Page 104 of Bitter Burn
Valter comes to clasp Mark’s shoulder, Isolde temporarily going still between them. I can see by the way her hands shake that she’s dogged by exhaustion and crashing adrenaline. I am too, although I’m standing in the dark, so I can hide it better.
Mark grips Valter’s elbow in return. A short nod, the kind that comes from a well of shared history, and then Valter lets go and walks back toward the van.
“You’re in good hands,” Valter says to me as he passes by. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it.”
“Will it ever feel like it?” I mutter, and the spy laughs.
“Oh!” he adds, reaching into a long pocket on the side of his pants and pulling a bundle of burlap free. “We found this when we were doing our final sweep. I thought you might like to have it back.”
I unwrap the burlap as Valter slips back into his van. His people leave with the same brisk efficiency they rescued us with, rolling smoothly away and disappearing at the turn of the road, headlights sweeping and then vanishing with machinelike precision. I look down at the knife in my hands, its hilt inlaid with rubies and gold.
I turn back to Mark and Isolde to see that Mark is smiling, a real, happy smile. As I come closer, I can see the swollen eye and the trails of dried blood framing the side of his face, which streak down his neck and disappear into the collar of his shirt. He’s still wearing the white button-down he had on under his suit jacket, but the rolled sleeves look irremediably stained, and a long tear in the side exposes freshly purpled ribs. One of his forearms looks like it’s been dipped in dark paint and left to drip dry.
He looks like he’s just climbed his way out of hell, and he has the nerve to smile down at Isolde like he’s earned himself an angel.
He bends to kiss her forehead, her nose, her stubborn mouth. She refuses to kiss him back, but she doesn’t resist him kissing her, settling for a glare when he pulls back to meet her eyes.
“Will you behave now?” he asks, affection plain in his tone. He finds her ferocity as endearing as he finds my obedience, I think.
“This isn’t over,” she sniffs, looking away. An offended cat who will sit by its owner but ignore them the entire time.
He kisses her temple, like he can’t help but kiss her, and jealousy leaps through me.
“Scourge me all you’d like,” he purrs. “I look forward to it. But be good for now so that I can kiss Tristan without fear of being executed for my little crime, hmm?”
The jealousy is still there, but when Isolde relents and Mark reaches for me, it transmutes from a baser metal into gold, shimmering and molten. I let Mark take my hand, my arm, yanking me into him so he can cup the back of my neck and kiss me.
He tastes like blood.
We breathe together a moment, Isolde tucked between us.
“Why didn’t you tell us about the rings?” I ask as we break apart.
There’s not enough light to track the subtleties of his expression, but I do see something wary and resigned there. Perhaps even guilty, though I’m not sure what guilt would look like on Mark’s face.
“Some things aren’t meant to be atoned for,” he says finally. “They simply are as they are meant to be. And any devil worth his salt is happy to take the blame for them.” And before we can interject, he says, “But there will be time to put me on trial later. For now, we need to move.”
He takes my hand and then puts his other at the small of Isolde’s back, guiding us toward a small car in front of the house. It’s old but not too old, worn but not battered, forgettable in every way.
“Where are we going?” I ask. “Home?”
“We are going to the end,” says Mark. “To Nemi.”
Thirty-Five
Tristan
I’ve never heard of Nemi—a lakeside town less than an hour’s drive southeast—but Isolde’s expression when we get into the car is pensive. Finally, after Mark maneuvers us out of the half-abandoned neighborhood and toward larger and larger roads, she asks, with no inflection in her voice, “The summer palace?”
“Your uncle uses the palace as cover,” says Mark, changing lanes and merging onto a highway denuded of traffic this late at night. “For visiting Nemi.”
“Why Nemi?” she asks. “I’ve never known him to go there.”
“He’s got a bad tooth,” answers Mark, but he doesn’t elaborate any further, and Isolde doesn’t press. In fact, within just a few minutes, she’s fast asleep.
Dawn isn’t far off when we arrive in Nemi, which is perched on a steep hill above a lake and thicketed with pines. As we pull into town, Mark informs me that Nemi is famous for a sacred grove—where a pagan priest would fight strangers to the death in a custom that endured until the reign of Caligula—and also its strawberries. The town is quiet, full of cobbled streets and buildings sun-bleached into pale pastels. Streetlamps glow a soft orange; above us, the Alban Hills push broodingly into the sky.
Our destination is just above the town itself, a buff-colored house with walls around it and a new metal gate. A mounted sign outside advertises it as a short-term rental, but Mark pulls right up and presses a call button mounted outside the gate.
