The silence was shattered at last by Agnes’s shallow, stuttering gasp. She was appalled at herself, at her lack of restraint; surely it was the wine that had slicked the path for her to make such a sound.
But before any heads could turn, before she could be burned with those dozens of eyes, Agnes fled from the feasting hall.
She hurried down the corridors, arms wrapped around herself as she shivered, not even quite sure where she was going. Her body was leading her and her mind was merely jerked along after it, like a horse choked by its bridle. Her vision blurred and multiplied.
Agnes only made it halfway down the corridor before she heard footsteps and realized that someone was following.
Bewildered, panicked, she turned. She could not have predicted what she saw when she did: Marozia, holding up the black skirts of her gown and striding briskly after her.
Agnes let out a startled noise of shock. She paused briefly and blinked, as though her cousin were a mirage, a vision that she could vanish. But Marozia’s pace only quickened, her slippered feet striking the stone floor.
And Agnes, her forehead pricking with a cold sweat, her heart careening in her chest, broke into a run.
She hastened through the corridors, making indiscriminate turns, clambering up spirals of stairs. She was still clumsy with drink and tripped once, twice, thrice over her skirts.
Somehow Agnes’s frantic flight led her to the parapet. As she emerged, she felt the hot gusts of summer night air blast her cheeks, blowing back her hair. The darkness was misty and muddled, smoke-colored clouds blotting out the stars and moon.
“Don’t you dare run from me!”
Marozia’s voice shot out like an arrow, and Agnes felt struck by it, pinned in place. She stopped, bracing herself on the balustrade, panting with exertion. Her whole body trembled.
In a single beat, Marozia was upon her. One of her hands clampeddown on Agnes’s shoulder, and the other grasped the front of her gown. She slammed her back against the balustrade, hard enough that Agnes’s teeth rattled in her mouth.
“Traitorous whore!” she screeched.
Agnes raised her own hand to Marozia’s shoulder, trying to shove her away, but her cousin had the advantage of a clear head, and her movements were not hampered by the clumsy sluggishness of wine. Agnes could not push her off.
“You may have fooled those dull cattle in the feasting hall, but I see how you swan your treason right before their eyes!”
The sky rumbled with thunder, drowning out the end of Marozia’s words. It was a dry summer storm, such that would make wildfires bloom wherever lightning struck the parched and depleted land.
Agnes swiped helplessly at her cousin’s face, yet that served only to further enrage her. With a quavering howl of fury, her grip slackened for a moment—but then her hands came around Agnes’s throat.
The sudden pressure, the shrinking of her breath, made Agnes seize with terror. Lightning cracked the sky, and it blanched Marozia’s face, clarifying every feature: her lips, pulled back into a snarl, her white teeth bared, her eyes glossy with the sheen of wrath.
“Marozia!”
Liuprand. He emerged from the staircase and approached them, each stride long and powerful, his previous quivery drunkenness now shed. The lightning washed him, and Agnes saw the blood still drying on his gold doublet and gold cloak, turning the silk a muddied, reeking red.
Marozia’s attention was diverted for no more than a second, eyes flickering to Liuprand and then back to Agnes again, and never losing their rageful gleam.
“Martyr, you think yourself,” she bit out, “so meek and so innocent. But you have always coveted what is mine. My title, my beauty, my children…and now you have taken my husband, too, out of a barren spinster’s sourness and spite.”
Her grip on Agnes’s throat tightened. Agnes could only wheeze, and a red haze fell across her vision.
“Release her,” Liuprand ordered, encroaching another step. “Now.”
Marozia turned her head—slowly, and as she did her hands began to shake, so fiercely that Agnes could feel their trembling through her skin, to the very marrow of her bones. The corners of Marozia’s mouth dragged down into a grimace that Agnes recognized, one that presaged tears, only there was no weeping now. Just the faint gathering of water on her dark lashes.
“She’s yourdaughter,” Marozia whimpered. “Your own blood.”
“Let her go, Marozia,” Liuprand said. “You’ve gone too far.”
Her cousin’s nails dug into the flesh of Agnes’s throat. And then there was a terrible, groaning, creaking sound, coming from below. Through the mist of her darkening vision, Agnes saw, with horror, that the stone of the parapet was beginning to break apart beneath them. That was why, she realized dimly, Liuprand remained at a distance. If he moved so much as a pace more toward them, the ground would give way completely.
“I have done my duty.” Marozia’s voice thickened. “Followed every law to the letter, every posthumous order. All while you have snuck about, shirking yours for stolen kisses and fleeting pleasures, shaming our family—our house.”
Agnes scrabbled at the hands around her throat but could win herself no reprieve. Her chest burned with the very last embers of breath, and the stone beneath them continued to groan and crack.
