CHAPTER 27

Luca proudly returned after an hour, with three grouse hanging from his belt. I was like a madwoman, ripping the feathers from the first bird, seriously considering eating it raw, when Marcello set me aside with a pile of almonds and some edible roots, then skewered the birds and placed them above the fire to roast.

“You do not fear that someone will smell our fire and come to see who is cooking?” I asked.

“We are safe, Gabriella,” he said, lowering his head with a look that said trust me.

We spent the day eating, drinking, laughing, and sharing all we had learned. I slept on and off, hardly able to keep my eyes open in the process of coming down from my stress-o-rama life. Marcello kept me close, his arm around me, and when we sat down I leaned back against his chest, his legs around me. Between my weariness and the comfort that was him, I was out again for hours. That proved a good thing, since I later learned we were to make it back to our side of the battle line by traveling under cover of darkness.

“How does your leg fare?” Marcello asked, cocking his head to watch as I walked.

“It improves daily. But it is hardly whole.”

“And your ribs?” Lia asked. She was carving an arrow from a stick as Luca was showing her how to do.

“In a similar state.”

“And she’s without a sword again,” Luca said, gesturing at me with a smile. “Mayhap that She-Wolf wishes to do battle with her pretty teeth alone.”

“If any man of Firenze stands between us and getting back to our mother,” I said, nodding, “they shall see I am willing to use my teeth.”

He and Marcello laughed, while I shared a meaningful look with Lia. Mom had to be going insane, not knowing where we were or even if we were alive or dead. She’d been through enough with Dad. We had to get to her or at least get her word.

“She’ll have heard that I was near Castello Forelli,” Lia said lowly to me.

“And then you went charging back to retrieve me,” I returned.

“She had better become accustomed to living with concern,” Marcello said, lifting a brow. “You two seem to attract danger like moths to a flame.”

“Mm, I believe it might be the most delicious thing about them, don’t you agree?” Luca said with delight. “Aside from their startling beauty, of course,” he added, winking at Lia. He smiled as he handed me a bit of cold meat, the remains of our morning meal, then lifted a morsel to my sister.

She set aside her arrow and took it from him, returning his flirty smile.

He laughed under his breath and looked around at us. “I could spend my entire life alongside you three and die a happy man.”

“No,” Lia said, her smile fading. She stepped forward and poked him in the chest, driving him backward. “I do not wish to ever, ever, ever hear you say such words again. Do you understand me?”

He bumped up against the back wall and frowned down at her. He threw up his hands. “What words? ‘Entire life’? ‘Alongside you’?”

“Nay! No words of dying. Death.” She whipped around and pointed her finger at me and Marcello. “From any of you.”

I gave her a tender smile, waiting for her to catch up with herself, realize she was making a scene because of some weird reaction-slash-phobia spawned by Dad’s death, when Luca reached out and grabbed her around the waist. She clawed at his hands, trying to escape, but then she was shrieking in laughter as he tickled her and tackled her to the straw.

Luca sat back and looked down at Lia. “Do I appear as a specter to you, m’lady?”

“Nay,” she said, sitting up beside him. “You are very much alive. And I aim to keep you that way.”

“Ahh, ’tis up to you, now? To protect a knight of Siena?”

“Si, ’tis up to me,” she said softly.

Marcello pulled me around the corner and out into the yard, giving them a moment of privacy. He smiled as I grinned. “It pleases you,” he said, nodding toward the open stable door.

I lifted a brow. “Does it not please you?”

“It is beyond pleasure,” he said, taking me into his arms, “to not only know love, but also to know that those I love know it too.”

My eyes widened with hope. “Do you believe it? Truly? That it is love?”

He shrugged. “I know ’tis for Luca. What of your sister?”

I shook my head. “I know not. Never before has she had strong feelings for a man.”

Marcello grinned. “Well if there’s one thing Luca does for a person, it’s elicit strong feelings.”

We set off as dusk gave way to dark, passing the forest border and then making our way through a valley, stealing from farm to farm. We had rubbed dirt into every possible inch of the gown, but the silk still had a luminescent quality to it that made me feel like a glowworm at night.

And I still had nothing but a dagger to hold on to. I longed for the comfort of my sheath, the steady weight of my broadsword at my back. While the straps had chafed my shoulders, grown heavy after a long day out, forming a lump of protest in the muscles, I would have taken that any day to this feeling of nakedness, vulnerability, traveling without a weapon.

Because the closer I got to home, the more intent I was to never be taken away again. I longed for the comfort of Castello Forelli’s high, grand walls. The warmth of the great hall, her men gathering and laughing, eating and drinking within. I even missed my cold, high-ceilinged, nunnerylike room, with the long hallway outside that led me so often to Marcello. Get us home, Lord, I found myself praying as we hurried along a path. Just get us home. Somehow.

I thought about what Luca said, about dying happy if he could be with us forever. And of that concept itself, dying happy. Had Dad died happy? Not wanting to die, obviously, but content, fulfilled, knowing he’d done his best?

And was that why I was latching on to this place, Castello Forelli, as home? Here, there was nothing to reflect Dad, bring up memories of him. Here there was a reprieve from the sadness. The thought of it made me feel both thankful and guilty.

In some way over the last few days, between starvation, and thirst, and narrow escape from those wishing to kill me, I started to think about the life beyond. The forever place. Heaven.

Is it real, God? Heaven? Or just something we make up so we can deal?

I didn’t know if it was a fable, a collective dream that we all willingly fell into, but deep down I knew that the thought of heaven, a place where Dad was now, where I would be someday—along with Mom and Lia and Luca and Marcello, in time—was not something to fear. It was a comfort. A dream I wanted to keep believing in.

We slept the following day in a shallow cave, stacked together like sardines in a can, one of the men in front of Lia and me, the other ten feet away, on guard. We had narrowly missed a long line of Fiorentini soldiers who were wearily making their way north, hauling wounded, dying, dead. I decided it was their grim task that kept them from seeing us, plain in the morning light. But then, they did not expect the enemy here, so far from the border; even Sienese soldiers would have left them alone, in the odd code of honor among those at war. They were, in effect, retreating.

It gave us hope. Had Siena turned more than this stream of men back?

We set off come nightfall and skirted a vast camp of Fiorentini knights. One glimpse brought back unpleasant memories for Lia and me. We would’ve run, but my leg couldn’t tolerate it, and Lia was sticking closer than ever, constantly holding my hand.

Marcello and Luca seemed to know this land now, walking steadily along a stream for a time, then rounding a hill and heading directly south. “We are just north of Castello Paratore,” Marcello said. “In but half an hour, we should be able to see her, and beyond her to Castello Forelli.”

We hurried the rest of the way, ducking beneath a stone bridge as a patrol of six knights crossed it. I was glad the creek bed was dry. The whole soggy dress thing? Yeah, I was totally over that.

Marcello paused when they had passed. Luca and Lia looked back at us, questioning his hesitation. “What is it?” I asked in a whisper.

He shook his head, barely visible in the narrow moonlight. “They were not on alert,” he returned. “They fear no spies or enemies about.”

A shiver of fear ran down my back. Mom.

Knights of Firenze not on alert? So close to the border? Only having gained significant territory would put them so at ease…and we were within reach of Castello Forelli’s. I tried to give him a comforting smile, but it probably came off more as a flash of teeth in the dim moonlight. “They are most likely fools, or drunk, or thinking as we are—only of home,” I offered. “Besides, we are still on the wrong side of the border, right? A quarter mile farther, and we’ll see Firenze’s men on guard…”

He rose, but I could feel his lingering concern. We quickened our pace. Hunched over, rushing, we reached a cliff that descended to the river, the river that ran between the two castles. We crawled through the bramble to the edge of the rock and looked out.

There, a stone’s throw from us, was Castello Paratore.

I frowned. Crimson flags again flew from her parapets, lit by torches.

Worse was what I could see beyond it.

Castello Forelli. No. No, no, no.

Her entire front wall was collapsed. Fires blazed within.

“Mom,” Lia cried, her voice garbled. She was on her feet in seconds, and Luca chased after her.

I stared over at Marcello, just making out his profile, knowing there was no way I could catch up to Lia.

And when he turned his face to me, my heart stopped.