Chapter 6 – Oaths and Ashes
Florence, 1533
The bells of Santa Croce tolled midnight. Beatrice stood cloaked in black, her fingers wrapped tightly around a bundle of letters—every word she'd written Matteo, every fragment of herself the world had tried to silence.
She was not supposed to be here.
The chapel was off-limits after dusk, but Beatrice had bribed the steward and lit her own candles. Saints watched from stained glass and frescoes, eyes painted with solemn judgment. She didn't care.
Tonight, she was making a vow.
The priest arrived late. Not a court priest, but a monk from the outskirts—quiet, loyal to no family name, paid with gold from Elena's hidden stash. He asked no questions. He only held the book open.
Beatrice placed her hand on the Gospel and looked him in the eye.
"I do not swear fealty to God or to Florence," she said. "I swear to love. To truth. To the life I choose. Not the one chosen for me."
The monk hesitated.
Then nodded.
He raised his hand in quiet benediction. "Then may your soul find its match in every life that follows."
She dropped the letters into the fire before the altar. The pages curled, blackened, flamed. But she did not weep. She knew the words would live elsewhere—on Matteo's tongue, in the silence between their meetings, in the blood that refused to forget.
Outside the chapel, Matteo waited in the alley, cloaked in shadows and fury.
"You shouldn't have come alone," he hissed when she emerged. "If anyone had followed—"
"They didn't," she said calmly, brushing ash from her gloves. "And if they had, I would've led them to the sea before I gave you up."
Matteo's expression cracked, and he kissed her—hard, desperate, the way men kiss when the end is closer than the beginning.
"We leave in four days," he said against her hair. "I've arranged a boat. Elena will pack your things in secret. We'll ride at dawn."
"Won't they look for us?"
"They will. But not where we're going."
Beatrice leaned back and studied his face.
"You believe in fate?"
He hesitated. "I didn't. Not until I met you."
She smiled faintly. "Then let's steal from fate before it takes us."
They parted quickly, without another word—each vanishing down different corridors like ghosts already erased from the history books.
But from a window high above, someone had seen them.
Someone with a ring bearing the crest of House Vescovi.
And vengeance sharp as a knife.