The iron carriage wheels shrieked over frosted canal stones as the team of black mares bolted through the sleet. Inside, Amadea could not feel her feet. A rim of crystalline white crept under the skin of her collarbones, needle-sharp and burning like dipped lye. Every inhalation scraped her throat raw. If the altar remained unbroken by the hour the sun fully sank, the curse would finish the job it bungled on the riverbank nine months ago.
She looked down at her skirts. It was the same ivory duchess satin, trimmed with moth-eaten silver lace, that Tullio had abandoned in the drift outside the city gates. The hem was still stiff from old river mud, dried and sealed in amber varnish to preserve the rot.
"Thirty minutes before dusk," Dr. Elias Vance muttered beside her, his coat smelling of carbolic and wet wool. He took both of her trembling wrists, chafing them vigorously. "Your pulse is fluttering like a trapped moth, Amadea. You cannot walk in there alone."
"I am merely eager to celebrate true love, Elias," she trilled, her mouth stretching into a blinding, vacant grin that set his teeth on edge. "A bride ought to have all her dearest well-wishers present, oughtn't she?"
Elias groaned, half in horror, half in baffled adoration. "You are going to kill yourself playing the simpleton."
"Only if Gaddo drops the carbons," she whispered. Her smile stayed pinned in place, glossy and terrifyingly blank.
The carriage lurched to a halt beneath the soaring buttresses of the Basilica of Saint Andrea. Wind howled through the colonnade, driving sleet sideways into the stone saints carved above the portals.
Amadea threw the coach door wide and stepped out into the gale. She did not gather her skirts against the sludge. She let the ruined lace drag, white hem drinking gray water, and climbed the broad marble stairs with the buoyant bounce of an uninvited party guest looking for the pastry cart.
Inside, the sanctuary smelled of beeswax, cinnamon-steeped wine, and damp fur. Two hundred nobles of the high court sat nestled beneath silk banners, heads bowed as the high priest held a gilded wreath over Tullio Vancetti and Cosima Delato.
"...and by the bond of hearth and harvest, let no man sever—"
*BANG.*
The sanctuary's ten-foot oak doors swung inward, crashing against the interior stonework. The reverberation killed the choir’s final verse in their throats.
Heads snapped toward the threshold. A collective gasp rose into the vaults.
Amadea stood bathed in the twilight squall behind her. Frost painted intricate, blooming ferns across her bare shoulders and the crook of her neck. Her skin was the color of skimmed milk, her lips an unnatural lilac, but her amber eyes shone with frantic, giddy brightness.
"Oh, goodness! Did I miss the blessing?" she called out, her voice floating across the nave, light and bell-like. She trotted down the central aisle, heels clicking loudly on the checkered mosaic floor. "Tell me I didn’t miss the kiss! I ran all the way from the canal! Well, my driver ran the horses, technically, but I clapped the entire journey!"
Tullio froze beside the priest. The velvet color drained from his cheeks until he looked like salt pork. "Amadea?"
Cosima whipped around, her sweeping veil of Valenciennes lace trembling over diamond hairpins. Her hand went instinctively to the silk bodice tailored to conceal her perfectly flat abdomen. "Guards! What is this wretched creature doing here? Tullio, call the watch!"
"Don't be silly, Cosima!" Amadea beamed, halting ten paces from the dais. Her teeth rattled, click-clack-click, against each other as the solstice cold squeezed her lungs. She had to clutch the silver wine chalice she carried to disguise the violent tremor shaking her ribs. "A proper sister of society always brings the loving cup. See? Spiced red vintage. I even had the sommelier warm it! Though, goodness knows, everything feels positively tropical compared to the river roads tonight."
Behind the congregation, a heavy clank echoed through the nave. Then another.
Four men in soot-stained wool overcoats—dock enforcers from the Morante syndicate—stepped through the entryways. Working with oiled precision, they dropped massive iron crossbars across the bronze handles, looping heavy padlocks through the chains.
Ignazio Morante stepped out from the shadows beneath the baptismal font, wiping an oily cloth over a short-barreled shotgun. He didn't spare Amadea a glance. He merely leaned his bulk against the barred doors and struck a sulfur match against the stone, lighting an ugly black cigar.
"The doors are barred!" a senator shrieked from the third pew. "Morante! What is the meaning of this?"
"Private viewing," Ignazio rumbled through gray smoke. "Nobody leaves until the show ends. Sit down, Excellency, before I remove your kneecaps."
Panic rippled through the pews like grease on water. Aristocrats stood, jewels catching the altar sconces, trampling over each other's velvet trains. Tullio stared solely at Amadea’s soaked dress, his mouth opening and closing without sound. He recognized the scorched rip near the hem where his boot had caught the cloth the night he left her in the blizzard.
"You're supposed to be..." Tullio choked out. "In the ground. You were dead."
"I took a nap!" Amadea chirped, tilting her head with vacant innocence. Frost crackled along her cheekbone, a visible lattice of ice forming over her cheek. She was losing time. Her vision was tunneling into dark gray circles. "A very long, very chilly nap. But then I remembered I simply had to see what you two looked like together at the altar. You make such a... unified picture."
Cosima's veneer shattered. Her almond eyes fixed on Amadea, bright with cornered, feral venom. "You insolent ghost. You think you can shame me here? In front of the council?"
Cosima reached into the gathered silk folds of her bridal gown. Her manicured hand reemerged clutching a two-shot derringer inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
"Cosima, no!" Tullio shouted, reaching for her wrist.
"Get away from me, you coward!" Cosima snarled. She leveled the barrel straight at Amadea’s throat. "Die properly this time!"
She pulled the trigger.
The crack of the powder deafened the nave.
Tullio lunged forward, thrusting his arm across the line of fire. The lead slug tore through the sleeve of his ceremonial doublet, grazing the meat of his shoulder and knocking him sideways against the marble altar steps. Blood bloomed instantly across his white silk vest, bright scarlet and steaming slightly in the draft.
"Tullio!" Cosima shrieked, cocking the second barrel.
Up in the shadowy choir loft, wood splintered. Three of Tullio’s hired cathedral guards threw their shoulders against the narrow door of the projection alcove.
"Gaddo!" Amadea screamed, dropping the chalice and dropping the cheerful mask entirely, her raw, rasping fury echoing through the cavernous rafters. "Now!"
Inside the booth, Gaddo kicked a guard’s hand away from the doorframe, his face smeared with soot, lime dust, and sweat. "Do not rush an artist during his grand finale, darling!" he roared back, his voice theatrical even over the thudding axes. "Behold! The triumph of modern science over domestic deceit!"
Gaddo slammed his palms down on a massive copper contact switch.
An arc of violet lightning sizzled across the balcony, hissing with the scent of ozone. The twin carbon rods struck each other inside the brass housing of the arc lamp, catching fire with a deafening, mechanical roar.
A beam of blinding, five-thousand-candlepower luminescence tore across the vaulted darkness, striking the massive white drapery hung above the high altar. The celluloid strip hummed through the sprockets at terrifying speed, throwing the black-and-white moving image of Cosima Delato dripping clear poison into an invalid's broth across forty feet of consecrated silk.