The pulse of the belladonna flower beat in his pocket like something that could not and must not be hidden.
Dante walked into the afternoon of London, the city vibrating with the grumble of engines and the distant clinking of church bells calling the hour. He had spent the morning standing, trying to figure out what had happened in the garden, working his way through the process of knowing the alchemy that had taken place within him.
But there was understanding he couldn't afford. Not now. Not while the silence of his father was more threatening than any threat.
The phone had vibrated only an hour earlier. One text from the Don:
"Go back to Naples. Now."
Dante had not answered. Could not answer. For to return to Naples was to invite the anger of having betrayed. It was to meet his father's eye and attempt to explain to him why he had loved humanity greater than duty.
It was to confess to having fallen in love with a woman he'd never spoken to.
The epiphany left him rooted at the corner of a street, as people rushed past him like water around a stone. He had seen her twice—once across the street, once in his head. But he'd never heard her laugh, never seen the touch of her fingers, never felt the sensation of being fully looked at by someone whose soul wasn't weighed down with death.
And yet, he was in love with her.
It was madness. Breathtaking, killing madness.
He turned onto a street he knew, his boots ringing off cobblestones. The studio where he'd first seen her towered before him, its windows flashing the light of late afternoon like mirrors. He had not intended to be here, but his feet had developed a will of their own.
As he approached, he spotted a movement within—a hand waving between easels, paint-splattered fingers catching the light, loose brunette ringlets spilling down her face.
Fianna.
She was there. Painting. Creating. Living life her father had protected her to appreciate.
Dante stopped in the street, hidden behind the shadows of a building. He could see her perfectly well through the window—her concentration as she painted, the angle of her head when she was thinking, the delicate line of her neck as she leaned forward to examine her canvas.
She was more beautiful than he remembered.
And then, as if she'd sensed him standing there, she looked up.
They gazed at each other's eyes over the glass, and time stopped.
They didn't stir for a second. They didn't even breathe. The rest of the world existing around them became nothing, with only the two of them bound together by something stronger than blood or memory.
Fianna's eyes went wide, a look of recognition passing over her face. She'd seen him before—that morning in Bloomsbury, when their worlds had first intersected. And now, here he was again, across the street and looking at her.
But this time was different. This time, there was something in his eyes that she hadn't caught before. Something which made her heart pound and her breath catch in her throat.
Dante cradled the belladonna flower in his pocket, petal soft against his palm. Eleanor's voice echoed in his mind: "Love is like the belladonna. Beautiful and dangerous."
He stepped out of the shadows.
Fianna sat and observed the stranger walk across the road, his steps slow and purposeful, as if an animal that had chosen to place itself in her way. She ought to have been scared—she'd been instructed to fear strange men who gazed at her from the other side of the road.
She wasn't scared.
He seemed familiar, as if she had seen him in a dream or before, in some past life. His hair was blond and shone in the light, and his eyes—those enchanted eyes—penetrated to the very core of her.
He stood in the doorway of the studio, and for a moment they just seethed at each other through the glass.
Then, reluctantly, he reached out his hand and tapped on the glass.
Fianna's heart throbbed against the cage of her ribcage as she walked to the door. She ought to have walked past him. Ought to have pretended she hadn't seen him. Ought to have screamed for help.
But she didn't.
She opened the door.
The stranger was taller than she'd estimated, standing in the doorway, his body spilling into the room as if made of flesh and darkness. Up close, she could observe the lines on his face—sharp and beautiful, like a sword weathered in battle.
"Hello," he said, his deep voice vibrating, as if he'd not spoken for days.
"Hello," she said, surprised at how even her voice was.
"I saw you painting," he said, cocking his head in the direction of her easel. "I was thinking I'd like to watch."
Fianna looked over at her canvas—a landscape she'd worked on for days, all blues and greens and the hint of mountains on the horizon. It wasn't finished. It wasn't even bad.
But something in the manner he'd spoken had made her want to let him see it anyway.
"Come on in," she said, stepping aside.
Dante followed her into the studio, the scent of paint and turpentine wafting up around him like a memory he'd long ago forgotten having. The studio was small but well-lit, with windows letting in the sunlight of the afternoon and walls covered in sketches and half-finished canvases.
It was her refuge. Her refuge. And he was trespassing.
"Your painting is beautiful," he said, looking at the picture on the easel.
Fianna laughed, her laughter making his heart skip a beat. "It's not complete. And it's not beautiful."
"It's true," he said. "That is something more than can be said about most painters' work."
She smiled at him afterward, smiled at him for the first time, and caught sight of something in his eyes which took her breath. There was shadow there, and pain, but something else, something that looked like hope.
"What's your name?" she asked.
He paused, the lie bitter on his lips. But he remembered the belladonna flower in his pocket, and Eleanor's words, that one must choose the light.
"Dante," he said to her.
"Dante," she repeated, the name a flavor of poetry on her lips. "I'm Fianna."
"I know," he replied, and caught himself.
Fianna's eyes grew suspicious. "How do you know my name?"
Dante adjusted his weight, his pockets filled with the leaden weights of the photographs he'd labored over for hours. But he could not tell her the truth. Not yet. Perhaps never.
"I questioned you a few questions," he lied. "I've noticed you around here once or twice. I was wondering."
Fianna gazed at him for a second, and he could sense the questions building in her mind. Then she grinned, and it was sunbeams through clouds.
"Good, now you know," she said. "Would you like to see more of my work?"
Dante nodded, and for the remainder of an hour they discussed color and painting and the manner in which light passed through windows. Fianna showed him her sketches and how she did it, and Dante listened with an intensity that pushed the boundaries of adoration.
He discovered that she adored the way sunlight looked on water, that she was trying to achieve the feeling of aloneness among people, that she believed that art had to be emotional, even hurtful.
And she discovered that he had the talent of words, that he saw beauty in a way which told of experience deep, that he carried secrets which she could not even take a guess at.
But above all, they found that together, the world was easier. More vivid.
As the sun began to leave the afternoon sky, Fianna looked at the clock and saw how much time had slipped away from her.
"I should get back to work," she said, though she didn't want him to leave.
Dante nodded, understanding. "Of course."
He moved towards the door, then turned back and gazed at her.
"Fianna," he said.
"Yes?"
"Would you like to grab coffee sometime? There's a place around here that I think you might like."
Fianna's heart leapt, but she replied in the same voice. "I'd like to."
"Tomorrow?" he asked. "Same time?"
"Tomorrow," she replied.
Dante smiled, and it transformed his face from something intimidating into something beautiful.
"Until tomorrow," he said, and walked out into the night.
Fianna stood there as he receded into the distance, smaller against the horizon. She had no idea why she'd agreed to meet him the next day, didn't know why she was drawn to him, didn't know why the chance to see him tomorrow had her heart racing.
But she did know so much: she needed to see him again.
And in the city somewhere, Dante walked through the falling dark, his brain burning with the memory of her smile and tomorrow's promise.
The cold flame of the belladonna flower burned in his pocket like a warning.
But for the first time in his life, Dante cared not for warnings.
He cared for hope.