“What makes you think Ansaldo would ever allow me to leave this place without pledging myself to the order?”
Mara takes a step toward me. “From what I’ve heard, you’re very capable of barely escaping bad situations by the skin of your teeth. What’s to stop you now?”
I bite the inside of my lip.She’s not wrong.I don’t feel like I owe them an explanation, either.
Kali’s eyes meet mine, an apology written across her brow. “Come on, Mara, let’s spar for a while. You always get so ornery when you haven’t punched something.”
Mara grumbles something intelligible but does as her friend bids her.
Before she follows her down the tunnel, Kali turns and bows her head in a farewell gesture. “Until we see each other again.”
I return it but she’s already disappeared down the corridor, as if she were never here.
“And here I thought I’d left my high school days behind me,” I mutter, uncrossing my arms.
Following the path Anders took into the murk, I forget about what happened with Mara. Instead, I think about Kali’s brother, potentially a part of the order as well and presumed dead. About my ancestors, whose burned corpses are displayed on the walls of a secret fortress. About how many people have fought and died for the order’s religious creed.
Ever since leaving Ansaldo’s office, I’ve tried to make sense of what happened. Why he would deceive me. It couldn’t all be because of my mother, could it?
Despite Ansaldo’s crude plan of trying to forcefully recruit me, I find myself torn between leaving this place behind after the blood oath, and staying to pledge my life to the order. Can I ignore the chance of making a difference in the world, while being able to do the very thing I’m good at? If the Order of Cavendi is in the business of subverting fascism and its many agents, then I can’t write them off yet.
My ancestors must’ve seen good in them once to stick around for so long.
I might feel differently about the order if I wasn’t being forced to join against my will. The condition of having to take a blood oath and pledge myself to them, or stay trapped in this place until they decide to kill me, has thrown a wrench into the whole ordeal.
At the end of the corridor, a single oil lamp hangs on the stone wall, illuminating the next turn I need to take. It’s colder here than anywhere else in the stronghold, and I swear my breath fogs up in front of me.
Once I turn the corner, though, I forget about all that.
Entering a long, great room with soaring, rough-stone ceilings and shelves carved out of the rock wall, I gasp softly at the sight. Ancient scrolls, tomes, and labeled boxes are piled haphazardly on every inch of available space, with lit oil lamps stationed in random alcoves. Rolling ladders perch atop the high railings along the shelves. Giant candlelit chandeliers hang low over the middle, illuminating dark wooden tables.
I stare at the shelves. Is the entire contents of the Library of Alexandria stored down here? Excitement pulls at my limbs at the thought, begging me to read everything in here until my eyes fall out of their sockets.
The sound of voices pricks at my ears.
Searching for the source, I find Anders, which I expected. But I’m surprised to see Cec, Bes, and an older woman as well, all four of them crowding around the end of one of the long tables in the center of the room.
I haven’t seen the older woman around before now. Though that’s not shocking given I haven’t been here long, and barely looked around the only time I’ve been in a room with the other members currently residing here. As I slowly approach them, she listens intently to Anders as he speaks, wrinkled facescrunched. Once he finishes, she throws up her hands, swearing colorfully in Italian.
Cec puts a hand on her shoulder. “Nonna Alessa…” She shrugs him off, glaring and pursing her lips.
So, that’s Nonna Alessa. She doesn’t remind me of Ansaldo at all: while his nose is more pointed, hers bulges out slightly at the end, and her eyes are wider than his beady ones. Ansaldo looms tall and imposing, but this woman looks to be the same height as my nonna, which is around five feet. When Bes murmurs something to her and she smiles up at him, though, I can see Cec in her.She must be Cec’s nonna on his mother’s side.
Once I’m closer, I hear Nonna Alessa speak, her accent heavy. “The information I have comes to us from one of our contacts in Austria.”
Bes crosses his arms. “And you trust them?”
“Si. They’re Kali’s contact.”
Bes motions for her to continue. She opens her mouth, then closes it when she notices me.
“Chi é?” she asks Bes, then yells at me before he can respond. “Who are you?”
Cec, who’s still wearing his training clothes, isn’t startled by my presence.He must’ve heard me coming.Bes and Nonna Alessa, on the other hand, appear alarmed.
Anders waves me over, and I approach them. “She’s alright, Alessa. This is Amelia Hawkins, the woman we told you about.”
Nonna Alessa regards Bes and throws his own question back at him. “And you trusther?”
