The Mosaic

Finale | And be a Villain

This is the last chapter! It is a little longer, but I did not want to split it into two chapters and keep you waiting even longer. I hope this is alright with you. So grab your favourite drink (are you team tea or hot chocolate?) and cozy up for a not quite relaxing last ride!

Any last bets on what will happen?

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. – Hamlet, Shakespeare.

The fog reached for her with his clammy, ghost-grey fingers, tracing the fear up her spine with slow delight.

But the devil was by her side, Laelia's hand tucked into the crook of his arm. It was the only point of warmth in the shivering twilight. The palaces they wandered past were still asleep, their looming marble ashen like a corpse behind the fog.

Despite Antonio's promise to help Giacinto and Alessandro, Laelia was on edge. The hollow echo of their steps followed behind them on the cobble stone, always a second out of rhythm with their strides. It's just us, Laelia told herself. No death, no monsters, no nights with bloody teeth. 

Still, the sound of steps drifting through the cold fog chased her heart with every beat. Soon, soon it would be over. Antonio would dig a secret out of its grave to buy her boys' lives, the sun would dissolve the fog and leave all the horrors in the night.

If Antonio noticed her unease, he did not show it, walking briskly through the side streets behind the palace. The pheasant feather on his hat bobbed with every step and the corner of his lips tugged down in a frown – everything as usual.

Lorenzo had once fooled her for an entire year, starting the rumour that the feathers on Antonio's hats were all quills – so he could start writing at the drop of a hat. Laelia wasn't sure if he was prouder of that horrible joke, or that Laelia had believed him until her father had taken pity on her.

"What are you smiling about?"

She hadn't noticed. But now the smile turned leaden, sinking with every second she fought to keep it up. "I was," she wet her lips, searching for a lie, "Thinking about the biscuits I had for breakfast. They had strawberries."

It seemed to be enough to fool him, or maybe he just didn't care.

But the mention of breakfast with her parents turned her mind to another mystery. If it all had started with her grandfather, if his illness had a puppeteer, there was another monster roaming these streets.

A monster Alessandro had not found in his puzzle.

A monster that would walk away free – or fall into their backs when they thought themselves victorious.

Because the Reaper was many things, he was death swift and cruel, but he did not command the slow death. He could carve out a heart, but he could not make it beat itself to death.

The Reaper was no poisoner.

A poison posing as illness so perfectly it fooled Laelia's mother? Her fingers dug into Antonio's arm. She knew only two people who could even dream of such a feat. Herself. And the Lady Medici.

No. Laelia forced her hand to relax before she would tear through Antonio's jacket. No, there were many poisoners in the shadows, she could not know them all.

And yet ... all'oro, from gold, written in cooling blood in the cell of that wrong witch. Golden, like the Lady Medici's dress that day, when the witch had been dragged away screaming about a traitor among them.

But the devil was by her side, silent but all-seeing. No story escaped Antonio.

If he could tell her what he had heard about her grandfather's death, perhaps she could match the symptoms to a poison.