This Vicious Grace (The Last Finestra #1)(3)

The service concluded with, “Per nozze e lutto, si lascia tutto, però chi vive sperando, muore cantando.” In weddings and mourning, one lets go, but he who lives with hope dies singing. It might have been the saddest thing she’d ever heard. Hugo certainly hadn’t left the world mid-note.

As the pallbearers made their way down the aisle, guests reached out to brush the glossy surface of the coffin.

Alessa did not. Spirit or ghost, surely whatever was left of Hugo would prefer she kept her distance.

As the casket passed beneath an archway of carved stone gods, the crowd murmured, “Rest in the company of heroes,” and he was gone.

Hero was perhaps a bit of a stretch—all he’d done was die—but she had no right to talk.

People stood, straightening jackets and gathering skirts with slow hands, brushing invisible dust from their clothing.

Alessa recoiled at Adrick’s elbow jab to her ribs, her heart racing at the rare sensation of physical contact.

Oh. Everyone was stalling. And she wasn’t taking the hint.

She flashed a rude gesture at him behind her back, then rose and made her way toward Dea’s shrine in the front of the temple. Everyone could flee while she pretended to pray.

Such a dutiful Finestra. So devout. So obedient.

Shielded from curious eyes within the alcove, Alessa sat beside the stone Dea on the altar and rested her cheek against one cold, marble shoulder. Her chest ached, hollow with everything she didn’t have.

Family, forsaken.

Friends, none.

Even the fortress carved into the bedrock of the island wasn’t for her. When Divorando came, other people—people who had families and friends—would huddle together in the darkness, thanking the gods they weren’t her.

When the nave rang hollow, she climbed the wide stairs alone to the piazza above, straining to breathe past the constriction of her gown. The temperature rose with every step, and the fabric clung to her skin, damp with perspiration. At least the Consiglio had finally let her remove her veil during private events after a brush with heatstroke at the last Midsummer’s Gala, and the current fashion of cape skirts—full and long in the back but with overlapping panels that crossed at knee-height in front—saved her from falling on her face daily in the City of a Thousand Stairs.

Alessa stepped out, blinking in the light, to take her place beside Tomo and Renata. The red-faced guards lining the wide steps to the Cittadella saluted, sweating through their uniforms, and the waiting crowd hushed to bow and curtsy.

From her usual vantage point—a balcony off the fourth floor of the Cittadella—the stylish young women of Saverio often looked like flocks of peacocks strutting around the city in jewel-toned skirts. Now, clad in shades of black and gray, they huddled like dirty pigeons around the margins of the piazza.

No one looked directly at her, as if she was too horrible to view with the naked eye, yet, somehow, the weight of their stares pressed in from all sides.

Go ahead. Bow before the blessed savior who keeps killing your friends and family.

At Renata’s pointed look, Alessa flushed, as though she’d spoken aloud the blasphemy in her head. Despite the two decades between them, Renata looked young enough to be Alessa’s sister, with an amber complexion, golden hair, and rich, brown eyes, but to Renata, Alessa was a duty, not family or even a friend. It was painfully clear in moments like this.

Tomo’s expression warmed with encouragement. “Remember, frightened people crave certainty.”

“You are confident,” Renata said under her breath. “You have matters under control.”

Alessa bared her teeth in a “confident” smile that made one guard flinch. She eased it down a bit.

Honestly. If she were to rank every possible description of herself, “confident and under control” wouldn’t make the list.

When she’d first been presented in this piazza, everyone had crowded close, eyes sparkling with hope, smiles heavy with promises.

One day, she was an ordinary girl. The next, Dea’s chosen savior. Beloved, important, and so popular she hadn’t known where to look first.

Not anymore. Now no one vied to become her Fonte. No one wanted to share their gift with her. Although it wasn’t really sharing, was it? Sharing implied they’d get something back. That they’d both be alive at the end of the transaction. That was a promise she couldn’t make.

But she’d try. She always tried.

Even in such a restless crowd, it was easy to find the Fontes, draped in a visible miasma of gloom. She’d met them dozens of times, but they were still nothing more than strangers with familiar names:

Kaleb Toporovsky, whose eyes slid away a bit too fast as he smoothed his burnished copper hair with a look of perpetual boredom.

Josef Benheim, impeccably clad in midnight black, his gaze so steady she could almost hear him reminding himself not to blink. He looked so much like his older sister that Alessa’s heart caught in her throat. Families rarely had more than one Fonte, but when they did, it was seen as a sign of strength, of the gods’ favor. He should have been one of Alessa’s top candidates, but she’d already cost his parents one child.

Other Fontes reluctantly met her searching eyes: Nina Faughn, Saida Farid, Kamaria and Shomari Achebe.

Most tried to blend in with the crowd. She couldn’t blame them. While she’d barely known the people she’d killed, they’d all grown up together.