Chapter 41
I found Gianna in Fhírinne, beneath a low hanging willow.
She snickered at the open book in her lap, toothpick stuck in the corner of her mouth, propping her lips open just enough for the morning light to bounce off her golden tooth.
Celine had coaxed me there, encouraged me to ask Gianna all my questions.
It wasn’t bad advice, not in the slightest, and yet my stomach riled.
I’d been so busy hunting for answers, I hadn’t considered what might happen when I found them.
Not to mention, she’d been stuck in the Shroud for reasons I’d yet to know.
But if anybody had answers about Bethesda and her bloodthirsty pack, I didn’t doubt it would be her.
“You going to stand there all day,” she called from behind me now, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Or are we going to talk?”
“How—how’d you do that?” I gestured from where she’d sat moments before, her book propped on the bench alone.
She toggled her lavender eyebrows. “Aura magic. It’s pretty easy really, I just tell my magic where I want to be, and boom: I’m there. I’ll show you how it works sometime.”
I smiled. “Sure. So … can we? Talk, I mean?”
“I’m all yours.”
She motioned for me to take the lead, and I found my place on the bench she’d abandoned before.
Her stare was calm, but also expectant, like she’d been waiting for this moment.
And why wouldn’t she have been? To her, I was her best friend: Fiorenza of Naples.
But on my end? I’d tried to remember her.
Really, I had, but I’d come back blank. I didn’t doubt she was who she said she was, not at all. I just … didn’t remember.
Fhírinne’s magical wind swept through the willows, and my fingers locked onto a flitty branch twirling the smooth leaves around.
For a few moments, the fountain’s trickle was the only sound.
It soothed my frayed nerves as it so often did.
To think, if I hadn’t found Fhírinne, if its magic hadn’t wooed me as it did that first visit, I doubt I’d have ever known what peace could feel like.
How life-giving it could be. I locked onto peace once again and shuffled to face Gianna, ready or not.
“Celine encouraged me to talk to you. She said you might have some insight for me? About the Shroud?”
“A wise woman, that Serenity. Though, I think Celine does fit her personality better.” She grinned and picked at the blade of grass between her fingers.
“I do have insight for you, and I’m willing to tell you anything you want to know.
But in order to truly understand, I think it’s best if I start from the beginning. Fair?”
Though I’d failed to admit it to myself, I feared what our life together had been.
Gianna had found herself in the Shroud, lived there for decades, Celine had mentioned, and in my experience the things that stalked about those shadows didn’t possess goodness.
Nothing truly kind lived there. Which left me to wonder.
I shuffled in my seat. “Fair.”
She tucked a beaded braid behind her ear and released a breath.
“Well, as I’m sure you know by now, we were close friends back when you went by the name of Fiorenza.
We grew up on the coast of the Mediterranean.
Our mothers were longtime friends.” A snicker slipped past her lips, eyes downcast in remembrance.
“They loved to force us into playdates, you and I, so they could sip their wine and carry on about the newest town scandal or what have you.”
“What was her name?” The question tore through me, quaked in my bones. “My mother?”
“Corinna. She was a lovely, kind woman, known around town for always having fresh bread and company to spare.” A grin caught her cheeks. “She adored you.”
The words sank into me like sunlight.
“We weren’t fond of each other at first, you and I,” Gianna continued.
“But with time we grew close, drawn together by a burning need to shake up the status quo. We made a pretty good team if I do say so myself; outsmarted the world around us every chance we could. We’d tag team our chores to get them done quicker, coerce Mr. Beneventi down the street to spare us his leftover pastries, and sneak off to our secret spot. Our sanctuary as you often called it.”
That did sound like something I’d say. “Secret spot?”
She met my gaze. “This little cave off the sea cliff’s north side; our place to think, away from it all.
We talked about everything there: our hopes for life in bigger, better places, falling in love, becoming famous artists.
It was a small life, but grand. And then you met Cillian.
You two were like a dream. And—don’t you dare tell him this, it’ll go right to his head,” she said with a laugh.
“But … I liked him. For you, I mean. We were a unit those four months. Inseparable.”
Her smile grew tense, worrisome.
“What happened?” I asked.
“There was a fire.” Her stare grew distant, fixated on the solarium windows.
“Many families lost loved ones, and … we lost you. You were stubborn as ever, rushing in to help those who couldn’t help themselves, and then, you—you didn’t come back out.
” A glaze settled over her eyes, but she was quick to clear her throat, to push it back down.
“My home burned with the rest of the block. My mother and father didn’t have the means to rebuild, so we were forced to head inland to a farm my great uncle owned.
It was the only way to survive. If you could even call the torture we endured there surviving. ”
A lump rose in my throat. “Gods, I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. Only took me nearly a century of reflection to come to terms with it, but I’m free of those ghosts now.
” She set a hand on my shoulder, offering a reassuring smile.
“It wasn’t until I was eighteen that I returned after the loss of my mother.
When I arrived, the quaint town we’d grown up in was no more, and a bustling trading outpost stood in its wake.
I returned to your home to find the same carved, wooden cross above the main entrance.
The post-fire rebuild was so true to the original, I nearly forgot what had happened to it years before.
I knocked on the door and a frail woman greeted me, her home cast in shadow.
She didn’t look familiar in the slightest, but I thought she may be able to give me a hint as to where your mother might be now.
I explained I was an old family friend looking for the woman who’d lived in the home before her, Corinna.
” She pursed her lips. “Then, the woman embraced me with all the strength in her frail body. After a second look, I realized it was your mother after all, just far more worn and run down.”
I leaned forward on the bench, neurons in my brain firing, trying to make the connection. To remember Gianna as she’d remembered me and our life together in such vivid color, however dark it had gotten. “What did she say?”
“She invited me in and sat me down with a warm bowl of soup, of course. She explained what happened in her life since the fire, and I gave her that social outlet she’d clearly thirsted for after my mother, my entire family, had left.
” She sucked in a breath. “And then, I—I told her of my mother’s passing.
She went quiet, motionless. I thought maybe she’d gone into shock.
After she finally pulled free from her thoughts, I offered to stay.
I could tell she wasn’t moving around the house as easily, and with no husband to help her, well … I think we needed each other.”
“That’s sweet that you’d want to stay with her,” I said. “Take care of her like that.”
“It was as much for me as it was for her. There was nothing left for me back in the country. I missed you. I missed my mother. I missed … home. So, I stayed.” She let the last shard of the picked-at grass drop to the floor.
“Your mother fell ill a few years later. We didn’t have the funds for traditional medicine back then.
So, I began to study holistic medicine. She started my journey to self-discovery, your mother awakened my Tinctured magic, which led me to hedge witchery and eventually freedom within myself.
My one regret is I didn’t awaken to magic sooner.
” Her face fell. “It may have cured her.”
I placed my hand in hers and gave a firm squeeze. “You can’t blame yourself. It was out of your control. I’m sure she was happy to have you by her side in the end.”
“Still as kind as ever.” She smiled and clasped her free hand over mine. “After she passed, I buried her by your side, overlooking the cliffs.”
My heart cracked as an image of golden sun reverberated back in my mind’s eye. The cliffs, clear as if it’d been yesterday: breathtaking. I turned to face Gianna, crossing my legs beneath me. “Where’d you go after that?”
“Your mother had signed the house over to me without my knowledge, and I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the only joyful home I had known, so again I stayed. Life in the town continued to flourish, as did my knowledge and understanding of herbal and light magic.”
I searched her face. “So, you were happy then?”
“For some time, yes … until a strange darkness fell over the town.” Her eyes creased into vicious lines. “The townsfolk began to treat each other horribly. Disease ran through the homes faster than could be cured: Spanish influenza.”
“Celine shared that with us—well, me really, in class. She read from your grimoire. You saved so many people.”