kyra

Lune appeared in the light, her veil pinned back slightly, allowing the breeze to catch the wisps of hair at her temple. She was not rushing, but there was a certainty to her stride, as if she’d known he would be here and had chosen not to be surprised by it.

“You’re early,” she said lightly as she fell into step beside him.

“I’m always early,” he replied. “You’re the one who insists on arriving on time and pretending that makes us even.”

She glanced at him sidelong. “Punctuality is a virtue.”

“Only when it’s yours,” he said. “When it’s mine, it’s apparently brooding.”

Lune gave a soft laugh, adjusting the folded edge of her sleeve as they walked. “You do have a talent for stillness. Some of the novices have started calling you the shadow in the south wing.”

“Not terribly flattering,” he murmured. “Though it’s good to know I’m leaving an impression.”

“Shadows tend to.”

Their shoulders brushed faintly as they turned down a narrower hall. Neither of them remarked on it.

The walk toward the library had become a rhythm, something they rarely discussed but often repeated. There were always small things to talk about. Lately, their conversations had slipped toward less structured things; banter that hovered just close enough to the edge to make her smile longer than she meant to, and him glance sideways with more intention than habit.

Lune let the silence linger a little longer as they passed beside a row of arched windows, the light striping the stone floor beneath their feet. Then, with her voice pitched just low enough to sound like something meant only for him, she asked him about the letter. He hadn’t touched it since the night it arrived, since she had been sitting beside him in the library, when Matteo handed it to him.

He glanced at her, then ahead again. “It was from Antonio.”

She nodded once, unsurprised. “I guessed as much.”

“He asked me to meet him,” Alessandro continued. “At the west bell.”

Her steps didn’t falter, but she turned slightly toward him, brows drawn in quiet thought. “Did you go?”

“No.” His voice was calm, steady. “He wanted a confrontation, whether he admitted it or not. It was all couched in polite phrasing, of course, all very noble, but it was a challenge.”

Lune’s eyes stayed on him, unreadable in the shifting light. “You didn’t answer, then?”

“I answered by not showing up.”

They rounded a corner, the familiar entrance to the library drawing nearer.

“I’m not interested in theatrics,” Alessandro said. “Or in trying to outmaneuver someone who wants me to act like a boy again. That’s not who I am anymore.”

Lune was quiet for a moment, her expression thoughtful. “You could have told me that night.”

“You were beside me when it arrived,” he said softly. “I didn’t want to bring him into that room with us any more than he already was.”

A pause passed between them, light and difficult all at once.

She nodded again, this time slower. “Then I’m glad you didn’t go.”

He looked at her. “Are you?”

She held his gaze for a moment before answering. “Yes. I am.”

Alessandro didn’t look away, though something in his posture eased, almost imperceptibly. “He’ll take it as cowardice, I feel.”

“Then let him,” she said. “It’s the only language he knows how to read. If you spoke in your own, he wouldn’t understand it. He doesn't understand much..”

The doors to the library came into view, half-cast in shadow, the iron handles catching what little light remained in the dim part of the hallway. Their footsteps softened as they neared, the hush settling around them like an exhale.

“I saw you tuck it away before I could read the name,” she said. “And I saw something change in your face.”

He gave a short breath of acknowledgment, more sigh than laugh. “I didn’t know how to explain it without sounding petty.”

“You don’t,” she said. “And you haven’t.”

He reached for the door but didn’t open it yet, his hand resting on the wood. “He wants me in his world. Playing by his rules. Same as always.”

Lune stood close enough now that her voice barely had to rise. “You don’t have to go to his world. You could make your own.”

Alessandro’s eyes flicked toward her, his gaze sharper than before. “I prefer not to live in fantasy,” he said, pushing the door open now and letting her walk in ahead of him. “I have mine right in front of me.”

The door closed gently behind them, muffling the distant sounds of the hall. The library greeted them with its usual hush, warm and weighty with the scent of aged paper and the faint trace of candle smoke, the room bathed in a golden, half-dreamt quality. Lune walked ahead toward the windowsill where she often perched now, after the night where she’d initially made the space her bed. She didn’t reply right away, as if carrying his words in her hands, turning them over, feeling their weight before deciding what to do with them.

Alessandro followed more slowly. His fingers brushed against the nearest row of books, not for any particular volume but as a way of grounding himself, or perhaps itching to touch something, although it was a habit he had never kept before. He watched her settle into the wide sill, her knees drawn up slightly, arms curled loose around them.

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” she said at last, her voice low and unhurried, eyes fixed on the dim pane of glass. “Not if you don’t mean them.”

“I’ve never been very good at saying what I don’t mean.”

That drew a soft look from her. Not a smile exactly, but something quieter, more private. “Then maybe I shouldn’t have said anything at all.”

He leaned against the edge of the nearest table, arms folded across his chest. “Too late now.”

They let the silence linger, both of them content to rest in it. It had changed over the weeks, losing its brittleness almost entirely. It had become a kind of language between them, and both treasured the brief comfort they took in the other’s company.

Eventually, Lune turned to him. “What happens now?”

He blinked once, then tilted his head as if the question had struck him sideways. “You mean with Antonio?”

“With all of it.”

He considered. “Nothing,” he said. “If he means to push, he’ll push. If he’s decided I’ve become an inconvenience, he’ll find a more elegant solution than confrontation. I don’t believe the situation to be high-stakes: only childish jealousy.”

“And you?” she asked. “What do you intend in the meantime?”

Alessandro was quiet for a long moment, the firelight from a nearby lamp catching faintly in the hollows of his face. “I intend to be here. With you, when I can. Around you, if I can’t.”

Her brow knit, although not in resistance. “You say it so simply.”

“I hadn’t intended to oversimplify,” he said. “But it feels simple. When I’m near you, it does, and I fear we’ve both spent many a year overcomplicating our personalities and… hiding things.” He supposed he could have worded it better. That curious glimmer in her eye that bordered on ferociousness was now aimed at him. She slid down from the windowsill and approached him, her expression resolved in its intention, although that made him somewhat uneasy.

“You still haven’t told me what the letter said in full,” she said firmly. un-avoidantly. 

“I didn’t want to give it that much power,” he said. “Though I suppose it’s too late for that now.”

“If he writes again?” she asked, and he knew what she was telling him to do.

Alessandro’s mouth twitched, though it was hard to call it a smile. “Then I suppose we’ll read it together.”

She nodded, then stepped closer and offered her arm in invitation: an echo of the evening rituals they’d started weaving into their days. They walked without hurry, arm in arm through the tall, close aisles. The presence in the library was no longer heavy. It was light—playful, almost, as if it had grown to welcome Lune just as much as it had Alessandro. Occasionally, she glanced at Alessandro beside her, and each time he looked perfectly at ease, though in a way that made her feel he was listening for something beyond her voice. It was as if something else walked these corridors with them, quieter still.

Then he said, “It’s strange how life folds in on itself, isn’t it?”

She tilted her head, unsure what he meant. The statement was general, but she knew he had some deeper meaning he was going to continue on with.

He didn’t elaborate right away. “I mean that we walk through these rooms, these moments, and they feel new. Present, but they’re not. They’re echoes. You and I—we’ve been here before.”

She let a soft breath escape her nose. “Philosophical tonight.”

“No,” he said, glancing sidelong at her. “Not philosophical. Personal.”

She slowed, letting her hand rest flat on a shelf, the leather bindings pressing cool against her skin. “What are you saying?”

He stopped beside her. “I mean that I was always going to find you here. Not because I was looking, but because you were in here, too, always.”

She smiled. “You make it sound like I was waiting for you. I assure you, I was not… but I am glad for that first chance encounter,” she said. “Secondly, you sound like someone with too many thoughts and not enough sleep.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he responded, looking at her pointedly. “And I would not be the first person.”

She hesitated. “I don’t know very much about you. I think I should.”

He lifted a brow. “You know quite a bit more than most.”

“Dates and reading preferences aren’t the same as knowing someone. They don’t tell me what sort of boy you were, or why you chose to stay here when most others would have left, or what you believe happens when we die.”

Alessandro’s gaze lingered on her, longer than she expected. “Would it matter if I told you?”

“I think it might,” she said.

He glanced around, as if confirming they were alone, though they, mostly, always were. “You’ll think less of me.”

Lune’s lips twitched in something like amusement. “I already think you’re odd.”

“Mm.” He nodded, folding his arms. “You asked about what I believe.”

She nodded.

“I don’t believe in the God our father bent his knees to, nor the devil he rumoredly gave Him up for,” he said slowly. “Nor in the God whom Antonio says his prayers to with his eyes wide open, checking to see who’s watching.”

Lune frowned. “Then… nothing?”

“No. Something,” he said, and his voice had changed—not in tone, but in texture, as if the words themselves remembered something old and unwelcome. “Not what they taught us, but something quieter, older. I’d like to believe that the creator, or whatever force influences our lives, doesn’t expect us to be good. It only expects us to be human… which, I fear, is why Antonio keeps losing his luck.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “That sounds dangerous.”

“Only if you mistake it for something it isn’t.”

“What is it to you?”

He met her eyes again, and this time, something flickered in his, like reflection, or recognition, or something else entirely.

“It doesn’t promise reward,” he said. “It only sees what is already there. The things we hide and those we protect. It waits. And when it comes, it doesn't come to save. Perhaps to assist, but never to grant any miracles.”

Lune felt the quiet press a little more closely around them. The hush that used to feel companionable now wrapped closer to the skin.

“And you…” she said carefully, “you believe this thing sees you?”

“I believe it always has.”

She looked away for a moment, scanning the spines of unreadable titles, their letters worn down to pale shadows. “And does it see me?”

Alessandro didn’t answer at first. Then, softly, he said, “It sees you, and it stays. For a while… I thought it left when you arrived—I didn’t hear it for a while, but now I see that isn’t true. ”

Her throat worked. “That isn’t comforting.”

“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t meant to be.”

They stood in stillness. Then he turned from her and walked a few steps further, resting his hand lightly against a tall volume. “My life has been like this because of you,” he said.

Lune’s breath hitched. “What do you mean?”

He turned, half-shadowed now by the row behind him. “It changed when you came. I had been living quietly. Alone. You turned the pages.”

“And now?”

Alessandro stepped toward her again. “Now I find I cannot go back to the silence that came before.”

She looked at him carefully. There was a strange kind of reverence in his eyes, and not the kind that came from worship. It was older, weightier, akin to fear, much as his now-revealed beliefs were. 

“You said you didn’t want to live in fantasy,” she said. “Then what is this?”

He held her gaze. “This is the part just before the story becomes something else.”

And again, the hush closed in. Somewhere behind the walls, the wind moved faintly, like breath.

They didn’t speak again for a long time.

Alessandro broke the silence with a wry curl of his mouth, the tension in his frame slackening just enough to feel human again. “Well,” he said lightly, almost teasing, “it seems I’ve ruined my chances of accusing you of witchcraft. Not when I’m clearly the heretic between us.”

Lune exhaled, the edge of a laugh slipping free. “No longer the voice of piety and order, then?”

“I’m afraid not.” He studied her more carefully now. “I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”

She tilted her head. “You haven’t,” she said, and there was no doubt in her tone. “I think I’m more disturbed by the people who wear sanctity like a veil.”

Alessandro’s gaze lingered on her. “Then I have to ask: what do you believe?”

Lune hesitated, the pause not from reluctance but from precision. She wanted to say it clearly, perhaps even for herself. “I don’t believe in God,” she said at last. “I never have—not in the way others seem to. If He exists, He’s never spoken to me.”

She stepped toward the window, resting her hand on the stone ledge as if she needed something to ground her while saying it. “Sometimes I wonder if anyone actually hears Him, or if they only pretend to, mimicking the right words and expressions so no one accuses them of rebellion or spiritual laziness. It’s hard to tell the difference between faith and fear in this place.”

Alessandro listened without interrupting. She glanced back at him once, expecting some reaction, but his face was unreadable.

“I used to think maybe it was me,” she continued, voice quiet but steady. “That I was broken in some way. That the silence was punishment. Eventually, I stopped expecting to hear anything at all.”

“And in the absence of a God?” he asked.

“I was drawn to other things,” she said. “Things people didn’t talk about. Old beliefs. Ghost stories. Little rituals I wasn’t supposed to know. They felt more honest somehow—more human. I don’t follow any of them fully, not enough to say I belong to them, but if there’s something out there, something with a voice... it hasn’t spoken to me yet.”

Alessandro stepped closer, his hands resting at his sides. “Then maybe it’s time something did.”

Lune’s brows drew slightly inward.

“I want to show you something,” he said. “Tomorrow night. In my room.”

She stared at him for a long moment. Her first instinct, she realized, was to withdraw because the idea was strange, unexpected, and because his surname carried weight whether he wanted it to or not. Trust was not something easily given, especially not here.

He seemed to sense it, but didn’t rush her.

And still—this man, this shadowed figure who haunted the library like a rumor—she didn’t believe he could ever bring her harm. His cruelty, if he possessed any, was not the kind that struck in the dark or waited in closed rooms. He would tell her first. He would ask if it was alright.

“All right,” she said finally, her voice calm. “I’ll come.”

Ten minutes.

A single crow passed overhead, cawing once into the growing dusk. Antonio didn’t flinch, but his jaw flexed. He stopped pacing, turned, and waited again.

Fifteen.

The stone beneath his boots was uneven. He noticed it only because his toe caught the same spot twice. A deep breath hissed through his teeth, barely audible. His eyes flicked toward the stairwell and back again, more than once, but no sound rose from it. The wind picked up, sharp and dry, tugging at the edges of his coat as it grew colder.

Twenty-five.

His hands clenched and unclenched.

He looked up to the moon—high now, ghost-pale in the bruised sky—and muttered something under his breath. The bell loomed above him, still and silent. Shadows clung to its base like moss. Below, the garden paths remained empty. No footfalls. No sign.

Thirty-five.

He kicked at a loose stone, hard. It skittered to the edge of the tower, clattering against the low wall. One hand flew to his coat, gripping the hilt of the dagger tucked there. He held it only a moment before drawing it out, as if the movement had escaped him. The blade gleamed in the moonlight.

And then, in a fit of pure bitterness, he hurled it. The sound of steel hitting stone cracked through the air like a whip. It echoed briefly, and then was swallowed by the dark.

Antonio stood breathing heavily, one hand braced on the low wall of the tower, the other empty. His face was taut, his shoulders tight with fury he was trying not to name. He looked down toward the walkways again, teeth bared just slightly.

Still no one.

The steps came quietly, but not quietly enough to surprise him.

“Antonio?” Matteo’s voice called up softly. “You’re still here?”

Antonio didn’t answer right away. Matteo stepped up onto the final landing, his breath visible in the air now. The young man’s eyes searched the dark.

“You’re waiting for him?” he asked, though it wasn’t really a question. He saw the answer in Antonio’s face.

Antonio turned slowly, face stiff with disbelief. “Waiting,” he echoed, the word thick with venom. “Yes. Like a fool.”

Matteo saw the flash of something silver near the far wall. He stepped over and picked it up—the dagger, its blade scuffed now from the throw. He looked at it as he turned back. “You dropped this.”

“I threw it,” Antonio snapped, snatching it from Matteo’s hand without thanks. “And don’t worry. I wasn’t planning to use it.”

Matteo hesitated. “Are you certain?”

Antonio gave a bitter, humorless laugh. “It was a precaution. Symbolic, if anything.”

Matteo didn’t quite believe him, but said nothing. His fingers curled briefly at his side, then stilled. He glanced out over the gardens again. “Maybe… maybe it’s better he didn’t come.”

Antonio’s expression changed sharply, his eyes cutting toward him.

Matteo went on, tentative. “He’s not like you. You know that. And this—this would’ve only made things worse.”

“Don’t tell me what would’ve made things worse,” Antonio snapped. “He received the letter. He read it. He had every opportunity to respond like a man.”

Matteo swallowed. “He did respond. He didn’t come.”

“That’s not a response,” Antonio said. “It’s cowardice wrapped in silence. It’s weakness pretending to be virtue.”

Matteo said nothing.

Antonio turned from him, back to the low wall. His hands gripped the edge hard enough to whiten his knuckles. For a moment, it looked as if he might stay there the rest of the night, pressed like a statue into the stone.

Then he moved, quick and sharp, heading toward the stairs.

Matteo blinked. “Where are you going?”

Antonio didn’t pause. “Back to my study.”

Matteo followed. “Why?”

“I’m going to write him another letter,” Antonio said, his tone like iron. “One that doesn’t leave room for interpretation. One he can’t pretend not to understand.”

Matteo trailed behind, his steps lighter, more uncertain. “Antonio…”

Antonio stopped halfway down the stairwell and looked back.

“Come along,” he said. “You’ll want to see how this one is worded.”

He didn’t wait for agreement. His boots rang against the stone as he descended. Moonlight followed them only so far, then vanished, leaving only shadow and the soft rustle of movement as they disappeared down into the building’s deeper hallways.

Antonio pushed open the door to the study without ceremony. Matteo followed, quieter now, as if the tension had settled into his shoulders, anchoring him in caution. Inside, the fire had long since gone cold in the grate. Antonio didn’t bother with it. He moved to the desk and pulled the chair back with a sharp scrape of wood.

Then he sat, leaned forward, and pulled a fresh sheet of parchment toward him.

He dipped the quill with precision, tapping once against the edge of the inkwell to avoid blotting. Matteo remained standing, close enough to watch, not quite near enough to intrude. He watched Antonio’s shoulders rise with a trembling breath, then steady. The tip of the quill touched paper, and the words came in a low voice as he began to write.

“Alessandro—you didn’t come.”

“You made me wait in the cold, in the dark, like a fool. I am not a fool. You know this. You know what I am, who I am, and still, you chose to insult me.”

“You think silence protects you, that if you say nothing, do nothing, if you vanish into your shadows and your books, no one can touch you—that you are owed peace simply because you don’t ask for war, but you forget who you’re dealing with. You don’t get to ignore me and keep your dignity. You don’t get to dismiss me without cost.”

“From this moment, you’ve forfeited the right to forewarning. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I gave you a warning. That will not happen again. I would advise you to watch your back. You are not the only one who knows where the library is. I will come for you.”

He lifted the quill, setting it aside with surgical precision. The ink was still glistening. He read the letter through again once in silence, eyes scanning with unflinching intent.

Behind him, Matteo stirred. “You’re going to send that?”

Antonio didn’t look up. “Yes.”

“It’s different this time.”

“I intended it to be.” He reached for the wax and seal. “If he’s too cowardly to come to me, I’ll make it impossible for him to ignore me.”

Matteo hesitated, then stepped forward. “You really think this will make him change his mind?”

Antonio looked up now, his face unreadable. “It will make him choose, and if he refuses again, then I’ll stop waiting on his choices.” He folded the page with deliberate care, pressing each crease with the back of his nail. He handed the red-sealed letter to Matteo, who, fingers twitching, tucked it into his inner pocket. “Deliver that, as soon as possible. I will deal with the girl tomorrow. I have grown exhausted with sharing.”

Matteo left the study in silence, the weight of the letter sharp and unnatural against his chest. The corridors were colder now, or maybe it only felt that way under the press of Antonio’s expectations. His boots hit the stone floor with more sound than usual, an argument forming like an angry current of wind inside of him.

He didn’t go straight to Alessandro, as he had been instructed. He didn’t even make it down the next flight of stairs. Instead, he veered off through the narrow hallway that fed into one of the lesser-used sitting rooms. The hearth there was still faintly warm, an amber glow soft beneath the ashes. No one else was present. No voices. No questions.

He pulled the letter from his pocket. The seal still gleamed in the low light, crimson wax pressed with the sharp imprint of Antonio’s signet. Matteo stared at it for a moment, then he crossed the room to the fireplace, bent low, and shoved the letter deep into the embers.

The flames didn’t need encouragement. The parchment caught quickly, curling black at the edges, then folding inward on itself as the red wax melted and hissed. Matteo watched it burn. He didn’t move until there was nothing left but warped ash and the faint scent of scorched ink.

Bernardo didn’t stir from his place. He gave a slight nod, his gaze still trained on the hearth. “I was.”

He offered no further explanation, no welcome or feigned warmth. The simplicity of the statement made it heavier, more deliberate. It hung in the space between them like the drawn breath before an arrow is loosed.

There was a pause, taut and expectant.

“You’ve been spending time with her,” Bernardo said, evenly. The words were not barbed, but they lacked any softness. They were offered as fact, as observation, not accusation, but the weight behind them was unmistakable.

Alessandro met the statement without deflection. “Yes.”

Again, silence, but it was not the silence of absence. It was filled, watchful.

Bernardo turned his head slightly, his features caught in the glow of the embers. “What are you thinking?” he asked. His voice was quieter now, but no less firm. “Do you imagine Antonio won’t find out? Or do you believe he will, and that somehow, it won’t matter?”

Alessandro did not flinch. “I don’t answer to Antonio.”

A shadow of a smile, humorless and dry, crossed Bernardo’s face. He glanced away. “You live under his roof. You carry the same title. Do you really believe that name doesn’t bind you?”

Alessandro moved closer to the fire, letting the heat touch his skin. His expression was drawn, not with defensiveness, but with something older, wearier. “I’m not doing anything to harm her.”

Bernardo turned toward him fully now, arms folding across his chest, the line of his jaw tight. “And you think that’s enough? That harm is only what’s done with intent? You walk beside her. You speak to her. You look at her as though nothing else in the world deserves your attention.” His voice broke slightly before he caught it. “You know how Antonio sees her. You’ve seen it.” Not directly, but he had. He could almost smell it in the way Antonio talked about her, like ownership.

Alessandro didn’t respond at first, but his jaw tightened, and the quiet around them seemed to draw in closer.

“I’m not warning you out of cruelty,” Bernardo said. “I’m telling you because she’s already being watched. Every step she takes is measured. Every glance, every hesitation. There are eyes on her—eyes that do not blink, even when yours do.”

“She’s not a fragile object to be handed between us,” Alessandro said, his voice low and steady. “She has her own mind. Her own reasons.”

“I don’t question that,” Bernardo replied. “But choice means very little when the scale is tipped before she ever puts her foot on it. You know this. You’ve always known this.”

Alessandro’s gaze flickered toward the shadows along the ceiling, tracing the invisible lines between stone and gloom. When he spoke again, his voice had cooled.

“She isn’t afraid. Not of them. Not of you. Not even of him.”

Bernardo’s eyes darkened. “Then she’s a fool. Or she doesn’t understand the cost yet.”

There was a pause, and then: “You’re not reckless, Alessandro. You never have been. You calculate. You plan. So tell me: what is this?”

For a moment, Alessandro said nothing. His silence deepened rather than deflected, as though the words were forming behind his teeth and had not yet found the strength to emerge. He stared at the place where the fire met the grate, where one ember had fallen and was slowly dimming to grey.

Bernardo watched him carefully. He saw it—the shift. Not in Alessandro’s face, but in the way his stillness bent inward, the way he stopped holding himself like a man preparing to argue. There was no defense here. Only something unspoken, and heavier for it.

“I know,” Bernardo said softly, not without effort. “I do. More than you think. But if you care about her—if that’s what this is—you need to stop. You need to let it rest before she’s drawn in so deeply she can’t climb back out.”

Alessandro turned to look at him fully for the first time, his eyes unreadable but steady.

“You think Antonio would give her peace?”

“I think he would give her protection,” Bernardo answered. “And I think, eventually, she might come to want that. He’s not a cruel man. Not always. And she…” He hesitated. “She believes in the possibility of healing. That things broken can be made whole again.”

“If she does, then she’s mistaken,” Alessandro said. Then, after a breath: “You’re mistaken. You don’t know her.”

Bernardo didn’t argue. He only said, “She’s hopeful. That isn’t the same thing.”

Silence returned, deeper now. The fire hissed softly as the last of the wood shifted in the grate. They stood, unmoving, in the same distance they had known since they were boys, when their father had sent them into the chapel to stand in silence until their tempers cooled. To learn, as he’d said, what silence could teach.

Bernardo exhaled slowly. “You’ve always been different. You know that? Even when we were young. You'd stay up reading those old volumes long after the candles burned low. You whispered about things no one else dared speak of. Things no one else even saw.”

Alessandro didn’t flinch, but there was a shadow in his eyes now. One he didn’t bother hiding.

“I’m saying this,” Bernardo continued. “You’ve already given them cause to distrust you. Don’t give them more. Don’t let her become collateral for your strangeness.”

Alessandro stepped forward, just once. His voice, when it came, was quiet and deliberate.

“She’s not carrying me. She’s walking beside me.”

Bernardo’s expression shifted. He didn’t speak. His eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger, but in careful thought.

“You don’t understand her,” Alessandro added, his tone flat. Not a challenge. A fact.

Bernardo’s reply came after a pause. “No. But I understand you.”

The words struck deeper than they should have. Bernardo did not raise his voice or move to block the door. He stood as he was, firm, steady.

“You’re my brother. I’ve seen the way you pick things apart until they make sense to no one else. You’ve always walked through this world as though it were half-familiar, half-foreign. And still—I have always wanted what’s best for you.”

Alessandro’s mouth curved, slightly. A twitch more than a smile. “Then perhaps it’s time to want what’s best for her.”

“I am,” Bernardo said, quietly.

“No. You’re choosing what’s safest. And not even for her. For Antonio. For the family. For the name. For the power tied up in every blessed ring and robe in this house.” Alessandro’s voice did not rise, but each word was precise, honed. “You think she needs protection. I think she needs freedom.”

Bernardo drew breath, but Alessandro continued before he could speak.

“She waits for me,” he said, softly. “Not because I asked her to. Not because she’s afraid. Because she wants to. Do you understand what that means?”

Bernardo looked at him, saying nothing.

“No one has ever wanted me like that. Not here. Not in this house. Not in the eyes of our father. Not in Antonio’s. Not in the eyes of men who speak of God but listen only to power. She sees me. And she stays.”

Bernardo’s gaze dropped to the fire. One last coal gave way, collapsing into a fine scatter of ash.

“I care for you,” he said after a long moment. “More than I say.”

“I know,” Alessandro answered. “But your care is dutiful. It was shaped in the image of this house. Bound by obedience. By silence. You spent years learning to call pain discipline, to call control love. I didn’t.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“No,” Alessandro agreed. “But it’s still true.”

Bernardo’s mouth opened, some retort on the edge, but Alessandro moved past him, slow and sure.

“Maybe,” he said, pausing at the door, “you worried over me when we were children. Maybe you let me speak when no one else would, but you never truly listened. You let me talk so I’d think I mattered.”

He turned, one hand on the door’s iron latch, the firelight drawing shadows along his jaw.

“Let me matter to her. Just once. Let me have that without interference.”

Bernardo didn’t reply. The room was quiet again, the kind of quiet that settles after something fragile has been broken—gently, but with no hope of repair.

Alessandro opened the door. The hallway beyond was dark, but not unwelcoming to him.

“Where are you going?” Bernardo asked.

Alessandro glanced back, his voice firm and final.

“I left her waiting,” he said. “I don’t intend to leave her for long.”

He stepped through the threshold, his coat brushing the doorframe.

“I don’t intend to leave her at all.”

…

The library was dark upon reentry, quiet in a way that felt less like absence and more like intimacy. The candles had burned low, their golden light softened into glittering haze across the stone. Shadows lay thick across the floors, pooling beneath shelves and stretching into corners where the night had begun to press in.

She was there, just as he hoped, curled into the wide windowsill on the far side of the room, half-draped in the folds of her own shawl. Her head rested against the glass, cheek turned slightly into her shoulder, lashes still against her skin. A book had slipped from her lap and now rested gently at her side, as if the library itself had tucked it there to keep quiet company. Alessandro paused, just inside the doorway. He let his gaze settle on her, drinking in the fragile peace of her sleeping form. In sleep, her face had lost none of its strength, only softened.

He crossed the room slowly, quietly, the creak of the floorboards barely audible beneath his steps. When he reached her, he knelt down beside the window seat, folding his coat back from his knees with practiced precision. He reached out and let his fingertips rest lightly on her arm, just above the elbow, then paused.

It didn’t feel right. Not like this. Not while she couldn’t see him, couldn’t choose. So he withdrew, letting his hand fall back to his knee. He leaned in instead, close enough that his breath stirred the hair at her temple.

“Lune,” he murmured, voice low and soft, as though trying not to wake the books themselves. “You should wake up, dove. It’s late. You’ll ache if you stay like this much longer.”

Still, she didn’t stir.

“You’ll blame me for letting you sleep through the bells,” he added, smiling slightly. “And I’ll be forced to pretend I didn’t watch you the whole time.”

A faint twitch pulled at the corner of her mouth, then her shoulder jerked slightly, like she’d been tickled in a dream.

He laughed under his breath, a quiet sound that slipped past his teeth before he could stop it.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she blinked once, then again, gaze unfocused. “You’re… here,” she said, her voice small with sleep, threading somewhere between a question and a realization.

He nodded. “I am.”

She stared at him for a moment longer, still trying to pull herself fully into wakefulness. Then her lips curled, not quite a smile, not yet. Something warmer than amusement, quieter than joy.

They didn’t speak, as they didn’t need to.

After a moment, Alessandro cleared his throat and stood a bit too quickly. “You—ah. You shouldn’t sleep on cold stone,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward the seat as if it were to blame. “Your neck will hate you.”

Lune arched a brow but didn’t rise just yet. She covered a smile poorly with the back of her hand. “My neck is resilient.”

“Even resilience has limits.”

“Mm. So says a man who limps every time it rains.”

Alessandro extended his arm, clearing his throat again as though trying to disguise the grin that tugged at his mouth. “Come on, before I lose what little gallantry I possess.”

Lune stood at last, brushing her skirt smooth, then slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. Her smile widened as she glanced up at him, but she didn’t say anything.

And together, they turned from the window and walked slowly back into the warmth of the shelves, the hush of the library folding gently around them once more, threatening to pull them back in even as they took their nightly leave, footsteps echoing lightly down the corridor, muffled by the worn tapestries that lined the walls. The night air had cooled the stones beneath their feet, and Lune leaned into Alessandro just enough to match his pace.

“I still can’t believe you left me long enough to let me sleep like that,” she said, glancing up at him with feigned offense. “It’s almost cruel.”

He looked down at her, one brow raised. “You think I let you? You fell asleep like a saint in a fresco. I feared waking you might trigger divine punishment.”

“Oh, please,” she said, laughing. “You were probably relieved by the silence.”

“Relieved? I was guarding your dreams, I’ll have you know. Very noble work.”

She gave a dramatic scoff. “You’re impossible.”

“No, just underappreciated.” He paused, then added with a smirk, “And possibly taken advantage of. I’m starting to suspect you planned it.”

“I did no such thing!”

“Ah. So the shawl and the perfect window seat—pure coincidence?”

“I was cold,” she said with exaggerated dignity. “And the cushion was warm.”

“Mm-hm.” He gave her a sideways glance. “Manipulative.”

“Kind.”

“Scheming.”

“Thoughtful.”

He grinned. “You see? Exactly what I mean.”

She nudged him gently with her shoulder, nearly stumbling when he didn’t budge. “You’re awful.”

“I’m the picture of generosity.”

“Oh, is that what this is?” she said, laughing now. “Generosity?”

“It’s either that or I’ve been enchanted.”

“Or maybe haunted,” she said lightly, eyes glinting. “I thought that for a moment, when I woke, I thought perhaps it was one of the ghosts in the library coming to drag me away.”

Alessandro turned to her, mock-serious. “That would explain a lot.”

Lune tilted her head. “Would it?”

He nodded gravely. “You do talk to yourself, mutter at books, and wander in at strange hours. Sounds like a classic case of possession. Or madness.”

She laughed again, louder this time, the sound echoing gently off the old stone. “You think I’m mad?”

“I think you’re a witch,” he said, smiling despite the words. “A mad, conniving witch.”

She laughed harder, clutching his arm. “And you are going to be burned at the stake for saying it.”

“Hush,” he whispered, chuckling as her voice rang again. “You’ll wake the ghosts.”

She covered her mouth with one hand, stifling a giggle, and he shook his head with a grin as they continued walking, the soft glow of the candles gilding the corridor in flickering gold.

Behind them, the shadows shifted.

Just beyond the reach of the light, where the corridor curved into dark, something paused.

A glimmer—not of candlelight, but of eyes.

Watching.

Waiting.

And then, as their laughter faded into the hallway’s hush once more, the darkness behind them returned to stillness, as if it had never moved at all.

…

Antonio’s study was a room rarely disturbed. It still bore the scent of varnished oak and undisturbed parchment, the stale breath of a space too carefully preserved. Dust clung to the corners like a held breath, and though the hearth had been lit, the fire seemed hesitant to fill the space with warmth.

Now, it was in disarray. Papers lay crumpled like wounded birds across the desk and floor, several of them stained with ink where Antonio’s hand had faltered or pressed too hard. His best letter paper, imported and watermarked, ruined. The quill scratched across the fresh sheet with frantic energy, the lines slanted and angry, which was nothing like the precise script he was known for. When the ink bled too fast or the words failed to form properly, he cursed low under his breath and swept the page aside, starting again.

Across the room, Matteo stood by the door, uncertain whether he should speak or pretend not to see. His hands were tucked into his sleeves, eyes flickering between the disordered desk and Antonio’s rigid shoulders. The air was thick with dangerous, coiled anger.

Antonio didn’t look up when he finally spoke.

“So,” he said. “They were together.”

Matteo hesitated. “I only said Bernardo was looking for them. I didn’t say—”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Antonio’s voice cracked through the room, sharp enough to make Matteo flinch. “Of course they’re together. Why else would he be out looking? Why else would she be missing?”

“She wasn’t missing—”

“She wasn’t where she belonged,” Antonio snapped. His hand flew to another page, striking it with another line of ink, but it broke mid-sentence, the quill splitting slightly. He swore and threw it aside. It struck the wall and fell behind the desk.

For a moment, only the fire spoke.

Antonio rose abruptly, pacing behind the desk, his boots harsh against the rug. His jaw was tight, twitching. There was color in his cheeks now—red, rising with the heat of his thoughts. He dragged a hand through his hair.

“It’s sick,” he said, quieter now, more to himself than to Matteo. “The way people speak of them. Whisper their names in the same breath. It’s obscene.”

Matteo didn’t reply. There was an urge to point out that very few people were aware of this situation. This was to do with the tightest group of the Clergy and one girl, but who was he to downplay Antonio’s rage?

Antonio turned on him suddenly. “Do you not see it? Do you not understand what that girl is doing to him?”

“She hasn’t—” Matteo faltered. “She doesn’t seem to be doing anything.”

“No,” Antonio agreed, voice thin as a blade. “She doesn’t seem to. That’s the trick.”

He turned back toward the desk, breathing hard. Another page was seized. More words, half-formed, sprawled onto it. The ink blotched as his hand paused.

“She was mine to watch,” he muttered. “Mine to protect. Mine to keep from rot. And now—” He cut himself off with a sound that wasn’t quite a word, just a sharp breath through clenched teeth.

From the fireplace, the flames hissed softly. Antonio stood still, pen dangling from his fingers, ink pooling unnoticed on the fine edge of his cuff. Behind him, Matteo shifted uncomfortably.

Antonio didn’t turn. He stared down at the page. “Correction,” he said, his voice suddenly level, eerily calm. “Setting things straight.” Then he picked up the next sheet of fine parchment, dipped another quill, and began again. “I will not allow that… that double-bastard son, that filthy knave, that devil-worshipping fool to get his hands on her!”

“What are you writing?” Matteo asked, almost too softly to be heard.

Antonio didn’t answer at first. He signed the page with a sharp flourish, then folded it slowly, precisely. His seal waited, already heated near the hearth. He pressed it down without ceremony.

Only then did he look up.

“A letter,” he said simply. His voice had returned to its usual quiet precision, but there was something brittle behind it. “To Alessandro.”

Matteo frowned. “What kind of letter?”

Antonio held the sealed page between two fingers, examining it, as though it were a blade he was testing the edge of. “One that invites him to speak with me. Alone. To… address the matter between us.”

The pause that followed was heavy.

“You mean to fight,” Matteo said, the words barely audible. “Don’t you?”

Antonio turned to him fully then, slowly, like the turn of a key in a lock. “I mean,” he said, “to remind my brother who he is. And who he is not.”

Matteo’s face shifted. “Alessandro doesn’t enjoy fighting,” he said. From what he heard, it was a passion his elder brother had retired before he was born.

“No,” Antonio said. “He doesn’t. Not anymore. But he’s made himself into something he was never meant to be. Someone needs to put an end to it.”

He placed the letter on the corner of the desk. Its seal gleamed gold in the low light. “I’ve asked him to meet me at the west bell. No witnesses. No noise.”

“You said you wanted to protect her. Lune,” Matteo said doubtfully.

Antonio’s jaw clenched. “I am.”

“No,” Matteo said. “You’re trying to punish her.”

Antonio didn’t reply. He only watched the flames, as if he could see something inside them that would justify everything. He couldn’t.

…

The library was warm with the low hum of their laughter. Lune leaned lightly against one of the tall shelves, her hand resting over the edge of a folio she had just mock-threatened to throw at Alessandro. He stood a few paces off, arms crossed, the smallest smile tucked into one corner of his mouth. It was a cloudy afternoon; humid, but significantly more pleasant than the torrential rains the swampy land was so accustomed to.

“You’re lucky I didn’t fall asleep on that theology scroll,” she said, her voice half a whisper in deference to the room, though amusement curled at the edges.

“You did,” Alessandro replied, lifting an eyebrow. “You just happened to disguise it better this time.”

She tilted her head, feigning offense. “I was meditating. Deeply.”

“Snoring, I’d say. Modestly.”

Lune scoffed and turned away, just enough to hide her grin, and wandered a few steps along the shelves. Alessandro watched her go, his expression softening. The light from the candles touched her shoulders, gold brushing the edges of her veil and the fine hairs near her temple. He didn’t speak, not right away. There was a comfort in the silence that trailed after them, as though they had earned it.

She looked back over her shoulder, teasing. “You should be grateful. Not everyone is so patient with your shelves full of haunted manuscripts.”

“I didn’t ask you to haunt them.”

“Well, something was. I’m sure I felt a cold hand on my ankle while I was sleeping.”

“That was the ghost of Saint Encelius. He disapproves of your posture.”

“Do you actually know their names?” she asked him, concealing a laugh.

“Of course I don’t.”

She laughed aloud then, and it echoed faintly in the rafters. He stepped closer, lowering his voice as hers carried.

“Quiet, madwoman,” he said, with the same half-smile. “Or you’ll rouse the spirits.”

“Madwoman,” she repeated with a breathless laugh, hand to her chest. “Next you’ll be calling me a witch. Again.”

“I’ve suspected it for some time,” he said. “Witchcraft is the only explanation for your company.”

She turned fully toward him then, both of them still smiling, the distance between them shrinking almost without their noticing. Something unspoken hung in the air, not new, but recognized all the same. Neither of them moved to break it.

Footsteps approached.

Alessandro’s eyes shifted first, narrowing slightly as they followed the soft tread of approaching steps. From between the shelves, Matteo emerged, hesitant but composed, his hand curled around something held at his side. The moment his eyes met Alessandro’s, he paused.

“Afternoon,” Alessandro said quietly, the warmth of his earlier mood not entirely gone.

Matteo gave a small nod. “Afternoon.”

Lune turned, her curiosity gentle. “A friend of yours?”

Alessandro glanced at her, then back at Matteo. “This is my youngest brother.”

Something flickered across Lune’s face—surprise, followed quickly by a small, warm smile. “Then now I’ve met the whole line,” she murmured, folding her hands in front of her. “It’s a pleasure.”

Matteo nodded again, more stiffly this time. “Likewise.”

Alessandro looked at her then, and for a moment, he seemed untroubled. Not empty or hiding, but steady, as though some storm within him had quieted. Lune smiled back, small but sincere. She looked at home beside him, and Matteo felt even more like a child than he already did.

“You can tell from his baby face,” Alessandro jokes. He was really joking, Matteo noted.

His grip tightened slightly around the paper in his hand.

“There’s a letter,” he said at last. “From Antonio.”

Alessandro’s expression shifted. Not entirely closed, but watchful. “Is that so?”

Matteo stepped forward and held it out. Alessandro took it slowly, turning it over, his jaw tightening.

Lune said nothing, but her gaze lingered on him as he broke the seal.

The silence that followed stretched. Matteo shifted his weight, glancing once at Lune, then down at the floor. The brightness that had filled the room moments before had softened into stillness, like the held breath before something breaks.

Alessandro read the letter through. His expression did not change, though his eyes darkened, sharp and steady. He folded the paper again, slowly, as if to delay the moment that would come after.

He did not look up. Not yet.

Lune leaned in, eyes trailing down toward the folded page in Alessandro’s hand. Before she could see more than a corner of the ink, he folded it smoothly, gently, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his coat.

“What was that?” she asked, her voice low.

“Nothing,” Alessandro replied, his tone calm, almost too even. “Just something Antonio likes to do from time to time. Remind me that I exist.”

Her brow knit, and she parted her lips to say more, but then her gaze caught on Matteo still standing there, tense and too quiet. She hesitated, her unspoken question hovering between them.

Alessandro, without a word, slid his hand across the bench beneath the table and laid it over hers. His touch was quiet, cautious. A kind of apology. A kind of reassurance.

Lune glanced down, surprised by the gesture, then looked up at him again. Her hand closed gently around his, fingers pressing into his palm. A promise, returned.

They stayed like that for a breath too long, until Lune gave him a look—soft, questioning, but patient. Later, it said.

Matteo caught it all. The touch, the look, the unspoken ease between them. It twisted in his chest.

“I should go,” he said abruptly, already turning away. “I have chores to attend to.” He swept himself from the room as if being dragged by the breeze, disappearing down the hall, away from the concerned gazes of his elder brother and his paramour, and down to the preparation room of the morgue where the eldest, Bernardo, worked.

…

Matteo’s feet pounded the stone corridor, echoing off the walls like the wild rhythm of a hunted thing. He didn’t slow at the turn—his boots scraped against the stone as he caught himself, breath tearing from his chest in ragged bursts. The air grew colder as he descended, the clean hush of the chapel fading into something weightier, older. Down here, even sound felt reluctant to linger. The morgue breathed in silence, but silence no longer, not upon his entry.

The door to the preparation room stood slightly ajar, the light within streaking softly from the small crack. Matteo shoved it open, hard enough that it struck the wall.

Bernardo looked up from the table, sleeves rolled above the elbow, his gloves still on, though the slab before him was empty. The scent of oil and witch hazel still clung to the air. Instruments lay in ordered rows, being cleaned, then returned to their velvet-lined case. His brow furrowed the instant he saw Matteo.

“Matteo?”

The youngest brother stood just inside the threshold, chest heaving, curls damp with sweat, his coat half-unfastened and crooked on his shoulders. His mouth opened but no sound came. His face looked washed out, far too pale for the boy who had sprinted in from the upper levels.

Bernardo didn’t hesitate. He came around the table quickly. “What’s happened?” he asked, low and urgent. “Are you hurt?”

Matteo shook his head too quickly. “No. No, I’m fine. It’s not that.” He doubled over slightly, one hand pressing to his stomach like he might steady something there. His breath caught again, thick in his throat. “I—”

Bernardo’s hands closed firmly around his shoulders, leather brushing damp wool. “Slow down. Tell me what happened.”

Matteo’s eyes flicked up to him, wide and glassy. He tried again. “I gave him the letter.” Bernardo’s jaw tightened, and his brow raised. “To Alessandro,” Matteo clarified, his voice brittle. “I didn’t know what was in it. Antonio just told me to bring it, and I thought— I thought it was just something about the library, or the church, or…” His voice trailed off, the weight of what he hadn’t thought settling visibly across his shoulders.

Bernardo held him steady, thumbs pressed against the trembling curve of his collarbone. “What did you see?”

Matteo’s chin trembled. “He was with her. Lune. They were sitting at one of the tables in the library, talking—laughing, even. Like they’d known each other forever. It didn’t feel like the first time.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “And then I gave him the letter. He opened it, read it. Didn’t say anything. Just folded it, slowly. His face changed, Bernardo. It went quiet. Cold.”

Bernardo’s eyes darkened. “Did Lune see?”

“At least part of it, yes. She kept looking at him, asking what was wrong, but he wouldn’t tell her.” Matteo’s voice cracked. “She looked afraid. Not of him. Of whatever was in that letter.”

The air in the room had turned still.

“I think Antonio means to fight him,” Matteo whispered, barely audible. “Not just argue. I think he wants to hurt him. Or break him. And Lune too. He thinks she’s his. Like she’s a piece on a board.”

Bernardo released a slow breath through his nose, but said nothing.

Matteo’s eyes shimmered, pleading. “I think I helped him. I helped him hurt them both. I didn’t mean to—I swear I didn’t—but I carried it right into their hands. I watched it happen.”

He covered his face with one hand, shuddering. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Bernardo’s expression didn’t shift much, but something in his eyes softened. He reached up, unfastening one glove and pulling it free with a quick, practiced motion. He set it on the table and brought his bare hand to Matteo’s cheek, grounding him.

“You came straight here,” he said. “That matters. You didn’t run from it.”

“But it’s already done,” Matteo whispered. “What if something happens to them, and it's all because of me?”

Bernardo’s hand dropped, resting on Matteo’s shoulder again. “Then we deal with what’s next. We help who we can.”

Matteo nodded, a single jerky motion, though he didn’t look convinced. His body trembled faintly under Bernardo’s grip.

Bernardo turned away, already stripping off his other glove. “Stay here,” he said. “Wait for me. And if Antonio comes, you do not speak to him alone.”

Matteo looked up sharply. “Where are you going?”

Bernardo opened a cabinet and pulled out a fresh coat. “To make sure Alessandro knows more than just Antonio’s lies.” He paused, but only for a moment. “He should know that he has someone on his side.”

He looked back once before he left the room, the lamplight catching in the edge of his jaw. There was no fear in his face, only decision.

Matteo stood alone in the hush of the morgue, the door still half-open behind him, and tried to remember how to breathe.

…

The library had grown dim in the afternoon hush. The sun fought with the overhanging clouds, streaming scatteredly through the arched windows. The silence in the room pulsed faintly, as if holding its breath, still reverberating with the ghost of laughter that had only recently dissolved into stillness.

Alessandro stood at the center table, unmoving, more braced than at rest. One hand lay splayed against the polished wood, fingers curled slightly inward, trying to pin a thought before it unraveled; discussing things in his mind, or with some unseen force. His other hand remained buried in the pocket of his coat, thumb brushing the brittle edge of the letter tucked there: Antonio’s letter, wax seal cracked open like a bone split under pressure. The folded page was light, but it pressed against him with a gravity all its own.

He didn’t turn when he heard the soft approach behind him. The footsteps were familiar, the rhythm of them measured, neither hurried nor hesitant. He didn’t need to look.

“Afternoon,” Bernardo said, his voice low and even, though beneath it there was a restraint, something held close to the chest.

“She’s gone,” Alessandro replied. His voice was subdued, wrapped in a quiet reserve. “Left for her chores just minutes ago.”

“I figured.” Bernardo moved into view, his gaze sweeping across the empty library before settling back on his brother. “Just missed her, then?”

Alessandro gave a small nod. The corner of his mouth lifted for the barest moment. “I suppose so.”

Bernardo folded his hands behind his back, his posture precise, almost ceremonial in its care. “I wasn’t exactly looking for her. Just thought she might be here. A feeling.” He paused, eyes still on Alessandro. “You’re not often alone these days.”

A subtle shift passed through Alessandro’s expression. His eyes narrowed, barely perceptible, but enough to register. He let the observation go unanswered, walking a few paces along the table’s edge, trailing his fingers along the old wood as though trying to absorb the steadiness of it.

“I heard,” Bernardo said after a moment, the words dropped into the hush with calculated calm, “you received some mail.”

Alessandro stopped. He didn’t look back at first, but the tension in his shoulders changed. Then, over his shoulder, he said, “News travels fast.”

“I have ears.” Bernardo’s tone was light on the surface, though the weight beneath it betrayed something closer to concern. “And Matteo was… unsettled.”

Alessandro turned slowly. He reached into his coat and withdrew the folded letter, its creases crisp and deliberate, and held it between two fingers, loose, as though it offended him to grasp it too tightly.

“He wants to meet,” Alessandro said, his voice stripped of drama, reduced to its purest core. “At the west bell.”

Bernardo’s brow drew inward. “To talk?”

A dry smile touched Alessandro’s face, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “To fight.” He wasn’t sure which was more dangerous.

The word hovered in the space between them like smoke.

Bernardo’s mouth tightened slightly, jaw shifting as if biting back an immediate reaction. “Of course he does.”

“He never used the word, not directly.” Alessandro returned the letter slowly to his pocket, refusing to let the gesture betray his thoughts. “But everything in the letter points to it. A challenge dressed in softer clothing to make it sound noble.”

Bernardo moved closer, leaning against the edge of the table, arms crossed over his chest. “And what are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” Alessandro answered without hesitation. “I’m not going.”

Bernardo’s eyes searched his brother’s face. “You’re certain?”

“I’m not fifteen anymore,” Alessandro said quietly, his gaze distant. “I don’t throw punches over pride. Not when I know how the game is set. He wants me angry. He wants me to respond. He’s counting on me to draw first.”

“Good,” Bernardo said, though his voice had lowered again, edged with something almost cautious. “Do you remember what I taught you?”

Alessandro tilted his head, a breath of something like irony in his voice. “Don’t fight.”

“Because you’re not like him,” Bernardo said, straightening slightly. “You never were.”

There was a long pause before Alessandro replied, and when he did, his voice carried something more worn, as if dredged from a quieter, darker place. “I used to be.”

“Not in the ways that count.” Bernardo’s answer came quickly, firmly.

They stood there, two figures drawn from the same house but shaped differently by time and choice, their shadows cast long and narrow in the failing light. The silence between them was no longer merely absence of sound. It was dense with years of understanding and friction, though not unkind.

“He wants me on his terms,” Alessandro said after a while, more to the room than to his brother. “He always has. Everything’s a performance to him, a contest. I’m done playing his games. I won’t let him drag me back into that, and I won’t do it at Lune’s expense.”

Bernardo looked down at the floor, then nodded slowly, something loosening in his face that had been tense since he’d entered the room. “I’m grateful for that.”

Another silence passed between them, this one longer, threaded with things too complex to articulate cleanly. When Bernardo spoke again, his voice had softened, and it carried the weight of something that had taken effort to phrase just right.

“I came to the library tonight because I needed to know. Not secondhand, not from someone else’s impressions. I needed to hear it from you.” He stepped back from the table, his stance still composed but less guarded now. “Still… be careful. Refusing the fight won’t make him back down. If anything, it’ll drive him to look for new ways to provoke you, and you know he’s capable of more subtle things.”

“I know,” Alessandro said. His features were touched with just enough light to soften the tension that had been etched into them for days. Not peace, but something like a truce within himself.

Bernardo watched him for a long moment. “Lune…” he began, then paused. “She brings something out of you. Something I didn’t expect to see again.”

Alessandro’s hand returned to the table, fingers brushing a faint mark on the wood—one that might have been left by her hand earlier, though it was impossible to be sure. His reply came in a voice so low it nearly merged with the silence.

“She doesn’t ask for anything. She just sees me. That’s all.”

Bernardo gave a single nod, deep and quiet, and chose not to press further. He stepped back. “If he makes a move, you come to me,” he said, voice level but weighted.

Alessandro met his gaze directly. “I will.”

Bernardo hesitated at the threshold, long enough for the moment to stretch, then turned and walked out, his boots whispering against the worn stone floor until the sound disappeared entirely into the corridor beyond.

Never had he seen her face, only her back, but when had he ever felt love directly? His brother's face, he had never seen but in photographs. His parents, placed so far above him, cared not for his joy or comfort. Naivete bred his fondness. He was in love with hrt, the idea that she would be the first and perhaps the only one to do something *for* him and not against him.

He lowered his eyes, not out of humility nor shame, but out of reverence; out of a fear so old it had calcified into devotion. His lips trembled, but the words came easy, as if they'd always been waiting in the back of his throat. "I’ve doubted. I’ve desired. I’ve imagined the robes tearing. I’ve dreamt of being looked at the way you look at the altar." With absolute devotion.

Her silence answered him with that terrible, sacred stillness that turned his yearning into something useful. He dared a glance upward, just for a moment, and saw the hem of her robe shift slightly, as if stirred by breath, or wind, or will. That was enough. It had to be. He would not be granted more.

He pressed his forehead to the cold, stone floor, lips brushing the grit and soot like a kiss. “I am ready,” he whispered, not knowing if it was a lie or a plea. “I am not pure. I am not clean. But I will serve. Let me be hollow, that you may pour yourself into me.”

The room did not echo. Even his voice seemed swallowed by the damp.

He felt, rather than saw, her move. Slow, deliberate. She was always deliberate. A soft scuff of cloth against stone, and then the sound of something metal being set down. The air thickened. He smelled clove and rust and old incense, a mingling of the sacred and the profane that made his mouth water with dread.

A hand—gloved, firm—touched the back of his neck. He shuddered, but did not pull away. Would not dare. Her voice came low and close, softer than he'd ever heard anything. “Then be made ready.”

Something cool traced a line between his shoulder blades. Oil, maybe. Or blood. Or both. He bit down on his own tongue, tasting copper. The candles guttered as the ritual began in earnest.

She whispered words not meant for daylight. Words older than churches, older than saints, and with every syllable, he felt something in himself peel back, a layer at a time, until there was nothing but want. Nothing but waiting.

He was to be Papa. And he would kneel for it. Bleed for it. Burn for it.

But oh—she would make him worthy.

She stood above him, her face invisible, partially due to her dark cloak, and his head at her feet. "Your soul is not your own," she says, her fingers tracing over his vulnerable neck. "Your body is but a vessel, youth. Your body is mine, and so is your soul, to command."

"There are seven gates, and seven cardinal sins. Tell me, have you completed them all?"

He let out a trembling sigh, breath hot and stuttering against the cold stone. Her touch was like lightning, jolting him to the core and leaving his skin buzzing. "All but the first," he said, the words catching in his throat. He'd practiced them. This should have been easy. He could have said them in his sleep, but all the practice in the world didn't make this moment any less sacred. Or terrifying.

"Pride? Have you never been prideful?" she asked him, her fingers remaining on her neck. They were narrow, smoother than he thought they might have been, but then again, this woman hardly left her station.

"Have you nothing to be proud of, youth?" she asked him again.

"Oh, many things," he said, trying to keep his voice even, although he already felt raw and shaking. He wanted to shiver, and he wanted to squirm, and he wanted to arch, and all because of touch. "Of my own abilities, and talents.” He laughed, a faint, rueful thing. "I'm told I'm quite the singer." He had been told so. Whether he believed it or not, he did not specify.

"But you don't believe that, do you? You doubt yourself," she says, her nails digging into the skin that had never before been touched. "You hear it, but you do not believe it is the truth."

She inhaled, then exhaled, the deep breaths mussing his hair. "Popularity breeds vanity. It shall be completed soon enough, post-ritual," she says. "Who do I have but you to elevate? I see no reason to delay." He was her last resort, but the knowledge that he was her only was enough to soothe the sting. He let out a soft, gasping sob, the sound almost lost in the heavy air. Her grip was tight, firm but not cruel, and oh, if he weren't so afraid right now, he would have melted against her with a pathetic whine.

"When?" he asked. He would not beg. He would not. He would have his dignity. "When?"

"Now," she murmurs. "When else but now? I come out for you, and you have the nerve to think I would change the time?" His whole body shuddered, a shudder that ran through him like an earthquake, and he realized, in a sudden, stomach-dropping wave of awareness, that he had lost his dignity. He had lost many things to them already, and would lose more before this was over.

He was not going to cry.

He drew in a shuddering breath, trying one more, vain attempt at composure.

"I... yes. Now."

The room was still, almost frighteningly so. Then, she descended.

She was on her knees there with him, and yet, retained her elevation. He was down further, on hands and knees, his head level with her stomach. Lust, that evil sin, drew his eyes there, and pride pulled them back.

"I require your blood," she says, "for it is the essence of your life. Only a small amount, but if you try to hurt me, I will drain you pale," she instructs. Her words are cold, almost threatening in nature, and they make his chest ache.

His mind stuttered, the moment so intimate that it was almost obscene. He'd be lying if he said his mind didn't jump to several other ways of giving blood, but that was just hunger and want talking. He would not disgrace the moment with thoughts so base. He nodded, once, slowly, and bit down on his lip. He couldn't decide what was worse: that she was so close, or that she was so far away. He could smell rosemary and incense. It could have been her alone, or a deliberate choice. Either way, he didn't want to be away from it now.

She lunged forward, grabbing his throat with a rough sort of gentleness that made his head spin. She squeezed, her thumb rubbing over his jugular to stimulate the flow of that sweet red wine that flowed within him.

He'd prepared for pain—a quick stab with some ritual dagger left over from the founding of the church, perhaps—but he was certainly not prepared for this. He made a noise, a strangled sound deep in his throat, and he was not sure if it was a gasp of pain or of something far worse. His heart was racing, pounding so hard it felt like it'd break through his chest, and he hoped they were not close enough to hear it. His thoughts came in fragments, broken by his breathless, panting gasps. Gentle. Too gentle. Too sweet. I don't want to be sweet. I want it rough. I want it to hurt.

She brought him closer, her shockingly cool breath stark against his heated skin. The daggers that were her filed-sharp teeth stabbed through his delicate skin, her tongue pressing over the puncture to soothe the sting. She sucked, brought his blood into her mouth, but did not swallow. Her head lifted then, to see his eyes. This was the closest he had gotten to seeing her face: the outline of her pinkish, stained lips.

He cried out, but he was not sure if it was from pain or pleasure, or something in between. She was touching him, feeding on him, her tongue slick and cool and so cruel. How could something so wrong feel so sweet? His mind was a tangled, reeling blur, and he was desperate to find something—some anchor, something safe—to hang onto. He brought his hand up, without thinking, and laid his fingers against her cheek.

She exhaled loudly, and then came closer, as if he had invited her, but he doubted it was anything personal to him. Her lips collided with his own, but she wasn't kissing. Her lips were parted, and she pried at his jaw, forcing it to open. There, she let the sweet fluid of his blood mixed with her saliva drain into his mouth. "Swallow," she mouthed.

He did. Oh, he did.

It tasted of copper and clove, and something sharper, almost acidic. It was bitter and sweet all at once, and he could not keep himself from making a noise, some low sound that almost resembled a moan. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been kissed, and it was as if his nerves had forgotten how to process touch—he ached for more, and yet, it was almost too much.

She pulled away after that, but remained close, her hand going to her torso as she pulled her cloak slightly aside, baring a singular breast, bringing his head closer with her other hand. "Drink." His head spun, and he was mesmerized; dare he say hypnotized. He couldn’t think straight, if even for a moment.

His hand trembled as he reached out, touching her stomach before he leaned forward, resting his cheek against the soft skin there. He could feel her thrumming heartbeat, wild and hungry, pounding against his face. Slowly, his head descended to her nipple, and slowly, he began to drink.

Her milk was almost sickeningly sweet, and she held his hair tightly in her hand as he sipped from her. She had taken life from him, and now he took something similar from her. "Greed," she groaned lowly as he took needless mouthfuls.

She pulled him away eventually, allowing him to gaze at her bare chest for only a moment before she covered herself with her cloak yet again. "Good." He drew in deep, trembling breaths, head spinning with the heady scent of her body. It was a strange feeling, equal parts satisfying and devastating. He wanted to get closer, bury his face against her and breathe her in, and yet, he was terrified of it. He nodded, once, and tried to steady his breath. Good. He'd been good. He'd never been told he was good before.

He wondered how good he'd have to be to get more.

She reached over, dipping her fingers in the ash of the incense burning behind him. Lightly, she touched his forehead, drawing a pentagram with her fingertips.

Then, she pushed him back with the butt of her hand, and stood up. "Swear yourself," she commands him, "to your dark lord, to me. We will guide you, for I am his voice."

He was on his back in the next moment, staring up at the distant ceiling. He felt heavy and weak, as if he might pass out at any moment, and yet, *something* felt... different. Something was *right.*

He blinked, trying to clear the pounding in his head, and then nodded slowly. "I swear," he said. "Myself, my voice, to my dark lord, Satan. I'm yours. Yours alone." Was he speaking to the beauty before him, or the one down below? Wasn’t all sin synonymous?

"In life and death," she says, "like yourself and all the Papas who came before you; your brothers, your father, you are mine," she says firmly, looking down at him. "Nema."

The room felt blurry, as if it were trembling, or perhaps it was only him.

"In life and death," he echoed, though the words sounded distant, almost slurred.

He was not sure what was happening. Something was pounding in his ears, and he could feel the cold stone at his back, digging in through his clothes. A shiver ran through him, and he sat up, shaking his head to clear the dizzying, hazy feeling. That word seemed to ring through his head like a chiming bell.

Slowly, her hands dropped to her sides, and she turned her back to him. "Go back to your chambers and rest. The Ritual was successful. Your superiors will inform you of your duties from there."

"You may come to me for guidance," she tells him. "But only at night, for you may not see my face. Do not waste my time." And yet, he didn't want to leave her. He couldn't imagine leaving her; not after what he had surrendered to her, and what he had taken, and she had gifted. No. He wouldn’t leave.

His mind was reeling with all that had happened, and yet, some desperate, needy part of him wanted to stay with her. He wanted more, to press himself against her and beg for more touch, more of her praise, her attention… He pushed himself to his feet, standing on shaky legs. He still felt dizzy, like he might stumble at any moment, but he somehow managed to keep his voice level. Almost.

"I won't waste your time," he said, his hands trembling. "I swear."

"Then why do you stay?" she asks, and her voice is cold, returning to that same harshness it had kept initially. Perhaps it was worse, but worse he had become, also. He didn't care. "You waste my time."

He needed more than he feared.

He knew that he should listen. He knew that he should leave, go back to the chambers that he had been given, and rest as she had ordered. But he was tired of following orders. He was tired of doing as he was told, always keeping his mouth shut and his head down.

He was greedy, just as she'd said.

He took a single, slow step forward, until he was close enough to reach out and touch her. He didn't. Not yet.

"Please," he said, and he hated himself a little for how desperate it sounded. "Please, let me stay. Just for a few more minutes. Just for the hour." He didn't care if his voice wavered, or if she could hear the pounding of his heart. He was afraid, yes, but the want was stronger. "Please.” He sounded like a pup crying, weeping and whimpering for just the smallest scrap of affection. He was no more a man than she was an angel. Visually, yes, but in soul, only a hollow husk of what met the eye… but he was almost certain that her innards matched his interpretation of her: tempting, alluring, rewarding, and angelic… to be around, to be inside of.

He heard her swallow. “You may.”

He was trembling, a mixture of want and fear and relief. Relief that she hadn't said, "no," and that he was allowed to stay.

He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do, though. He didn't dare touch her, and yet, every muscle in his body ached to move forward, closer. He'd spent his whole life being denied affection, and it felt like a starving man being invited to a feast.

And so, he feasted.

He dropped to his knees once more, like a beggar in tears, and groped her hips like a man deprived. Her fingers, sharp, almost clawed, dug into soft curls of black velvet. And like a dog, a Hellhound, his jaw fell slack and he mouthed at her sex through thin robes like he might die if he didn’t try for her. He didn’t wait for her permission, or her encouragement. All that mattered was that he be satisfied, and that hopefully, in the process, he could prove himself not only worthy of the Papalship, but worthy of her. This body that Lucifer himself had entrusted to carry out his will, he wanted for his own. He was a selfish manwhore at her feet, but the moment her leg slipped and her cloak parted, his shame was forgotten as he tasted her for the first time.

He groaned, tongue pressing flat against her sex, almost cradling her cunt against the tender muscle as he supped on her intoxicating flavor. He buried his nose against the soft, dark curls of hair that attempted to preserve some kind of coital modesty. They only egged him on further. She smelled of cloves and rosemary and something else similar and distinctly herbal.

She was stone cold, like a statue carved from the finest, purest of marble, but at her core, she was a woman, and he was a man obsessed. He sucked her clit, the tip of his tongue brushing over it, and she moaned. He had drawn that from her. His ministrations, his work, had built and brought that moan just for his venal ears. His mouth opened wide again, and then would come to a near close as he suckled again, sending waves of pleasure like pure electricity through her delicate clit and up her spine.

“You taste like honey,” he said, the words messy, wet, and muffled against her cunt. He pulled away after a moment, breathless. His statement had been a lie. Truthfully, he’d never had honey, but he imagined that there was no flavor sweeter than her essence on his tongue.

She was gasping, hands pressed up against the stone lectern-like structure behind her, and soon, so was her back. Her legs trembled. She had granted numerous soft pleasures to his brothers and family before him, he was sure, but when had she ever received any? When was the last time this sweet fruit had been thoroughly enjoyed?

“Forgive me, for I have sampled your wine without asking,” he said. The words were poetic, metaphorical, and intended to be charming. “But I find that you bear the most potent of alcohol, and is the best of wine not meant for sharing?”

The side of her hood was drawn over her face, concealing her identity still. “I forgive you,” she speaks. “It is a trait your congregation will admire in you; ravenousness, even if directed at the wrong subject.”

“If this is wrong,” he says, “I would prefer to spend my entire career a failure.”

He stood, perhaps swifter than he had meant to, and when his arms slipped around her waist, he buried his face into her shoulder. The noise that left him was broken… something akin to—no, identical to a sob. “Satanas, won’t you let me mean something?” he pleaded. “Won’t you let me do right by you?”

He humped her leg, rubbing his hardening cock against the soft, plush flesh of her thigh. The sensitive skin rubbed dryly against the fabric of his trousers, and it made him cry again. “I spent my entire life in the shadow of someone who’s identical to me,” he grunted. “Let me have the one thing he couldn’t, won’t you? Let me have you. He didn’t have you, did he? I want you,” he said, his words bridging the gap between plea and demand. “I want you more than the papacy. I’d give it all up for you right now, ciliegia. Just say the word. Say the word… and I’ll fuck you like he never could.”

She exhaled shakily, her hand pressing against his chest, pushing back softly. The action was half-hearted, as if trying to make up for the lack of passion and meaning in her words. “It is improper,” she insisted. “I am never to be touched, or to be seen. I am supposed to walk among the congregation, unidentifiable, and you stand here and defile the will of your own blood.”

She was shaming him now, was she? It didn’t matter if it violated every rule the foundation of the Ministry was set upon. He would give her the world… and if she didn’t accept the Heaven he was willing to give her, he would give her Hell.

“I don’t care,” he hissed through gritted teeth, fumbling with the lacing of his pants. He was kind enough, gentle enough, to pause and remove his long coat, pulling her to him to place it under her and push her right back down, cushioning her as he propped her up on the very lectern that was supposed to be grounding her. “I know you need it. I know you want it. I know you’re not weak, and I know you could push me away if you wanted to. But I am more man than monster, for now, I believe… and I will ask you,” he says, gripping her delicate hips with an almost bruising force. He wanted her to speak to him, with no viable escape. “Do you want me?”

Despite her better judgment, and despite her objectively superior intelligence, he felt her hand wrap around his loosened collar. Her voice, so very close to his ear as he buried his nose into her neck, whispered: “Yes.”

He didn’t require much other encouragement. He pushed down the soft, dark fabric of his underwear. Hers were absent; undoubtedly some kind of authenticity precaution taken by the Ministry, one which he was thankful for in this moment. His heated cock against the cool skin of her belly was a contrast so painfully pleasurable. He rested himself there for a moment, as if measuring up to her. Still, even at the crude action, he didn’t look down, didn’t remove his face from her throat.

Perhaps he was self-conscious; an aspect visible even under layers of falsified bravery and carnal desire. “You’re a goddess,” he breathes. “You’re a goddess, and I’m going to worship this body just so.”

His cock slid through soft, wet lips, still dripping with her sweet honey and the remnants of his spit. His head pressed heavily against her entrance, and then with the slightest stretch, he slid inside. The rest went easy, fitting like a glove, like a key into lock and hand into hand. It was an intoxicating feeling—one he had prayed for, and yet, one he hadn’t expected.Truthfully, he could say that this woman was made for him. Confidently, he knew that his body had been created with the primary purpose of filling her.

He grunted as he bottomed out, and she breathed heavily, body clenching around him in a way that, briefly, could have been her body trying to expel him from her pleasurable warmth. Soon, though, that natural protest became an eager welcome.

He began to move then, slowly at first, savoring the exquisite sensation of her silken walls enveloping him. Each thrust sent ripples of pleasure coursing through his body, and he could feel her responding in kind, her hips lifting to meet his, drawing him deeper still. Their voices, for the most part, remained quiet. His songs were for the audience she would soon grant him, but his whispers, his pleas, his tears, were for her ears only.

His hand slid slowly, tenderly up her stomach, cupping her swollen breast and pressing gently. More of her sweet milk dripped, and he ducked his head down to drink from her once more. His tongue lapping at the creamy liquid as it trickled down the soft curve of her breast. He savored the taste, the warmth of her skin beneath his lips, the feeling of her nipple stiffening against his tongue.

As he suckled gently, he could feel her body beginning to tremble beneath him, her inner walls fluttering and clenching around his shaft. He knew she was close, and could sense the building pressure within her as he continued to thrust slowly, deliberately, his hips rolling against hers in a sensual dance.

"Come for me," he whispered against her breast, his voice a sweet murmur. "Let go, my goddess, my ciliegia. I want to feel you, to watch you, to be a part of your ecstasy." He hummed low, his mouth wet and warm against the soft skin of her breast. “I’ll go too, I swear it. I’ll give you my all, just… oh, dolcezza mia, give it to me!” he wept.

Her inner walls clamped down around him, rippling and squeezing his shaft in a vice-like grip as her climax exploded through her. Pleasure detonated in every nerve ending, her entire being consumed by the sheer intensity of her release. Scorching heat flooded her core, and her vision flickered as elation unlike anything she had ever experienced before overwhelmed her. He felt her convulsing beneath him, her precious body undulating in time with her peak. Her cries of euphoria and the slick grip of her silken walls drove him to the brink of insanity, his own release approaching at a breathtaking pace. The exquisite sensation of her coming undone around him was his undoing.

With a feral groan, he thrust deep and hard, burying himself to the hilt inside her spasming sheath as his own orgasm claimed him. Scorching ropes of liquid heat erupted from his shaft, painting her insides with his release. Each pulse of his climax sent jolts of rapture ricocheting through his entire being, prolonging their shared climax. Finally, he was hers. He wiped the saliva from his lower lip, his breaths low, hoarse, a sharp contrast from his usual voice. That voice, the one she had recognized, the one that now belonged to her.

He lifted his head, finally, eyes closed. He wanted to lean down. He wanted to kiss her… but that wasn’t his decision to make, was it? No, not when she was already moving out from underneath him, pulling that forsaken cloak back around her, leaving him there, humiliated and spent, as if he were nothing. The shadows hid her face, but even as her gaze left him, her claim did not.

And like that, he was reduced back to the sobbing, simpering mess he had been just an hour before. He breathed out, lungs trembling beneath fragile ribs. “Come back to me,” he pleaded with her as she left. “Can’t you come back?”

No, longer than that. He couldn’t even place when he had last seen her—really seen her. Not since the night she had hugged him, sudden and brief and too much, too fast. It hadn’t meant anything, he told himself. It had been gratitude, relief, a slip of emotion she probably regretted the moment it happened.

Still, here he was.

Foolish. He felt foolish. Had he expected—what, exactly? That a small, impulsive act of closeness would make her seek him out again? That it had meant something? He knew better than that. He had told himself he did.

But he couldn’t quite stop himself, either.

He rounded another corner, passing a few nuns clustered in muted conversation. One of them, a young, new nun, with her veil slipping slightly from her hair, looked up as he approached. Her eyes widened, wary.

He stopped a respectful distance away and inclined his head slightly. "Sister," he said. His voice was low, even. "I’m looking for Sister Lune. Could you tell me where her room is?"

The young woman hesitated, her hand tightening around the rosary at her waist. There was reluctance in her posture, an inward shrinking, but after a moment she nodded, murmuring the directions quickly, almost as if afraid to be overheard.

He thanked her with a slight bow of his head and moved on, feeling the weight of her nervous glance trailing after him. He didn't blame her. His presence in this part of the abbey wasn’t usual, and he wondered if she knew him at all. His searching wasn't usual, but still, he walked steadily forward, following the whispered directions, the halls narrowing and cooling around him the closer he came.

He found the door easily enough. It was plain, as were the rest of the doors in the hall of quiet, humble rooms, each identical in its austerity. There was no marker, no decoration, nothing to distinguish it as hers.

For a moment, Alessandro just stood there. His hand hovered halfway to knocking, then lowered again. He felt ridiculous. As if the simple act of knocking could summon something he wasn’t ready to face.

He wasn't good at this. He never had been.

Alessandro and conflict were like oil and water—one always slipping past the other, never quite mixing. He could withstand silence. He could take a punch to the gut. But to confront it directly, to ask for something when he didn’t know what answer he wanted…

It set his teeth on edge.

Still, he hadn't come all this way to turn back now.

Alessandro drew in a slow breath, willing the tension out of his shoulders. His knuckles touched the door softly, almost tentative. A second tap followed a little firmer, but still hesitant, as if he was already bracing for the door to stay shut, for her voice to call out a dismissal, for some reminder that he was overstepping.

The hall remained silent.

He waited.

And then, quietly, almost too softly to catch: a shuffle of movement from within.

“Are you decent?” Alessandro called through the door, voice low and careful, as if he feared it might bruise the silence between them.

There was no answer at first, the only response the faint creak of something shifting within, like someone startled into stillness. Then, after a long pause:

“…Yes.”

He opened the door slowly, as though he might still be told to stop.

Afternoon light spilled in through the narrow window, filtered gold through dust. It wasn’t how he’d pictured it—not that he had meant to picture it—but he’d imagined it quieter, emptier. Instead, it was plainly lived-in. Folded clothes near the basin. A cup left near the bed. Books, perhaps borrowed, stacked with care. The edges of her life, arranged with deliberation.

Lune sat on the edge of the bed, still as a bell just after its strike. Her hands were clenched in the folds of her skirt, but it was the way her shoulders twitched that gave her away. She’d flinched, the gesture barely noticeable, but Alessandro had spent too much of his life watching people trying not to be watched.

His brow creased, a silent question passing across his face. He didn’t voice it. He only stood there a moment longer, half-in, half-out of the room, something uncertain coiled in his chest.

Lune’s gaze flicked toward him, then away. Her voice was quiet, dulled by something like fatigue. “I thought you were Antonio.”

The name landed in the space between them like a stone dropped into a basin with no splash, only the quiet weight of it sinking.

He blinked. “Has he…?”

He didn’t finish. He couldn’t. The idea lodged somewhere beneath his ribs.

“No,” she said, after a moment. “Not recently.”

Not recently. That shouldn’t have been reassuring. But she seemed to ease a little in the saying of it, and that, at least, was something.

He exhaled through his nose and crossed the room, his movements careful, almost ceremonial. He pulled the chair out from her desk, its legs scraping gently against the floorboards, and turned it toward her. Then he sat, spine straight but trying to appear at ease, his long fingers threading together in his lap.

It was strange, sitting here. Strange, not being in the library where the rules of their conversation were clearer, where books could be a shield, where their gazes had shelves to rest on. Here, there was only her. And him. And the narrow band of space between.

Lune adjusted her posture slightly, crossing one leg over the other, as if to mirror his ease, but even that felt practiced, uncertain. Then, without thinking, she reached down and tugged at the hem of her habit, drawing it over her ankles with quick, precise fingers. She smoothed the cloth as if trying to erase the gesture.

He watched this, saying nothing, but the silence between them changed shape. He could feel it. She had flinched when he entered. She had covered her ankles, and something about that made him feel suddenly, quietly monstrous.

The silence stretched, soft but insistent. It folded itself around the room like fog around cloister walls, muting everything it touched.

They spoke eventually, in that careful way people do when they don’t know how to speak honestly. She asked him, in a voice too light to be casual, if the archives had kept him busy. He replied that they had. He asked her if her tasks had eased, and she nodded without offering detail. It went on like that for some time, with neither lying, not truly, but neither of them saying anything real.

Alessandro found himself watching the way her hands moved when she tucked a stray thread back into her sleeve. The way she sat up a little straighter every time his eyes caught hers. He could feel something thick in the air between them. Not tension, exactly, but something more worn.

Alessandro shifted slightly in the chair, the old wood groaning under his weight. He glanced down at his hands for a moment, as if surprised to find them still resting in his lap. When he looked back at her, Lune had turned her gaze toward the window. Her profile was outlined faintly in the pale gold of the afternoon sun, and he saw her throat move as she swallowed.

“I had wondered,” he said at last, carefully, “if I had done something to drive you away.”

Her eyes moved, slow and uncertain, but she didn’t meet his. She stared instead at a crack in the far wall.

“No,” she said. The word came quickly, almost reflexive in its nature. Then slower, steadier: “You haven’t.”

He let the silence hang, waiting.

Lune drew in a breath that barely touched her ribs. “I’ve not been myself,” she said. “Not entirely. These past days have been… difficult. I find I have little appetite for company. That is all.”

He tilted his head, studying her. “Yet you seem frightened of it,” he said quietly.

Her eyes flicked to his, startled. “Frightened?”

“I came to your door and you startled like I’d come to beat you,” he said, not cruelly, but not gently either. “That’s not something I think I misread.”

Lune’s lips parted, but for a long moment, no answer came. She looked down, the shadows deepening beneath her lashes. When she spoke again, her voice had changed. It had grown softer, but older somehow. Older than her face, older than her place in this room.

“I thought it might be Antonio,” she said. “He’s been… persistent. Lately.” She paused. “Not at my door, no, but near enough.”

Alessandro’s brow furrowed, but he said nothing. Lune lifted a hand to tuck her hair beneath her veil, though it hadn’t fallen.

“I know I ought to be grateful for his interest,” she continued. “There are many who would envy such a match. And yet…”

She trailed off, eyes lifting again to the corner of the room, as if searching for the end of her thought.

“I’ve never liked being told what ought to feel right,” she said. “It confuses the part of me that knows when something isn’t.”

Alessandro leaned back slightly, the chair creaking again, though he hardly noticed. “And do you know, now?”

Her gaze met his then. There was no trembling in it, no softness. Only the quiet, solemn certainty of someone who had sat with something long enough to know its shape.

“I think I’ve always known,” she said.

The silence returned between them, but it had shifted. It no longer pressed at the walls or waited to be broken. It simply settled, as if it belonged there, like the late sunlight on the floor or the sound of the bells ringing faintly in the distance.

Alessandro did not speak again for some time. When he did, it was little more than a murmur, spoken half to the air and half to her.

“I had missed your voice in the library.”

There was a pause. The weight of that small confession hung between them, suspended, not heavy, but unmistakable.

Lune shifted, her hands folding together over her knee. “I would never try to hurt you,” she said quietly, her tone neither dramatic nor defensive. It was offered simply, like a truth she needed him to believe.

Alessandro turned his head slightly, letting his eyes drift toward the window so she wouldn’t see the way his expression gave him away. That statement, as soft as it was, had landed somewhere deep. Something inside him cinched tighter, as if the threads that held his heart together were being pulled from both ends.

He cleared his throat softly, reaching to tug at the sleeve of his coat, a small, absent motion. “I understand the urge to shut the door,” he said. “To stay in, let the silence do the speaking for you. There’s a kind of comfort in it. But it won’t help you, not in the end.”

Lune nodded, looking down. “I know.”

She paused, her fingers twitching once before settling again. “You don’t usually come to find me. Not here. Not like this.”

There was no accusation in her voice, only observation. Still, something about the way she said it stirred him. It was true. He had kept his distance, until recently. The knowledge that Antonio had crossed that threshold, even just once, pressed sharply at his chest. He didn’t know exactly what it meant, but he resented it nonetheless.

He breathed in through his nose. “Antonio isn’t a foolespite how dull I must seem by comparison.”

That earned a laugh from her. It was quiet but real, unguarded, her hand rising to her mouth too late to catch it. He looked at her again, and for a moment, the heaviness between them eased. He let himself smile faintly.

“He’ll notice what you’re doing soon enough,” he continued. “Then you’ll have no peace at all.”

Lune tilted her head slightly. There was something in her eyes now—not challenge, not quite. It was something gentler. Expectant.

“What is it I’m doing, exactly?” she asked.

Alessandro looked at her, really looked, and then dropped his gaze for a breath. When he lifted it again, he met her eyes without flinching.

“You’re hiding,” he said. “From everything. But especially from me.”

The silence that followed did not hurt. It settled over them like a soft cloth, quiet and necessary. Lune didn’t look away this time. Her mouth turned, just barely, into a smile.

“And you want me to stop,” she said.

“I want you in the library,” he replied. His voice was quieter now. “With me.”

Lune’s smile grew, not wide but warm, and her expression changed—less weary, more certain.

“I’ll see you tonight,” she said.

He watched her for a moment longer, the lines of her face softened by the afternoon light, her eyes calm now in a way that unsettled him more than any sorrow. A quiet thought passed through him—brief, uninvited, but potent. The way she said it made it sound like a promise. And for the first time in days, Alessandro felt like something might be beginning again.

…

The corridor outside the library stretched in dusky silence, the stone underfoot still holding the heat of the day. The air had begun to shift, though, thinned and cooled by the coming evening. The cool seaside air moved softly through the high windows, stirring the edges of old banners and catching in the folds of Bernardo’s robe. He stood half-obscured beside one of the columns, hands resting behind his back, posture patient, still. Not idle. Never idle. He had chosen this place deliberately—near the hallway that led to the library, but far enough removed to appear incidental, as though he might have simply wandered here by chance. There was a skill in that kind of waiting which Bernardo had perfected over the years.

He had been told she would come. Not by Antonio directly—his brother had merely spoken in passing to Matteo, dropping Lune’s name like a coin on the floor, not caring if it was picked up. And of course, Matteo had spoken. He always did. Bernardo hadn’t even needed to ask directly. Matteo had offered the information with that eagerness particular to young men desperate to matter, the kind of boys who mistake being listened to for being important. Bernardo had once been like that. Too eager to please, too loose with what should have been kept. There was something sad and sharp in the memory. He did not pity Matteo for it, but he understood him.

He heard her footsteps echoing through the corridor before he saw her.  She wasn’t trying to be quiet, but she wasn’t walking as someone who wanted to be noticed, either. Her figure appeared slowly in the distance, limned in the grey-blue light of the hour before vespers. She had her head bowed, not in sorrow, but in thought. She was heading toward the library like a pilgrim approaching a shrine.

“Lune,” he said, gently, just loud enough to reach her.

She stopped mid-step, her body tensing before she turned. Her face showed no alarm, but it took her half a breath to summon the expression she needed. She dipped her head in the shape of a greeting, measured and practiced.

“Cardinale Bernardo,” she said. Her voice was calm but distant. “Good evening.”

He stepped forward slightly, out of the shadows, wearing a smile carefully curated to seem effortless. “Out for a walk?”

She hesitated, then replied, “To the library.”

He nodded, as though this surprised him only a little. “Ah. That makes sense. I thought I’d been seeing you less, but perhaps I’ve just been looking in the wrong places.” He’d seen her, yes, but never quite spoken to her. He’d never had the need to until just now.

She didn’t answer, though he watched the way her hands folded themselves more tightly beneath her sleeves. Her composure was neat, as ever, but it was the neatness of something pressed and folded too many times. A gesture of control rather than peace.

“I’d heard as much, to be honest,” he said, as though continuing a thought. “Antonio mentioned something to Matteo about it. I suppose curiosity got the better of me.”

If her body stiffened at Antonio’s name, she masked it well. But Bernardo saw the stillness that followed it, the breath she didn’t quite take.

“Matteo speaks freely,” he went on, softer now. “It isn’t difficult, getting words out of him. He wants so badly to be liked. To be useful.” A pause. “I remember what that feels like.” He was sharing with her, and she seemed confused by it.

He looked past her then, to a point on the far wall, his expression unreadable. It was something quieter than confession or regret, as if he were simply a man recalling his own shape through the behavior of another.

“I used to talk too much,” he said. “Trying to please. Trying to prove I deserved to be listened to.”

She said nothing, though her eyes remained on him. Bernardo was not like his brothers, but then again, it seemed like none of them were meeting expectations these days. His voice was gentler than Antonio’s, his movements less striking than Alessandro’s, but he was no less careful. He wielded quiet like other men wielded power.

“I was glad to hear it, though,” he said at last, returning his gaze to her. “That you were going again. I think the library suits you.”

Something flickered across her expression then in some sort of grateful suspicion, but some of the tension unwound from her arms, and her hands settled more loosely at her sides.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice low but sincere.

“And Alessandro?” Bernardo asked, the name offered as lightly as a passing thought. “He doesn’t mind the company?”

It was a small question that could be brushed aside, but the weight of it was carefully calibrated, like a hand laid gently over the pulse.

Lune's eyes didn’t shift, but there was a stillness in her now that hadn’t been there a moment before. She didn’t bristle, didn’t step away, but something behind her gaze drew inward, as though she were retreating a single step inward rather than out. The question itself was harmless on the surface. Casual, even, but it had reached into a space where she had not expected to be touched.

“He’s never minded,” she said after a pause. Her voice was steady, but the edge of quiet deliberation in it suggested she was measuring each word. “Not when it’s quiet. Not when there’s work to be done.”

Bernardo nodded slowly, as if that answer satisfied something in him, though it was hard to tell what. He had always possessed the kind of demeanor that made people feel he knew more than he let on, because often, he did. Still, he let the subject rest there, not pressing further. He seemed content to let silence rise again between them, letting her wonder if she had said too much or exactly enough.

“It’s good,” he said after a moment, softly, “to have a place to retreat to. Even if it’s just for a little while.” His words hung in the air a moment longer, gentler than Antonio’s would have been, less loaded than Alessandro’s, but not without weight. Bernardo never said anything by accident, but this was perhaps the closest to normal, aimless conversation she had been to in some time.

Bernardo gave the faintest smile, that quiet, unreadable kind that never quite reached the corners of his mouth but softened his features just enough. Lune hesitated under the stillness that followed, not because she feared his reaction but because something about him made her feel like she was being watched from beneath calm water.

Still, something eased in her posture. The silence between them wasn’t hostile. Just… unfamiliar.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, then blinked, her brow drawing in. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded—only that I haven’t seen you around this part of the abbey much before.”

Her voice, uncertain at first, steadied as she spoke. She was curious, genuinely. Bernardo had always been an elusive presence, someone more often spoken of than spoken to. Of all three brothers she had been acquainted with, he was the one who gave her the least reason to be wary, and the least reason to feel like she understood him.

Bernardo didn’t appear offended. If anything, her question seemed to amuse him, though his expression remained mild.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “I don’t come here often.”

He looked past her briefly, down the hall she’d come from, then back again. “But I’ve found it… instructive lately. How people move. Where they go. What patterns form when they think no one is watching.”

Lune frowned slightly, not sure if that answer was meant to be philosophical or pointed. But there was no edge in his voice, only that quiet steadiness, as if he were remarking on weather or dust.

“And now you’re watching me?” she asked, a little lighter this time, not quite teasing, but not defensive either.

Bernardo’s gaze didn’t shift. “I wouldn’t say watching,” he said slowly. “Just noticing. I’ve always thought people deserved to be noticed. Especially when they begin changing their steps.”

There was a long pause between them, though it didn’t settle uncomfortably. Lune looked down briefly, then back up at him.

“I didn’t mean to change them,” she said. “I’ve just… been tired.”

“I believe you,” he said, and to her surprise, she did believe that he meant it. “I only wondered. But I won’t keep you.”

She nodded, unsure why she suddenly felt so tired again, as if a weight she hadn’t realized she was carrying had just shifted. Still, something about the exchange had settled her. Bernardo was easier to speak to than she’d thought—quieter, less invasive.

Bernardo did not leave right away.

His gaze lingered, though not in the way Antonio’s might have—a pressing weight, all expectation and assertion. No, Bernardo’s presence was lighter, more careful, but no less intentional.

“And Alessandro?” he asked, the words folded gently into the quiet between them. “You seem… at ease with him.”

Lune turned her head slightly, not enough to meet his eyes, but enough to register the shift. Her hands folded together at her waist, her fingers curling around each other, a habit born of reflex more than discomfort. Still, she hesitated.

“We know each other,” she said. “From the library.”

A beat passed. She heard her own voice, how distant it sounded, how neatly she had tucked the truth inside it. Bernardo did not interrupt.

“I’ve never had reason to fear him,” she added. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

“I wasn’t,” he said. “Not quite.”

The air between them shifted again, less curious now, more attentive. Bernardo had a way of peeling back the edges of conversation without making it feel like an intrusion. It was something about his patience, the way he left silence open for a fuller answer.

Lune’s brow furrowed faintly, and she drew a slow breath.

“He’s kind to me,” she said, at last. “In ways that don’t ask for anything.”

That admission felt dangerous once spoken, as if it had named something she wasn’t yet ready to see clearly. She glanced down the hall, toward the library, as if the thought of him might summon him there.

Bernardo’s expression didn’t shift. His voice remained quiet, level.

“That’s rare,” he said. “Especially here.”

Lune nodded, but didn’t respond. Her eyes stayed on the floor for a moment longer, then lifted again, searching his face.

“Why are you asking me this?” she said, more cautious now. “I mean no disrespect, but surely you know him better than I do.”

“I’ve never seen you with him before,” he replied, without accusation. “It’s different when things are spoken aloud. Different when others begin to notice.”

She stiffened at that, barely, and he saw it. But she held his gaze.

“There’s nothing to notice,” she said carefully.

Bernardo offered a faint smile, polite and unbothered.

“If you say so.”

He stepped back then, not far, just enough to make room for her to move past. But his eyes didn’t leave her.

“I’ll see you around, Lune.”

She gave him a nod, quiet, unreadable, then turned toward the library, her pace steady, her thoughts anything but.

Bernardo watched her go, her figure retreating into the dim stretch of corridor, the sound of her steps growing softer until the heavy door of the library opened and closed behind her. He stood there a moment longer, as if weighing something invisible in his hands. Then he turned. His pace was unhurried, every movement still smooth, composed, even idle, but as soon as the hallway bent and she was no longer in sight, something shifted in him.

His shoulders, once loose with practiced ease, drew tighter, the line of his jaw set. His gaze was now fixed ahead, sharp and searching. There was no one to perform for now, no need for gentleness. The quiet, distant worry he had kept folded neatly behind his eyes began to surface, thin and cold.

He walked faster. Not quickly enough to seem unnatural, but enough to betray that whatever calm he had shown her had been just that, and beneath it, something urgent stirred. Against his better judgement, he turned back, pressing himself against the not-yet-closed door, and peeked inside.

…

The library was hushed as always, steeped in the solemn stillness that clung to its high arches and stone walls like a second air. The scent of parchment and resin lingered thickly, a comforting balm that softened the edges of the day as it faded into the night. Lune stepped across the threshold and paused, letting the hush settle over her. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim, amber glow cast by the sconces along the walls, their flames flickering faintly behind the glass. Shadows stretched gently across the hardwood, long and reverent.

She let her gaze drift over the rows of tall shelves, each one solemn and still, guardians of centuries-old texts whose cracked leather bindings she knew as well as the lines of her own hands. She had passed countless hours in this place, yet tonight, something about it felt altered—less like a room, more like a memory slowly stirring awake.

And then she saw him.

Alessandro stood near the far end of the room, his back angled toward her, the dark folds of his coat falling still. His head was slightly bowed as he examined the row before him, one hand resting lightly against the wood as though steadying a thought. He had not noticed her. Or perhaps he had, and chose not to show it. Lune couldn’t tell. That peculiar weight she’d been carrying all afternoon—the one stirred up by Bernardo’s voice and the things left unsaid between them—loosened slightly. It was not gone, but it was quieter now. She moved forward, slowly, careful not to let her steps echo too loudly.

Alessandro’s eyes lifted the moment she drew near. Whatever flicker of surprise passed through them was quickly subdued by something steadier. Almost warm. Familiar.

“Evening,” he said, his voice low but clear, as though speaking through the quiet rather than over it.

“Evening,” she answered. It felt strange to say it aloud, to address him like that after so many days—weeks, perhaps—of near silence. Not just silence of words, but of presence, of attention. And yet the syllables fell easily from her tongue.

Without needing to speak again, they began to walk. She matched his pace as if they had done so a hundred times, which, in truth, they nearly had. They made no plan, named no purpose. There were no bindings to repair tonight, no paper to press flat, no threads to knot with resin-stained fingertips. For once, their hands were clean and idle. They wandered the rows with unhurried steps, their breath mingling with the musty scent of vellum and oil-soaked wood. Every so often, one of them would pause to read a title aloud, or recall some half-forgotten note scribbled in the margins of a book long tucked away.

At first, it was stilted. Lune’s remarks came a touch too slowly, as though summoned from far off. Alessandro’s replies felt measured, precise—as if each word were being weighed before it left his mouth. They spoke the way one might test a frozen pond in early winter, uncertain of the ice’s strength. But the words came. And after a time, they no longer felt like something they had to coax.

“I’m fairly certain this one is cursed,” Lune said, pausing before a narrow shelf and tapping the spine of a worn theological tract whose binding had once split open in her lap with a groan loud enough to startle the honorary sacristan.

Alessandro looked over with a faint smile. “It’s not cursed,” he said, brushing a hand along the shelf beside it. “It simply resents being disturbed.”

“Same thing, really.”

He glanced at her sidelong, the curve of his mouth deepening. “You’ve always had such a charitable view of church scholarship.”

“Says the man who nearly set fire to a scroll and then acted as though nothing had happened.”

He gave a soft snort, turning his eyes back to the shelves. “I didn’t act. I simply... declined to panic.”

She laughed then, and the sound slipped out more freely than she expected, bright and clear in the dim library air. Almost too loud. She pressed her fingers to her mouth, as though she might gather it back, but her eyes were bright with amusement.

Alessandro didn’t laugh, not exactly, but his smile lingered longer now. Softer. More certain. “It’s good,” he said after a moment, “to have you here.”

She didn’t answer right away. Her gaze drifted along the shelves again, following the worn gilding on the spines, some of it half-flaked away by years of handling and heat. She saw familiar titles, familiar wear, and yet something in the room felt freshly drawn—as if the space between them had been cleaned, not erased but cleared of dust.

“I think I missed it,” she said at last.

He looked at her. “What—me, or the books?”

“I’m still deciding,” she replied, her voice light but not evasive. After a moment, more quietly, she added, “But I missed this.”

He nodded once, not in agreement but in acknowledgment, as if to say he had missed it too, though he would not speak it aloud.

And so they walked again, slower now. The silence that fell between them was not the strained hush of things left unspoken, but something fuller. It was the kind of quiet that fills a church after prayer, or a chamber after music has ended—soft, echoing, inhabited. The library, long accustomed to the weight of their presence, seemed to breathe more easily for it, as if it had been holding its own breath and could now, at last, let it go.

They wandered like that for a time, circling old shelves that knew their shadows well, the amber lamplight catching in the uneven glass of cabinet doors and glinting off the soft wear of book spines. Their words were quiet, but they came more easily now. Banter bloomed in the softened space between them, small and unhurried.

“You were always drawn to the dullest ones,” she said, nudging a volume of ecclesiastical law with the back of her knuckle.

Alessandro tilted his head. “Not dull. Foundational.”

Lune gave him a look. “Foundational is a very dignified word for unreadable.”

He reached above her to pull a slim book from a higher shelf and handed it to her. “Then here. Something less virtuous.”

She took it and turned it in her hands, raising a brow as she read the title. A Treatise on Gramarye. “This is worse.”

“I said less virtuous, not less tedious.”

They both smiled, and the quiet that followed was touched with something lighter, something that hummed beneath the surface. They moved on. The air had lost some of its caution, like the closing of a long-watched door. There were still silences, but they no longer pressed so hard. They breathed inside them.

Then, as they turned the corner between two rows, something shifted. Alessandro slowed. He glanced at her, not directly, but from the corner of his eye, as though gauging her posture before shaping the words.

“You saw Lucia,” he said. A thought spoken aloud, carried gently into the space between them.

Lune’s steps faltered, only briefly. She looked ahead to the far end of the aisle, where the shelves deepened into shadow. Her fingers brushed the edge of a binding as she passed. “Yes,” she said, and left it there at first, the single word not clipped, but careful.

Alessandro didn’t press. He waited, silent but present beside her. It was the kind of silence that invited rather than demanded. She felt it all the way down to the bones of her fingers.

“It was…” she began, then stopped, adjusting the weight of the book in her arms as though it might help settle the thoughts rising too quickly. “It was strange.”

“It was strange,” Lune said again, quieter this time, like she was testing the shape of the word. She didn’t look at Alessandro. Her gaze was fixed ahead, down the long row of shelves where the sconce light faded into soft dark. The diary weighed on her more than the book she held, though it wasn’t in her hands, but tucked away somewhere safe. Tucked out of sight, but not out of reach.

She stopped at the end of the aisle and turned slightly toward him, her voice no louder than the rustle of her robes. “I didn’t expect to recognize it when she handed it to me. I thought maybe she would’ve destroyed it, or kept it as leverage—for what, I don’t know. But she gave it back.”

Alessandro said nothing. He leaned lightly against the shelf across from her, arms crossed, not defensive, but watchful. She felt the weight of his silence more than his gaze.

“She marked some of the pages,” Lune added. “But I don’t suppose she found much interest in them. Perhaps she wanted me to.”

He looked at her then, his brow faintly drawn, as if to say he wasn’t surprised.

Lune offered a slight, tired smile. She turned the book in her hands again, slow, rhythmic. “She wanted me to know she’d been there. That she’d seen things I’d never meant anyone to see. And maybe she wanted me to feel... grateful. That she gave it back.”

“And do you?” Alessandro asked quietly.

Lune hesitated. “I don’t know. Part of me thinks I should. The other part—” her voice thinned for a moment, “The other part is still reading through those pages wondering how much of it isn’t mine anymore.”

Alessandro’s expression shifted, just faintly. There was something restrained behind his eyes, like the thought of anyone else holding that diary—even Lucia—scraped against something inside him. But he didn’t speak on it.

“I’ll be careful now,” Lune went on, her fingers curling lightly along the spine of the book she carried. “Not to write too quickly. Not to linger too long in anything that might give me away.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Give you away to who?”

“To myself,” she said. “Mostly.”

He didn’t smile, but his posture eased, like something in her honesty had touched a place of understanding in him.

Then he noticed that small, involuntary tremble in her hand again. It was so subtle that another might have missed it. Her thumb pressing harder against the binding. The slight sway in her stance, as if holding herself too upright for too long had begun to wear.

He reached toward her with an unspoken offer. His fingers found her wrist, gently closing around it—not to still her, but to remind her she wasn’t alone.

Lune glanced up. Her eyes met his, and something in them wavered—not weakness, but weariness, held with dignity. She didn’t pull away.

Slowly, Alessandro’s hand shifted. His fingers brushed against hers, tentative, before settling between them. She let him. Let their hands fit together without ceremony, without explanation.

For a while, neither of them moved. The books around them stood like quiet witnesses, their worn spines and faded lettering untouched by the small gravity forming between two people who had spent so long circling the edge of understanding.

“You’re not alone in this,” he said, after a long pause. His voice was low, the kind of low meant only for her. “Not anymore.”

She nodded once, her grip tightening just slightly, and for a moment, Lune allowed herself to believe it.

They stood like that in the hush, their hands loosely joined, neither pulling away. Around them, the shadows grew longer, softened by the low amber light, the scent of warmed vellum and dust thick in the air. Time shifted oddly in the quiet, stretching, curling in on itself. Perhaps it was only seconds, or perhaps it had been longer. The moment held, suspended in that fragile stillness between breath and decision.

Alessandro's eyes lingered on hers, searching not for answers, but for something quieter, more essential. And Lune, without meaning to, stepped the smallest measure closer. Her fingers had relaxed in his, the shape of their hands no longer uncertain. Something flickered between them, not quite spoken, but it was there, forming like a tide pulling inward.

She tilted her head, just enough. He shifted his weight. The space between them—already narrow—drew tighter, and neither moved to fill it completely, not yet, but the air had changed. Something unspoken leaned forward, reached out, hungry and almost sure.

And then—

“Alessandro!”

The sound cracked through the hush like a pebble dropped in still water.

Both turned. Matteo stood in the threshold at the edge of the aisle, flushed from the cold or perhaps from the way his voice had echoed louder than intended.

“Sorry,” he said quickly, glancing between them, already aware he had interrupted something not meant to be broken. He rubbed the back of his neck, awkward and too young for the gravity in the air. “Bernardo sent me. He wants to see you.”

Alessandro’s expression shifted in an instant, composure gathering over whatever had nearly broken the surface. His hand slipped from Lune’s, not roughly, but with a restraint that felt like regret. He nodded once toward Matteo, his jaw tightening just slightly.

“I’ll come,” he said.

Matteo gave a quick, uncertain nod and turned, disappearing as quickly as he had come.

Alessandro didn’t look at Lune right away. When he did, the warmth was still there, but it had drawn inward, quiet again.

“Wait here?” he asked.

She hesitated, then gave a small nod. Her hand felt cold without his, but she let it fall to her side.

He moved to the far corner.

The air smelled sharp and expensive—cologne layered upon cologne, failing to mask the undertone of old wine and wax-drenched candles. Everything had been placed, not lived in. Nothing lingered long enough to feel real.

Alessandro stood and said nothing. He didn’t pace. He didn’t fidget. He simply watched the door.

Time passed in unmeasured increments—long enough for the silence to grow dense, for the seams in the wood paneling to sharpen beneath the eye, for the sounds of the abbey beyond to fade into nothing. Stillness pressed in like fog.

And then, a shift.

A rhythm of polished, pointed shoes on stone—distant, deliberate. Each step drew nearer until they paused just outside the door. The handle turned. Antonio stepped inside, half-shouldered in shadow, unconcerned, unknowing. He exhaled softly, began unfastening his gloves—the leather sliding off with a muted hiss. He didn’t look around. He didn’t need to. This was his space, after all, and he belonged in it.

The gloves landed on the desk with a soft slap. The belt followed. He moved with the languid ease of someone retreating from the weight of his own performance. Shoes off. Cufflinks removed. Collars tugged. He shrugged the overshirt from his shoulders, careless now, and tossed it toward the far corner.

But it didn’t land.

There was no rustle of fabric, no soft fall against the rug.

Antonio’s body froze mid-motion, spine half-curved. He blinked—once, twice—something unfamiliar tightening at the base of his throat.

He turned.

Only then did he see the figure in the corner. It was silent, still. Alessandro, half-shadow, half-statue, held the garment in one hand as though it had interrupted him. Not aggressive. Not cruel. Just… there. Present.

Antonio’s chest felt constricted.

A sour heat rose in his gut, and the world tilted slightly, like a wrong note struck on a well-tuned instrument, a discordant and disorienting feeling. His fingers curled slowly inward. His breath caught. And for the first time in years, Antonio flinched.

Alessandro tilted his head like a hound catching the scent of something long familiar and long detested. The gesture was deliberate, almost curious, yet beneath his stillness there was a quiet threat in the slow turn of his chin, in the force of his gaze. Not a question. Not even a statement. A warning, perhaps. Or a dare.

Then, with a flick of his fingers, he let the shirt fall.

It crumpled to the floor without a sound. A small, final gesture that might have gone unnoticed anywhere else, but here, in the tension of this room, it struck like a bell. The motion wasn’t violent. It wasn’t theatrical. It was measured and dispassionate, as though the fabric had been sullied by touch alone.

Antonio stared as it landed, watching the sleeve fold in on itself like something dead. His throat twitched. He straightened with a poise that belonged more in courtrooms than bedrooms. His eyes flicked between the shirt, the door, and the shadowed corner Alessandro had claimed like a long-delayed judgment.

He tried to breathe with dignity. Tried not to let it show.

“…Alessandro,” he said, his voice thin and even. There was no softness to it, no intimacy, not even the illusion of brotherhood. It was the greeting of a man unsure of his rank, whose crown felt a shade too heavy in the wrong room.

Still, he offered the name like a lifeline. As if saying it first might restore order. As if it could cast Alessandro back into the lesser shadow where he was expected to remain. Acknowledging him not for who he was, but for what he was supposed to be.

But Alessandro didn’t answer.

In the silence between them, something sour curled up Antonio’s ribs and settled tight beneath his sternum like rot.

Alessandro let the quiet stretch. His gaze narrowed, and the corners of his mouth twitched in a humorless flick of a smile. It wasn’t kindness. It wasn’t mockery. It was colder, drier, like a blade being shown but not drawn. A gesture that said: I know what you are.

“Nice room,” he murmured at last, voice low and slivered at the edge. His eyes roamed briefly over the furnishings, the chair by the hearth, the untouched glass of water on the mantle. He hadn’t been in this room in some time, and he allowed himself to look. “Smells like entitlement.”

Antonio didn’t laugh.

He stood still for a moment, then wet his lips. “What do you want?”

The question dropped without force. There was uncertainty in it, a faint fray in the thread of his composure. He shifted his weight just enough to settle back on his heels. A subtle illusion of calm, though something primal beneath his skin whispered caution.

Alessandro didn’t answer right away. He tilted his head thoughtfully in the other direction now, appraising,

His boots moved softly over the floor, muffled by the woven runner as he closed the distance by a pace or two. Just enough.

“You’ve been somewhere you shouldn’t be,” he said. His voice was quiet, but the weight behind it was undeniable. Not quite an accusation, but close. The edges gleamed with something sharper.

Antonio blinked. His mouth opened, then closed again. His brow furrowed. His gaze flicked past Alessandro’s shoulder for a moment in an unconscious glance, as if hoping someone else might appear to clarify this encounter.

“I don’t…” he began, then stopped. He tried again, steadier but no less uncertain. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But his voice cracked at the end.

Alessandro’s gaze flicked downward and caught it like a scent.

He stepped forward again, slow and patient, like a hunter waiting to see if the animal would bolt.

Antonio’s hands twitched. His thumb brushed nervously along the seam of his trousers. He swallowed, the gesture loud in the stillness.

He was used to being feared. Used to giving orders, not answering for them. But here, with the door shut and shadows crawling long across the floor, his usual mask failed him.

There was something in Alessandro’s stillness that made the walls feel closer… something in his careful pacing that thickened the air. A truth began to press at the back of Antonio’s mind, unformed, prowling, and just out of reach. It would not be reasoned with. It would not be charmed away.

No, his brother had never fallen for charm. Perhaps he had found it sickening from the start.

Still, Antonio would not abandon his sharpest weapon. Not now.

He circled slowly to the side, hands clasped loosely behind his back, jaw tight with calculation.

“I’m still not sure what this is,” he said, keeping his tone casual. If tension remained, he wore it well. “Did something happen? Or are you just in one of your… moods?”

Alessandro didn’t move.

His hands stayed loose at his sides, but his sharp eyes steadily followed Antonio’s every inch, like a bow drawn taut.

Antonio kept circling, slow and deliberate. “Because if someone’s upset about something, well…” He shrugged, tone slipping toward mockery. “That doesn’t really concern us, does it?”

An offer of alliance. An us where there had never been one.

Alessandro didn’t take the bait, but his mouth twitched: the first sign that the cool surface was bending beneath something deeper.

He let the silence stretch a beat longer.

Then:

“My… friend,” he said, swallowing once, “is missing something. She’s awfully worried about it.”

Antonio halted.

This time, he didn’t flinch, but his posture shifted just barely. A subtle tightening through the shoulders. A slow blink, like recalibrating.

“And what business is that of yours?” he asked finally, voice lowered and cautious, though his tone aimed for dismissiveness. “Or mine? People lose things all the time, brother. It’s part of life.”

The words were out before he’d weighed them. They echoed through the room, and something flickered in Alessandro. Not a roar, but a shift in the air, like the moment before a storm breaks.

His expression barely changed.

But he moved.

One long, quick step forward. His hand shot up, gripping the front of Antonio’s shirt, fingers twisting in the fine fabric at the collarbone.

Antonio stumbled half a step back, spine tapping the edge of the desk. His hands rose, palms outward. He didn’t speak.

Not yet.

His mouth was open, but his eyes were wide and glassy, like that of  a child caught in the act.

Alessandro didn’t strike. Didn’t raise his voice.

He leaned in, grip tightening just enough to crumple the illusion of composure.

“You don’t get to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” he murmured, low and taut. “Not when you’ve gone crawling through places you don’t belong.”

Antonio’s breath came shallow, and for one flicker of a second—just one—there was fear in his eyes, but it soon passed.

He smiled slow and thin, like a blade drawn from silk.

“Oh,” he whispered. “It’s her.”

The word hung like poison.

Alessandro’s eyes narrowed. For half a heartbeat, heat surged behind them, but he smothered it.

His grip loosened. His hand fell back to his side, as if he hadn’t just cornered the golden boy of the household, but the room did not cool.

Antonio exhaled, brushing the wrinkles from his shirt with exaggerated care. He straightened, suppressing the grin that threatened.

Antonio took another measured step backward, his hands raised slightly, palms half-turned, the gesture caught somewhere between appeasement and mockery. Like a courtier before a duel, smile flickering, eyes fixed on the man who just might draw steel first.

“Careful,” he murmured, voice low, nearly amused. “You’re acting like I’ve done something awful. You would think she wasn’t used to having me in her bedroom… makes me wonder what she told you, dear.”

He stopped just beside the armchair by the hearth, fingers brushing against the back of it as though casually anchoring himself to the room. But he was retreating. No matter how slow the pace or languid the posture, he was giving ground, and he knew it.

His chin tipped upward with a mock gallantry, a twisted courtesy woven into the narrowing of his eyes.

“So,” he said, “why are you so… invested, brother? Since when does a misplaced diary merit a personal crusade?”

Alessandro didn’t answer right away. His hands were still loose at his sides, but his shoulders looked heavier than they had moments ago, tense and pulled back, as if holding too much weight. His mouth set into a line so straight it could have cut glass.

He tilted his head the barest degree. His voice, when it came, was flat and stripped of pretense.

“I don’t like seeing anyone’s hands where they don’t belong,” he said. “Especially in a woman’s private things. It’s cheap. Cowardly. And cruel.” But they both knew that although Alessandro had some kind of strength in his character, he had never been the type to go about in ominous silence with drawn fists for the sake of defending some niche moral pillar of his.

Antonio’s brows lifted at that. Not dramatically, just enough to mark the performance.

“Very noble,” he said, voice mild and honeyed, though the undertone was vinegar. “Gallant, even. You’d think she was some helpless maiden, trembling in need of rescue. Or perhaps…” He let the word hang there, curling faintly. “Something more.”

He watched for a flicker in Alessandro’s expression, some proof of fire beneath the ice. But there was nothing.

Alessandro simply stood there, quiet and motionless, as though carved from some ancient stone that had long since grown tired.

Antonio clicked his tongue softly and gave a small, almost sympathetic shake of his head.

“Anyway,” he said with a mild shrug, “I didn’t take it.”

That earned him a silence sharper than words.

He sighed, a little theatrically. He stepped around the chair and leaned his weight against the mantel, posture calculated to seem effortless.

“It was her,” he said, going silent afterwards as if the name itself required no clarification. After a pause: “Lucia.”

A moment passed. He glanced toward Alessandro now, as though offering him some small, poisoned gift. “She came in this morning while I was gone. I didn’t think anything of it. I left the ring, but I assume she took the rest.”

He paused, watching.

“I didn’t ask.”

Alessandro didn’t speak. But something shifted in his jaw, a single muscle ticking like the edge of a clock counting down. His expression didn’t change, yet the quiet around him did, hardening like frost on a pane of glass.

Antonio leaned slightly forward, as though confiding something.

“She didn’t say what she was looking for, of course. She never does. But when she left, she looked pleased with herself.”

A smile tugged faintly at the edge of his mouth. “You can imagine how rare that is.”

He tilted his head, faux-innocent.

“Still think I’m the one you ought to be threatening?” He asked. “You ought to go speak to mother dearest.”

…

The corridor seemed to recoil as Alessandro stormed through it, his boots hammering against the old stone like war drums. Shadows flinched away from him. Candle flames hissed in their sconces as he passed, guttering in his wake. The quiet reverence of the abbey’s halls was shattered, and there was no grace remaining in his movement, no apology in the way his shoulder caught the edge of a hanging tapestry and tore it sideways.

When he reached the library, he didn’t pause.

The door slammed open with a sharp, echoing crack that startled the dust from the upper rafters. The air inside, normally settled and cool, rippled as if the storm had followed him in. Somewhere high above, the stir of displaced air whooshed, like whispers pulled suddenly from the corners. The scent of ink and glue grew sharper, tinged with something metallic, something old. The soul of the place, if it was still there, had gone still, listening. Or recoiling.

Lune looked up so fast her chair rocked beneath her. She had been seated in the far alcove, the late afternoon light carving soft gold against her pale sleeves. A book lay open before her, unread. Her hands trembled faintly where they rested on the table’s edge, fingers white at the knuckles. She was still dressed in the plain tones of her station, but there was nothing calm in her presence now. There was only the brittle tension of someone waiting for a verdict.

Relief flickered through her eyes when she saw him. Not complete, not safe—just a flicker. A single breath that didn’t catch.

“Where did you go?” she asked, voice taut but careful. “You didn’t say—”

He strode past the first row of shelves without slowing. His coat caught on the corner of a chair, and he shook it off like a nettle. “Antonio’s rooms,” he said curtly. His voice was flat, the kind that carved instead of answered. “Charming as ever.”

Lune pushed to her feet. “You didn’t have to—”

“Didn’t I?” he cut in. His eyes found her then, glinting and weary, but too sharp to be tired. “You sent me after something. You looked at me like it mattered. Like it wasn’t a game.”

Her mouth parted in protest, but he kept speaking.

He dragged his hands back through his hair. It stuck up wildly, untamed. “I cornered him like some hound—and for what? For a diary. That might not have even been taken.”

She flinched, but didn’t retreat. “I didn’t know what else to do. You—you said—”

“I said I’d help.” He stopped, chest heaving once, but his voice dropped lower. “Not chase phantoms.”

“Well, I figured that was typical for you!”

Silence, then. It pressed close. Outside, the bells tolled softly for the hour, distant and unfelt.

Finally, Lune’s eyes searched his face. “You think I did this to waste your time?”

“I think,” Alessandro said, stepping closer, “that I have no idea what game we’re playing anymore. You give me puzzles with no solutions. You vanish behind apologies and silence. And you looked me in the eye this morning like it meant something.”

“It did,” she whispered.

He stopped.

The storm paused.

And for one breathless second, they just looked at each other: two figures thrown together in the quiet rot of a place that had forgotten how to be sacred.

Lune blinked. Her lashes lowered, not in guilt but in something heavier. Something that threatened to fold her in on herself. She didn’t look away, but her voice came quiet, barely above the hush of the room settling. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t send you after him to mock you.”

A silence stretched between them, long and taut.

Alessandro’s gaze didn’t soften. His arms were stiff at his sides, hands curled into half-fists as if the tension had nowhere else to go. He was breathing harder now, not like someone enraged, but someone bracing against a blow that had already landed.

Lune watched him closely. Her sadness deepened as she studied him, not because of what he’d said, but because of what he hadn’t yet. She could see it crackling just beneath his skin, somewhere between hurt and shame.

And then he said it.

“Do you find it amusing?” he asked, voice low and raw, his eyes flashing with a bitterness she hadn’t seen before. “Making me run around like some kind of… some kind of cuckold?”

The word dropped like iron in a baptismal font. Out of place, unholy, irretrievable.

Lune gasped. Her eyes flew wide, mouth parted in shock, but no sound followed: only the echo of the accusation, still ringing through the room. She took a step back, breath stuttering in her throat. She was offended, angry… did he truly, really think of her in such a way?

He thought—God, he thought—

“You believe I’m with him?” she asked, her voice barely formed. “With Antonio?”

He didn’t answer.

And that said everything.

The pain on her face was not just surprise, but a kind of betrayal. A devastation she hadn’t known to prepare for. Her spine stayed straight, but her hands trembled. One clutched at her skirt, and the other remained over her chest, as if shielding herself from something.

Alessandro turned his head slightly, as if he couldn’t quite bear the full weight of her expression, but the damage was already done.

“I went to him,” he said, quieter now, but still sharp, like a blade dulled at the edges but still capable of cutting. “I stormed into his room like a fool. Demanded answers, accused him of things I wasn’t even certain of. And he…” A bitter laugh scraped from his throat. “He didn’t even need to lie. He just stood there and watched me come apart. Like he knew. Like it was all some private joke between the two of you.”

Lune’s brows drew together. “It isn’t. Alessandro, there is nothing between us. There never was.”

His eyes flicked back to hers. “You’re sure of that?”

It was a challenge. A test. And it cut her far deeper than it had any right to.

She straightened, not out of anger, but clarity.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice did not waver this time. “I would sooner walk into the sea.”

For a moment, there was nothing but their breathing. Hers was quick and shallow. His came slower now, as if the rage had spent itself in the admission, leaving only the bruised ache behind.

“I thought—” he started, but stopped himself, shaking his head.

“You thought what?” she whispered, stepping closer. “That I asked you to help me because I wanted to humiliate you?”

His silence was his answer, and it broke something in her.

The tension bled from her shoulders in a way which was not indicative of forgiveness, nor understanding, but weariness. She had thought the danger was behind them, waiting in quiet corners and empty corridors, but the real wound was here, festering between them in the space where trust should have lived.

When she spoke again, her voice was not soft, but quieter.

“I asked you because I thought you were the only person here who wouldn’t lie to me. Who wouldn’t make me feel like a child for wanting to understand what’s being done to me.” Her hands dropped to her sides. “I never expected you to protect me. I just hoped you wouldn’t… make me feel small.”

Alessandro looked stricken. Not shattered, but stripped, like someone waking from a nightmare and realizing the monster had been inside his own ribcage all along. God, he felt like a monster. He felt like an idiot.

“I never meant to,” he said. “Not you.” But he didn’t move. Didn’t reach for her. Didn’t apologize.

Still, the question burned at the back of Alessandro’s throat, ash on his tongue.

He could feel the shape of it before he spoke, less a curiosity and more a compulsion. The need to scrape at the edges of something he hadn’t wanted to name. Not until now.

“What is he to you?” he asked, finally. Not cold, not accusing. Just… tired.

Lune’s mouth pulled into a tight line, and for a moment she looked away, her gaze catching on the dim shelf beside them as if it might offer an escape. But it didn’t. There was no rescue in this place. Only confession, if she chose it.

Her voice, when it came, was soft. “He’s… he upsets me.”

Alessandro’s brow furrowed. “So you’re using me as a remedy for him?”

The words came sharper than intended. He regretted them instantly, but they were already out, brittle and ugly in the air between them.

“No,” she said quickly, and with more heat than before. “I never wanted to be around him in the first place!”

She looked at him like he should’ve known. Like he did know, but had chosen not to believe it. As if she were reminding him of something older than memory; some truth she’d been living in alone while the rest of them wandered blind.

Alessandro stared at her, his jaw locked in an expression of tangled anger and confusion. Lune, meanwhile, stood rigid in the golden hush of the window light, her hands curled into the fabric of her sleeves. She wasn’t wilting. She wasn’t pleading. She looked like a storm herself, wrapped in a too-fragile body, barely holding in what had wanted to be said for weeks.

Something hovered in the air between them, unfinished, and it gnawed at him.

“Say what you’re thinking,” Alessandro demanded.

But even as he said it, he remembered she wasn’t someone he could command. Not here. Not anymore. And it was hypocritical, wasn’t it? To try and demand honesty from someone he'd cornered only moments before with doubt and venom. He had been no sanctuary for her today. And yet, he wanted to be.

She didn’t flinch.

He hesitated, gentled his voice. “...Please.”

Lune was quiet for a moment longer. And then, with a breath that trembled just once, she spoke.

“He harasses me.”

The words were plain. No dramatics. No emphasis. As if she'd already gone over them a hundred times alone in her mind.

“I’ve never acted… never invited him. Not once. Not ever. He doesn’t need a reason, Alessandro. He just decides I’m his for the day, or for the hour, and then…” Her voice caught. Not on tears, but on restraint. “And then I disappear, I become nothing, and he watches me like he’s waiting for me to ask him for more, but I don’t want it!”

Her eyes stayed fixed ahead, not quite meeting his.

“I’ve tried to stay away. I’ve tried being invisible, but it doesn’t matter. He finds ways to remind me. To make sure I know I’m not safe when he’s near.”

She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t even shaking. But he could see it beneath the steady cadence of her words, beneath the control, she was afraid. She’d lived with it so long that it had folded itself into her posture, her tone, the way she measured her breathing.

Alessandro felt the heat rise in him like a tide. Fury, guilt, and disbelief, all tangled in a knot too thick to pull apart.

But then he saw the fear still glimmering in her expression. Not of him, not directly, but of what might happen if she said more. Of what might happen now that the truth was out and couldn’t be buried again.

And the anger… drained.

It didn’t vanish, but it cooled, tempered by something deeper. A quiet, protective ache.

He stepped back, just slightly, giving her space. He didn’t speak right away. Just stood there, hands loose, shoulders tense, watching her as though she might vanish the second he turned his head.

“You should’ve told me,” he said, voice low.

She looked at him then, fully, and her eyes were tired. Not with him, but with the weight of surviving.

“I didn’t think anyone would listen.”

And Alessandro knew then that he hadn’t been listening. Not the way she needed. Not until it was nearly too late.

His voice, when it came again, was different. Quieter. Warmer.

“I’m listening now.”

Eventually, they sat with Alessandro in the chair nearest the window, Lune across from him, the thick old wood of the table stretched between them like a makeshift truce. Neither spoke for a while.

The trembling afternoon had begun to bleed into a calmer evening. The light slanted lower across the shelves, turning the spines gold and dimming the corners where dust reigned. The library had returned to its hush, though neither of them trusted it now. The silence felt wary. Listening.

Alessandro watched her hands. How still they were now. How her fingers rested over each other, white-knuckled still, but no longer trembling. His voice, when it came, was gentle, a notch above a whisper.

“Has he… has Antonio ever tried to follow you?”

Lune shook her head. “No.”

“Threatened you?”

“Not with words. At least, not explicitly enough to matter.”

His brow furrowed. “Touched you?”

“No.” A pause. “Not in the way you mean.”

He breathed in slowly through his nose, grounding himself. “Why haven’t you told someone else?”

“I did,” she said quietly. “Just once. Nothing happened.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. There was a hollow sort of shame to hearing it, like being handed a legacy you never asked for and knowing it came from family.

He started to ask another question. Perhaps about how long it had been going on, or why she hadn’t run, but the words were still forming when something stopped him.

She stood.

Moved.

Crossed the space between them with that strange, sudden certainty some griefs carry when they can no longer stay caged.

And then, Lune hugged him.

Not with ceremony. Not with trembling gratitude. Just… wrapped her arms around his waist, tucked herself lightly against his chest, and let her forehead rest near the curve of his collar. Her touch was warm and brief and utterly still, like a heartbeat laid against stone.

Alessandro didn’t move at first. Then slowly, tentatively, his hand came to rest between her shoulder blades. No pressure. Just presence. Something unspoken passed between them, softer than an apology.

When she pulled back, her cheeks were faintly pink, but she didn’t shrink from him. She didn’t apologize, not as the color faded quickly once again.

Instead, she lowered her gaze and asked carefully, “Do you… know anything about the diary?”

The question sat between them like a lit candle. She looked at him cautiously, as if expecting a flame.

Alessandro hesitated. He could feel the weight of it returning: the chase, the accusations, the humiliation still pulsing like a bruise beneath his skin. But he didn’t want to go back to that. Not with her.

He exhaled, voice dry. “Antonio said… he thinks Lucia took it. This morning. While he and… her, I presume, were in your room.”

Lune went still. Her brows drew together slightly, not in disbelief, but in thought. A breath passed through her lips, thin and strained.

“She would do that,” she said finally, almost to herself.

Alessandro leaned back. His gaze searched hers. “Maybe it’s best if you leave it alone. If you press too hard, you’ll only give them more reason to—”

She looked at him then, sharply, and he stopped.

He could see it in her eyes: what she wasn’t saying. What she refused to say. The same expression she wore earlier, when she couldn’t quite name the weight pressing on her chest.

She wasn’t going to stop. He could see it as clear as day.

“…I could go after it,” he offered, though there was reluctance in his tone. “It might be easier, coming from me.”

Lune frowned. “Sending you to do my work hasn’t been good for either of us.”

There it was—that edge again. A flick of the blade. Not cruel, necessarily, just true.

He almost bristled. Almost. But then his own words echoed back in his head—“Do you find it amusing?”—and he saw himself again, saw how easily he’d turned her search for help into an accusation, how small she’d looked standing in the eye of the storm he created.

So instead of defending himself, he sighed. “I won’t stop you,” he said. It wasn’t permission, nor indulgence. It was a quiet surrender. A trust.

She nodded, as if that was all she’d needed to hear.

And then, unexpectedly, she stepped forward again, not with the intent to hug this time, but to reach down and gently squeeze his hand. Just once. Briefly.

It startled him.

She didn’t say anything else. Just—

“Goodnight.”

And then she turned, and walked toward the door, her footsteps quiet again, steady.

He sat there long after she’d gone, his hand still tingling where hers had touched it, wondering how something so simple could make him feel like the entire world had shifted beneath his feet.

…

The evening light had turned violet by the time Lune reached the quietest wing of the abbey. Here, the stone walls were thicker, the halls narrower, built to shelter contemplation rather than conversation. It was always colder in this part of the building, and always a little dimmer, no matter the season.

She moved quietly, but with purpose, her hands folded neatly in front of her. Her breathing had steadied, but her thoughts were running knots around themselves, pulling tight and tighter. The hem of her skirts whispered against the hardwood as she turned the final corner.

Lucia’s room was near the end of the hall, tucked away. Not in the north corridor, where rooms were granted to figures of real prominence, such as abbots, stewards, or visiting clergy, but here, in this plain stretch. Lune had always found that strange. The Mother Superior had never had an office, either. No door bearing her title. No place to receive guests formally. Just a larger but modest bedroom with a low, dark lintel and a door that barely shut without a firm hand.

She stood before it now, lifted her knuckles, and knocked twice softly. There was a pause, then, the muted reply: “Come in.”

Lune opened the door slowly, stepping into the scent of cool linen and pressed lavender. The room inside was neat, but lived-in, containing an aging desk beneath the window, a crucifix above the bed, and books in gentle disarray beside a half-burnt candle. A shawl lay folded over the end of the double bed. The walls, like Lucia’s expressions, were adorned by some gilding, but were otherwise bare of sentiment.

The Mother Superior sat at a small chair by the desk, bathed in the last of the sun’s light. She was not writing. Not praying. Just sitting, hands folded in her lap, back straight.

Lune bowed her head. “Mother Superior.”

Lucia’s eyes lifted, slow and sharp. “Lune,” she said. Her voice was clipped, precise. “It’s late.”

“I know,” Lune replied. “Forgive the intrusion.”

There was no gesture inviting her to speak. No easing of posture. Lucia merely watched her, silent, as though measuring the weight of her presence in the room.

Lune clasped her hands. “Something was taken from my belongings,” she said carefully. “A personal item. A book.”

Lucia blinked once. “Taken?”

“I can’t be sure by whom,” Lune continued. “But I thought—I hoped—it might have been turned in. Or… mentioned.”

The silence that followed was heavier than the words.

Lucia didn’t move. Didn’t ask for clarification. Her expression remained still.

After a pause that stretched too long to be comfortable, she said, “You’re referring to the little leather volume.” It wasn’t a question.

Lune felt her breath catch, but she made herself stay composed. “Yes,” she said softly.

Lucia leaned back in her chair, the motion measured. She crossed one leg over the other with a quiet creak of old wood beneath her. “I took it,” she said.

The words fell like a stone into the center of the room.

Lune stood motionless, her spine straight but cold beginning to needle up her arms.

Lucia tilted her head just slightly, studying her with an expression like one might use on an unruly novice. “I was concerned by what I read,” she said. “Your tone. Your curiosity. The subjects you chose to dwell on.”

“You read it,” Lune echoed, a note of breath in her voice.

“Don’t be dramatic.” Lucia’s fingers tapped once against the edge of the desk. “If you didn’t want it read, you would not have written it down. You’re not a child, Lune. Diaries are not sacred objects. They are confessions without priests.”

Lune’s hands tightened around themselves. “I wasn’t confessing,” she said quietly.

“No?” Lucia’s brows lifted. “Then what were you doing? Writing poetry about silence and doorways and dreams? Scribbling little nothings about voices behind the walls? Such things don’t spring from a disciplined mind. They unravel it. You are here to serve, not to indulge your wandering fancies.” What exactly she was supposed to be serving remained unsaid.

Lune's jaw tensed, but she kept her tone calm. “Why did you want it?” she asked. “There’s nothing of interest in it. Nothing that doesn’t already happen within these walls.” She swallowed the heat behind her teeth. “Nothing you don’t already know.”

Lucia said nothing for a moment. Her face remained inscrutable as she stepped away from the chair and moved toward the dresser, her steps deliberate. Her hand reached to the top drawer, and she pulled it open. The scent of lavender grew stronger. From beneath neatly folded garments and a stiff-bound prayer book, Lucia withdrew the little brown diary, worn now at the corners.

Lune’s heart beat faster. Not because it was there, but because it was there. In a drawer. In use. Not discarded. Not glanced at once and tossed aside.

Lucia returned to the chair but did not sit. She rested one hand on its back, the diary in her other. “You say there is nothing in here I don’t know.” Her thumb flipped to a page marked by a deep purple ribbon: one of her own. Lune glimpsed others—two, three more—tucked into the pages like knives. “You are mistaken.”

She opened the diary.

Lune stood frozen, every inch of her skin prickling as Lucia cleared her throat softly and read:

“There is a strange kind of silence in him. Not the stillness of the chapel before dawn, but something else. Like walking into a sealed room and knowing someone has just left it. I tell myself I look because he unsettles me. But it isn’t that. It isn’t that at all.”

Lucia didn’t read it mockingly, nor warmly. Her voice was cool, level, and even.

Lune flushed deep in the cheeks, her hands trembling faintly at her sides. Still, she kept her voice level. “That… isn’t forbidden. That kind of feeling. We’re not banned from relationships, from affections.” She hesitated, then added, more pointedly, “You know that better than anyone.”

Lucia’s eyes flicked up from the page. The air sharpened, and for a moment, neither of them spoke. And then Lucia closed the diary with a soft thud.

“No,” she said, “relationships are not banned. But infidelity,” she continued, gaze now heavy and clear, “is one of the greatest sins of all.”

Lune’s face froze, but her breath stuttered. She hadn’t said it outright, but Lucia had heard the implication clearly and answered it with the precision of a blade.

Still holding the diary, Lucia stepped closer, her eyes never leaving Lune’s face. “Affection is not sin, child. But the harboring of desire where vows have been made… the entertainment of love that cannot be sanctified…” She placed the book carefully on the desk. “That is not affection. That is temptation, dressed in softer clothing.”

Lune stared at the diary, sick with humiliation, fury, and something she didn’t have a name for. But she said nothing. She couldn’t, for fear of her safety, and it drove her absolutely mad.

Lune’s hands curled into fists at her sides. Her voice came sharper than she meant it to, but it didn’t matter anymore. “I haven’t committed any infidelity,” she snapped. “I couldn’t. I’m not promised to anyone.”

Lucia’s gaze didn’t soften. If anything, it sharpened further, like a cold, east wind.

“Aren’t you?” she asked quietly.

The words struck with more precision than volume. Lune’s heart jolted in her chest. She took half a step back, lips parted in confusion. “I—no. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lucia exhaled, the sound somewhere between a sigh and a scoff. Shelooked at her the way one might regard someone very young and very slow. “Don’t be foolish.”

She stepped around the chair now, almost lazily, as if circling the conversation like a cat circles a stunned bird.

“Antonio is interested in you,” she said. “That’s no secret. He makes little effort to hide it, and I can’t imagine, in all of your endearing dullness, that you’ve been blind to it.”

Lune’s mouth went dry. Her jaw stiffened, but she said nothing.

Lucia smiled—thin, joyless. “Of course, I hate to spoil the surprise, but something tells me you’re already aware. He plans to propose. It’s only a matter of timing.”

Lune’s breath caught. Whether from dread or disbelief, she wasn’t sure. Her eyes locked on the diary on the desk, but it looked suddenly like a weapon, or a cell key she hadn’t been allowed to use.

“He’s a good man,” Lucia went on, and now there was something almost indulgent in her tone, something condescendingly kind. “With a promising future. He’s positioned well within the abbey. Connected. Clever. He knows how to survive. And he’s chosen you.” She drew closer again, not unkindly, but with that same pitiless composure. “Do you understand what that means?”

Lune said nothing. Her silence was its own kind of answer.

Lucia leaned in, quiet now, intimate. “It means your place here could be secure. Your future comfortable. Your safety…” she smiled slightly, “guaranteed.”

There it was again. That quiet implication. A truth spoken as if it were inevitable.

Lune’s stomach turned. Her mind rushed, searching for some protest that didn’t sound like defiance or fear. But all she could think was that this tidy little plan had been set in motion without her consent, without her voice. And now, Lucia was handing it to her like a gift wrapped in iron. All Lune could feel was the weight.

Lune opened her mouth.

The words were there just behind her teeth, beneath her breath. They were sharp. They tasted like resistance. But before she could give them shape—

“This is what’s best for you,” Lucia said, gently enough that it chilled the room more than if she’d raised her voice.

Lune faltered. Her eyes dropped to the floor, the diary, her own hands. Anywhere but Lucia’s face. She didn’t nod, but she didn’t speak either.

Lucia repeated it, softer this time, but with steel behind each syllable. “This is what’s best for you.”

Lune didn’t trust her voice, so she stayed silent. Her throat felt tight, full of things she didn’t dare say aloud.

Then Lucia turned. She moved back to the desk with the measured grace of someone who had already won and didn’t need to gloat. She picked up the diary—Lune’s diary, the one she’d violated—and held it for a moment longer than necessary. And then, wordlessly, she extended it toward Lune.

On top of it sat a small brass lock and a thin, curved key, looped with a crimson thread.

Lune blinked. She took it with hesitant fingers, half-expecting some final comment, some cryptic farewell or cutting remark. But none came.

Lucia simply turned back to her chair and sat, as though she had never stood at all.

Dismissed without being dismissed, Lune stepped back slowly, cradling the diary against her chest. Her fingers tightened around the smooth spine, her gaze flicking once more toward the lock.

That small, quiet offering, left there as an afterthought, unsettled her more than the rest of the conversation. It was a kindness. A gesture of concern. Protection, even. But why? That evil question took residence on her tongue yet again.

The room around her was modest, its furnishings simple but well-kept. A narrow bed was pressed against the far wall, its thick woolen blanket folded neatly at the foot, untouched since morning. A small window, set deep into the stone wall, allowed the cool night air to slip in through the imperfect seal of the wooden frame. The moonlight stretched across the uneven floorboards, pale and cold, cutting through the warm glow of the candle. The scent of parchment and faint traces of lavender clung to the air, a lingering comfort from the sachet she kept tucked beneath her pillow.

Lune dipped the quill into the inkwell, tapping the excess liquid against the rim before pressing the tip to the paper.

I did not expect him to notice. Not that—not the absence of something so small, so insignificant. And yet he did. He always does.

Her brow furrowed slightly, and she exhaled, watching as the ink bled into the fibers of the page before continuing.

Perhaps I have been careless. Or perhaps he simply listens too well. I wonder if he realizes how rare that is…how unsettling it can be to be seen so clearly, even in the spaces between words.

A soft gust of wind slipped through the cracked windowpane, sending a faint ripple through the candle’s flame. The light wavered, casting shifting patterns along the walls, turning the simple wooden furniture into elongated shapes of shadow and flickering gold. The quiet was thick here, a gentle weight pressing against her senses, wrapping around her like a cloak.

I thought I had hidden it well—the way I hesitate before saying his name. I hadn’t even realized I was hesitating until he named it for me. And yet, he didn’t want to hear it. Not from me.

Her quill lingered at the end of the sentence, the ink forming the faintest blot where she had paused. She flexed her fingers slightly, feeling the stiffness in them from holding the pen for so long.

Why did that sting?

She inhaled slowly, letting the question settle in the quiet before shaking her head and pressing forward.

It doesn’t matter. He has drawn his line, and I will not cross it.

The candle burned lower, its wax creeping closer to the holder. Outside, the wind carried the distant toll of the evening bell, signaling the slow descent of the night. The air had cooled further, settling into the stone walls, seeping into the floor beneath her bare feet.

With measured patience, she finished the last stroke of her entry and carefully set the quill aside. The ink shimmered faintly in the candlelight, fresh and unburdened by second thoughts.

Lune leaned back slightly, closing her eyes for a brief moment before reaching for the blotting paper. She pressed it gently over the writing, absorbing the excess ink, before folding the diary shut with quiet finality. The weight of it in her hands felt familiar, grounding. A tether to herself, to her thoughts, to the parts of her that no one else would see.

She traced the edge of the worn leather cover with the tip of her finger, then exhaled softly. Carefully, she reached for the small wooden box on the desk, lifting the lid just enough to slip the diary inside. It nestled against the other pages she had filled over time, hidden away from curious eyes, untouched by the world beyond this quiet space.

The candle flickered one final time before she reached out and extinguished it between her fingers. In the darkness, she sat for a moment longer, listening to the sound of her own breath, steady and quiet, before rising from the desk and stepping toward the waiting stillness of sleep. As usual, she had an early morning.

…

The chancel was quiet in the way that only early morning could bring. A stillness had settled over the polished wood and cool stone, broken only by the occasional rustle of fabric as someone shifted in their seat. Sunlight filtered in through the high, narrow windows, casting long beams across the marble floor, illuminating the dust that lingered in the air. The scent of wax and faint incense clung to the space, remnants of prayers and candlelight from the night before.

Bernardo sat with his hands loosely clasped, elbows resting on his knees, only half-listening to the conversation drifting around him. His thoughts were elsewhere, tangled in the subtle but noticeable change in Alessandro’s demeanor. It was difficult to put into words. Alessandro had always been reserved, always deliberate in what he chose to share, but now, something was different. A kind of withdrawal that went beyond his usual solitude. He had looked distracted the night before, his expression hard to read, his answers clipped and distant. Even during supper, when he typically offered at least a few words of acknowledgment, he had been unusually quiet, barely touching his food before excusing himself altogether.

“I don’t know why he insists on skulking around like a stray,” Antonio said, rolling his shoulders back as if shaking off a burden. “People talk, and I’m the one left dealing with their questions. They ask why he doesn’t speak, why he acts like he’s too good to look people in the eye. I don’t have an answer for them.”

Matteo, seated beside him, nodded hesitantly. “He… he does make things difficult.” His words lacked conviction, but it was clear he felt the need to agree. “Even when he’s in the same room, he’s—” he faltered, searching for the right word, “—somewhere else.”

Lucia scoffed, smoothing the fabric of her gown over her knees with sharp, deliberate movements. “It’s shameful,” she said, her voice cool, unyielding. “He was given every opportunity, every advantage, and still he walks around like a ghost, like something that doesn’t belong. If he wants to be treated like family, he should act like it.”

Giuseppe sat with his arms resting on the back of the pew, looking thoroughly unimpressed with the topic but not enough to stop it. “He’s always been a disappointment,” he said flatly. “It’s his own fault people look at him the way they do. I don’t know what goes through his head, nor do I care. It’s too late to change him now.”

Bernardo’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He had long since learned that his father’s disapproval was permanent, a fixed thing, as unyielding as stone.

Antonio huffed, shaking his head. “It would be easier if he at least pretended to care. Instead, he does whatever he wants, makes us all look foolish, and expects to be left alone.”

Matteo fidgeted. “Maybe he just doesn’t know how to—”

Lucia’s sharp look cut him off. “Doesn’t know how to? Ridiculous. He knows. He just chooses not to. He could stand beside you, Antonio, help you manage things, make himself useful. Instead, he lingers in dark corners, playing at being tragic and mysterious, as if that will earn him sympathy.”

Bernardo inhaled through his nose, staring down at his hands. Alessandro was not fond of socializing, even with him, but he knew that if there was anything that the younger man did not want, it was sympathy. He had heard variations of this conversation for years, each time more callous, more indifferent to the fact that they were discussing their own family. Yet, as he listened now, there was something heavier about it, something that settled uneasily in his chest.

Because the truth that none of them would ever admit was that Alessandro had tried, once. When they were younger, before the distance had solidified, he had reached for them in quiet ways. Small efforts, small gestures, small attempts to be part of something that had never been his to claim. And each time, he had been met with this same indifference, this same cold dismissal, as they all had been. Bernardo himself had reacted by trying harder, and although it had been fruitless, it had earned him some sort of peace. Alessandro had resorted to silence.

No wonder he no longer bothered.

“He doesn’t make us look foolish,” Bernardo said at last, his voice measured but firm. “If anything, the way we talk about him does.”

A brief, brittle silence followed.

Lucia turned to him first, her eyes narrowing. “Oh? And what would you have us do, then? Praise him for sulking in the shadows? Applaud him for acting like a stranger in his own home?”

“That isn’t what I said,” Bernardo replied, barely suppressing his frustration.

Antonio scoffed. “Then what are you saying? That we should just accept it? Let him do as he pleases while the rest of us have to answer for it?”

Bernardo glanced at Matteo, who remained quiet, gaze lowered. Typical. If Antonio led, Matteo would follow. It had always been that way. His eyes flicked back to Giuseppe, who had been silent thus far, watching the exchange with something between amusement and mild disapproval.

Giuseppe huffed, red in the face from the simple effort it took for him to speak. “You’ve always been soft on him, Bernardo,” he said, his tone carrying the weight of a reprimand. “It doesn’t do him any favors.”

Bernardo bit back the bitter retort that rose to his tongue. Soft on him? That was laughable. Alessandro had never been given the chance to be anything but alone, and simply choosing not to sharpen his words into knives did not make Bernardo guilty of favoritism.

Giuseppe, apparently satisfied with his own hypocrisy, leaned back again. “You would do well to remember that we are family, and we must hold each other accountable. We don’t have the luxury of coddling someone who refuses to act accordingly.”

Bernardo’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He had long since learned that arguing with their father was as fruitless as speaking to the wind. He had made up his mind about Alessandro long ago, and nothing Bernardo said would change it.

Antonio, seeming pleased with the outcome, exhaled sharply through his nose and leaned back, crossing his arms. “Then that’s settled.”

Beside him, Matteo nodded along, though Bernardo doubted he even knew what he was agreeing to.

Lucia smoothed her skirts once more and shook her head. “It’s shameful,” she repeated, voice laced with finality. Bernardo merely looked down at his hands again, silent.

Some time has now passed since those words and the present. Antonio leaned forward, his elbow resting against the polished wood of the pew, fingers tapping absently against his arm. The conversation had lulled, but he had yet to say what he had clearly come here to say.

Bernardo watched him closely, noting the way his brother’s usual confidence wavered beneath something hesitant, something uncharacteristically uncertain. Antonio scarcely doubted himself, which made his avoidance all the more obvious.

Lucia noticed too. “Out with it,” she said, impatient. “You didn’t bring us here just to prattle on about Alessandro.”

Antonio exhaled sharply, his fingers halting their restless movement. “I need something,” he admitted, then paused, his eyes flicking briefly to their father.

Giuseppe lifted a wrinkled hand, gesturing for him to continue. “Go on.”

Antonio hesitated for only a moment longer before straightening his shoulders, regaining some of his usual composure despite his uncomfortably twisted expression. “Your ring,” he said at last, turning to Lucia. “I want your ring.”

A silence fell over them.

Lucia’s expression hardened instantly, her posture going rigid as she slowly clasped her hands together in her lap. “You must be joking.”

Antonio shook his head. “I want to give it to her.”

Lucia did not need to ask who. The answer was plain enough in his tone, in the way he spoke with an urgency that was rare even for him.

“A proposal?” Matteo said, blinking, as if just realizing where this was going. His expression then fell flat once more. “Again?”

Antonio gave him a look as if offended, and then nodded. “Yes.”

Lucia scoffed, tilting her chin up as she regarded him with something close to disdain. “And you thought to ask for my ring?”

“It’s a family piece,” Antonio argued. “What better way to show my intentions?”

Lucia’s fingers curled slightly, just enough for Bernardo to notice the way she pressed her nails against her palm. She was stalling, but not because she needed time to think. She already knew her answer.

“No,” she said, and the word was as firm as stone.

Antonio’s expression flickered with irritation. “Why not?”

“Because it’s mine.”

That was the simplest answer, though there was far more beneath the surface. Bernardo saw it. Matteo saw it. Even Antonio must have recognized that her refusal was not just about possession, but about something deeper: something she would never say aloud.

The ring was a symbol. Not of love, not of devotion, but of power. A power she had clung to as the years had worn on, as Giuseppe’s attention strayed further and further from her, as Antonio grew older and took more of the authority she once wielded as a mother. She could feel it slipping even now, in the way they all sat here, in the way Giuseppe listened to Antonio’s requests with more weight than he had ever given her grievances.

Giuseppe sighed, rubbing his temple. “Lucia—”

“No,” she said again, sharper this time. “He can use something else. Why must it be mine?”

“Because I want it to be yours,” Antonio countered. “It would mean more.”

“More to whom?” she snapped. “To her?”

Antonio’s jaw tightened.

Lucia huffed, shaking her head. “This girl—this mystery girl you refuse to even name—what has she done to make you so eager to part with something that is not yours to give?”

Antonio’s silence spoke volumes.

Lucia narrowed her eyes, satisfaction gleaming there. “You don’t even know, do you? You’re infatuated with her, and yet you bring nothing of substance.”

Antonio’s nostrils flared, but before he could bite back, Giuseppe raised a hand, silencing them both.

“Give it to him.”

Lucia’s head snapped toward her husband, disbelief flashing across her face. “You cannot be serious.”

“He wants it,” Giuseppe said simply, as if that was all that mattered.

Bernardo’s stomach twisted. The favoritism was blatant, but it had always been. Antonio did not even need to argue; he had their father’s unwavering support in all things.

Lucia inhaled slowly, controlling her expression with an effort that did not go unnoticed. Then, she exhaled, her lips pressing into a thin line. “Fine.”

Antonio smirked, but Lucia held up a hand of her own before he could claim victory.

“On one condition.”

Antonio’s brows furrowed. “What condition?”

“I will meet her.”

That gave him pause.

Lucia tilted her head. “You ask for my ring, but I am not so easily parted from what is mine. If she is to wear it, I will judge for myself whether she is worthy of it.”

Antonio hesitated, but in the end, he nodded. “Fine.”

Lucia studied him for a long moment before finally looking away.

Bernardo exhaled through his nose. This was far from over.

“We can arrange a dinner,” Antonio suggested, somewhat strangely, as he was unaccustomed to unnecessary grandeur. “It doesn’t have to be anything abnormal. We could invite her to one of ours.” For once, he seemed to be avoiding a fuss. “Perhaps sometime this week, or the next? Sunday evening seems appropriate—”

“No,” Lucia responded sternly. “I will meet her now.” She was exhausted with his stalling. It had gone on two months, and two months too long.

It was hardly past morning, Bernardo thought, and surely, she would still be busy, or at least leisuring outside of the Abbey. Surely, the Mother Superior would recognize that, he thought, but it had become more apparent over the years that her tasks with the other nuns were limited to jeering cruelly and barking harsh orders at random.

“Antonio,” she addressed suddenly. “Do you know where this girl’s room is?”

He huffed, and as if suddenly remembering that his admiree was, in fact, a person, he named her. “It’s Lune, Mother,” he hissed. “And yes. Of course I do.”

Lucia’s lips curled in distaste at his tone, but she let it slide for now. “Then lead the way.”

Antonio hesitated for half a second, glancing at his father, but Giuseppe merely gave him a nod, a silent command to comply. With a frustrated exhale, Antonio stood.

Bernardo followed suit, watching his brother closely. There was something stiff in the way Antonio moved, something reluctant beneath his usual confidence. He had been eager to bring up the engagement, eager to stake his claim, but now, as Lucia pressed forward, he seemed less certain.

Matteo stood as well, though his movements were slower, more hesitant. He rarely had much to add in these conversations, and now was no exception. He glanced between their parents, then to Bernardo, as if silently asking if they truly intended to do this now.

Lucia, however, was already making her way toward the corridor, not bothering to wait for them. The morning light filtered through the tall windows, casting its opalescent, fractured beams across the stone floor, but she moved with the sort of purpose that paid no mind to beauty.

Antonio finally started after her, his steps brisk, determined. “She won’t be expecting this,” he muttered under his breath.

Lucia’s expression remained impassive. “Good.”

Bernardo’s jaw tightened as they descended the hall, past archways and candlelit alcoves that had yet to be snuffed from the night prior. The Abbey always felt unnervingly still in the mornings. It was silent, yet not quite peaceful. And now, with the tension simmering beneath each step, it felt even more suffocating.

Antonio’s agitation was palpable, but he said nothing as they made their way toward the quarters where the nuns resided. For all his posturing, for all his grandiosity, it seemed he had not anticipated this would happen so soon. Lucia, however, had tired of waiting. and when Lucia was tired of something, she simply removed the obstacle in her path.

 Antonio lingered for only a moment before stepping forward, pressing his thumbnail into the flimsy lock. The lock on the door was weak, easily turned by sticking one’s thumbnail into the lock and twisting it. With a small twist, the mechanism clicked, and the door creaked open. A rush of still air greeted them, carrying the faintest scent of something vaguely herbal; lavender, or perhaps chamomile. It was an unassuming room, sparse yet neatly kept, the kind of space that belonged to someone who valued quiet over extravagance.

Lucia stepped in first, her gaze sweeping across the modest furnishings. A narrow bed against the wall, its blanket smoothed with meticulous care. A small wooden desk, stacked with carefully arranged books and loose sheets of parchment. A basin of water in the corner, undisturbed. No sign of life beyond the lingering evidence of routine.

“She isn’t here,” Matteo pointed out, his voice quiet but clear.

Bernardo crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe. “And she won’t be, not until evening.” His words were measured, not quite a challenge, but an invitation to leave.

Lucia ignored both of them. She stepped further inside, gliding her fingers along the desk’s surface as though expecting to find something out of place. “A nun should have no reason to keep us waiting,” she muttered. “And yet, she does.” Bernardo would have liked to mention that Lucia would have been upset to find a nun in her room in the late morning, but he neglected to do so.

Antonio, perhaps emboldened by her actions, strode inside as well, his previous hesitation melting into something more assertive. He moved toward the bookshelf, scanning its contents with the vague disinterest of someone searching for a hidden flaw rather than appreciating what was before him. “She’s always writing,” he remarked, idly thumbing through the edges of a parchment stack, the majority of the pages marked up at least halfway. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that her room looks like a scribe’s quarters.”

Bernardo exhaled slowly. “She won’t appear out of the furniture, Antonio.”

Antonio shot him a look, but before he could respond, Lucia reached for a small wooden box atop the desk. Unlike the other items in the room, this one was clearly not part of the abbey’s furnishings. It was old, the wood wearing along the edges, the hinges dulled with age.

“A jewelry box,” Lucia observed, her tone edged with disdain.

Bernardo straightened slightly, his expression shifting to something more alert.

“A nun should not have enough jewelry to require a jewelry box.” Lucia’s fingers found the latch, and with a sharp click, she opened it.

But instead of rings or trinkets, inside lay something far more telling: a small, well-worn leather diary. It was no remarkable thing, with the fabric worn as if obtained secondhand, the first few pages torn out, indicated by the small gap at the front of the spine. Anyone keeping any terribly secret information might have put a lock through the small, hole-punched leather straps that dangled from the twin covers, but nuns did not keep locks, as they were not supposed to be doing anything that required secrecy, so a small piece of twine was slipped through instead, tied in a somewhat intricate knot that was weakened in its hastened creation.

Her face scrunched up in something akin to disgust, and she slipped the pointed nail of her fifth finger into the center of the knot, pulling it undone and flipping it open, wrinkled hands running along the grainy pages.

Her aged but no less keen eyes traced along the neat pen strokes. She wrote in an easily legible blend of stylized cursive and print, something common within the Ministry, as language classes, although described as elective, were prioritized over anything else. Those who were illiterate were mocked, seen as lesser. Visitors, if Basinshore ever received them, would have thought the church much wealthier than it was due to the sheer level of education.

Lucia turned the pages idly at first, her fingers dragging lightly over the parchment, feeling the indentations of ink pressed deep from a deliberate hand. The diary was filled with long, flowing passages of thoughts, observations, and small recollections, each penned with a careful, practiced elegance. It was the writing of someone who took solace in her own words, someone who found comfort in the act of preserving her thoughts.

How terribly sentimental.

Lucia’s lips curled as she scanned a passage recounting some mundane detail about the Abbey—the changing of the seasons, the way the bells chimed in the evening, the scent of rain against stone. She flicked past it. Another passage, this one an anecdote about a lesson she had given to the younger nuns, complete with little reflections on their progress. It was almost endearingly foolish.

She prattled on like a lovesick poet, Lucia thought, her eyes flicking over another passage where Lune described the texture of parchment as if it were something sacred.

On the other side of the room, Antonio rummaged carelessly, his movements impatient and thoughtless. He opened drawers only to shut them a moment later, lifted books without flipping through their pages, prodded at fabric as if expecting something of interest to leap out at him. He was not searching so much as he was asserting his presence, as though Lune herself might materialize from the very walls if he were thorough enough.

Lucia, meanwhile, remained seated at the small writing desk, the diary resting lightly in her lap. She barely acknowledged Antonio’s fruitless search, her attention fixed instead on the inked words before her.

It was all drivel, really. Useless musings on the minutiae of daily life, filled with exaggerated sentiment and self-indulgent reflection. And yet, she read on, her fingers pressing against the paper as if she might wring something more substantial from it.

Then, the tone shifted.

Lucia’s lip curled.

“I do not know what to make of him.”

She turned the page, her fingers moving more briskly now.

“He is odd, in a way. There is something in the way he looks at me. Not unkind, not cold, but as if he sees something I do not. As if he understands something I have yet to put into words. It unsettles me. It fascinates me. He is accustomed to looking at things not meant to be seen—”

Lucia inhaled sharply through her nose. Disgust prickled at her skin, but she read on, drawn by the sheer absurdity of it.

“When he speaks, I listen. When he moves, I notice. I tell myself it is nothing. I tell myself I imagine it. What does he see in me, I wonder?”

Who was it that occupied the girl’s thoughts? What was this nonsense that she wasted her time on? Who had claimed her thoughts so completely that she felt compelled to spill such ridiculous musings onto the page? It was a pitiful indulgence; a waste of ink and paper.

“Did you find anything?” Antonio’s voice cut through the quiet.

Lucia barely flicked her gaze up to him. He had finally grown bored of his searching and was now approaching, eyes catching the diary in her lap. His curiosity sharpened as he drew near. Her grip on the diary tightened as she tilted it away from him, her nails pressing faint crescents into the worn leather. Her expression was carefully schooled into disinterest. Antonio had abandoned his rummaging, drawn instead by whatever had captured her attention so thoroughly. His sharp eyes locked onto the diary in her lap, curiosity flickering in their depths.

“What’s that?” He stepped closer, his interest deepening as he took note of how firmly she held it.

Lucia exhaled slowly through her nose, as if the question itself was beneath answering. “Nothing of importance.”

Antonio was not so easily deterred. “Then you won’t mind if I have a look.”

He reached for it, but before his fingers could so much as brush the cover, Lucia snapped the book shut with a decisive thud and pulled it away.

“No.”

Antonio’s brows rose. “No?” He let out a breathy chuckle, tilting his head as if she had just said something amusingly absurd. “She’s a nun in my church, Mother.”

Lucia’s lips curled. “And yet, she remains under my guidance,” she countered, voice laced with quiet authority. “You tend to their faith, Antonio. I tend to everything else.”

A flicker of irritation crossed Antonio’s face, but Lucia did not waver.

“If it’s nothing of importance,” he pressed, “then what harm is there in letting me read it?”

Lucia met his gaze coolly. “Because, my son, it is my right to know what these women under my charge concern themselves with. Not yours.”

Antonio’s expression darkened, suspicion lacing his features, but before he could argue further, Lucia rose to her feet with deliberate poise. The diary remained clutched in her hand, held close, as if it were something fragile.

“I will handle this,” she said simply, her tone leaving no room for debate.

And with that, she turned on her heel and strode toward the door, leaving Antonio to stare after her, unsatisfied.

Antonio's lips parted slightly, as if forming a protest, but for once, he found himself without words. Offended, certainly. Suspicious, undoubtedly. Yet Lucia afforded him not a single glance as she moved past him, the diary still in her firm grasp.

She had no interest in his wounded pride.

As she stepped into the hallway, the echo of her heels against the stone floor a steady, deliberate rhythm, she flicked the book open again with one practiced motion. Her sharp eyes flitted over the flowing script, past the meandering thoughts and foolishly poetic descriptions, hunting for the name she knew must be there.

And then she saw it.

Alessandro.

Written with particular care, as if the very act of forming the letters required reverence. As if the name itself was something to be held gently, something delicate.

Lucia’s lips pressed into a thin line. With a sharp snap, she closed the book once more, her grip tightening. This would not do. No, not at all. No, she would do something about this, and her actions would not be kind.

Sometime later that evening, Lucia sat at her writing desk, the diary resting beneath her fingertips. The room was silent, save for the measured turn of each page. Her gaze, steady and unhurried, traced the lines of ink with the same detached scrutiny she might give to an old ledger. She was searching for something more than the girl’s meandering reflections, more than the sentimentality and girlish poetry that cluttered so many of these pages.

And then—

I should not have spoken. I should not have provoked him. But when he reached for me, when he—

Her hand stilled.

Her eyes moved quickly now, absorbing each word with careful precision. The details were unmistakable: Antonio’s quiet temper, his insistence, the way he had cornered the girl, reaching for what he believed was already his.

Lucia exhaled slowly, pressing the diary shut between her palms.

For a moment, she sat motionless, her expression unreadable.

The feeling was distant, buried beneath years of discipline, but not so distant that she did not recognize it. A door closing. A voice that did not ask, but demanded. A hand on her wrist, too firm to be mistaken for tenderness.

She pushed the thought aside. It was irrelevant.

What mattered was the risk and implications that lay before her. If this ever left these pages, if it was spoken aloud, Antonio’s chances of securing his proposal would be jeopardized. And by extension, so would her own standing.

Giuseppe would not blame Antonio. That much was certain. He never did.

Lucia adjusted her grip on the diary, her hold firm but composed. This situation required no emotion: only action.

The girl had left her no choice. A written tarnishment of her favored son, praise written in favor of her mute fool of a boy…

She stood, tucking the book beneath her arm. There was still time to set things right, and she would. It would benefit Lucia to see this engagement secured. The girl would come to understand that soon enough that it was better to be chosen than to be hunted. Her son was not a gentle man; not when he wanted something.

Antonio, like his father, could be difficult when denied. He had never needed to learn patience, never needed to ask twice. Lucia had ensured that, for the most part, and yet, there was evidence of his frustration. His temper turned against what he already considered his own: the woman he had claimed so boldly to treasure.

She tapped her fingers against the worn leather of the diary, considering.

Lune was foolish, but she was not blind. If she had any sense at all, she would accept Antonio’s affections before his admiration soured into something far less pleasant. She would say yes when he asked this time, and in doing so, she would secure her own place, which Lucia had spent years fighting to maintain.

A life under Antonio’s favor was better than the alternative.

Lucia’s grip tightened on the book.

Yes. She would support this engagement. She would ensure it happened. For Antonio, and for herself.

And although she would never admit it aloud, for the girl as well.

…

That evening, Lune was making herself busy in her room. It was messier than she remembered having left it that morning; she had never been a fitful sleeper, and the physical unrest of her morning bed was usually limited to the slight wrinkling of the sheets and the slightly raised outdention in the center of her bed cover. Now, they had been straightened, the outside-top folded over some two inches in a way she normally would not have done. The drawers of her tall nightstand were pulled forward less than an inch, as if the wall had stepped forward and pushed them somehow. The uniforms within her closet were parted onto either side, retaining the same pattern of organization that she had standardized in her room, but now somewhat disarranged.

She had rushed this morning to get both her tasks and some extras done; a gesture she had insisted to her acquaintances was one of kindness, but was instead an avoidant tactic in hopes to busy herself enough to keep away from the library. The place she had found herself in night after night had suddenly become unfamiliar, the sight of the heavy wooden door as she passed by it now the emotional equivalent to an insect crawling up her back.

Slipping two fingers into the ankle of her polished shoe, she considered whether or not he might have remained in the library after she left. He left at the same time that she had on that first night, but she doubted he would enforce any kind of severe interruption upon his usual schedule for the sake of whatever girlish emotion he had inflicted upon her.

She slid her shoes just beneath her bed and climbed onto it, lying down and stretching her legs, her hands placed lightly over her stomach as she closed her eyes. Her back was throbbing from the extra work, but she had evaded any kind of verbal altercation, and that knowledge comforted her, at least temporarily.

Lying there, she could feel the thin sheen of sweat that had developed on her forehead and over her upper lip and chin. Despite the cold seaside weather that seemed near permanent in the winter months, Basinshore remained stuffy, the burning fireplaces and wet air contributed by the evening seabreeze resulted in mostly hot, thick-aired hallways and even more suffocating bedchambers.

She exhaled slowly through her nose, trying to will the tension out of her limbs. Her eyes remained shut as she let the stiffness in her spine dissolve into the soft give of the mattress. The air clung heavily to her skin, like the remnants of a fever that hadn’t quite broken.

She turned her head slightly, eyes still closed, and reached toward the nightstand for the white cloth she always kept folded there. A simple thing; worn soft with use, kept for the purpose of wiping away the heat that so often clung to her skin after a long day. Her fingers brushed the surface of the wood, and then stilled.

The cloth was there, but not as she had left it.

It had been folded into a perfect square. Not the way she did it, hurried and practical, but neatly, like a handkerchief meant to be displayed rather than used. And sitting squarely in its center, stark and gleaming against the pale fabric, was a ring.

Not hers.

She sat up quickly, the mattress creaking beneath her, breath catching in her throat as her eyes locked onto it. Silver. Thick-banded. Smooth, but aged, and dented ever so slightly at the edges, with a familiar darkness to its polish. She knew this ring. She’d seen it before, more than once, slipping over long fingers that gestured too easily, too possessively, when they spoke.

Antonio.

Her throat tightened. She hadn’t been mistaken. He had been here.

She stood too fast, her legs unsteady beneath her. The ring remained on the cloth, glinting under the faint glow of her candle. She didn’t touch it.

Moving quickly, barefoot and breathless, she crossed the room to her desk. The surface looked undisturbed. Papers still sat in a neat stack, the ink bottle remained closed, her pen aligned where she had left it. But there was something just slightly off. The alignment of her stationery was a fraction skewed, the corner of the blotting paper no longer perfectly parallel to the desk’s edge. Her quill was angled just a hair differently than before.

She knelt to the drawer beneath. Inside, the wooden box where she kept her diary still sat in its place. She reached for it, fingers cold against the polished lid, and lifted it.

Empty.

Her heart dropped.

She reached in again, as if a second look might change what she already knew. But no—nothing. The space was hollow, a silent confirmation of something stolen. Something read.

Not just taken—seen.

The walls of her room, so familiar and so contained, suddenly felt narrower. The warmth that had been so stifling before now felt suffocating in a different way. She pressed a hand to her chest, willing her heart to slow, her thoughts to quiet. But they wouldn’t.

He had been here.

He had walked into her room, folded her cloth, left behind a ring like a signature scrawled across a page, and he had taken her words with him.

In the next moments, Lune didn’t remember leaving her room. She remembered only the corridors of the abbey surged around her like a tide of stone. Cold walls blurred past in a smear of torchlight and shadow, her steps more stagger than sprint, driven by terror rather than speed. Her breath tore through her chest in raw, scraping gasps, like fabric dragged over skin left flayed. Somewhere, distantly, a bell chimed for the late meal, but it sounded like it belonged to another peaceful, orderly world she had been ejected from.

She slammed into the library door, shoulder-first, the force rebounding it off the stone wall with a thunderous crack. His name was already rising in her throat, already primed to burst, but she didn’t have to call. Alessandro was there, steadily, unmoved despite the unsettling of the other presences in the room.

He stood near the far table, book in hand, haloed by the amber spill of candlelight. His usual perch, still and solemn. He looked up at the sound of the door, and for the first time, the stillness in his eyes seemed to fracture.

“Lune?”

He barely breathed the word before she crossed the room in a staggering blur. Her legs faltered beneath her, her chest rising and falling in frantic heaves. Her mouth opened, but her voice came in fragments: cracked, panicked, unraveling.

“I—he—he was in my room—he took it—I don’t—I don’t know what to do—”

Alessandro reached her in two strides. His hands hovered in the space between them, unsure whether to touch her. Her arms flailed upward, fingers grasping at nothing, as if she were drowning in air.

“Lune. Stop.” His voice was low, firm, and steady in a way it never had to be before. Heavy with something rare. Something cold. Worry.

But she couldn’t stop. Her words spilled from her, jagged and incoherently, like water through a burst dam.

“Antonio—he left his ring—he touched my things—he took it—”

At last, his hands found her shoulders. The contact was gentle, but bracing, like a wall against the flood.

“What did he take?” he asked, voice sharpened by something coiled and waiting.

She was barely breathing now, trembling beneath his touch. Her hands pushed against his chest, weak and directionless, more plea than resistance.

He caught her elbows, guiding them down, pinning them softly to her sides. He did not aim to injure or offend, only exerting enough force to still her; to bring her back. She didn’t fall still, not really, but the thrashing of her limbs slowed, replaced by jagged breaths and eyes wide with a terror she couldn’t contain.

Her voice cracked as it broke free.

“My diary.”

A blink. Just one. His face didn’t change but something behind it stilled, and then twisted, as if befuddled.

“A… diary.”

He said it as if testing the word. Confusion lingered in his voice, as if the statement had somehow been underwhelming.

“It’s not just a diary,” she snapped. The heat in her voice was desperation, not anger. “It’s everything I think about! My thoughts. My fears. Him. I wrote about him.”

Silence thickened between them. A silence full of unsaid things.

And then, quieter, like the name had been hiding all along, waiting to be let out:

“Antonio.”

Alessandro didn’t speak for a moment after that. He didn’t need to.

The stillness in him changed. He looked at her then, truly looked, and in that moment, whatever disbelief he might have carried burned away.

He released her arms with care, sliding one hand to the curve of her back. A guiding touch. He led her to their usual table, his steps steady even as hers faltered. Her knees nearly gave as she sat, her coat too thin to muffle the trembling in her bones. She folded into the chair like someone folding in on pain, as though reducing her shape might shrink the agony.

He stood over her for a moment, watching. She looked like something about to break, like a glass lingering precariously on the edge of a shelf.

Her hands gripped each other in her lap, white-knuckled, as if she could hold herself together with force alone. Her shoulders twitched with silent sobs—the kind that never touched the throat, only the lungs, only the ribs, leaving a bruising feeling in her throat but remaining soundless.

Alessandro exhaled, a sound more bitter than breath. With a quiet motion, he shrugged the coat from his shoulders and stepped behind her. The heavy wool fell over her like armor.

He tucked it around her with the same precision he used for his books. Thoughtful. Careful. Not gentle, exactly, but protective. And then, his hand brushed over the back of her head. It made her still.

“I’ll be back,” he said. His voice was soft, but it struck like a vow. She didn’t ask where he was going, for he hadn’t offered it.

He turned and left, the long line of his back taut with purpose, his footsteps carving clean through the silence of the library.

His fingers, adorned with rings of his own, drummed impatiently against his forearm as he crossed his arms, eyes sweeping over the selection before him. The light refracted in every direction, bouncing off faceted diamonds and sapphires, reflecting the narrowed edge of his gaze. He had been here too long. He had seen too much. And yet, nothing he looked at—no ring, no delicate band, no shimmering stone—felt like it belonged on the woman’s hand.

Which was, frankly, maddening.

Antonio was not a man who second-guessed himself. He prided himself on decisive action, on certainty, on knowing what he wanted and taking it before anyone else had the chance to realize they wanted it too. And yet, here he was, surrounded by opulence, feeling as though each carefully crafted piece of jewelry was sneering at him in silent mockery.

His patience, already thin, was beginning to fray.

“You’ve looked at that one already,” Matteo muttered beside him, arms loosely folded in poor imitation. His younger brother—blessed with less vanity, less extravagance, and certainly less interest in the fineries in life—had grown weary an hour ago. Now, he stood with the heavy-lidded expression of someone contemplating throwing himself into the nearest river. “Twice, actually.”

Antonio flicked him a glance. “And?”

“And you keep putting it back,” Matteo sighed, rubbing at his temple. “If it isn’t right, it isn’t right. Pick another or let’s leave before you make me hate jewelry for the rest of my life.”

Antonio ignored him. He reached for another ring—a slender band, set with a modest diamond, elegant in its simplicity.

Too plain.

He set it down with more force than necessary.

The jeweler, an elderly man with the posture of someone long accustomed to indulging difficult customers, merely watched him with a serene expression. “Perhaps, Signore, you might describe exactly what you’re looking for?”

Antonio let out a sharp breath. “Something that fits her.”

The jeweler’s tone was skeptical.. “Her finger or her personality?”

Antonio shot him a withering look. “Both.”

The jeweler hummed, reaching beneath the counter to retrieve another tray. “A difficult task indeed.”

Antonio barely glanced at the new selection before shaking his head. No. None of these would work. None of them would be enough, because no matter how rare the cut, how delicate the setting, how brilliant the stone, it would still be just that. A ring. A piece of metal and gem that she could remove, could leave behind, could slip off her finger the moment she decided she wanted to be free of it.

The realization settled in his chest, an unwelcome weight. He needed something more: something she couldn’t refuse. Something she couldn’t give back.

And then, like a key turning into a lock, the answer slid neatly into place.

His mother’s ring.

The thought struck him with a force of inevitability, as if it had been waiting all along for him to catch up. Slowly, he straightened.

Matteo, perceptive despite his boredom, frowned. “What?”

Antonio’s lips parted, but he did not immediately answer. Instead, he let the idea take root, let it settle into his mind with absolute certainty. She was practical. She was bound by duty, by obligation, by the weight of what was expected of her. If he proposed with the ring that carried his family’s legacy, she would have no choice but to accept it. It would no longer be just an engagement ring. It would be an inheritance. A tie to something greater than either of them.

And Lune, for all her stubbornness, would never discard something that didn’t belong solely to her. A slow smile curled at the edges of his lips.

“You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?”

Antonio turned to him, a glint of satisfaction in his gaze. “Yes.”

Matteo’s expression soured. “I don’t like that look.”

Antonio ignored him, already turning toward the exit. “We’re leaving.”

The jeweler, startled, blinked. “You’re not making a purchase, Signore?”

Antonio cast a final disinterested glance at the glittering array before him.

“No,” he said, breezing past Matteo, who sighed before shuffling along after him. “I’ve found something better.”

…

It wasn’t often that Bernardo came wandering down the east wing of the Ministry.

The corridor outside the library was quiet, save for the muted whisper of Bernardo’s footsteps against the stone floor. It was late enough that the sconces lining the hall burned low, casting long, flickering shadows along the walls, but not so late that the sun had completely sunken below the faded-green field surrounding the Ministry. He had no business lingering here. He preferred his own private collection of books over the library—was partial to the silence that came with his own modest lodging.

And yet, as he passed the arched doorway leading into the library’s depths, something made him pause. A shift in the air, perhaps, or the distant, rhythmic rustle of turning pages. He glanced inside, his gaze sweeping across the dimly lit shelves in search of the late-evening inhabitant, the rows of worn wooden tables, the lone oil lamp burning low at the far end of the room.

Alessandro.

His younger brother sat hunched over a book, the glow of the lamp illuminating the sharp, tired angles of his face. His fingers moved with practiced precision, carefully smoothing the spine of an aging volume, brushing away layers of dirt as if each page contained something fragile—something worth preserving. Not for the first time, Bernardo wondered how Alessandro could spend so many hours here, buried beneath parchment and neglect, as if the weight of forgotten words meant more to him than the world outside this room.

He almost walked on. Almost ignored the scene before him, as he had countless times before.

But then he saw her.

She stood across from Alessandro, half-hidden in the dim light, hands folded neatly in front of her with shadows cast across pointed features. A quiet observer, watching with an expression Bernardo couldn’t quite place. She was familiar to him—at least, not in any way that mattered. A face he might have passed in the halls of the church, perhaps, or seen in the periphery of a sermon. But that wasn’t what made him pause. It wasn’t her presence, specifically, that caught his attention. It was the fact that Alessandro had company at all.

He had never known Alessandro to tolerate distractions. The younger man existed in quiet solitude, slipping through the world with deft hands and a sharp tongue, making himself unapproachable without ever needing to try. And yet, here he was, seated at his usual table, the oil lamp throwing fractured light across his features—and a woman stood before him.

A woman.

Bernardo’s frown deepened.

It was unusual enough to see Alessandro with another person at all, let alone a woman. Women were permitted in the library, but only begrudgingly so. It was not a place where intersex familiarity was encouraged, and certainly not at this hour. And yet, she remained. More startling still, Alessandro was letting her. A quiet breath left Bernardo’s nose, sharp and measured, as he remained by the doorway, gaze fixed on the dim-lit tableau before him. The scene was… odd. Off-kilter in a way he couldn’t quite define, like a book whose pages had been bound out of order. Alessandro was many things—difficult, reclusive, burdened with an intellect that often turned cutting—but he was not the sort to entertain company. And certainly not the kind draped in the robes of the church, her presence at odds with the dust-heavy and disobedient silence Alessandro so carefully cultivated.

Bernardo’s fingers curled against his palm. He should move on. This was not his concern. And yet—

A voice, smooth and familiar, interrupted his thoughts. "You’re lurking, brother."

Bernardo tensed, just slightly. He did not turn immediately, instead letting the weight of Antonio’s presence settle behind him like the inevitable pull of a tide. Antonio stepped closer, the rich scent of his cologne—spiced citrus, leather, something darker beneath—clinging to the air between them. He was never subtle, Antonio. Never quiet. Even now, in the hush of the corridor, his presence was a sharp contrast to the dim austerity of the library.

Bernardo finally turned his head, just enough to meet his younger brother’s gaze. Antonio’s expression was one of casual amusement, though there was something else too. Shrewd in nature, hidden beneath the glint of the candlelight that reflected off of his rings.

“I’m not lurking,” Bernardo murmured.

Antonio arched his brow. "No? Because from where I’m standing, it looks an awful lot like you’re spying."

Bernardo exhaled slowly, leveling him with a cool stare. "I was passing by."

Antonio hummed, unconvinced. He shifted, peering past Bernardo’s shoulder toward the figures in the library. A spark of interest flickered across his face, something almost delighted.

"Well, well," he mused, lips curling at the edges. "That’s certainly not what I expected to find."

Bernardo frowned. "What are you talking about?"

Antonio’s gaze flicked back to him, dark eyes alight with something keen and knowing. He did not answer immediately, instead clasping his hands together as if savoring the moment. Then, with an exhale that was just a shade too pleased, he murmured, "Alessandro and a nun. Now, that is interesting."

Bernardo’s jaw tightened. "It’s nothing."

Antonio tilted his head. “Is it?”

His tone was too amused, too self-satisfied. Bernardo knew that look, knew that Antonio was already turning the implications over in his mind like a coin between his fingers.

"Whatever it is, it isn’t our business," Bernardo said firmly.

Antonio’s smile remained in place, but it no longer reached his eyes. The flickering light of the sconces cast shifting shadows across his face, sharpening the angles of his cheekbones, deepening the hollows beneath his eyes.

"Not our business," he echoed softly, almost as if tasting the words.

His fingers curled at his sides, the metal of his rings pressing into his skin. Bernardo had always been so good at that—standing at a careful distance, keeping his hands clean, pretending disinterest in things that deserved scrutiny. Antonio, however, was not so detached. He never had been. He did not let things lie when they twisted at the edges of his mind, when they left a bitter taste on his tongue.

He turned back to the library, gaze lingering just a moment too long on the woman standing across from Alessandro.

Little Lune. Of course.

His lip curled faintly, barely perceptible in the dim light. It was absurd, wasn’t it? Laughable, really. His brother, solemn and bookish, surrounded by dust older than either of them, barely a man at all in the ways that mattered—and yet, here he was, drawing the attention of someone who should not have even looked his way.

Antonio exhaled through his nose, the sound low and sharp.

What a joke.

And yet…

He tilted his head, his fingers tapping absently against the back of his wrist. No, not quite a joke. Not yet. There was something there: a thread worth pulling. Antonio did not believe in coincidences. He believed in control, in power, in knowing the right moment to close his fingers around an opportunity and squeeze. He smiled again, but this time there was no amusement in it. Only something colder.

"Well," he murmured at last, stepping back from the doorway, "I suppose we’ll see."

Bernardo’s frown deepened. "See what?"

Antonio glanced at him, and for just a moment, there was something unreadable in his gaze.

"We’ll see that you’re right," he said smoothly. "That it’s nothing."

And with that, he turned on his heel, his steps measured, unhurried, disappearing into the corridor’s waiting dark.

…

The door creaked.

Lune’s gaze flicked toward the sound, her posture shifting instinctively, though she remained otherwise still. The library was silent save for the faint crackle of the oil lamp beside Alessandro, its light stretching long shadows across the stone floor. She narrowed her eyes at the arched doorway, but the corridor beyond was empty.

Empty, but not quite undisturbed.

A breath of something unseen prickled at the back of her neck, a lingering presence, like the echo of footsteps already gone. She parted her lips to speak, then hesitated.

Alessandro, however, did not so much as glance up. His fingers, ink-stained and sure, turned another page with deliberate ease.

“Nothing,” he murmured before she could voice her thoughts. His voice was quiet, but not soft—calm in a way that felt practiced. His even tone comforted her, and she lowered herself into the seat next to him.

The library stretched out in quiet solemnity around them, the scent of aged parchment and lamp oil thick in the still air. The tall, arched windows along the far wall had darkened with the fading light of evening, their heavy drapes drawn back just enough to let in the last slivers of dusk. Shadows pooled in the corners between towering bookshelves, their edges softened by the flickering glow of the solitary lamp resting at Alessandro’s side. It burned low, casting its golden light over the worn wooden table, across scattered pages and leather-bound tomes that carried the weight of centuries. The world outside had faded into hush and distance, leaving only this place, enclosed in the quiet hum of ink and thought.

Alessandro turned a page with absent precision, his fingers stained with the remnants of the day’s work, smudges of ink trailing along the creases of his knuckles. He was aware of her company, but too accustomed to solitude, too used to the weight of silence pressed around him like an old, familiar cloak to acknowledge it. The presence of another should have unsettled that quiet, should have made itself known, but Lune had a way of keeping herself small, of tucking herself into the periphery, careful and unobtrusive.

And yet, as the moments passed, his attention drifted—not from the words on the page, but toward her. Unconsciously, his gaze flickered to her more often than he realized, drawn by some quiet instinct, some pull just beyond the edge of his understanding. It had happened before, in fleeting glances and half-noticed gestures, but now, in the stillness of the library, he saw it clearly. She did not sit like someone at ease.

Her back was straight, but not in the way of someone comfortably upright; it was the posture of someone braced, someone balanced at the edge of something uncertain. Her hands were folded in her lap, fingers twined too neatly, too tightly, as if keeping them still was an act of control rather than rest. The glow of the lamp played along the sharp lines of her face, illuminating the quiet tension that lingered at the corners of her mouth, the way her gaze flickered—not toward the books before her, nor toward him, but somewhere just beyond, never quite settling, never quite claiming space.

She looked like someone waiting for a verdict.

Alessandro turned another page, slower this time, the parchment whispering beneath his touch. He studied her from the corner of his eye, let the moment stretch between them before finally breaking it with quiet certainty.

"You sit like someone waiting to be dismissed."

Lune’s head turned at his words, her gaze snapping to his with something like startled recognition—not at his voice, but at the fact that he had noticed at all.

"Do I?"

His own attention did not waver, though he did not lift his head fully from his book. "Yes."

For a beat, she did not respond. Then, as if searching for something to anchor herself, her gaze dropped to the open pages before him, skimming over the words without truly reading them.

"Perhaps I am merely being polite," she murmured, the words light, but not without weight.

Alessandro exhaled, a sound too soft to be a sigh but carrying the same measured patience. "Polite." He repeated the word slowly, turning it over in his mouth as if testing its meaning. "That would imply you feel like a guest here."

A shift—small, but noticeable. The faintest tightening of her fingers in her lap, a slight press of her shoulders.

"Is that wrong?" she asked at last.

This time, he did lift his gaze fully, meeting her eyes with quiet intensity. The oil lamp between them flickered, its flame guttering for the briefest moment before steadying again, sending shadows stretching and retreating across the woodgrain of the table. In that dim, golden light, he saw it—the flicker of something withheld, something restrained, lingering just beneath the surface.

"You spend more time in these halls than most," he said, his voice even, measured. She spent more time here with him than anyone, but that thought was kept silent. "And yet you act as though you are waiting for someone to tell you to leave."

A breath—soft, shallow. A hesitation so slight it might have gone unnoticed by anyone else. But he was watching now. He saw it. She pressed her narrow back a little harder against the cool-toned wood. “I do feel comfortable here,” she attempts to remedy the imagined offense. “I feel much more comfortable here than in any other place.”

The thought made him smile. “Here with the ghosts?”

She nodded.

“They do make better company,” he concurred. “Suitable, for you and for I.”

She reached over, nudging the inkpot closer to him as he reached for it—quiet helpfulness. “I thought they were only for you. They’re your company, aren’t they?”

“You can have more than one companion,” Alessandro responded, his lip twitching unconsciously. “Unlike most things here, there is no rule dictating that.” And yet, he’d found himself becoming partial to just the singular. Selfishly, and despite his preference, he hadn’t asked many questions about her. “Do you have your own… clique?” He asked. The word was spoken with a twinge of unsubtle distaste.

“I wouldn’t call it that,” she responded. His eyes flitted briefly to her face before settling back on his book. That one glance was enough to pull a truth, or at least free the very corners. “No, I don’t believe it’s that at all.”

“You have friends, then?”

She didn’t want him to think her needy. “Acquaintances,” she corrected respectfully. “I prefer it that way.”

“Right,” he said, and a vague tone of skepticism which he would not elaborate on slipped into his voice. “You don’t belong anywhere.” Alessandro did not mean for his words to sound like an accusation, but they hovered in the air between them like one regardless. He had meant to state an observation, nothing more—to give voice to the quiet dissonance he saw in her, the contradiction of someone who lingered yet seemed ready to flee. But now that it had been spoken aloud, the weight of it settled, and he found himself unwilling to let it go unanswered.

His fingers, still idly resting on the open pages of his book, curled slightly, pressing against the parchment as he considered her. She had not immediately responded, and that in itself was an answer of sorts. A silence that did not feel empty, but full—filled with something unspoken, something uncertain.

Her breath hitched—just barely, but he caught it.

Her lips parted, but no words came at first, as if the statement had caught her off guard in a way she hadn’t expected. She shifted, her posture still too careful, still too composed, but there was something unsteady about it now, like the faintest waver in a taut string. "I..." she started, then hesitated, her gaze flickering away, as though the answer might be found in the dim glow of the oil lamp, in the shadowed corners of the library.

At last, the words came—soft, nearly swallowed by the hush of the room, but there.

"I don’t."

A confession, however small.

The admission settled between them, quieter than the turning of a page, yet heavier than any book lining the shelves. Alessandro did not look away from her, and for a moment, she held his gaze. There was no defiance in it, no challenge—only the barest sliver of honesty, as if she had given away more than she intended to and was now waiting to see what he would do with it.

For a moment, Alessandro said nothing. He only regarded her in the dim glow of the oil lamp, his gaze steady, unreadable. Lune felt it in the space between them—the weight of his attention, sharp yet strangely unintrusive, as though he was peeling back layers without ever needing to ask.

Then, he moved. Not abruptly, not with any great urgency, but with quiet purpose. He shut the book before him, the whisper of parchment against parchment barely breaking the silence, and reached for the oil lamp with one hand. The flame wavered as he lifted it, casting shifting shadows along his features, catching against the sharp line of his jaw and severe nose.

Lune watched as he stood, her pulse quickening, though she could not quite say why. He had not spoken, had not given any command or expectation. And yet, something in the way he looked at her—as if measuring something, weighing some unseen decision—made her fingers tense in her lap.

“Come,” he said at last.

A single word. Not forceful, not urgent, but certain.

She hesitated, glancing toward the doorway as if to reassure herself that no one else lurked in the corridor beyond. There was nothing—only the vast, unbroken hush of the library, the towering shelves filled with books that had long since forgotten the voices that had written them.

Still, she hesitated.

Alessandro took a few steps away from the table before pausing, glancing back at her. The low light softened the cool severity of his expression, but his eyes remained sharp, keenly observant.

"If you don’t wish to follow, then don’t," he said simply. "I won’t ask twice."

Something about that statement, about the quiet certainty with which he said it, made her decision for her. Before she could overthink it, she stood, her chair scraping softly against the floor as she pushed it back.

She followed.

Alessandro did not wait for her to catch up, but he did not outpace her either. His steps were deliberate, unhurried, the light of the oil lamp shifting as he wove through the shelves. The deeper they went, the further the glow of the sconces faded, replaced by the encroaching weight of shadow. The air grew heavier with the scent of dust and parchment, the hush pressing in around them, swallowing even the sound of their footsteps.

Lune did not ask where they were going. She only watched the way Alessandro carried himself—steady, assured, as if he had walked this path countless times before. And perhaps he had.

At last, he turned into a narrow alcove, tucked between two towering bookshelves. It was a space so small that without a guiding light, one might have walked past it a hundred times without noticing. There was a dip there in the wall, a small wooden window seat that had been built with care but worn with age. A few books were left abandoned as though someone had meant to return to them but never had.

Alessandro set the lamp down upon the table, its glow pooling over the pages, over the rough wood, over the quiet, waiting space between them.

Lune remained near the entrance, uncertain. “Why here?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Alessandro leaned against the edge of the table, arms crossing loosely over his chest. His gaze was unreadable in the shifting light. “It’s quiet,” he said.

“It was quiet out there.”

“Not quiet enough.”

Lune swallowed, glancing toward the bookshelves as though expecting some unseen observer to step forward from the dark. There was no one. Only the smell of ink and paper, the steady glow of the lamp, and the presence of the man before her.

“I keep things here,” he tells her suddenly, the words spoken quicker than they might normally have been in a more casual setting. Their meetings, which had increased first to weekly and then quickly to multiple times a week after that very first, had not been entirely formal, but there had always been a boundary; one not quite breached, but he stood on that line, a guiding path, teetering on its blurred edges. “Well—they’re not mine, per say. They belong to my family.”

As he approached the edge of the left shelf closest to the window, she noticed rectangular figures that were much taller and much narrower than the books nearby. They were frames, she realized as he carefully removed one from the very back. Portraits. Family portraits, and painted by various artists, she noticed, as the styles varied from year to year.

She steps closer, extending a tentative hand, as if asking permission. He allows her, placing one of the framed portraits in her hand. They were of reasonably large size, measuring crudely from her chin to her hip, and were much lighter than she had expected. Then again, she wasn’t experienced in handling canvases or in the creation of their contents.

He was silent for some time, and she took it as a sign to examine them closer, bringing the canvas closer to her face as if she were looking for some miniscule detail. Finding none, she glanced up at him, only for him to nod down at it again, suggesting she give it another try. Sighing inaudibly, she brushes her fingers over the textured paint, and then looks at the one he had propped up on the shelf next to her.

There was a gap, she noticed. Not in the paintings, but in time, as the one she held pictured his mother and father holding his older brother, while the second pictured his parents and older brother again, but this time with both him and his first younger brother. With their age difference, apparent in their appearance despite their familial introversion, there should have been one between the two that featured only Alessandro and Bernardo. Yet, seemingly without reason, there wasn’t.

She looks up at him now, pressing her fingers lightly against that space just beside a much younger image of Bernardo. “Where are you?”

For a moment, Alessandro said nothing. His gaze remained fixed on the painting she held, but Lune sensed that he was not truly looking at it—at least, not in the way she was. She watched the way his fingers rested against the edge of the propped-up canvas, not gripping, not holding, merely touching, as if feeling the frame’s presence rather than interacting with it. The silence stretched long enough that she almost considered withdrawing the question. But then, without looking at her, he answered.

“I wasn’t there.” His voice was quieter now, more measured, as though he were selecting his words carefully, as though he had already considered them many times before. “Not yet.”

Lune’s brow furrowed slightly. Her fingers, still resting lightly against the canvas, twitched as if debating whether to move away. “What do you mean?”

Alessandro exhaled, a slow, steady breath through his nose. Then, at last, he turned his head to meet her gaze. “I wasn’t born into this family,” he said simply. “I was adopted.”

Lune blinked. For all the things she might have expected, that had not been one of them. Not because it was impossible—no, in fact, now that it had been spoken aloud, it made sense in ways she hadn’t considered—but because of the way he had always carried himself, always poised, always so deeply entrenched in his family’s affairs, his place in them never once called into question. And yet, in this moment, standing beside him in the dim glow of the oil lamp, she could see it—the faint trace of distance that had always been there, something imperceptible to most but now undeniably present.

She looked back down at the portrait, tracing the space where a younger Alessandro should have been. “But you were here,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “You were already part of this family before Antonio was born.”

He nodded once, a small, measured movement. “Yes.”

She looked up at him again, searching his face for something—an emotion, a reaction—but he was unreadable. Not in the way he sometimes was, when he purposefully concealed his thoughts, but in the way of someone who had long since grown accustomed to keeping certain truths unspoken.

“It isn’t something that’s discussed,” he continued after a pause. “Not because it’s a secret, but because there has never been a need. I was taken in, given a name, a place, an education. I was meant to belong.” A beat. Then, a faint curve of his lips—something wry, something bitter, something too quiet to be called a smile. “That should have been enough.”

Should have. The words hung between them like dust unsettled by a passing hand.

Lune did not speak immediately. Instead, she looked back at the painting, at the faces carefully rendered in oil and pigment, at the missing space that had never been filled. She had thought, in some small way, that Alessandro was different from her—that for all his solitude, all his sharp edges, he still had something solid beneath his feet. A place to return to. A certainty of belonging that she had never quite possessed.

He inhales suddenly, the noise breaking her train of thought and pulling her eyes, and more importantly, her ears, back to him.

“You called him Antonio,” he says, a statement. “You know him well, then?”

Lune hesitated. Not because she did not have an answer, because she most certainly did, but because she was uncertain how to shape it. He, despite their lack of a blood tie, was Alessandro’s brother.

“I wouldn’t say that,” she admitted at last. “We’ve spoken.”

Alessandro studied her for a moment, unreadable. The flame of the oil lamp flickered in the quiet space between them, casting long shadows across the spines of forgotten books, stretching across the floor like something reaching.

“That is not the same,” he remarked, tilting his head slightly, as though weighing her words with an unseen scale. “Speaking to someone and knowing them.”

She looked away, back to the painting, though it no longer held the same pull it had moments ago. “Perhaps not.”

Alessandro exhaled softly. It was not quite a sigh, more a measured release of breath. “Antonio is… charismatic,” he said, though the word felt chosen with care, as if avoiding others that might be less kind. “People gravitate toward him.”

Lune glanced at him. “And they don’t toward you?” That was a redundancy on her part. He was alone when she found him, and alone now, except for her and the cryptically mentioned “ghosts” that he seemed to speak of so often.

Something flickered in his expression—brief, like a candle guttering before steadying again. “No.”

She considered that; considered the way he carried himself, the way he spoke only when necessary, the way he lingered in the spaces between conversation rather than in the center of it. The way his bitter expression seemed to scare more people off than it encouraged.

And yet.

“I can’t imagine why,” she murmured, and though she meant it neither as jest nor flattery, something about the way Alessandro looked at her made it clear that he was measuring the weight of her words.

He did not respond immediately. Instead, he turned his attention back to the portrait, fingers tapping once, absentmindedly, against the wooden frame.

“He is good at belonging,” he said after a pause. “At making people feel as though they belong with him.”

Lune frowned slightly. “And you?

The question lingered, hanging in the space between them like a breath not yet exhaled.

Alessandro’s lips pressed together, his expression unreadable. When he spoke, his voice was quieter. “I have never quite mastered that skill.”

Lune’s fingers twitched slightly at her sides. “It isn’t always a skill,” she said. “Some people just—” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “Fit.”

His gaze flickered toward her then, something in his expression shifting—subtle, but present. “And you don’t?” He used his turns wisely. Touché.

Lune felt the weight of the question, not because it demanded an answer, but because they both already knew it.

She shook her head once, just enough for him to see.

Alessandro was silent for a long moment. Then, with a quiet sort of finality, he turned back to the shelf, carefully sliding the portrait back into place, filling the space it had occupied as though it had never been moved.

“You called him Antonio,” he said again, though softer this time. “But you do not call me Alessandro.”

Lune blinked, caught off guard. “I—” She hesitated, suddenly aware of it, the unspoken habit she had not thought to question.

He was right. She had never once spoken his name.

She paused, her eyes straining slightly in the fading candlelight as they trained briefly on his face. “I can call you that if you would like me to,” she said, her eyes falling again.

She ran her fingertips over a gilded title, barely visible through decades of neglect, when a sound—not quite a cough, not quite a sigh—made her still.

She froze, fingers hovering over the book’s brittle spine. The sound—too deliberate to be the library settling, too human to be ignored—unraveled the delicate solitude she had woven around herself. Slowly, she turned her head.

At the far end of the aisle, barely visible in the dim light, a figure sat hunched over an aged wooden table. A small oil lamp cast flickering shadows across the surface, illuminating a spread of tools and a stack of weary books in various states of disrepair. He hadn’t spoken, hadn’t moved beyond the subtle shift that had given him away.

For a moment, she considered retreating. Then, his fingers, ink-stained and precise, turned a fragile page, and his voice—low, edged with something dry and unreadable—broke the silence.

"If you’re planning to run, I’d do it now. Most people do."

She stiffened, caught somewhere between curiosity and unease. He didn’t look up, but the corner of his mouth quirked, as if he already knew she was still standing there.

She didn’t move.

The quiet weight of his voice lingered between them, daring her to retreat, to vanish like the others surely had before her. But Lune had never been one to frighten easily—not when faced with the biting scrutiny of the clergy, nor the whispered warnings that women had no place loitering in the depths of the library.

Instead, she straightened her spine, hands carefully folding in front of her as she took a tentative step closer. “I wasn’t planning to run,” she said, keeping her voice measured. “Should I?”

A pause. Then, Alessandro let out a quiet breath—not quite a chuckle, not quite a sigh. “Depends,” he murmured, dipping a brush into a small ceramic dish of paste. “How do you feel about ghosts?”

Lune blinked, startled by the question. “Ghosts?”

His fingers, steady and deft, smoothed the paste along the spine of a frail, half-unbound volume. “They like it here,” he said, eyes still fixed on his work. “Or maybe they just never figured out how to leave.”

She studied him in the flickering lamplight—the sharp, austere angles of his face, the ink smudged along the ridge of his thumb. He didn’t look like a man who entertained superstitions. But there was something in the way he said it—detached, almost absentminded, as if he wasn’t trying to scare her but simply stating a fact.

“If I were to believe in ghosts,” she said carefully, “I imagine they’d have worse things to haunt than a library.”

That earned her a glance. Just a brief flicker of dark eyes beneath the fall of untamed hair. A faint, wry curve ghosted across his lips before he returned to his work. “You’d think that,” he said. “But people leave their worst secrets in books. If something’s bound to linger, it’s here.”

Lune swallowed, an uneasy prickle settling at the nape of her neck. She wasn’t sure if it was his words or his presence—so still, so unapologetically at ease in this dim, forgotten corner of the world.

She should leave. She should take the nearest book and go. Instead, she took another step forward. “What are you doing?” she asked.

Alessandro exhaled, a slow, deliberate sound. “Keeping things from falling apart.” He turned another page, careful as a man handling something far more delicate than mere parchment. “For now, at least.”

Lune hesitated. She had seen the state of the library—the way time had gnawed at its edges, how the clergy seemed indifferent to the slow decay. She knew there were workers, members of the clergy, entrusted with the delicate texts, but this was her first time seeing one at work.

“And you do this alone?”

“Wouldn’t be much of a ghost story if I had company.”

She huffed, startled by the dry humor laced in his tone. He wasn’t quite smiling, but there was something in his expression that suggested he was pleased to have caught her off guard.

For the first time since stepping into the aisle, Lune felt the tension in her shoulders ease. “I imagine ghosts don’t make for very good conversation,” she said.

Alessandro flicked an invisible speck of dust from the corner of a page. “Neither do most people.” 

Lune tilted her head slightly, studying him. “Then I suppose I should be flattered you’re entertaining this conversation at all.”

Alessandro let out a quiet breath—not quite a laugh, but something close. “Flattered isn’t the word I’d use.” He reached for a thin metal tool, carefully pressing it along the seam of the book’s spine, his touch almost reverent. “But if it keeps you from hovering like an ill-omen, I’ll allow it.”

She arched her brow. “I thought you liked ghosts.”

“I tolerate them,” he corrected. “I don’t encourage them.”

Something in the way he said it made her wonder if he was speaking of more than just ghosts.

Lune hesitated, then let her curiosity take hold. She stepped closer, peering at the tools spread across the table—fine brushes, a bone folder, a pot of glue thickened with age. The book beneath his hands was old, its cover peeling, its pages clinging to each other like leaves left too long in the damp.

She glanced at him. “You’re repairing it?”

Alessandro nodded, his ink-stained fingers gliding along the fragile paper. “Trying to,” he said. “It’s older than anyone in this town, and not particularly cooperative.”

Lune’s lips quirked. “Much like its caretaker?”

He paused, fingers stilling for just a fraction of a second before he huffed softly through his nose. “Clever,” he murmured. “I’ll have to watch out for you.”

It wasn’t a threat, nor was it a warning. Just an observation, dry and vaguely amused.

She allowed herself a small, triumphant smile before nodding toward the book. “What’s so important about that one?”

Alessandro tapped a finger against the brittle spine. “It’s a record of the town’s oldest laws. Some of them still stand. Others… not so much.” His tone was even, but there was something in it—a trace of something unreadable beneath the surface. “I like to know what came before.”

Lune studied him, her own curiosity sparking. “And do you prefer the past to the present?”

For the first time, he looked at her fully, his dark gaze settling on her with quiet weight. “The past already happened,” he said, voice low. “It doesn’t ask for anything.”

Lune wasn’t sure why that answer unsettled her.

The library creaked around them, the wooden beams shifting with the night’s cold. She glanced at the towering shelves, at the books resting in the shadows—forgotten, waiting, lingering.

“You don’t seem like someone who likes being disturbed,” she said finally.

Alessandro exhaled, turning back to his work. “I don’t.”

“And yet you haven’t sent me away.”

His lips quirked, just barely. “Not yet.”

Lune considered that, then pulled out the empty chair across from him and sat down.

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. But the corner of his mouth twitched just slightly, as if conceding a silent challenge. The oil lamp flickered between them, casting long shadows along the table.

Alessandro turned another page, careful and unhurried. “You’re either very brave,” he murmured, “or very foolish.”

Lune folded her hands in her lap. “A nun can’t be foolish.”

His eyes flickered with something sharp, something knowing. “A nun,” he said, “shouldn’t be here at all.”

And yet, neither of them moved.

The silence between them stretched, filled only by the quiet scrape of Alessandro’s tool along the book’s brittle spine. The library, vast and hollow, seemed to shrink in around them, folding them into the dim glow of the oil lamp.

Lune held his gaze, unflinching. “I like books,” she said simply.

Alessandro’s fingers paused for a fraction of a second before continuing their careful work. “Plenty of books upstairs,” he murmured. “Ones that don’t smell like decay and regret.”

Lune’s lips twitched. “And yet, you spend your time here.”

That earned her a glance—brief but assessing. “Someone has to keep them from crumbling to dust.” He smoothed the paste along the frayed edges of the spine, his touch almost reverent. “Or did you think knowledge preserves itself?”

Lune considered that. “Some would say there are things better left forgotten.”

Alessandro hummed, a low, unimpressed sound. “That’s what people say when they’re afraid of remembering.”

She shifted slightly in her seat, unsure why his words unsettled her. Perhaps because they were spoken with such quiet certainty, as if he had seen the truth of them play out time and time again.

“You sound like someone who doesn’t forget easily,” she observed.

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he carefully turned a fragile page, his ink-stained fingers pressing it flat with an almost excessive gentleness.

Then, finally—“Forgetting is convenient. I’ve never cared much for convenience.”

Lune studied him, this man who sat cloaked in shadow and ink, who seemed more a part of the library than any book lining its shelves. He did not speak like the clergy, nor did he carry himself like the scholars who occasionally wandered through. He was something else—something quiet and knowing, something worn at the edges but still standing.

“I think,” she said slowly, “you are not at all what I expected to find down here.”

Alessandro huffed softly. “Likewise.”

Silence again. But this time, it felt less like an end and more like something waiting to be unraveled.

At last, he set his brush aside and leaned back slightly, as if considering her for the first time. “Since you’re determined to linger, you might as well make yourself useful.”

Lune arched her brow. “Is that an invitation?”

He smirked—a small, fleeting thing, but it was there. “It’s a test.”

She tilted her head. “And if I fail?”

Alessandro gestured vaguely to the shelves around them. “Then the ghosts will have another lost soul to keep them company.”

Lune exhaled, shaking her head as she reached for the book he slid toward her.

He was being humorous, she knew, and she wasn’t sure if it was foolishness or something else entirely, but she did not mind the thought of staying.

. . .

She should not have stayed as long as she did. The thought followed her as she made her way toward the exit, the vast silence of the library pressing at her back like a held breath. Alessandro had not tried to stop her. He had merely watched as she pushed back the chair, gathered herself, and slipped away without another word. No farewell, no acknowledgment—just the flicker of oil-light over his face as he returned to his work. Lune exhaled as she stepped beyond the heavy doors and into the night. The cold was sharp against her skin, chasing away the musty warmth of the library. She pulled her habit tighter around her shoulders, her breath curling in the air before her. Unease stirred in her chest, twining with something quieter, something she did not have a name for. It was not fear—no, fear would have sent her running the moment she heard Alessandro’s voice. It was something else. A feeling like standing at the edge of something vast and unknowable, staring down into it, unsure whether she wished to step forward or turn away entirely.

A strange sort of satisfaction settled beneath her ribs. He had not dismissed her like the others. He had not treated her like she did not belong. If anything, Alessandro had looked at her and seen her as something worth testing. Something intelligent. The thought unsettled her as much as it pleased her.

She walked quickly, the hush of the library still clinging to her, even as the distant chime of the monastery bells reminded her of the world waiting beyond the books and the ghosts and the ink-stained hands. Tomorrow, she told herself—tomorrow, she would not return.