held on tighter
“It’s just dinner with my uncle and his Masters, maybe a few top Veterans mixed in for good measure, nothing to be nervous about, Mogliettina,” Ezio assured her as he expertly preened in the dressing table mirror over her shoulder. “Wear your pretty blue dress, and those strappy silver sandals.”
She sat up straighter, adjusting the heavily embroidered dressing gown she was wearing over her slip while she did her hair and makeup for the evening, and spared the shoes he wanted her to wear a quick glance.
“Your mother told me not to wear shoes like those anymore; she said it might hurt the baby-”
“Only if you were to trip, and I wouldn’t let you fall,” he murmured as he turned his attention from the mirror to her. His hands trailed over her, stroking and squeezing, before settling to cradle the swell of her belly. Before she’d met Ezio she hadn’t known that there were so many different flavors to being groped.
“She also said it could hurt me – damage my feet or ankles – and then they’d be deformed, ugly,” she carefully reminded him, tone diffident and soft. “Won’t she be unhappy with us if she thinks we ignored her advice?”
Ezio sighed and she knew she wouldn’t be wearing the silver sandals. Good. They pinched her toes and the straps cut into her ankles.
“You’re right, Mogliettina.” He pressed a kiss against her cheek. “In the interest of domestic harmony, you should probably wear the type of shoes she wants. Will you wear the sapphire earrings? I love the way they look on you, the way they catch the light.”
She bit the edge of her bottom lip and glanced over at the set of chocolate colored pearls she’d planned to wear that evening – a pair of combs, stud earrings, double stranded princess length necklace, and a matching bracelet – with a pang of disappointment. It was a beautifully matched set of jewelry, far too fancy for her day to day life, but she’d thought the formal dinner that evening hosted by Ezio’s uncle would be a perfect opportunity to finally wear them. She also wanted to look extra glamorous after meeting Cristina and seeing how Ezio had reacted to her, how tall and thin she was; she felt positively short and thick in comparison. It hurt to remember how Ezio had hardly been able to tear his eyes away from Cristina, and he had been acting strangely since the encounter.
“My mother will be dripping with pearls,” Ezio explained softly, clearly having caught the way she’d glanced at the jewelry. She still couldn’t understand how he managed to be almost frighteningly perceptive regarding some things and entirely oblivious to others. He sighed and slipped his hands inside her robe to caress the bare skin of her shoulders with a feather light touch. “I just, it would be nice to see you in something pretty that’s not pearls tonight, Mogliettina. You understand, right?”
Not really.
“Of course, Varpet. Whatever you think would be best,” she murmured and squeezed her thighs together, cheeks warming at the way her body responded to him.
Ezio smiled and gave her shoulders a quick squeeze before he drifted over to rummage through the casket of jewelry she’d packed. She picked up the pearl necklace Ezio had instructed her not to wear and let the strands slide through her fingers, admiring the weight and luster of it. He laid the sapphire chandelier earrings out for her on the dressing table and his gaze scorched her skin as he watched her.
“I’m going to go shave,” he told her, prodding one of the earrings flat with exaggerated care. “You’ll be just about ready when I’m done, yeah? We don’t want to keep my mother waiting.”
“Of course,” she replied, carefully coiling up the necklace and slipping it into its compartment of the velvet pouch that housed her pearls. Her heart felt heavy and her eyes burned.
“Hey.” He caressed the back of his fingers against her cheek. “You’ll get to wear those pearls for a night out, I promise. I’ll take you somewhere really fancy after our baby is born – just the two of us – we’ll go to Cairo, spend the night in the best suite Shepheard’s has to offer, or Mena House, whichever you’d prefer. Okay, Mogliettina?”
“That sounds lovely.” Her smile felt ready to shatter and she really just wanted him out of the room before she started crying. “I have to finish getting ready for dinner.”
“Yeah, okay.” He hesitated a moment before crushing his mouth against hers in a sloppily aggressive kiss. Something about it didn’t feel quite right.
“I can’t wait for this dinner to be over so I can take you to bed. Christ, I’m dying for your tight little figa.”
He pressed another kiss against her lips before collecting his shaving kit and sauntering out of the bedroom. She waited until she heard the door close behind him before she dropped her forehead to her folded arms and started crying.
She shivered as she made her way down the palazzo’s sinuously curving staircase. The gown Ezio had selected for that evening was gossamer-thin silk with a plunging open back that clung to her body almost like a second skin, and her earlobes were already starting to ache from the weight of the chandelier earrings he’d specifically asked her to wear. The white velvet pāpūš her mother-in-law had given her were silent against the plush Persian rug carpeting the stairs.
Ezio was waiting for her at the foot of the staircase, so absorbed in his conversation with Lucia and Mari he didn’t notice her approach until she was almost standing beside him. He jolted away from Lucia guiltily and stopped talking when he noticed her presence, not that it really mattered; they had been speaking in Italian and she wouldn’t have understood anything they said anyway.
“Hey, Mogliettina. You look beautiful,” he greeted her. Lucia slid a half step further away from her as Ezio slung a proprietary arm around her waist and she flinched at the contact before she could stop herself. He noticed and released her, turning to offer his arm to his sister, who was sitting on the bottom step in a pool of buttery-yellow silk. Mari took his arm with a sigh as she heaved herself to her feet and restarted the conversation that had stalled at Taline’s approach, again in Italian. Ezio reached over and settled a hand at the small of her back but made no effort to include her in the conversation, even though she knew they all spoke perfect Arabic; his inattentiveness stung.
At least he and Mari aren’t fighting, she reminded herself and self-consciously folded her arms around the swell of her belly, uncomfortably aware that she wasn’t far enough along to look really pregnant – as opposed to just bloated or slightly overweight.
“Is everyone ready?” Madonna Maria asked as she glided down the stairs, hand lightly resting on Altaïr’s proffered arm, and leveled her scrutinizing gaze at each of them in turn.
She was surprised to see that her mother-in-law was dressed in a long black evening gown; Maria seemed to almost exclusively wear shades of white and pale gray, occasionally lighter shades of beige and darker tones of cream. Altaïr was dressed in a dark red sherwani-style coat with a collar high enough to brush the underside of his jaw and slim cut black trousers. She’d seen enough of Italian fashion, both Assassin and non-Assassin, to know that, while not the tightest trousers she’d seen Altaïr wear, not by a long shot, they would still look shockingly narrow to his Italian brethren. Ezio’s suit, a bluish-gray blend of light wool and linen, was decidedly European in style, but still cut slimmer than the suits she’d seen other men wearing in Rome. His closely fitted shirt was a pale dove gray and his tie was a heavy paisley brocade with shades of sapphire and a lighter blue that matched her dress. The ribbon around the crown of his fedora matched her dress as well; she assumed either he or one of the elves must have enchanted it to match.
“Stop slouching, Lucia,” Maria reprimanded. The fabric of Altaïr’s coat depressed under Maria’s fingers as she tightened her grip on his arm. “You too, Moosh – and stop sulking – it’s most unattractive.”
“Good evening, Mother,” Ezio said, removing his hat as he stepped forward to kiss his mother’s cheek. “You look beautiful.”
Maria accepted the gesture then frowned and pinched the point of Ezio’s chin between her thumb and index finger, forcing him to meet her eyes. “Have you been drinking, mio tesoro? I told you, no hard alcohol before dinner. You have to be more careful about not drinking too much.”
“It’s fine, Mother, I’m not a child,” Ezio retorted, jerking his chin out of his mother’s grasp.
“You haven’t reproved Taline for her poor posture,” Mari quickly interrupted the exchange with a carefully careless toss of her curls. “Why do Lu and I get scolded while she gets a pass?”
I’m not going to give Mari the satisfaction of seeing her venom upset me, she decided, surreptitiously glancing at her sister-in-law through the fans of her lashes. She’s going to have to amuse herself at someone else’s expense tonight. Even as she made the promise to herself, she wasn’t entirely confident she would be able to keep it.
“Jesus Christ, Mari,” Ezio exclaimed with an angry sweep of his hand. “Can you forget to be a bitch for just-”
She heard the sharp sound of the slap before she registered Maria’s movement or Ezio’s reaction. Altaïr moved quickly to position himself between his cousin and aunt and murmured something in low voiced Farsi – she’d heard the language spoken enough when she worked at the cabaret to recognize the sound of it, even if she couldn’t speak it herself. She hung back and watched Lucia sidle up to Ezio, clenching her teeth at the overly familiar way she squeezed his bicep and he leaned into her. Her husband and Lucia had been friends their whole lives – so everyone kept telling her – but something about that exchange bothered her. She shielded her abdomen with one hand and pressed the fingertips of the other to her marriage scar, channeling her magic into it, tingling sharpening to pins and needles before turning into the burning sensation of an electric shock surging through the scar tissue. Protect us. Ezio’s forehead creased as he distractedly rubbed his chest, shrugging away from Lucia to come over to her. She cuddled against him when he took her into his arms and reached up to soothe the red mark on his cheek his mother’s hand had left.
“Apologize to your sister.”
The muscles of Ezio’s jaw bulged against her palm as he clenched his teeth.
“That’s really not necessary, is it, Mari?” Lucia interjected, going over to Mari and intertwining their arms. “We all know E-zo didn’t mean any harm.”
Mari harrumphed under her breath and pointedly avoided eye contact with everyone in the room.
“Apologize,” Madonna Maria repeated stonily.
Ezio heaved a sigh strong enough to stir her hair and her stomach clenched at the scent of alcohol already on his breath.
“I apologize, sister.”
“Accepted,” Mari acknowledged curtly. “Can we go now, Mother? Uncle Mario won’t like it if we’re late.”
“That man doesn’t like a lot of things,” Maria replied dismissively.
Ezio turned slightly to roll his eyes at Mari so their mother wouldn’t see.
Taline startled at the sound of Altaïr’s heel striking the hardwood floor as he summoned an elf. Several arrived almost instantaneously, carrying overcoats and wraps. She accepted her devoré velvet shawl and then a half-length shearling cape from a spindly elf with electric green eyes. It waited until she and Ezio hand assumed their outerwear before it extended a hand to each of them.
“It’ll be fine, Mogliettina,” Ezio assured her and slid an arm around her waist before taking the elf’s proffered hand. “You look so beautiful, truly. I am a very lucky man.”
She smiled nervously and grabbed the elf’s hand; she just wanted the whole trip to be over. She wanted to be back at Alamūt – having tea with Taghrid and teaching her students, playing with Altaïr’s cat and being able to avoid Mari. She felt the strange feeling of a hook catching just behind her navel, followed by a violent tug, and stumbled slightly forward as she found herself in the Mirror Room of Roma’s Motherhouse. She managed a single deep breath before the nausea struck and she doubled over. The elf pressed an uncorked phial of the same yellow potion she’d been given before into her hand and she immediately gulped it down.
“What, what was that? What did you take? What the hell did you just give my wife?” Ezio demanded as he turned on the elf, voice rising into an infuriated roar.
She swallowed repeatedly as she waited for the potion to take effect, the elf frenetically signing its response to Ezio’s increasingly furious onslaught of questions beside her.
“-I don’t care!” Ezio shouted, the large vein in his forehead bulging. “I don’t want her being given anything that hasn’t come directly from the medics, do you understand me?”
The elf cowered behind her.
“Leave the elf alone, habibi,” Altaïr commanded, hooking his arm through Ezio’s and dragging him a few steps away from her and the trembling elf. “It’s only trying to help.”
She could see Ezio struggling against his cousin’s grip, see his mouth moving as he protested vehemently, and she could see Altaïr’s lips move as he presumably tried to soothe and reason with Ezio in turns, but she couldn’t hear a word they said; like there was some sort of soundproof barrier between them.
He’s cast a silence.
Her stomach heaved with horror at the realization; at the thought of Ezio casting that same spell before he killed every member of her family, their useless screams for help that people only a few feet away were unable to hear. Ezio had boasted to her once, as they cuddled after sex, that even other Masters struggled to break the silences he could cast. He was reallygood at casting silences, he’d said, clearly a little drunk and very eager to impress her with his skill, starving for her admiration and praise. Ezio got borderline desperate for reassurance when he was drunk – that she was happy, that she wanted to be with him, that she was faithful, that her pregnancy was going well. He wanted to be told how big and virile he was, wanted her saying his name while he made love to her and when he forced her to orgasm. He always stopped just short of asking if she loved him, almost like he was afraid of how she might answer.
Madonna Maria had dropped to her haunches beside her and was carefully smoothing her shawl over her naked back. Her mother-in-law, she noticed, was indeed dripping with pearls, as Ezio had predicted. She wore an enormous collar of pearls; Taline counted twenty-four strands in all, the top hugging Maria’s throat and the lower tiers lengthening to hang in a lustrous cascade over her chest and shoulders, where the gleaming strands brushed her upper arms; large chandelier earrings completely woven of pearls hung from her ears. The pins in her upswept hair were tipped with enormous lustrous pearls and she wore a clustered pearl cocktail ring on her right hand. She’d never seen so many pearls on a woman in her life. She swallowed down her nausea shakily and thanked the elf. She could tell it didn’t like being thanked, but it was grateful enough for her perceived protection from Ezio’s wrath that it did nothing to indicate its discomfort with her gratitude.
“Are you all right?” Madonna Maria asked her softly. “You’ve gone quite pale, joon-am.”
“Yes, of course, Madonna,” she managed to reply around a tight, brittle smile as she carefully rose to her feet. “I’m perfectly well.”
Lucia, who had been watching her, quickly looked away when she glanced at her. She felt a flicker of resentment as she watched Lucia avoid her eyes. Lucia was tall, her long, thick blonde hair elaborately twisted and coiled at the nape of her neck. Her dress was bright scarlet silk swirling up from the floor to a sharply nipped waist, loose, blousant front held up with thin straps and a plunging, open back. She wore a thick gold filigree cuff pushed snugly up her forearm and a lariat necklace, the tasseled ends hanging down between her shoulder blades to brush the bare skin of her lower back. Nausea tickled the back of her throat and she briefly contemplated vomiting on Lucia’s dress; or maybe Mari.
“Nipoti!” Mario greeted them as he strode into the mirror room, going over to embrace his niece and nephew in turn, tactfully avoiding Lucia and nodding to Altaïr. “Madonna,” he perfunctorily greeted Maria, tone holding only meager traces of hospitality.
“Granmaestro,” Maria sniffed in reply, eyes narrowed in warning. Mario hesitated as he exchanged an eerily long look with Maria before turning to her with a wide, glowing smile.
“Ah, bella ragazza,” he rumbled, surprising her with perfunctory kisses to both cheeks. “You look a little pale. Come, eat. We’ll put some meat on those bones. Ezio needs a happy healthy bride to bear his many children.”
“Zio,” Ezio groaned, looking almost embarrassed. “We’ll start with this one and see how it goes before we run Alamūt over with little Auditores.”
“Not Alamūt, nipote,” Mario corrected him with a strained smile, slinging one arm around Ezio’s shoulders and offering the other to Mari as they proceeded out of the mirror room. “Roma, and then Lucca.”
Ezio laughingly responded in Italian and she felt a sharp burst of frustration that he was once again speaking a language he knew she couldn’t understand, with people whom she knew could also speak Arabic.
The elves salaamed deeply after taking their coats and capes, apparently waiting for them to leave the room before they vanished themselves. She snuck a quick smile and the gesture for thanks to the elf that had attended her before following the others out into the wide hallway outside of the Mirror Room. Once in the hallway she hesitated, uncertain if she should try to catch up to Ezio or follow after him unescorted. Moments felt like hours, and the longer she hesitated the more uncertain and abandoned she felt. I can’t wait to show you around the Roma Motherhouse, Mogliettina. Everyone will be so excited to meet you, Ezio had told her, at home in Alamūt. I guess he forgot about that promise, or changed his mind and didn’t want to tell me. It hurt.
“Shall I escort you, Khanum?” Altaïr murmured, offering her his arm. “I imagine this all must feel very overwhelming to you.”
“A bit,” she agreed, resting her hand on his proffered arm, careful not to grip him too tightly or let her relief color her tone. She didn’t miss the pointed look her mother-in-law had shot at Altaïr before he had offered to escort her, or the longing and resentment on Lucia’s face as she watched Ezio as they walked down the hall, her right arm folded across her chest, gripping her left bicep.
“I feel like everyone else knows something I haven’t been told about yet,” she confessed to him, in Turkish, mindful that Lucia and Madonna Maria were only a pace or two ahead of them.
“That’s because they do,” Lucia unexpectedly answered her, slowing her pace to fall into step beside her. “All sorts of things, I’d bet.”
She tried not to show her surprise that Lucia spoke Turkish; she’d forgotten that fact, if she’d been told it in the first place.
“That’s how it always is, with groups,” Altaïr replied, the barest hint of something almost like hostility or hurt edging his voice. “They bring up shared memories, inside jokes, things you just had to be there to understand, to make sure you don’t forget that you’re not one of them, that you’ll never really belong.”
“Careful, Effendi,” Lucia hummed. “A person might suspect you’re bitter, to hear you talk like that.”
He shot a narrow-eyed look at Lucia, but Madonna Maria had spoken to him in low voiced Farsi, and he dutifully turned his attention to his aunt. Mari had fallen a few steps behind her brother and uncle and sidled over to them while her mother and Altaïr were involved in their conversation.
“Mind what you say to him,” Mari murmured, cutting her eyes quickly from her to Altaïr and back again. “He tells my mother, and his sister, everything.” Mari paused for a carefully timed beat of silence before turning to Lucia with a dazzling bright smile. “Come join us, Lu. Let’s make Uncle Mario be nice to you for a change,” she chirped, hooking her arm through Lucia’s and pulling her with her when she skipped ahead again to retake her uncle’s arm. The intention behind Mari’s gesture was uncertain, but her slight stung as she watched Ezio flash a smile at Lucia, as Mari had undoubtedly intended.
Not everything, she mentally corrected Mari and nervously smoothed her hair.
She’d been watching Altaïr tirelessly working to foster a relationship between one of his students, Tārā, and his sister for the last three months. Altaïr played matchmaker like a game of chess; move, counter-move, check. He volunteered to help Kadija with students, and then sent Tārā in his place. He convinced Kadija to oversee a student’s training session for him as a special favor and then reorganized his students’ schedules so that she and Tārā ended up alone together. Kadija had stormed in while they were having their weekly dinner to bawl him out in furious Farsi, punctuated with emphatic hand gestures. Augustine had darted under the bed to hide; she almost wished she could have joined him. Kadija had been terrifying in her fury.
I don’t think she likes you meddling, she’d said softly after Kadija had left, slamming the door behind herself.
I’m not meddling, he’d replied calmly, spearing a piece of roasted lamb onto his plate. She’s lonely. She needs another person in her life, and Tārā needs a reason to come back alive before I can assign her on any contracts. The arrangement would be to everyone’s benefit, as well as the Order’s.
She still wasn’t convinced. It had taken a long while before the cat ventured out of his hiding place to raspily demand his dinner.
A sharp bark of laughter from Ezio, still a few paces ahead with his uncle, sister and now Lucia, drew her back to the present with an uncomfortable feeling of abandonment. Altaïr and Madonna Maria were still conversing in Farsi. She half listened to the cadence of their conversation as she took in her surroundings.
The tiled floor of the hallway was covered in a red and white Moresque pattern, frescos adorned the recessed areas in the exposed brick walls and the chandeliers – the chandeliers were enormous – hanging from the ceiling at regular intervals like birds of prey made of glass and metal. She was grateful for the pāpūš her mother-in-law had given her; the heels of the shoes Ezio had initially wanted her to wear would have been so loud against the tile floor. It was stuffy in the Motherhouse, the air close with stale incense, lingering traces of rosemary and sweat; nausea tickled the back of her throat. The hallway emptied into a large, central room dominated by staircases and the largest chandelier she had ever seen. It was a monstrous behemoth of shivering crystal and lacquered black wrought iron, almost blinding to look at directly as it hung over the room like a sinister raptor. The staircases were actually three segments of the same grand staircase, wide steps leading downwards with two graceful wings sweeping up to the higher levels. Her skin itched under the scrutiny as scores of assembled Assassins turned their attention from their Grandmaster to those accompanying him. She felt their eyes searching out Ezio’s name scarred across her chest and she wished that the neckline of her dress was higher, that she could clutch Altaïr’s arm as tightly as she wished without sparking malicious gossip, and that she’d plead a headache or whatever else it might have taken to have stayed behind and had a bowl of broth and fruit alone in the safety of Ezio’s room. She jolted nervously when Maria took her other arm.
“Calm yourself,” Maria instructed in an undertone. “They can see what you are; a frightened Cathar is going to be interpreted as dangerous.”
She took a deep breath, and then another, and tried not to cry. She wanted Ezio beside her, his arm around her waist, claiming her, protecting her. He said he wanted to show me off back in Rome. Her throat was tight with distress that he wasn’t showing off and boasting over her like he had their first afternoon in Rome, at his mother’s brothel. That was before he saw Cristina again, she realized, heart twisting into a tender knot. I should have worn those stupid sandals. Something wet slid down her cheek and it took her a moment to realize that she’d started crying.
“Let’s go powder your nose, joon-am,” Maria said, tone pitched low and soothing, as she put her arm around her shoulders and steered her towards one of the hallways.
“I want Ezio,” she protested, and wiping the moisture from her cheeks and dragging her feet as she looked for him. Her mother-in-law caught hold of her wrist as she reached to touch her marriage scar.
“Don’t use that trick too often. He’ll figure out what you’re doing, and my son doesn’t like it when he knows he’s being managed.”
Her heart lurched guiltily. “Madonna? I don’t understand,” she protested, trying to twist her wrist out of her mother-in-law’s grasp.
“Where are you taking my wife, Mother?” Ezio asked, tone casually conversational but eyes narrowed. He had almost seemed to materialize out of thin air and was now blocking their path. She nearly sobbed with relief that he hadn’t forgotten about her.
“Taline is feeling a little overwhelmed,” Maria replied smoothly. “I was just taking her somewhere quiet to compose herself, mio tesoro-”
“I’ll take her,” he interrupted and roughly pulled her from his mother’s grasp. She clutched the edge of his coat and pressed herself against him.
Take me home, she wanted to beg, but she swallowed the words and pressed her damp cheek to his chest. The fabric of his vest was soft against her skin, imbued with the warmth and scent of his body – soap and starch and the soft musk of his skin, hyssop and rosemary, hints of sweat and the briny tang of sex. His magic tasted sweet and spicy – cloves and black pepper and sun-warm peaches – underlain with salt and the metallic tang of blood. Ezio.
“It’s really no trouble,” Maria insisted. “Everyone wants to see-”
“Everyone will just have to understand,” he retorted, hand at the small of her back, pressing her closer. “We won’t be long, will we, Mogliettina?”
She shook her head. “No,” she whispered. An anxious knot formed in her stomach at the sudden realization that he might want to have sex with her right then, make sure everyone in the room behind them knew that she belonged to him. That cuts both ways, she reminded herself, remembering the longing that had ghosted across Lucia’s face as she looked at Ezio when she thought no one was watching. Her grip on his coat tightened.
“Have a cocktail, Mother,” he said over his shoulder. “Make sure Altaïr doesn’t insult anyone – they’re not used to how he is over here.”
Any response mother-in-law might have made was drown out by the thump of her heart against her ribs as she followed Ezio from the room, nearly stumbling in her haste to keep up with his long strides as he guided her along one hallway before turning down another. He stopped abruptly and sank into a squat, back braced against the wall.
“What’s the matter,” he murmured as he drew her down to perch on his thigh. “Did someone say something to upset you?”
“No,” she whispered, leaning into him. “I thought you said it wasn’t going to be that many people, Varpet.”
He sighed. “Apparently my uncle decided to expand the guest list.” He nuzzled his face against her hair, stroked his fingertips down her spine, causing her skin to prickle with nervousness and desire. “The sooner we sit down to dinner, the sooner it’ll be over. Are you ready to head back?”
Please, take mehome.
“Can we stay like this a little longer?” she asked cuddling into him. “It’s nice.”
“Yeah,” he rasped. “Just a little longer.”
She self-consciously rubbed at the fresh love bite Ezio had left on the side of her neck, just above her clavicle, and took a tiny bite from the plate in front of her. The meat was oily and over-flavored in her mouth, each bite a lead weight in her stomach. Fegatelli di maiale, the person sitting next to her had said it was called. Pig’s liver forcemeat stuffed into pig’s stomach and baked in a slow oven with stock and red wine. Madonna Maria and Altaïr were eating buttered gnocchi and Altaïr had insisted on drinking water with his meal, instead of wine. Haram, he had commented, with a curl of his lip, when the fegatelli di maiale and bottles of dark red wine had appeared on the table, and Maria had glared down to the head of the table at Mario, Ezio and Mari seated on either side of him. The gnocchi had appeared a moment later.
Granmaestro Mario had fussed over her when they returned to the central room, brusquely commanding a nearby elf to get her a drink and draping his own dinner jacket over her shoulders. Bisogna prendersi cura della tua sposa, Ezio, lei è così sottile e pallida! E nervoso come un coniglio![1] He rubbed some warmth into her upper arms and shoulders with a wide, indulgent smile.
Ezio looked annoyed. Va bene, zio. Cosa è successo alla piccola festa che hai promesso? Naturalmente è nervosa, guarda tutte queste persone![2]
Enough arguing, you two, Madonna Maria had cut in before Mario could respond. The older man closed his mouth with a snap of his teeth and exchanged another of those strange looks with Maria.
Madonna Maria pulled her aside when they’d descended to the dining hall below, emptied save for one long table. Sit by me, joon-am. It will be a long dull dinner for you at the head of the table, just sitting there while they talk over you in Italian.
Ezio had started to protest but his uncle quickly cut him off. She’s right, nipote, let your mother and cousin entertain Taline this evening while we have a proper visit. You don’t want to have to worry about boring your charming bride, do you?
And so she was sitting at the opposite end of a very long table from Ezio, picking at food she didn’t really like and watching him laughing and chatting with his uncle and Lucia and Mari and various strangers at the other end. She watched the way the other women around the table – and a few of the men – flirted with her husband, as though she wasn’t even there. She hated the jealousy that was almost choking her, burning through her sternum like acid; it hurt, so much.
“Leave it, ameh joon,” Altaïr said with a shade of irritation to his voice. Her mother-in-law heaved a disapproving sigh in response and sipped her wine.
“Do you not like it, Khanum?” the man seated on her right asked, motioning with his fork at her food. He bared his large, square, tobacco-stained teeth in a broad smile with that particular breezily confident charm she was rapidly beginning to associate with Italian men.
She desperately tried to remember his name. Giulio? Ernesto? He wasn’t a Master, she remembered that much, at least, so she couldn’t get by with just calling him Effendi or Maestro. Was it Massimo? Allah kahretsin, will this meal never end? It felt like she’d been sitting at that table, trying not to shiver in her thin silk dress, for hours as the elves served course after interminable course.
“No, it’s quite good,” she lied, forcing herself to smile. “Succulento,” she hesitantly added, hoping she chose the appropriate word and didn’t maul the pronunciation too badly. She could tell immediately from the fleeting expression on the man’s face, before his smile aggressively reasserted itself, that she’d said something wrong.
“Delizioso, joon-am,” Maria corrected her with a silky smile before speaking further to the man in Italian. Across from her, Altaïr’s brows briefly drew together in sympathy.
“That’s why I don’t try to speak their language,” he told her in Turkish. “So many of their words mean basically the same thing, and half of their entire language is slang for penis,” he said, with a flash of something that might have been a grimace.
She smiled tightly in response and breathed through her nose, swallowing against the sudden swell of nausea burning the back of her throat. Her mouth had begun to water ominously.
“I’m going to be sick,” she told him in Turkish, in an urgent undertone. She could already feel an assortment of the previous courses beginning to bubble up her throat. “Please, help me!”
Altaïr’s response was immediate. He vanished from his seat to suddenly reappear beside hers, offering a clipped explanation, in Farsi, to her mother-in-law as he guided her from the table and then spirited her out of the room. Once they were safely out of view he stopped and stamped for an elf. She clamped a hand over her mouth and swallowed down the first plume of vomit rising up her throat. He noticed her gesture and stamped again. She could have cried out with relief when an elf appeared, if she had dared uncover her mouth. There was no way around it at this point; she was going to be violently sick.
“The Khanum is suffering from vomiting-sickness. Help her,” Altaïr commanded. She found his quiet, calmly authoritative tone immeasurably reassuring.
The elves were incredibly kind about the mess she made of the hallway floor.
Rejoining the dinner party had been out of the question. Vomit had splashed on her dress and shoes, matted in her hair as lock after lock had slipped out of her carefully pinned coiffure, and the thought of sitting back down at that long table and being served another course after course of the same rich food while men and women with hard cold eyes watched her while pretending not to and talked about her in a language she couldn’t understand would be returning to her own private hell. In the blur of retching and being vanished and finding herself mostly alone before a toilet, she couldn’t be entirely sure what happened between Altaïr whisking her out of the dining room and Madonna Maria arriving to escort them both back to the palazzo, but Ezio hadn’t come home with her.
She found herself in her dressing gown and the nightdress she’d bought specifically for this trip, practically buried under a mound of blankets on one of the couches in the family parlor, scrubbed clean and picking at a bowl of lentil soup while Altaïr and Madonna Maria had a rather strained sounding conversation in Farsi. She shivered as Filomena settled on the settee beside her and the older woman bared her teeth as she tucked the blankets more tightly around her.
“Are you cold, Taline?” Filomena asked with a serrated smile, eyes cold and hard. Assassin eyes. “Do you need another blanket, or perhaps a hot brick for your feet?”
“No, thank you-” she forced herself to smile “-I’m warm enough already.” Her instincts told her she couldn’t entirely trust Filomena, that the older woman wasn’t as accepting of her and her relationship with Ezio as she pretended to be. After what had happened with the Man, she’d learned to trust what her instincts told her.
Filomena clucked her tongue. “What an evening you’ve had, getting sick and having to leave dinner so suddenly. It’s very generous of you to be so understanding.”
The palms of her hands prickled with unease. She wished Ezio was there to protect her from whatever Filomena was hinting at.
“Yes, thank you,” she replied, smile stretched tight and brittle. “I’m really tired. I think I should go to bed.” Filomena made no move to help her as she struggled to unearth herself from the entangling blankets that had been heaped upon her. Altaïr rose from his place beside his aunt on the other couch to offer assistance.
“You haven’t finished your soup,” he observed as he took the bowl from her.
“I’m more tired than hungry.” She didn’t feel tired so much as worn down – from the near constant nausea, the stress, anxiety and fear, from smiling, smiling, smiling like everything was fine, and not letting herself cry. Her dreams had become filled with familiar faces and blood as Ezio’s nightmares spilled over into hers.
Altaïr’s brows drew down in a frown, but Madonna Maria headed him off before he could speak.
“She’s had a difficult evening, Aquila, let her retire to her bed if she so chooses.” Her mother-in-law cast an appraising look at her. “You look tired, joon-am. An early night might do you good.”
She forced herself to smile. “Yes, thank you. Good night, Madonna. Effendi.” She hesitated over Filomena, trying to recall the correct term of address before she gave up; Mari wasn’t back yet to laugh at her. “Begum.” Filomena looked confused by the title, but she didn’t comment on it, smiling her hard, empty smile at her as Madonna Maria watched, her mother-in-law’s lips curved in a chilling smile of her own. She managed to glide from the room, shoulders thrown back and spine straight. Her posture crumpled as soon as she shut the bedroom door behind herself.
Where’s Ezio? Surely he must have noticed my absence by now. She sawed her teeth across her bottom lip and paced from the bed to the window and back, half expecting Ezio to burst through the door after every step she took. She paced until she was exhausted, until her steps stumbled and she could barely manage to haul herself into the bed, his bed. And still Ezio hadn’t come to her.
There was someone in the room with her.
She woke up struggling against strong hands restraining her, to the sound of low-voiced assurances; it took her a moment to recognize her husband and remember they were in his mother’s house in Italy.
“Varpet.” Her skin was misted with perspiration from the nightmare she’d been having, although the details were dissolving into haziness as she tried to recall what she’d been dreaming about. Pain and horror and guilt and fear, fear, everywhere fear.
“Yeah, Mogliettina, it’s okay. I’m here now, everything is all alright,” he soothed, slurring his words as he clumsily smoothed her hair back from her face. “Just a bad dream, yeah?”
My life is a bad dream. She felt guilty the moment after that thought crossed her mind. Was a bad dream, she forcefully amended. I’m very lucky now, he’s giving me everything I’ve ever wanted.
Yes, Varpet,” she dutifully murmured in response. The strength of the alcohol on his uneven breath seared her skin and made her eyes water. She closed her eyes and swallowed the whimper creeping up her throat as he pulled the covers away from her, mouth moving hungrily downward across her skin. Mother preserve us. Please let him be too drunk for sex.
“Dio santo, mogliettina. Devo scoparti, adesso,” he panted against her as he tore at their clothing, stripping off his vest and dress shirt and baring her breasts. She felt her nipples tighten from the sudden exposure to the cold night air; he wasn’t wearing an undershirt. “Dimmi che vuoi che il mio uccellone sia dentro di te. Dimmi quanto bagnata la tua figa è per il tuo stallone.”
He stood and skinned off his trousers; she could see his erection straining against the thin fabric of his underwear in the cold light of the nearly full moon streaming through the open window. A black, tarry bubble of fear swelled in her throat, nearly choking her as she forced herself to sit up and remove her nightdress. Please don’t hurt me.
“Be gentle Ezio,” she pleaded as he pushed her back against the mattress and settled on top of her, rubbing the hard ridge of his fully erect penis against the place between her legs through the fabric of his underwear. His mouth moved over her breasts, hard, hungry suction and sharp, almost painful nips. Please, please don’t hurt me.
“Voglio che tu l'orgasmo per me, piccola mamma, prima che io abbia la tua figa dolce. Vieni per tuo marito, mogliettina.”
She didn’t have to understand the language he was speaking to understand what he was demanding from her, but that he was only speaking Italian made her uneasy; Ezio usually asked for her consent in Arabic – their common language. He skinned off his underwear and pressed her hands against his body, wordlessly encouraging her to touch him, before his hand slid between her legs and she felt the tingling currents of his magic as he touched her. She tried to delay her orgasm for as long as possible, dreading what she knew would follow.
“Gesù cazzo di Cristo,” he panted when she came – back arching and mewling his name – before he sat up, crossed his legs, and hauled her into his lap so that she straddled him. He penetrated her with a single hard thrust before she could think to protest or stop the sharp cry that escaped her lips. He froze, fingers digging into her splayed buttocks.
“Sei ferito?” he asked. She could feel his hips twitching against her with the urge to thrust.
“Please, Varpet,” she sobbed, clutching his shoulders and trying not to squirm away from his painful invasion of her body, which she had learned only encouraged him to thrust harder. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
He blinked at her a moment too long. “Taline? Shit!” he exclaimed. He tipped her back onto the bed and carefully pulled out; she couldn’t help sobbing harder with relief as he slid out of her. “Did I hurt you, hurt the baby?”
The place between her legs was throbbing and wet, the hooded peak of her sex aching and tingling and over-sensitive. Her nipples stung and her breasts were painfully swollen and tender.
“I don’t think so,” she choked out between sobs, unresisting as he leaned over and pushed her thighs open wide. She gasped when he pressed his mouth against her and recoiled from the feeling of his tongue sliding inside her, squeezing her legs closed and clawing away from him across the bed. “No, please,” she begged as he caught her by the hips and dragged her body back against his. “Please, Ezio, it hurts.”
“God, your figa taste so good,” he mumbled against the side of her neck, wrapping his body around hers, pressing her back into his chest and reaching down to touch himself. “Like gojé sabz, but better. So much better. I want to taste more, lick your figa all night long. Touch me. Please, please, touch me the special way. I’m yours,” he slurred, rubbing himself against her. “Fuck me.”
She gritted her teeth and guided him back inside her; he gasped, breath hot and moist in the shell of her ear, when he penetrated her. He convulsed with orgasm after several thrusts.
“Ezio?” She flexed her pelvic floor muscles and his softening erection slid out of her body. She managed to turn in his arms to face him after a fair amount of shoving and heaving. His eyes were mostly closed, lips softly parted, respiration deepening and even. She brushed a lock of hair off his face and he nuzzled into her hand.
“Feel s’good,” he sleepily slurred, weight settling as he melted against her.
Her breath caught as she felt something inside her, a faint fluttering movement in her abdomen. Was that the baby quickening? She forced herself to hold absolutely still, scarcely daring to breathe. Ezio stirred slightly to resettle more snugly against her. He was starting to softly snore. Her breath caught as she felt the fluttering again. Our baby. Our baby is moving on his own inside me. Something between a laugh and a sob lodged in her throat. I felt our baby move. Ezio shifted against her and pressed his lips to her skin in a sloppy kiss.
“Cristina,” he sighed. “Mmm, Cristina.”
She felt something burst in her chest and it hurt to breathe.
[1] You have to take care of your bride, Ezio, she is so thin and pale! And nervous like a rabbit!
[2] All right, uncle. What happened to the little party you promised? Of course she's nervous, look at all these people!