The light flared one more time. I winced at the brightness and looked away. When I looked back, the light was gone. But so was the scar. The last inch of the wound that had cut through Dante’s skin had closed.
Dante’s body relaxed in an instant, his muscles turning slack and his breath slipping out in one long, slow exhalation.
Orlando and I both instinctively moved back, giving him the space he needed. Valerie hovered around us, a nervous bird too unsettled to land.
In the silence that followed, Dante’s eyes opened.
The gray film that had clouded over his vision had vanished. His eyes were clear and bright.
I saw him see me—really see me—and my heart threatened to stop.
He blinked slowly, as though waking up from a hard sleep. “Abby?” My name sounded dusty in his mouth. “Is that you?”
I leaned over him, cupping his face, touching his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, his lips. “I’m here. Are you all right? Can you see?”
He pushed himself up into a sitting position, his arms shaking with weakness.
“What about your heart?” I started. “How does it feel? Is it healed too?”
“Dante?” Orlando said quietly, moving into his brother’s field of vision.
Dante’s eyes opened even wider and his face turned winter white. Without a word, he reached for his brother and locked his arms around him.
I leaned back on my heels, tears spilling down my face. I didn’t brush them away, though. I wanted to remember everything about this moment: the feel of my tears, the sound of Dante’s voice as he said his brother’s name, as together they called out for their parents, and the deep, overwhelming joy that filled my entire being.
• • •
We stayed up the rest of the night talking, each of us amazed and awed by the miracle that we had witnessed. I knew Dante and Orlando had a lot of questions for me about what I had done and how, but with their parents in the room, such questions would have to wait. I didn’t mind, as I wasn’t sure I fully understood myself what had happened. All I knew was that Dante could see again.
I wanted to ask him about his heart, but with his parents’ unending attention focused on him, I didn’t have a chance. Dante knew I was worried, though, because at one point, when he had been released from yet another hug by his mother, he quickly touched his chest, then his lips, and blew me a kiss.
We told Alessandro and Caterina that it must have been Alessandro’s poultice that had healed Dante so completely. It was easier than trying to explain what had really restored Dante’s sight.
Dante, for his part, couldn’t stop looking at his family. I could see the gratitude in his face, the recognition that against all odds he had been given an unexpected gift, and the resolve that he was not going to waste even a moment of it.
As the sun rose, I felt exhaustion begin to steal over me. I closed my eyes, capturing one last image of Dante’s face close to my own, smiling. The sound of his voice whispering my name followed me into the darkness of sleep.
• • •
I felt a gentle touch tilting my face up, and a soft and slow kiss on my lips welcomed me back to the world.
“Good morning,” Dante said.
I blinked as he moved away and a beam of sunlight fell across my face.
“Or should I say, good afternoon?”
“What time is it?” I rubbed at my eyes.
“Time to wake up,” he teased. “Father, Orlando, and Valerie have already left for the shop, and Mother has been up for hours.”
I vaguely remembered falling asleep in the main room and Dante picking me up and carrying me to a soft bed, covering me with a warm quilt, and closing the door behind him. I still wore Caterina’s gold-brown dress, but my sneakers were lined up neatly by the open door.
Dante sat down in a chair next to the bed and picked up a pen and paper.
I stretched and wiggled my toes underneath the quilt. I wasn’t quite ready to leave the warmth of sleep. I rolled onto my side and watched Dante work. I loved seeing his skin unmarked by scars and his bright eyes healed.
“Will you tell me something?” Dante said as he continued to write on the paper in his hand.
“Anything.”
“How did you restore my sight?”
It was a complicated answer, and it took quite a while to explain how I had healed Dante with a touch of light, as well as what I had learned about the language of the river.
Dante listened intently and asked a few specific questions at key points.
When I finished, I closed my eyes, remembering how it had felt to hold a healing piece of the river in my hand. The scratch of Dante’s pen on paper sounded like music, a lullaby that threatened to pull me back asleep.
“Dante?” I asked dreamily.
“Hmm?”
“So, did it work?”
“Did what work?” He continued writing, but I saw a smile play around his mouth.
I propped my head up on my elbow. “Your eyes are healed. Is your heart healed too?”
Dante paused in his work, then forged ahead. “For now.”
I sat up in alarm. “So it didn’t work?”
“I didn’t say that.” Dante set down his pen. “So much of what has happened to me—to us—has never been done before. I don’t fully understand what you did, so I don’t know how long the effects will last. So I’m focusing on what I know to be true: I know that, for now, I can see. I know that, for now, it feels like the hole in my heart has been bandaged up. I feel like I’m still losing time, but it’s more like a slow leak instead of a flood.” He looked at me with his clear gray eyes. “You have done an amazing thing for me, Abby. Thank you.”
I relaxed, leaning back against the pillows again. I had hoped that Dante’s heart would have been completely healed, but I knew he was right. We were in uncharted territory and there was no telling what the long-term effects might be. I would follow his lead and be grateful for what I had now and keep working toward what I wanted to happen in the future.
I listened to the sound of Dante’s pen. “What are you writing? Are you keeping a journal?”
“Sort of.”
“I’m sorry,” I said in a hurry. “Journals are private; I understand. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“No, it’s not that.” He hesitated a moment. “I’d planned to show them to you when I was done, but I wasn’t sure how you would react or what you would think of them.”
“Them?” I repeated. “So it’s not a journal?”
“They’re letters,” he said, looking at me a little shyly. “I’m writing letters.”
“Love letters?” I grinned. “Dante di Alessandro Casella, are you writing me love letters?”
His shy smile teetered close to a tease. “They are letters of love, yes. But they are not addressed to you.”
My eyes widened.
“They are about you,” he hurried to finish.
“Go on,” I said warily.
“I told you we were close to the time when you need to stand at the dungeon door and close the loop. But after that happens and we leave this time, I’m never coming back. Not for holidays or birthdays, not for weddings or funerals. I’ll never walk these hills again. I’ll never pass by the window and see my mother in her chair, sewing by the fire. I’ll never ride with my father through town, or work alongside him at his shop.”
“You don’t know that,” I said. “Once the river is stable again, you could come and go as you please, if you wanted to.”
“That’s just it.” He leaned closer to me. “I won’t want to. Coming back here—even to visit—will mean leaving you behind, and I swore I would never do that again.” He picked up my hand and laced his fingers through mine. “When I say good-bye to my parents for the last time, I know it will be for the last time. But they won’t know that.”
“The letters are to your family,” I said in quiet realization.
He nodded, his eyes holding mine. “I don’t want the
m to worry about me. I want them to know that I’m healthy and happy and whole, even if I’m . . .” He cleared his throat. I saw his hand move as though he might touch his chest, but in the end, he didn’t. He didn’t have to; I knew what he was thinking.
“Whatever happens to me,” he continued, his voice steady, “I want my parents to know the good parts of my story. But I won’t be here to tell them, so the letters will have to do it for me. I’ve written enough to have one delivered every year for the next five years.”
“Why only five years? Won’t your parents be worried when the letters just . . . stop?”
Dante was silent for a long time. “My parents won’t be around to expect a sixth letter.”
“Oh.” My heart ached at the thought of Dante’s loss that was already so close and drawing closer.
He drew in a deep breath and held it. “Knowing the future is sometimes a burden I’d rather not bear.”
I traced the back of Dante’s hand with my fingers. “So, what did you write in these letters? You said they were about me.”
Dante made a sound halfway between a laugh and a cough. “This is the part I wasn’t sure you would like.”
“Uh-oh, should I be worried?” I asked with a smile in my voice.
“Well, first I wrote about after I returned to da Vinci’s studio, how you and I began courting,” Dante began slowly, his palm pressed against mine.
“And?”
“And then, in a letter that will arrive in a few years, I wrote about how you had accepted my proposal and that we are to be wed the following spring.”
“And?” My voice squeaked in a high note of surprise and disbelief.
“And then, in the last letter, I wrote about how we are expecting a child. You think it will be a boy and want me to ask permission to name him Alessandro, in honor of my father. But I am sure it will be a girl, and that we will name her Sofia.”
I gulped down my words, speechless with emotion. “Married?” I managed. “And a child? In five years? But I’ll only be—what?—twenty-three?”
Dante’s blush turned to dark red. “Well, I may have . . . accelerated the timeline a little. There’s no rush, of course. I know you want to go to college and . . .” His words tripped over themselves in his hurry to explain. He was usually so calm, it was strange to see him so flustered. “Anyway, I know my mother would be pleased at the thought of a grandchild. Even one that is only a wish of pen and paper.” He looked down at the letter in his hand and then back up at me. “Don’t worry, Abby. I didn’t write what was going to happen. Just what I thought might happen.” Then he added in a low voice, “What I hope might happen.”
I blinked, still reeling from the idea of my life unfolding in a series of letters. “But Sofia?” I echoed, my tumbling thoughts catching on something familiar. “I know that name. I heard you talking about her to Zo once on the bank, a long time ago. Did you see her in the river? Is she—” I could barely get the words out. “Is she going to be our child?”
“She could be,” Dante said quietly.
“But you don’t know,” I stated.
He shook his head.
“Didn’t you see my future in the river?”
He shook his head again. “I haven’t looked. And I’m not going to.”
“Why not?”
“I’m tired of knowing things I shouldn’t. I’m tired of wondering which possibility will prevail. But most of all, I don’t want to second-guess your decisions. I want you to be able to choose your own future by yourself.”
I thought about everything Dante had told me: how his wounded heart was better but not yet whole, about the letters that sketched out his hopes and dreams, about the shape of our future together. I thought about the possibilities and the potential that waited for us. “But I’m not by myself,” I said. “Not anymore. And the future I choose will be the one that has you in it.”
A small smile curved Dante’s lips. “So, does that mean you’ll say yes when I do ask you to marry me?”
“When the time is right,” I replied with a grin, “ask me and find out.”
Chapter 21
Dante and I were outside in the garden, enjoying the sunshine and sharing stories, when a small carriage rumbled up the front walk. When Dante looked up and saw the pattern of stars on the side of the door, he stopped in his tracks.
“What?” I asked. “Who is it?”
“The court’s men,” he murmured. He took my hand and quickly led me back toward the house.
I kept my face down as well. We both had good reasons for wanting to avoid contact with anyone from the courthouse. Me because I had escaped from there not too long ago, and Dante because, according to their records, he was already locked up in the dungeon awaiting trial. How could he explain away the fact that he was in two different places at the same time?
We had just reached the door—Dante even had his hand on the latch—when a voice called out.
“Excuse me, miss? May I speak with you?”
I stopped short. I knew that voice. Glancing up, I saw a short man standing in the center of the pathway. He wore a heavy winter coat, and the stars on his collar matched those on the carriage. His boots were polished to a high shine, and over his shoulder he had a familiar-looking satchel.
“Miss?” he asked again, a little louder.
Dante whispered low in my ear. “He’s seen you. If you don’t answer, he’ll be suspicious.”
My heart skipped a beat. “But it’s Angelo’s assistant —Domenico.”
Domenico took a few steps closer toward us. Dante shifted toward the shadow of the house, but his movement must have drawn Domenico’s attention because he called out, “Sir? Yes, hello. I’m looking for someone. I was wondering if perhaps you could help me.”
I exchanged a glance with Dante and shook my head. Now that Domenico had seen us both, there was nothing we could do but play along and hope for the best.
I turned around and gave Domenico a bright smile. I hoped that since my hair was down and I was wearing a dress instead of a T-shirt and jeans, Domenico might not recognize me.
No such luck.
He took a step back, tilting his head like a bird and peering at me with muddy brown eyes. “I know you,” he said in astonishment, blinking in surprise. “You were at the courthouse. With Orlando di Alessandro Casella.”
Before I could reply, Domenico clutched his satchel to his chest and began rummaging through the contents. “But he is the man I’m looking for. Is he here? It’s important that I speak with him.”
“I’m sorry; I can’t help you,” I said, grateful that Orlando was legitimately out of the house and out of harm’s way. It was bad enough that Domenico had found me and Dante; I didn’t want to jeopardize Orlando’s safety too.
Domenico looked up from his search, glancing between me and Dante. “But isn’t this the Casella home?” His face turned an embarrassed shade of pink. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you look so much like him”—he gestured to Dante—“I just assumed . . .” He trailed off and studied Dante more closely. His forehead creased in confusion.
“Why are you looking for Orlando?” I asked, hoping to distract Domenico’s attention away from Dante. “Has he done something wrong?”
“That’s just it. He’s done nothing wrong. I simply wanted to give him a message.” He cleared his throat. “Are you sure you don’t know where he is?”
He looked up at me with such hope in his eyes that I felt my resolve crumbling.
“I’m his brother,” Dante said carefully. “You can give me the message.”
Domenico hesitated, as though wary of trusting us too much.
“There are no secrets between my brother and me.” Dante’s voice was low but strong. “I know the truth of his past.”
The wariness in Domenico’s eyes retreated. “In that case, when you see Orlando, would you please tell him how sorry I am?”
Now I was the one to blink in surprise.
“Tell him that what w
as done to him . . . it was wrong. No one should be made to suffer as he did.” He dove back into his bag and rustled through a few more papers. “I have been looking for him everywhere in order to give him this.” He held up a large envelope in both hands.
“What is it?” Dante asked.
“He was promised a new identity—among other things—in exchange for his . . . assistance.” The pink blush of embarrassment deepened to the red of shame. “Angelo has refused to fulfill his promise, but I am a man of honor, and if this, in some way, can help Orlando, then it is my duty to help him however I can.” He cleared his throat again and straightened to his full height, even though it meant he only reached my shoulder. “A promise is a promise, and I would like to make amends, though I know it will never be enough.”