The Wolf Esprit: Lykanos Chronicles 3
Chapter Fifty-Two

My statement opened a flood of memories I couldn’t withhold from her. Guccia saw all of it: Duccio’s tenderness, his voracious appetite for our love-making, his fierce protection, the light in his eyes when he laughed, the simple words of love he whispered when we were alone in bed.

But then she witnessed all of it change the moment we’d arrived in Venice, this alien world where there was no earth to walk upon but only fashioned stone floors floating above the sea. The world had upended itself, and Duccio became the opposite of everything he’d been to me.

Flashes of his impatience. The surge of adrenaline that flooded my veins when he’d resigned to sleeping in two separate beds to support his ambition. The smirk on his face as he’d slapped me yesterday, playful or not. His rage at seeing the bauble on my finger and the memories of how Guccia had won me over. The agony as he’d raped me, a biting sensation less painful than his wholesale betrayal of our love. The vile things he’d said to me, the vulgar indignities reflecting his carnal need to dominate me. They’d reminded me of those men who’d almost killed me outside my family’s camp in Saulieu—they had used the same words, hadn’t they?

“But why?” she pressed, realizing her emerald gift was gone before squeezing my bare hand in confusion. “What have I done to enrage him so? It makes no sense to me.”

“I don’t know,” I said, tears forming again. “Maybe he didn’t want me to like you as I do, to know you like this? Perhaps he wanted to keep us separate, his two lives—his public life with you and his real life with me. Maybe yours will be his real life, and mine his false one? He accused me of trying to make him jealous before his rage took him, and he…”

Guccia rose at a start from the sofa. Had she felt my flash of pain, the searing agony where only a light ache now remained?

“Esprit, we’ve known each other a day,” she offered weakly. “It makes no sense. Perhaps he’s so madly in love with you that your unexpected confrontation took him by surprise? Maybe he took your justified question as betrayal, so he lashed out. Nothing else makes the slightest bit of sense. But neither of you has any reason to be jealous. Ours will be a political marriage—Duccio knows this. I’ve only met him once, after all. Twice this morning?”

I didn’t know how to see through my suffering to appreciate her meaning.

Guccia returned to the sofa and retook my hand.

“It wouldn’t matter if he had a lover, don’t you see? That has always been the way of things among our kind, among those of our station. Even humans understand this. What man of wealth in this city doesn’t have a mistress? Does someone believe for a moment I’ll not keep lovers to warm my bed when I desire?”

I considered her point, admittedly shocked by the idea.

“But why does that shock you?” she pressed.

“My lady, all of this shocks me. The shock of him agreeing to bed you without so much as a labored breath of indecision put me here!”

The sound of my cry startled her, but she took me into her embrace in a moment. It was the first bit of genuine tenderness I’d found in Venice, and I hadn’t realized how desperate I’d been for it.

“Listen to me,” she whispered in my ear. “There is a simple way to solve our dilemma if you can trust me.”

I exhaled a note of weary skepticism, but she held to me and let me keep my disbelief.

“You and I will make this work,” she continued. “We will move into this house and play our parts. I will be his wife, and you will be his lover. I have no need of him in my bed—on that point, you must believe me. Father’s political machinations are the whole reason he agreed to this alliance. I do not need Duccio at all. So, let it be, I say. We’ll live here together with this understanding: he is yours in as much as he can belong to another. And if the time comes where he must come to my bed, you will let him. You will trust that I’ll never allow it to be anything more than a duty.”

Guccia kissed my temple, her gentle breath warming my skin. “I’ll never give my heart to him, never even in the way I already have to you.”

I released another sigh, unable to say how miserable the whole idea made me.

“Even as a matter of practicality, Venice is my home, and I mean never to leave her. Duccio’s aim is for Como. So, let him have it. And if he means to take you there with him, go, if you wish. Or stay here with me. I will only ever visit that place as a matter of duty, and then only to know you are well.”

In moments, pulled away and looked into her eyes. There was no malice there—not a hint of dishonesty. How had she come so easily to this unclouded point? Had she seen in my mind the truth of Duccio’s lies hidden beneath the suffering forefront in my mind?

“If you can forgive him, then do it. Let all this pass as time does. And if you replace you can’t, then don’t. Live your life here with me as well as you can. I am not much older than you, not even twenty years older. But I know enough of the world to play this game and win. He will never harm you again, not here. I won’t abide it—my father would never abide such a thing. You are safer here with me than anywhere you might ever replace. If we must live this charade, let us live it together as friends and partners.”

I didn’t answer for a moment, strangled by the exhaustion of it all. My mind swam with the idea of her proposal, of the bitter relief it promised.

“We can do this,” she whispered, kissing my temple. “If only you’ll trust me.”

I didn’t know what would happen when I returned to the Doge’s Palace. I’d nodded in agreement with Guccia’s proposal, grateful for her affection, even if I didn’t fully understand it. But as I arrived at our palace apartment, I experienced a pang of nausea and fear as I stepped inside to replace Duccio. For the first time, I realized my wolf couldn’t protect me from such emotions, not when they were born from the pain of love.

Duccio sat at the dining table, having just finished his lunch. The servants had set a place for me with a cheese and fruit plate.

I thought of transitory subjects to mention—the beauty of the canal or the fine choice Guccia had made for them in the future Palazzo Lupofiero. Even something as unimportant as the salt air crossed my mind. But nothing came from my lips as I stared at him.

“Your lunch is waiting,” he mumbled, reaching for the pitcher to fill my goblet with wine.

I couldn’t bring myself to answer, staring back with muted disinterest.

“Please,” he said, “we should talk.”

I offered nothing for several moments before resigning to join him in the dining room. I sat but didn’t touch the food—my stomach would not accommodate it. The instrument he’d purchased for me sat in its handsome case on the other end of the table, but I refused to look at it. I would never accept it!

Waiting for me to begin, we sat in silence until he realized I meant not to give him even that courtesy. I decided I would raise my voice to condemn him, but it was he who broke the silence.

“If this won’t work, let’s think of something else,” he began with a sigh.

I only shook my head with irritation.

“Should we go somewhere else? We could leave this minute,” he said. “Il Vento is still anchored in the harbor. We could leave without a word and slip away. We’d be away for hours, maybe days, before they recognized our absence.”

“For what?” My exasperation broke my countenance, and I struggled to keep from sneering. “What difference would it make if we were somewhere else?”

“We could go somewhere people don’t know my name. We could slip into other cities and live in secret as we did in Rome. Or we’ll replace a place devoid of lycan. There aren’t many places, but they exist. We could replace a place in America. I’m sure we could be unbothered in the new world.”

“That’s just it,” I answered. “Why would I want to be alone with you? So you could do that to me again? Will your cruelty feel different in another place?”

I pushed my undiluted memories of his assault from the day prior, still bitingly fresh. My heart raced as I gave over to experience the moments in my mind. I let him feel the sharp pain between my legs as he pushed his way inside me. Let him feel it all, I thought, the fear of helplessness as he held me by the neck and throat—the entire experience bathed in the echos of my pleading for him to stop. It poured out of me without a filter, fueled by my spite that he deserved to feel every ounce of pain.

Duccio only gave another weary sigh.

And then I realized the obvious reason for his tepid response. I revealed nothing to him by sharing my memory, for he’d been a part of it.

He’d already fully known my experience.

Though I hadn’t felt Duccio’s experience as he’d raped me, his emotion locked within his unbreakable mind, he’d known all of mine, my youthful faculties unable to hide my suffering. And he’d done it anyway. He’d chosen violence, fully aware of my suffering, and it hadn’t deterred him. His cock had remained hard while he penetrated me, thrusting savagely again and again. Nothing had stopped him until, his seed spilled, Duccio grew tired of his anger, offering me one last defiant whisper. “You belong to me and me alone.”

My bottom lip began to tremble, and I knew I’d lose myself to fresh tears in a moment.

Something seized me, a noise inside my mind. Was it my heartbeat? A tinge of red took my field of vision, and for a moment, I thought blood had leaked from my eyes. There was a voice far off, pulling at my concentration.

“What more can I do?” he asked, reaching to take my hand. The question pulled me from the echo that had taken my senses, and I returned to the moment. From Duccio came a sound of wounded sorrow, the first genuine acknowledgment of his crime. “I’ll do anything. I’ll apologize every day for the rest of our lives if you wish.”

Was there something he could do to heal the damage? At once, I felt stupid. Would this be it? Would I spend the rest of our time together loathing him, unable ever to feel satisfied by his apologies? Would I never allow him to touch me again, no matter how desperately I wanted to be touched? Was I now the obstacle to our continued journey?

I raised my eyes from the table to look at Duccio’s face, seeing its sharp masculine beauty somehow weathered with shame, the same guilt he’d carried for all his earlier failures. I’d forgiven him once for all he’d done to those who’d called him Son and Brother. Could I not do the same now that it was me who he’d betrayed and injured?

I longed for his love, unsure how to receive the sweet feeling of joy again it. And weary of another pang of depressive sadness, I pushed my chair back and stood up from the table. I took Duccio’s hand and drew him with me through the apartment to the bedroom.

As I undressed him, I realized it was the only way. A hundred viols would not heal my wounded heart. I needed his affection—I needed his kisses, I needed him to hold me, I needed him inside me. And I might only ever replace an end to my suffering if I allowed him to love me in all the ways I’d grown to need from him.