“A Dark Summer Fae.” He spoke softly, though his full, pale lips curled in an intrigued pleasure as he lifted one eyebrow, a clever glint in his eyes. “Where in seven winters did Quinn find her?”
“The Summer Fae royal palace, apparently. In the human world.” Devina snorted with humor now as she glanced at Ariana.
“Ciao bella.” Curio spoke now, reaching out across the desk and taking up Ariana’s hand, lifting it to his lips as his silver-blue gaze pinned hers. As she drowned in those eyes, Ariana heard sleigh-bells again, along with the sound of laughter on a cold, brisk wind. As she sank into that sensation, feeling how cold yet strangely warm Curio’s touch was, she felt him dive into her mind like a winter wind, brisk and playful but also thorough as he read her from head to heels. As Ariana gasped, her eyelashes flickering, his wind was gone. But it left a sensation of winter snows and peppermint inside her, alluring and deadly.
As he stared her down from across the desk, stroking his thumb over her hand.
“A Dark Fae newly opened to her powers, if I’m not mistaken,” he spoke with a quiet chuckle as his winter-blue eyes pinned her, “or she’d have been able to block mine. Is she Quinn’s?”
“No.” Devina spoke bluntly as Ariana retrieved her hand, shivering to shake off the strange wintery feeling of Curio’s power. “She’s someone else’s, but she’s under Quinn’s protection right now. So we shall treat her as a guest.”
“She may be a guest in our halls, but I don’t think she’s up for what guests do here.” He spoke with a deviant smolder as he penetrated Ariana again with his gaze, though he didn’t reach out to touch her now. “She’s blushing like fire and trembling like a poplar leaf just from walking our halls. And the Florence Hotel is barely awake yet for the evening.”
“Excuse me, who are you?” Ariana finally asked, gathering her wits from the fascinating man.
“I’m Head Concierge Curio Silverfrost, darling. The one and only.” He smiled more genially now as he leaned on his elbows at the desk, lacing his long fingers in an almost coquettish way beneath his chin though his winter-blue eyes were still piercingly intrigued.
“Are you a Vampire?” Ariana asked, still not able to tell with his sharp yet somehow deliciously erotic magic flowing all around her. Though all the Vampires she had seen in the Hotel so far had been peaceable, Ariana noticed her hart rate sped around them, as if something in their magic or demeanor still alarmed her.
“I am a Vampire. Sort of.” He smiled wider now, flashing delicate needle-sharp fangs with debonair delight. “I was once Winter Fae, Sired by a Vampire and turned to the life of the Night, though I have retained quite a lot of my initial magics; Winter Fae and Vampire power mirror each other quite closely, you know. As Head Concierge here at the Florence Hotel and Third in the Dark Haven of Florence, I am in charge of all the day-to-day details, while Devina and Quinn manage far more of the Hotel and Dark Haven’s larger operations.”
“Were you… Sired by Quindici?” Ariana asked, using the lingo.
“No, darling.” He smiled more kindly now, though it was complex as Ariana felt a sudden dip in his magics. “Like a fair amount of Vampires here in the Dark Haven of Florence, I was Sired by Quinn’s Sire many centuries ago – the ruinous Emiliana DiClario. She was a tyrant and Quinn killed her in order to rise to power here, just over two hundred years ago.”
“Quinn killed his own Sire?” Ariana blinked, her eyebrows rising now to hear a tale that was more in-line with what her parents had always said about Vampires; that they were cruel, vicious, and ruthless, and would kill just as soon as look at you. But an amused smile lingered about Curio’s lips as he stared her down now, as if he knew what she was thinking.
“Yes.” Curio spoke succinctly as he smiled at Ariana. “And if you’d ever had opportunity to meet Emiliana, you would know why Quinn killed her, and the rest of us are glad he did. Many of us who were Sired by Emiliana have blood-oathed to Quinn now via his Master’s Kiss. But I was not Sired by him like Devina and the rest of our more recent Vampires.”
With that, Curio suddenly glanced to Devina, pinning her with his intense gaze. “Which reminds me, Devi. Quinn stopped by the desk just a few moments ago. He has requested that we both show Ariana around the Hotel’s underground if you haven’t been there yet, and answer any questions she has about our culture. Shall we?”
“Lead the way, Curio.” Devi spoke with blasé now as she gestured the Head Concierge to Ariana. With a vibrant smile, as if it truly would be his pleasure to escort Ariana around for the evening and answer any and all questions she had about the Hotel or about Vampires, Curio summoned a quick wintery wind swirling with actual snow to whisk the gilded ledger off the ebony desk and stash it somewhere beneath. Ariana heard a safe chunk open, then heave shut with a complicated clicking sound like a clockwork. And then Curio was briskly flicking his hands and dissipating his wind as he rounded the desk in a wave of gracious elegance.
Beaming at Ariana and offering his arm to escort her.
Blinking, Ariana moved forward at Devina’s nod. As she accepted Curio’s arm, he curled his long white fingers upon hers – strangely warm and chilly at the same time just like Quinn’s. Though her heart sped, she was soon calmed as they moved off casually through the conservatory, taking a vaulted wrought-iron exit into a different Italian Baroque hall full of massive Renaissance landscape paintings.
As beautiful as anything Ariana had ever seen from Italian masters in the human world, her mind was boggled by the sheer size and detail in the vast canvases as they traversed the hall. Most were pastoral, but each featured a decadent and often scandalous orgy somewhere in the scene – not the typical fare, though they were decadently shocking. Ariana found herself staring up at each and every one as they continued, Curio slowing his pace so she could. After the seventh one, however, he chuckled beside her, as Devina huffed and rolled her eyes.
“Come, Dark Fae,” Curio spoke with a sweet charm as he lifted an eyebrow at her. “Our tour will take all night if we stop and look at every piece of art Quinn has acquired for the Florence Hotel.”
“Does he collect all this?” She asked, glancing at Curio. “So many of these look like they were done by human Italian Renaissance masters, but they’re just… not.”
“These paintings were done by Twilight Realm Italian masters, who influenced the human Renaissance.” Devina snorted from behind them now, as Ariana turned to look at her. “Art, operas, symphonies, couture, ancient writings from both the human world and Twilight Realm – if it’s artistic, Quinn collects it. Waste of the Dark Haven’s funds if you ask me, but he likes them.”
The Vampiress was gazing up at a pastoral scene now, of rolling Tuscan hills with a small fountain in one corner surrounded by an orgy of at least thirty people, many of which were decidedly not human but creatures of the Twilight Realm. Though Devina’s look was judgemental, Ariana also saw softness in it for Quinn’s pastime, as if even the bitter Devi found solace and pleasure staring up at the massive paintings.
“It gives this place class, Devi, you know it does.” Curio smiled now at Ariana’s side, eagerly engaging what seemed like an old difference of opinion between them. Turning to Ariana, he winked at her as his wintry pleasure gave a light swirl around her. “You cannot imagine how this place used to look without Quinn’s collection. In Emiliana’s day, the palace was stark – forbidding in its intensity and typically Vampiric. This Hotel has always been known for what we do here, but now it has a lighter, softer edge because of Quinn’s leadership. And his quirks.”
“Speaking of. Aren’t we in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence? Though this place seems twenty or thirty times bigger – enormous. And the design feels older, pre-Renaissance, though some features are similar.” Ariana spoke as she glanced around, taking in the place. She had been inside the Medici Palace once for an auction, and that palace had been full of high baroque details and frescoes, the walls plastered and thoroughly painted. Though the city was different in the Twilight Realm, Ariana had recognized the location and exterior of this building from her balcony earlier. But much of what she saw now was a far cry from that other palace – darkly luminous with is exposed stone walls and ornate marble columns between the paintings, cathedral-like vaults coming together far above instead of wooden beams.
Rather than classically Renaissance in its details and decor, this palace was far more stark in its Gothic-inspired design; though Quinn’s artworks plus the beautiful chandeliers and long royal blue silk curtains brocaded with gold gave the wrought iron, glass, and stone vaults a luminous pleasure. But though she had learned Twilight Realm history as a child, Ariana was up to speed on her human history; the Medicis had not been in power early enough to build before the Renaissance, the starkness in the stone architecture here more 12thor 13thCentury like Notre Dame in Paris. As Ariana turned, absorbing the intense beauty, she heard Devina snort.
“Webuilt this palace, long before the Medicis were even born. Humans copied us in this style of architecture, and did so badly and on a far lesser scale.” Devina spoke as she gestured around proudly with her long hands and ultra-red nails. “Gothic architecture has been popular in the Twilight Realm for thousands of years, that’s where humans got it from. Humans adopted stonework like this first in temples and cathedrals, thinking it fit for the gods – which weareto humans who accidentally wander between Realms. Where do you think the builders of the Foro Romano got their ideas?Il Colosseo? Il Vaticano?From Fae, Vampires, Dragons, and Giants, who built wonders all through our world long before humankind – feats achieved by magic ages ago.”
“Gently, Devi.” Curio chuckled, though he didn’t refute Devina as he glanced at Ariana. “The young woman is still new to our world.”
“And what exactly do you do here?” Ariana asked now, as a very naked snake-woman sauntered by – wearing only oilslick-green heels that matched her beautiful cascades of scales winding down her sculpted body, and her ornately-coiffed oilslick-green hair. Though Ariana had only seen a drawing in a book, she knew the woman was a Lamia; still, she stared as the woman moved by.
