The Mosaic

Chapter 70 | Something Wicked this Way Comes

Belated happy new year!

Something wicked this way comes – the witches in Macbeth. The evil is Macbeth himself. 

The salon spun around them like a starry carousel.

Maybe it was the sparkling liquor Bianca had snuck for them from a servant, maybe it was the memory of flying around the ballroom in the girls' round dance. Laelia laughed, catching her breath after chasing the Medici daughter up the giant flight of stairs to the balcony running around the ballroom. It was a miracle they hadn't gotten tangled up in their ballgowns and tumbled down the stairs.

Giacinto had reappeared out of nowhere, gaze a bit too sharp among the dazed revellers, eyes glazed over with starlight, spinning dances and the pearls crushed in their wines. There was a smear of rusting blood around his knuckles. Marco Morosini, he had said. Lorenzo and Antonio's father, the duke's brother and the man who wanted all of them dead.

Laelia hadn't believed him at first – Signore Morosini had said he would return to Venice, his wife was about to give birth.

People lie, Giacinto had hissed and the pity in his eyes had half crushed, half enraged her.

He had dragged her across the room, barking for the Medici daughter she had seen him with earlier. Stay with Bianca. Don't leave the room. Stay out of his sight. Call the guards. He'd left without another word.

We can still have fun, Bianca had muttered, sticking out her tongue at Giacinto's back.

Laelia hadn't even known who Bianca was, except that for some reason, Giacinto had only danced with her. And that for some other, obscure reason, that bothered her. That she didn't know why he had danced with only her. Not that he danced with only her. 

I like your hairpin, she had said, trying to break the awkward silence.

Bianca had grinned. Thanks, it's poisoned.

There was no love at first sight, humans didn't work like that, her mother said love was a complicated mechanism to find mates and a pack, just an animals inability to tolerate loneliness, but Bianca challenged that hypothesis. The girl challenged everything. Giacinto, her mother, the old man that had looked at Laelia at bit too long.

She could see why Giacinto liked her.

"Why didn't I meet you before? Your mother had invited me to show me more poisons. Shouldn't you have been there?" Laelia asked.

Bianca pulled back from where she had leant over the balcony – people watching, she called it – blowing a golden curl out of her face. Apart from the blonde hair, she looked like her mother, with the same big brown eyes and curved lips, but less ... deadly. "I was hunting."

"Alone?"

"I had the hunters with me." Bianca said, as if that was as simple as two plus two.

"My father wouldn't even let me leave the house without a chaperone."

Bianca rolled her eyes. "That's because your father is a boring donkey." She noticed her mistake, cheeks turning pink. "Apologies. Your mother's words, not mine."

"You know my mother?"

Bianca furrowed her eyebrows. "I'd hope so. She's my godmother."

"I –" Laelia stopped, fingers tightening around her crystal glass. The sparkling wine sloshed dangerously. Was everyone keeping secrets from her?

Her own mother – she had always thought her mother was her ally in everything. She'd taught her the art of poison. She couldn't even cook, and yet she threatened to sautée Antonio's heart for Laelia if he showed his face again.