This Vicious Grace (The Last Finestra #1)(97)

“While we’re on the topic,” Alessa said, “can you all please use my name? I know there are rules, but I think some have gone off track over the past few hundred years.”

“Screw rules,” Kamaria said. “They’re overrated.”

Alessa smiled. “Well, um, hi. I’m Alessa Paladino. Nice to officially meet you.”

“Alessa?” Kaleb said. “Really? I would have pegged you as a Mary, or maybe Marie.”

“This is a fun little theological lesson,” Kamaria said, earning an elbow from Kaleb. “But you still haven’t told us who’s going to hold your hand when the bugs come.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say.” Alessa took a deep breath. “I was sort of hoping it would be … all of you.”

Four pairs of eyes stared blankly at her.

“I think Kaleb collapsed because you were each absorbing part of my power, so no one was overloaded, but when you let go, Kaleb got the full force, and it was too much.”

“Meaning?” Josef said.

“Meaning I’m supposed to have more than one Fonte. Simultaneously.”

“Whoa,” Saida said. “None of the texts ever mentioned such an idea.”

“Didn’t they, though?” Alessa smiled sadly. “Together, we protect. It’s in every song. On every mural. Maybe it’s what Dea wanted from the beginning. She told us to find safety in connection. In community. We—the people—wrote it down and turned it into a million rules regulating everything a Finestra could wear, touch, love, or speak to. The gods didn’t make those rules. That was us.”

“The apocalypse is coming in—” Kaleb pretended to check his watch. “Ten days? Eleven? Who can keep track? And we’re throwing out the rulebook. Nice. What about the part that says ghiotte are evil?”

Alessa couldn’t smile. “That one might take longer to fix, but we’ll figure it out after we save the world.”

Josef still looked dazed. “A team of Fontes?”

Kaleb cleared his throat. “Ahem. I have it on good authority that the correct pluralization of the word is Fonti.”

Kamaria punched him on the arm, and they broke into a childish slapping fight.

Alessa watched them bicker with fierce affection. The Verità may have said loving no one was the only way to love everyone, but she’d fallen in love with Dante, and now her heart could burst with love for her friends.

Love didn’t demand perfection. The people—human, flawed, imperfect—who’d begun writing the Verità hundreds of years ago might have started on the right path, but they’d gotten lost along the way, a pendulum swung so far it had snapped. And if they were wrong about that, they might be wrong about other things.

She’d tried to be like Renata, strong and stoic, hiding her emotions beneath a layer of cold detachment, and it had never fit. She’d tried to be what she thought the gods wanted her to be, what she was told the people needed her to be, and it had gotten her three dead partners, and a shell around her heart. She’d been stunted until she threw off the rules, shut the holy books, and let herself be the emotional, stubborn, distracted mess she was.

Her mistake was playacting at being someone else.

She was still Alessa. She was a person, a daughter, a sister, a lover, a friend. She didn’t have to shed those roles to become Finestra. She only had to rearrange the parts she already had. She might be but one stitch in the tapestry, but every stitch had a purpose, and threads couldn’t become art without them.

To become one of many, she had to be one.

And to win the battle, she needed her friends.





Forty-Five


Tardi si vien con l’acqua quando la casa è arsa.

It is too late for water when the house is burnt down.

DAYS BEFORE DIVORANDO: 7


One week before Divorando, Alessa couldn’t take it any longer.

Saida and Kamaria were asleep in her bed after she’d made a big show of falling “asleep” on the couch hours earlier, and Josef and Kaleb were staying in the Fonte suite, so when she stole out of her room and eased the door closed, the coast should have been clear. But Kaleb, as always, was a pain in the ass.

“Leaving without me?” he wheezed, hanging onto the railing.

“What are you doing out of bed?”

“I couldn’t sleep, and I heard you stomping around out here. I’m going with you.”

“Going where?” she asked, innocently.

He gave her a look of utter exasperation. “If you say you took me to see the monster with my own eyes, maybe you won’t get accused of treason. I wanted to scold the mongrel who dared to soil my angel, or something like that.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Come on, help me down the stairs.”

Alessa didn’t want company and she didn’t want to share the few stolen moments she got with Dante, but Kaleb had a point.

They paused midway across the courtyard so Kaleb could catch his breath. “Has no one wondered why I haven’t been out and about? Truly?”

“We told everyone you’re taking your duties so seriously you’ve become a recluse. The waving was very helpful, though.” He’d waved magnanimously down to the servants from the hallway railing the day before.