Chapter 21 – A Different Kind of Fire

Once again, there was silence between them, not uncomfortable, but it was clear that none of them knew how to begin. Valentina didn’t even know where to put her hands, where to look. Innogen was still sitting on the small sofa, her cheeks still reddened from dried tears. Lorenzo had leaned back in his armchair and was looking at them both with an expression that seemed both exhausted and faintly amused.

“Well,” he finally said, a crooked smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “This is probably the strangest engagement conversation in the history of Sommerland.”

A surprised laugh escaped Innogen, short and a little hysterical. Valentina felt her own lips curving into a smile, despite everything.

“So I assume that courtly education for young nobles doesn’t teach you how to deal with a situation like this?” Valentina asked.

“‘No, at least no one explained to me what to do when you discover that your future wife loves the same woman as you do,'” Lorenzo replied dryly.

Innogen shook her head, but the smile on her face was genuine, if still fragile. “You two are impossible.”

“Maybe,” Lorenzo said, his tone softening. He leaned forward and reached out his hand, hesitantly at first, then more decisively. His fingers touched Innogen’s hand, which was still resting in her lap, and gently enclosed it.

Innogen stared down at their joined hands, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Then Lorenzo raised his other hand and held it out to Valentina. His green eyes sought hers, questioning, pleading.

Valentina took it without hesitation. His fingers were warm and firm around hers.

And then, almost as if by itself, Innogen’s free hand moved. It slid across the cushion of the sofa and found Valentina’s other hand. Their fingers intertwined, familiar and yet different than before, a touch charged with new meaning.

“Cute little triangle you have there,” Vyxara remarked in Valentina’s head, but even the demon sounded less mocking than usual, in fact, Vyxara sounded almost proud.

“I don’t know what this is going to be,” Lorenzo said quietly, his voice a little shaky. “But we’re in this together now, whatever ‘this’ may turn out to be. The three of us.”

Valentina felt both hands holding hers close tighter. Innogen’s grip was gentle but steady, Lorenzo’s firmer and almost urgent. She felt the weight of both their gazes on her, Innogen’s full of vulnerable tenderness and Lorenzo’s full of longing that he no longer hid.

Something tender was forming between them, still nameless and without fixed form. Not a romance, at least not yet, but not just a friendship either. A fledgling alliance, perhaps, born of the mutual decision to make the best of it.

The moment stretched out, floating in the sun-drenched silence of the salon and Valentina couldn’t have said how long they remained like that, seconds or minutes, but when their hands finally parted, something between them had solidified, a shape already faintly visible in the fog.

Innogen cleared her throat gently. “I should return home,” she said with an apologetic smile. “My family will wonder where I am. I need to think of something to tell them about what the duchess wanted from me.”

Lorenzo rose immediately. “We’ll walk you to the entrance.”

At the entrance gate, Innogen paused. First, she turned to Lorenzo and bowed her head in a gesture that was now more than mere politeness.

“Thank you,” she said simply. “For your understanding.”

Lorenzo bowed, kissed her hand, and the warmth of this gesture that had previously been merely performed was now genuine. “Thank you for your trust.”

Then Innogen turned to Valentina and, without words, pulled her friend into an embrace. Her arms wrapped tightly around Valentina’s shoulders, and for a moment she buried her face in Valentina’s neck.

“We can do this, right?” she whispered, so quietly that only Valentina could hear.

“We’ll figure it out somehow.” When they broke apart, there was a quiet confidence in Innogen’s eyes that warmed Valentina’s heart.

Then Innogen had left, her slender figure disappearing into the waiting carriage. Lorenzo and Valentina stood alone in the doorway, turned toward each other, and for a heartbeat didn’t know what to do.

Lorenzo cleared his throat. “I-“

“I-” Valentina began at the same moment.

They had to smile, both of them. Valentina nodded to him. “You speak.”

“I think what I need most right now is time to think,” Lorenzo said in a tired but not unfriendly voice. “That was… a lot.”

“It was,” Valentina agreed. “We may not have all the time in the world, but we have time.”

He looked at her, long and intently, then nodded and walked away and his footsteps echoed through the small courtyard until he too had disappeared.

~

Valentina lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, her mind still reeling from everything that had happened.

“What a morning,” Vyxara sighed with relish. “The duchess is truly a masterful woman. I can only marvel at how skillfully she defused this whole situation, which could have ended in disaster.”

“She obviously has had enough practice,” Valentina murmured.

“And you, little Weaver, are now in an enviable position. You are, in a sense, the hinge between the future Duke and the future Duchess of Duskenshire.”

Valentina was silent. Vyxara was right, of course. Strategically speaking, her situation was better than ever. But it was difficult to detach herself enough emotionally to view her life from that perspective.

“That’s what you have me for. But there’s something else that interests me,” the demon continued. “When you talked about your feelings for Lorenzo earlier, it sounded almost a little too light, so to speak.”

Valentina frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You said you had feelings for him, and I don’t doubt that’s true, I have enough insight into your emotional life, after all. But your heartbeat remained calm, your hands didn’t tremble and it was as if you were talking about the weather.”

The words hit Valentina harder than she wanted to admit. She had noticed it herself, this strange distance between what she said and what she felt.

“I care for him,” she replied in her mind. “He is wonderful, and the time we worked together at Greystone Hospital was one of the best times of my life. He understands me and I really like him. Our night together was beautiful and sad. It broke my heart that the ‘what if’ we allowed ourselves that night was not allowed to be.”

“I don’t doubt any of that. But passion…” Vyxara paused deliberately. “Passion sounds different. Your blood boils when you think of other things. The Tower, for example. The games with the duke and his inner circle. Even what you did with Professor Horne, or rather, what he did with you. There’s something burning inside you that I don’t feel with Lorenzo.”

Valentina closed her eyes in shame. She wasn’t ready to fully explore this realization that lurked at the edge of her consciousness. But she couldn’t completely ignore it anymore either.

“There’s no shame in it,“ Vyxara added gently. “Different people awaken different things in us. You can genuinely like Lorenzo, even love him, and still burn for something else.”

“I know,” Valentina whispered.

Despite everything, she felt lighter than she had in weeks. The secrets were out, at least some of them, at least to those who needed to know. And, most importantly, she was no longer alone with this impossible situation. They were working together on a solution.

She walked over to an armchair, reached for one of her books, and tried to distract herself with the complex diagrams, to forget the events and worries of the last few days and let the events of the morning sink in.

~

Evening was falling over Vandercourt when a soft knock on the door pulled Valentina out of her thoughts. She had already changed into a simple evening gown in muted grey and was expecting perhaps another invitation from the duchess, perhaps to discuss the events of the morning.

Indeed, Lady Beatrice stood at her door, but not with an invitation to the duchess, but with a piece of parchment.

“I have what you wanted,” Beatrice said bluntly, holding out the parchment. “He is a guest at Baron Foncemendicant’s townhouse near the South Bridge. I have written down the directions for you.”

Valentina took the parchment, her fingers trembling slightly. “Beatrice, I… thank you.”

“Don’t worry,” Beatrice said quietly. “This will stay between us. After everything that happened today, this is really nothing.”

It was strange to see Beatrice with different eyes now. To her mind she still was the competent first lady-in-waiting, of course, who always seemed to know everything. But she was more than that. She was Rosalind’s lover, her partner even and understood exactly what it was like to feel desires that didn’t fit into neat categories.

“Have fun,” Beatrice added, and then she was gone.

Valentina closed the door and looked at the parchment with Beatrice’s neat, precise handwriting showing her the way to what she wanted.

Her pulse quickened so much that she could feel it painfully in her throat, and she noticed the difference immediately. That morning, when she had talked about love and feelings, about Lorenzo and Innogen and this whole complicated situation, she had not felt nothing exactly, but now, at the mere thought of his grey-blue eyes and his broken nose and his hands big enough to effortlessly…

“You see,” Vyxara purred in her head. “All morning you’ve been negotiating limitations and futures, arrangements and obligations, and now you’re reaching for something that requires none of that. Just your body and hunger and the will to take what you need.”

“Is that bad?” Valentina asked in her mind.

“Not at all. Maybe you understand yourself better than you’re willing to admit. It’s time you stopped denying what you really want.”

Valentina carefully folded the parchment and slipped it into her dress pocket. She glanced briefly in the mirror, but she didn’t change her appearance. This wouldn’t be seduction. She would make him a direct offer, simple and blunt, just like the man himself.

From the closet, she pulled out a simple dark cloak, one that wouldn’t stand out in the evening streets, with a hood that could cover her face. The weight of the heavy fabric on her shoulders felt comforting, familiar as the darkness itself. Then she took a phial of Distilled Essence, just in case and paused for a moment.

The morning had brought her so much hope for a future together with two people who meant a lot to her. And now she was about to do this, something so completely different, something simpler and at the same time more raw, so much more visceral.

“There is no reason to be ashamed of this, little Weaver,” Vyxara affirmed.

She opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. The townhouse lay quiet, the servants werebusy elsewhere, and no one noticed the slender figure moving through the shadows and slipping out through the side entrance into the darkness.

Outside, Valentina wove a fine pattern of Schâte Essence around herself, just enough to make her nothing more than another shadow in the night to the eyes of others.

She pulled her hood deeper over her face and made her way in the direction of the south gate. And shortly thereafter, the night swallowed her up and Valentina disappeared into the alleys of the capital.