulders covered by a royal blue silk faille cape with a long tasseled gold clasp at her neck. The woman was far from short, raised in her delicate brocade heels, her white blonde hair swept up in a perfect coiffure of careful ringlets. A wide-brimmed bergére hat with gold lace and white feathers helped her rise all the way to my height.

The icy powder blue of her agitated eyes left me for a swift moment to look about the room, the sharp turn of her head causing the sapphires in her ears to dance until well after she returned her eyes.

“You’re not him,” she said curtly. It was a declaration, not a question.

“I am Esprit, my lady,” I responded with a sobered bow of my head.

“Where is Don Lupofiero, then?”

“Gone,” I said. “You just missed him, I’m afraid. I’m unsure of where he went to.”

The woman stepped back to scan the hallway behind her for a moment, but she returned her eyes to me and stepped into the apartment.

More striking than her guise was the realization I’d seen no other woman in the palace since arriving. I’d proceeded through its many grand salons led only by men, most wearing finely cut black robes with heavy white wigs. Some had donned scarlet robes similar to Prince Adelchi’s. They had not seemed like the clerics that hunted us in Rome, but perhaps they were. It seemed there was so much I misunderstood about this day.

“You are his nephew?” the woman asked.

“Yes, my lady.”

“You both just arrived this morning?”

“Aboard il Vento anchored in the harbor.”

“Father said you are French?”

“I am,” I responded in my natural tongue.

“Son of the fire witch?”

The condemnation of her tone dealt a decisive blow, and I found I couldn’t respond.

The woman released a frustrated sigh, sensing the effect of her callous words, and she stepped forward to apologize.

“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to offend,” she said. “My aggravation isn’t for you, and now it’s caused me to be rude.”

I gave a flustered blink and nodded my head in acknowledgment.

“My lady,” I said, dropping my eyes to the floor. I struggled to stop myself from saying anything else.

“No, please.” She reached to take me by the wrist as if to press her point. It was an impertinent move for a lady, and I couldn’t escape the sight of the plump swell of her bosom as she reached. But at once, her guise melted into her whisper of girlish intimacy.

My mind sharpened to recognize what all this woman’s glamour and poison had distracted me from, and I realized who she was.

“My name is Guccia. Won’t you please forgive me? I didn’t mean to speak of her disrespectfully. There are those fools here who call her that, and not thinking, I repeated their mindless words.”

“She died,” I managed to say. It was a last bit of spite with which I couldn’t stop myself from reproaching Guccia.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” she answered in time. “I hate myself for mentioning her so. How unforgivably cruel.”

The anger she’d arrived with had all but disappeared to give way to a feeling of self-loathing, mirroring my awkward silence.

“But you’ll still come tonight, won’t you?” she spoke at last. “Father is throwing a feast in your uncle’s honor at home.”

From her mind, I realized she didn’t mean here in the massive palace we stood in.

“Oh no, this isn’t our home. This is the Doge’s Palace—not a place fit for ladies.” Guccia looked down at her exquisite dress and pulled at the snow-white lace of her sleeves with mild frustration. The impatient movement made it seem like the dress was a mere costume, a reminder of her disappointing gender. “Father and the human patricians administer the government here. This apartment is only for Father to rest from his work during the day. He rarely uses it. Our family home is just up by the first bend of the canal.”

I didn’t know what to think of any of it. I stared into the eyes of this woman who would soon be my lover’s wife, and her venom and confiding sweetness coming all at once made the moment too much for me to see straight.

“Of course,” I said to everything. “Was that all? Is that why you came for my uncle?”

Again, Guccia sighed.

“No, I came here to give him a piece of my mind.”

I sharpened my eyes, but I gathered her intent.

“I came to tell him I had no intention of marrying him. That I wouldn’t consider such a thing, to a foreigner, a stranger.” She gave yet another sigh and shook her head to acknowledge the futility of her behavior. “I couldn’t say it to Father, so I came here like a child to shake my fists at your uncle.”

I thought I saw tears near to gathering in Guccia’s eyes, but she blinked as if to stop them.

“I suppose I seem idiotic telling you all of this.”

“My lady,” I said with a forgiving shake of my head. Again, I didn’t know what to make of her.

“But you were leaving when I arrived,” she said, as if just realizing she’d stopped me. “I got in your way.”

Once more, I shook my head.

“I had no destination,” I said. “I meant only to walk outside and take in your city for the first time.”

“Oh, won’t you allow me to escort you? Let me make this up to you and show you around—introduce you to my people. You’ll be my nephew also…”

Her voice trailed off under a sharpening of her fine brow. From her mind, I gleaned how the words triggered another painful acknowledgment—something she’d come here to refuse at the top of her lungs—the pre-arranged marriage she’d known all her lycan life would one day come.

All at once, she seemed defeated.

“I would be honored, my lady.”