“Certainly she appreciated it. How could a mother not? Not when a son’s love shines so clearly on his face.”
The words settled upon him with a tenderness he had long forgotten the world possessed. His thoughts drifted, unbidden, to the woman who had first taught his heart to beat. His mother had fashioned him with patient hands and unyielding affection. She had loved him before he had earned it, before he had spoken, before he had learned that the world rewarded sharper things than kindness. And yet no mother, however devoted, could wrestle forever against the will of the child she bore.
The ruin that followed had not been her doing. She had not placed ambition in his veins nor pride upon his tongue; those sins had been of his own cultivation, watered faithfully until they eclipsed every better instinct she had once nurtured within him. He alone had been the architect of the man he had become.
Would she still look upon him with that same unwavering love? Or would her eyes search his face for the son she had raised, only to discover a stranger wearing his features? There are griefs more merciless than death, and perhaps a mother outliving the goodness of her child was among them.
“May I ask who you mourn?” he asked quietly. “Forgive the intrusion. It is only that grief has always struck me as a lonely pilgrimage, and yet burdens carried by two shoulders seem less intent on breaking either. Shared wounds do not cease to ache, but they are less likely to fester.”
How curious, that sorrow should so often crave another sorrow beside it. A solitary pain grew feverish in silence, but shared between two souls, it became something less monstrous in its shape. Two mourners merely stood shoulder to shoulder beneath the same relentless storm.
“You do not seem to look upon the sea with much affection, my lady. Are you not fond of the waves?” The observation escaped him almost absently, though his curiosity lingered upon her with greater persistence than he intended.
Most souls found comfort in the ocean’s endless breathing; they admired its vastness, mistaking indifference for freedom. Yet Lady Vitoria regarded it with a distance that bordered upon distrust, as though she alone understood that the sea had never promised mercy. Perhaps she knew that the sea accepted every confession without absolution. It swallowed saints and sinners with equal appetite, smoothing every tragedy beneath waves that remembered nothing.
He chuckled at the certainty with which she spoke of her parents, the sound almost wistful as he inclined his head. What extraordinary people they must have been, to leave their daughter so certain of the goodness they had instilled within her. Such confidence was seldom inherited. Could he have spoken so assuredly of his own? Once, perhaps. But experience had taught him that reverence was a dangerous currency.
Parents, like saints, were dangerous idols to worship. Their halos were fashioned by children’s hands, and nothing shattered more completely than the moment one discovered they had always been only flesh.
“Friends, then?” Niccolò mused, extending a gloved hand toward her.
The leather concealed a hand no more honest than the man himself. Some creatures wore venom in their fangs; others buried it beneath manners and easy smiles. Niccolò belonged to the latter sort. He had learned long ago that the gentlest snares were the ones adorned with courtesy.
Her hesitation pleased him more than immediate acceptance would have. Distrust, after all, was often the soundest instinct a person possessed.
“I’ve been told I make an excellent friend,” he continued with a smile too measured to be entirely sincere. “Those I claim as my own seldom find me wanting in loyalty.”
His head tilted ever so slightly.
“And you, Lady Vitoria? Should I fear the friendship you offer, or is it only your enemies who have cause to lose sleep?”
