The Mosaic

Chapter 64 | Phantasmagoria

Phantasmagoria:  A scene of optical effects and illusions in a theater. A constantly shifting scene as if in a dream. The state between truth and imagination. A mind tricked into illusions.

"No." Giacinto laughed quietly. "He's beyond insane."

"What waits beyond insanity?"

"Gods."

A chill ran down Alessandro's back. The Reaper radiated a kind of madness he couldn't comprehend. He was sick. And yet eerily clear minded. "Then why did you meet with him?"

Giacinto's mouth opened, then closed again. Alessandro knew it. It had struck him a few days ago, when Giacinto had his sleeves rolled up after Laelia had removed her stitches, the fresh scar long and shiny across his forearm. A scar on the right forearm. Like the Reaper.

Giacinto had never gotten into a barfight.

Alessandro clenched his fists, his incapable heart jumping back and forth between worry and suspicion.

Giacinto glared at something in the distance. He looked like he was considering stabbing Alessandro right then and there just to have his peace.

But Giacinto's shoulders only slumped with a sigh. "I'm aware it was not my brightest moment. But Steno... we're losing this fight. We're only alive because his targets have been the agents, Piero de 'Medici, now Marius... but we keep getting in his way."

Giacinto had met with the Reaper to bargain for their lives. Shame pooled uncomfortably in his stomach. What had he turned into over these years?

Giacinto waved it off. "You wanted to know how a wayward prince came to call death by his first name."

It wasn't just obsession. The Reaper thought they were the same. The Reaper was trying to turn Giacinto into him. He branded Giacinto with a scar like his own.

But ... yesterday, Giacinto had told him about the Reaper, a monster donning human skin, comforting a scared boy who'd witnessed rape, feared for his life and taken another's.

"At first, many opposed the Regent. My mother had married him because he had the north rallied behind him. But he wasn't royal. Noble, but not enough."

So the Reaper had been hired to silence the opposition.

Giacinto's laugh rang empty. "It's a peaceful rule if there's no one to question it."

Alessandro was going to be sick. He didn't know what to say.

"The Regent was paranoid. He didn't trust Luca's loyalty." Giacinto's jaw worked. "He ordered Luca to kill his wife. A test."

Perhaps the ancients had been right – Crete was the land of Gods and Monsters. "Did he kill her?"

"Of course. There's no exception to his rules." Giacinto snorted. "I don't think Luca is capable of love as we think of it. It's more... fixation. She was a girl from the village he grew up in. I don't think he loved her, more what she represented. An illusion."

"You think doing this to you is his revenge? Even if he didn't truly love her, he felt something."

"I ... " Giacinto shook his head. "I don't know. I don't understand him. He doesn't think like us. The Regent hates me. If Luca killed me, he'd do him a favour."

Alessandro stayed silent for a while, watching Giacinto's jaw work. This was getting to the Greek more than he admitted. "But if he could get you to kill the Regent... that would be the ultimate revenge."