This Vicious Grace (The Last Finestra #1)(5)

Than her life? Alessa frowned. She might have managed to pry one answer from them, but that didn’t mean she’d asked the right questions.

Renata sighed. “It won’t happen again. Put it from your mind.”

Right. The many things Alessa was supposed to remember had a tendency to slip away like sand through her fingers, but she wasn’t likely to forget a dagger flying at her head.

Renata rubbed her temples. “The sooner she chooses a Fonte, the better.”

“I didn’t even get to speak to anyone,” Alessa said. “I have to make an informed choice. I need it to work this time. Please.”

Please don’t make me kill again. She might as well have said it aloud. They knew what she meant.

Tomo moved as though to clasp her arm, awkwardly brushing at his sleeve instead. “How about a performance? A gala, where every eligible Fonte can demonstrate their gifts, and you’d have a chance to speak with each of them.”

Anticipation fluttered beneath Alessa’s breastbone. She’d expected to spend the next few days in isolation, begging Dea for a sign before choosing whom to shackle herself to, but a demonstration might be exactly what she needed to choose the right Fonte, for once.

“Tomorrow.” Renata nodded. “And she needs to look transcendent. The more jewels the better. I want her dripping with proof of Dea’s favor.”

Inwardly, Alessa rolled her eyes. Once, she might have equated wealth and jewels with a person’s worthiness, but now she knew the truth: The gods gave and took for their own incomprehensible reasons, and only fools tried to make sense of it.

Her. She was the fool. Because she still wanted to understand.

“Perfect,” Tomo said. “Our guests will leave here raving about our blessed savior, prepared to choose her final, true partner. That will silence the naysayers.”

Alessa still didn’t know what, exactly, needed silencing, but she’d slipped back into invisibility, so she left them to their plans and climbed the stairs on leaden feet.

Adrick would know what this Ivini person was saying—he collected gossip like children hoarded pretty rocks—but she had no idea when she’d see him next.

From outside, the Cittadella looked like a massive stone block, but within the austere facade, the building blended a military stronghold and an elegant estate, with an exquisite atrium in the center and lavish gardens out back. The first two levels were all business, with a mess hall, barracks, an armory, and training spaces, while the second floor served as the military command center.

The upper levels, however, were the private residence for the Duo Divino, the divine pairing. Pairings, plural, as the previous Finestra and Fonte were expected to return to the Cittadella when a new Finestra rose and remain for the duration of the five years Dea gave them to train their successors.

Dea must have ignored the fine print of whatever divine contract she’d signed with Crollo, however, because instead of sending Divorando on the fifth anniversary of the new Finestra’s rise, Crollo chose a month at random in the fifth year, and no one knew precisely when he would strike until the First Warning arrived.

Seven months into her fifth and final year, Alessa was no closer to finding her battle partner than she had been the day the Consiglio confirmed her.

The formal banquet hall on the third floor was empty and dark, and Tomo and Renata had not yet returned to their suite, so Alessa didn’t see another soul until she reached the fourth floor, which was all hers and would remain so until she found someone to fill the rest of it. The largest library on Saverio, a private chapel, and two suites for one lonely girl.

When she reached the top of the stairs, Lorenzo, the young soldier assigned to guard her rooms, blanched beneath his olive complexion. He was supposed to open the door for her and complete a thorough inspection before she entered, but he, like the string of guards before him, refused to touch anything of hers.

She opened her own doors now.

She’d never say it aloud, but it stung like ice water on bare skin every time someone cringed away from her. Especially soldiers. They’d volunteered to face a swarm of demons but acted like she was something even worse.

Lorenzo deigned to cast a cursory look around and retreated to his post, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like ghiotte.

Greedy one.

Alessa kicked the door closed.

“Don’t be a ghiotte,” her parents used to chide her whenever she’d asked for more than her fair share of sweets. They’d softened the word, so it sounded almost endearing, but visions of Crollo’s thieves took residence in her head. Even now, she often dreamt of growing claws and horns.

Every child on Saverio grew up hearing tales of the ghiotte. How Crollo sent demons disguised as humans to find Dea’s third gift before the first Divorando. When the ghiotte found La Fonte di Guarigione—the healing fountain created for the soldiers—they stole its power, becoming nearly impossible to kill and leaving nothing behind for the troops. Caught and damned for their sin, they were hunted or driven into the sea, their only remaining legacy a warning about the consequences of greed and selfishness.

Some skeptics believed the story was a metaphor, a morality tale to keep people in line, but the church elders insisted that every word in the holy Verità was history dictated by Dea herself.

The Finestra was Dea’s first blessing.

The ghiotte had stolen the third.