The Mosaic

Chapter 74 | Mortal Thoughts

The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance. [...]Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts. – Lady Macbeth, calling the devils responsible for murderous thoughts.

The night was dark and silent around them, an open grave, the warm breeze that brushed their cheeks like a fading breath. Were they the mourners or were they the mourned?

Alessandro didn't know.

Alessandro didn't want to know.

He had wanted to sit on the river's shore until the moon sank in it, until it ran dry in the sand, until time itself would fade around him. But he couldn't. He had to function. He was the rational one. He couldn't fall now.

He did not want to feel the storm of emotions threatening to tear his breath away. It brewed on the horizon, banished from the emptiness Alessandro drowned himself in. Only the guilt stayed, seeping through his hollow heart, heavy and thick and sweet.

He did not want to look at them now, staring at him like he had answers. Like he knew what to do. Like they could follow him – but he was lost.

Marius seemed to fade into the night like a dying ghost, paler than usual, water still dripping from his white hair like translucent blood. Giacinto, silent, still – eerily still. The shadows were long rifts in the thin silver light of the moon, when Giacinto stood motionless he turned into one of them. He had not said a word to Alessandro. And Laelia ...

When Alessandro had pushed down everything he feared to feel and marched up to find the rest, Laelia had been trying to run back to the ruin, screaming and clawing at Giacinto's iron grip around her. Alessandro had once seen a deer fight hunting dogs for its life, kicking and bucking, running, being brought down again, fighting until it dropped dead – Laelia fought like that. She broke free from Giacinto's hold twice with desperate strenght.

She had drained her soul screaming Lorenzo's name. When Giacinto had finally let her go, she had crumbled at his feet into a lifeless heap, sobbing silently.

Now she sat where she had fallen, staring into nothing. She didn't seem to even notice Marius sitting next to her, his whispered comfort falling on deaf ears.

Alessandro didn't know what to do. He was letting them down. He was the one who was supposed to have a plan.

But they had nothing. The horses were back at the ruin and with them all their supplies. They had nothing but the wet clothes sticking to their skin and the weapons that had been useless in the end.

The cut on his cheek was still bleeding. The handkerchief he had pressed against it had been soaked with ice-cold river-water before, now it was soaked with warm blood. It would need stitches – but there was nothing to stitch it up with.

Alessandro gave up, hurling the damned cloth into the shadows. He felt like breaking down. He felt like breaking someone's bones. But the only thing slowly breaking was his mask, if the worried glances Marius kept shooting him were anything to go by.

Giacinto slipped from the black into the moonlight. He looked completely unbothered, a coin dancing across his knuckles.

Alessandro felt an angry itch in his fingers – Lorenzo was dead and Giacinto, Giacinto who Lorenzo had loved, maybe like a dear drinking companion or maybe as something else, looked like he was on an evening stroll.

He grit his teeth. He would do well to remember that. Giacinto did not form attachments.

Giacinto looked around their sorry group – glance slipping over Alessandro as if he was not there. "Let's go."