He’s already walking. Doesn’t wait for an answer. Doesn’t need one.
I follow because what else is there.
The hallway stretches and contracts as I move through it. My bare feet slap against cold marble. I have to trail my fingers along the wall to keep my balance, leaving smudged prints on the ancient stone. The guard at the end of the corridor watches me stumble past. His expression doesn’t change.
We stop at a set of double doors I haven’t seen before. Dark wood, carved with something elaborate I can’t focus on long enough to identify. He pushes them open.
Oh.
The library is massive. Two stories of floor-to-ceiling books, leather spines aligned in perfect rows, a rolling ladder attached to brass rails. The room is climate-controlled, I can feel it in the air, that cool dryness that preserves paper and prevents mold. Glass cases line the center of the room, displaying what look like first editions under museum-quality lighting.
It’s everything. Every bookish girl’s fever dream made real. Centuries of knowledge, bound and preserved andbeautiful.
My chest aches with wanting it.
I hate that I want it.
The windows are floor-to-ceiling too, stretching across the far wall. Beyond them terraced gardens dropping away in layers of green, lemon groves, and past that?—
The Mediterranean. Blue and endless and unreachable.
I can see Palermo in the distance. A smudge of civilization on the horizon. My cathedral is out there. My apartment. Mylife.
Miles away. Might as well be another planet.
He’s gesturing at something. A glass case near the window, his voice warm with an enthusiasm of a collector showing off his prizes.
“—acquired at auction in Geneva. The binding is original, which is remarkable given the age. I thought you’d appreciate?—”
“I don’t appreciate SHIT from you.”
The words scrape out of my throat like broken glass. My voice sounds wrong. Raspy. Weak.
He continues like I didn’t speak.
“This one is particularly rare.” He moves to another case, his fingers hovering reverently over the glass. “An 1820s restoration manual. One of only three surviving copies. The techniques described here predate modern conservation by nearly a century, but the principles are sound.”
I don’t want to look. Don’t want to care.
But my restorer’s eye catches the tooled leather cover, the gilt lettering, the careful preservation of something that should have crumbled to dust a hundred years ago. Part of me, the part that spent years learning to save beautiful things, itches to touch it. To open it. To learn.
I despise that part of me.
“You’re welcome here whenever you’d like.” He turns to face me, and his expression is so fuckingsincereit makes me want to vomit. “The collection is extensive. I think you’ll find?—”
I walk out.
Don’t speak. Don’t look back. Just put one foot in front of the other until I’m through the doors, down the hallway, past the guard who doesn’t blink.
His voice follows me, soft and patient.
“Dinner is at eight,tesoro. You only need to ask.”
Back in my room, I go to the window.
Really look this time.
The view is stunning. Terraced gardens cascade down the hillside in perfect geometric precision. Lemon trees heavy with fruit. Bougainvillea spilling over ancient stone walls in riots of purple and pink. And beyond it all, the sea, stretching to the horizon where Palermo waits like a promise I can’t keep.
