He glances back at the towering face of the cathedral.
“We should hide,” he finishes for me.
ELEVEN
WE REACH THE EDGE OF THE CATHEDRAL SQUARE. ALE moves in the direction of a quiet, unassuming street, but I grab his wrist.
“Let’s go to the gardens,” I say.
He gives them a nervous glance. “It sounds like there’s a party.”
“Which means they’ll expect us to hide somewhere quieter,” I say.
And I can’t go sit in an empty alley. Not after the darkness of the underground well. It doesn’t seem like the blood-eating shadow we just encountered can venture into the city above—if it could, surely it would still be chasing us—but I’m finding it harder and harder to trust my own instincts.
We head for the gardens and push through an ornate iron gate at the entrance. In Occhia, the name “gardens” is a bit of a misnomer. They’re more of a stone plaza, with plenty of statues of saints and the occasional plant. Everyone crowds the prettiest path that’s lined with tall, skinny cypress trees. There are always, at minimum, three couples trying to have romantic moments. It’s impossible for anyone to enjoy it.
My people would probably faint if they could see the gardens of Iris. They’re so green and so very alive. Ale and I are instantly lost in a maze of hedges. We wind around sharp corners and through ivy-covered tunnels, and I look for a hiding place that feels secure enough.
“So,” Ale says. “You’re… you’re absolutely certain that Verene doesn’t have blood magic?”
“We were fighting,” I say. “I was besting her. If she had it, she would have used it on me the moment she escaped from the trunk—”
I stop short.
“You loosened her bonds,” I say.
“What?” Ale whispers very delicately.
I round on him. “She escaped the trunk on her own. And I couldn’t figure out how. When we were in her bedroom, I told you to tie her up even tighter while I searched her things. But you didn’t. You loosened her bonds.”
The guilt is all over his face.
“I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to breathe,” he says. “And I didn’t—I really didn’t think she was dangerous. I just—”
“And were you right?” I say.
He’s not looking at me anymore.
“You useless piece of garbage.” My ears are very hot. “This is why you’re supposed to do exactly what I tell you. She attacked me. She could have killed me.”
“You left me with her brother,” he whispers. “He could have—”
“You left yourself,” I say. “That was your own incompetent floundering. And it was mortifying to watch, by the way.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I just—I thought maybe, if we didn’t treat her like an enemy—”
“She is our enemy,” I say. “She’s taking Occhia’s water, Ale. That water belongs to us. I was right about what’s happening in this city—I was more right than you, at least. These people are a danger to us, and they need to be stopped. Am I wrong about that? Tell me I’m wrong.”
He’s quiet. He’s looking at the blood that’s still smeared on his fingers.
“You’re not wrong,” he says.
I whirl around and march off. I find a gap in the hedges and slip through it. Now that I’m hidden in the narrow, dark space between two walls of hedges, I should feel a little safer. I should feel a little better. But I don’t.
“Emanuela.” Ale squeezes in after me. “Please don’t run.”
“I didn’t want us to get separated,” I hear myself say. “I didn’t—When things started to go wrong, I didn’t know what was happening to you.”
I pause, suddenly aware of how hard my voice is wavering. I can’t look at him, because I know he heard it, too.
For a long moment, he’s quiet.
“Well,” he says, “we won’t be separated again.”
He sits down, his back against a wall of hedges. He rubs at the blood on his fingers, then sighs.
“This city was too good to be true,” he says. “I should have known.”
I sit down next to him, closer than I normally do. I’m cold and wet and I’m craving the warmth of another person at my side. He idly rests his knee against mine.
If we were still in Occhia, and we were married, we would be doing whatever we wanted right now. We would be throwing a party, or holding meetings, or just sitting together in the parlor we owned. That was the way things were supposed to be. Things will be that way again, once I fix my city.
“I took something from him.”
Ale says it so quietly that for a moment, I think I imagined it. I give him a sideways look and find that he’s hunched and shamefaced.
“What did you just say?” I say.
“The brother,” he says. “When he was showing me his study—he had all these diagrams of the fountains on the wall. There was a lot of math. I didn’t understand any of it. But I noticed that there was a piece of paper on his desk that he had folded and slipped under some books, like it was a secret. The books were very boring, by the way. They were also about math. I was so disappointed. I was thinking about how this city must have so much beautiful art and so many novels that I’ve never read. Isn’t it amazing that they’ve been over here for a thousand years, making their own—”
“What’s your point, Ale?” I say.
“Oh,” he says. “I, um, I waited until he turned his back and I took the secret paper.”
“You stabbed him and stole his private documents?” I say. “What has this city done to my wholesome Alessandro?”
He squirms. “I’m not proud of it. It was terrible of me. But maybe it will have something useful. I hope it didn’t get too wet…”
He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out the paper, unfolding it on the grass between us. I shift to get a better look. For a long moment, we’re both still, trying to figure out what we’re seeing.
It’s a drawing in red ink. There are eight circles arranged in a ring, just barely touching. In the middle of each circle is a tiny drawing of a familiar building. A cathedral. Surrounding the cathedrals are webs of painstakingly rendered streets.
One of the circles catches my eye. It’s labeled with the word Occhia.
I touch it, delicately. The drawing looks like it’s supposed to be a map, but I don’t recognize the path of the streets. I can’t find my family’s house. But after a moment of searching, I realize that maybe it’s not a map of the city above. Maybe it’s a map of the city below.
My eyes drift to one of the neighboring circles. It’s labeled as Iris. The others are labeled, too, with names I’ve never seen before.
“Ale,” I say.
“There’s—” he says.
“There’s more,” I say.
There are other cities. Six other cities.
“We’re all connected by the catacombs,” I say. “Everything around us—that’s the veil. But inside it, we’re connected. That’s how we got here.”