Chiara’s brown eyes welled with tears, and she blinked. “You poor thing. You poor,poorthing. You don’t worry about it anymore. I will take care of you. I will make you presentable for the palace for tomorrow.”
That night, after Chiara had thoroughly reinvented Dree and she was alone in her dorm-sized room, Dree found the wrinkled napkin in the bottom of her backpack and smoothed it out on the small desk.
She found the list of all the places she was supposed to visit, countries around the world that she’d only heard rumors of, and drew precise lines through the wordMonaco,which was directly above the crossed-out wordsVisit Nepal.
Chapter Three
Prayer
Maxence
Maxence Grimaldi picked up the nail. It was not a slender pin made of galvanized steel, but a black, iron antique.
Then, he picked up a hammer.
The hammer was sleek and silver, delivered by the palace’s maintenance department only half an hour before.
Maxence held the nail to the thousand-year-old plaster of the medieval castle and drove the iron spike into the wall. When the metal was firmly embedded, he returned to his duffel bag from Nepal and poked around in the bottom until he found a silk bag.
From inside, he removed a crucifix, a memorial of the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross. It was rough-hewn from hardwood, scarred in some places, soiled with black soot in others. Max hung it on the wall with a leather loop over the nail and retreated three steps.
The crucifix had traveled with him for over a decade. Before that, it had been held by priests for centuries. Max was its guardian, not its owner.
He stared at it for a long time, trying to compose his thoughts. Peace wouldn’t come. Tranquility wouldn’t come.
Maxence fell to his knees.
He began to pray with his hands pressed against each other in front of his chest, his palms flattened against each other as he poured his heart out in one long stream of anguish to God.
Why am I like this? Why do I sin? I cannot fathom I could lead a better life. I can only clutch at the momentary pleasure because there is no peace I could otherwise attain.
The crucifix was two dark slashes against the white wall.
Monaco is a siren calling me to dash myself against the rocks. Dree Clark is every temptation I’ve ever had rolled up in one beautiful woman. It’s not her fault that I am willing to damn my soul to touch her. She is a beautiful spirit. If only I were notwhoI am, if only I were notwhatI am, I could be with her.
Tell me what to do.
Tell me who to be.
Max’s arms unfurled to mimic the shape of the crucifix above as he bared his chest and his heart in a desperate attempt to reconcile himself with God and his heart with his passion.
I have dedicated myself to You and Your work. I have given you my soul and my body. I fight every day, but I feel like I’m clinging onto the face of the cliff while my faith crumbles around me. I fall every day. I fall every minute.
But I want to fall.
It feels like flying.
Chapter Four
Nicostrato Grimaldi
Maxence
Maxence started his day in the royal business office in the Prince’s Palace.
The room was hardly wider than the admittedly large desk placed in front of the wide window, but it was probably five times as long as it was wide. The walk from the door to sit in front of the desk left supplicants a lot of time to think about what they were going to say or why they had been summoned, as intended by the medieval architect.
The high ceiling above was designed to make petitioners feel small as they begged the sovereign’s grace. Also, it had allowed smoke from pitch torches to rise and thus not choke the prince.
