Niccolò had always believed in the elegant precision of ordered things. Love, he reasoned with the unwavering conviction of his youth, was not some wild, chaotic vine, but a carefully cultivated bloom. It thrived best, he’d often concluded, between two souls perfectly aligned, two symmetrical halves of a single, well-crafted design. This, he had mapped meticulously in his mind, was the expressway to the tranquil happiness everyone in Volterra’s intricate dance of power and patronage claimed to seek. Common values, a shared lineage stretching back through generations of minor nobility or rising merchant families, an equivalent weight in the coffers, even a similar cast of features – these were the bedrock, the unshakeable foundations upon which a respectable, enduring affection was built. Like always sought like, an undeniable truth in the vast, complex societal maps he drew, both on parchment and in the deeper chambers of his intellect.
He was a scholar, after all, a cartographer of both the visible and the invisible, capable of discerning the subtle currents that shaped the Duchy. Such logic had always served him well, providing a comforting, predictable framework against the volatile, often destructive passions that simmered beneath Volterran civility. His intellect, his greatest pride, allowed him to navigate the treacherous shoals of patronage and expectation. But even the finest compass can be thrown awry by an unexpected magnetic anomaly.
Then, in the year he turned eighteen – though his heart had begun this quiet, insistent rebellion months before, a tremor he had consciously ignored – he found himself in the midst of a grand, unsettling discovery. It was an affection unlike any he had ever attempted to map, a force that defied all his careful calculations of societal suitability. Perhaps, in truth, it had been a flash of lightning at first sight, a sudden, blinding illumination. He, Niccolò Moretti, a man who prided himself on dispassionate reason and meticulous insight, had simply dismissed it as an aberration, a momentary, juvenile lapse in his otherwise perfect navigation of the world. A boy’s fleeting infatuation, nothing more. He’d tried to chart its boundaries, to understand its origin and trajectory, only to find his instruments failing him.
Yet, the currents of feeling, tightly coiled within his chest, did not dissipate with his dismissal. Instead, they grew, a slow, insidious pressure, a relentless tightening beneath his ribs that would, in time, choke the very air from him. It was a cartographer’s nightmare: a vast, unmappable territory within himself, wild and untamed.
"A note for you, Master Moretti."
The servant's hushed whisper, a sudden, sharp intrusion like a pebble dropped into a still pond, shattered the fragile peace of his predawn chambers. He sat up abruptly, the rumpled sheets clinging to his nightshirt, the taste of sleep still sour on his tongue. Dawn, a bruised purple on the eastern horizon, was just beginning to paint the Volterran sky through the high, arched window. The air was cool, carrying the faint scent of damp stone and distant charcoal fires.
A moment he spent on the edge of his bed, the weight of the parchment in his hand feeling impossibly heavy, a leaden indictment. He knew the elegant, impatient script instantly; its sharp, decisive strokes always spoke of its author’s arrogance. Leandro Volkov. A soft curse escaped his lips, barely audible even in the profound quiet of the room. His parents, his younger siblings, all slept soundly in their separate wings of the modest Moretti villa. Only the aged housekeeper, slumbering deeply downstairs, would be stirring soon, her shuffling steps a familiar herald of morning. There was no chance of discovery, not if he moved with practiced stealth. He would go. He always did.
Cool morning air bit at his exposed skin as he stepped from the deep shadows of the Moretti courtyard. His family’s villa, respectable but undeniably modest in comparison to the grand palazzi of the true nobility, was still dark and dreaming, its windows like blind eyes. A thin mist, born of the Arno and the waking city, swirled around his ankles, tasting of damp earth and the distant river. The air was clean, carrying the faint, hopeful scent of freshly baked bread from a distant artisan’s oven, mingled with the less pleasant odor of old refuse.
Beyond his wrought-iron gate, across the cobbled alley, stood a magnificent destrier. It was tethered loosely, almost carelessly, to the rough stone wall of a neighboring palazzo. It was a beast of formidable stature, coal-black, its muscular coat gleaming even in the dim, nascent light. Its head, finely sculpted and intelligent, was held high, its breath pluming delicately in the chill. A year prior, the ancient Rossi family had, with surprising haste, sold their estate, and a new, notoriously private family had moved in. He hadn't yet seen a single one of them, their walls high and their gates always shut, impenetrable. This horse, however – a creature of immense power, beautiful in its untamed potential, yet left almost casually unattended – caught his analytical eye.
A strange, potent identification stirred within him. The animal seemed to exist in a space between belonging and abandonment, a solitary power held in check by a flimsy rope, a mere suggestion of constraint. It was a wild, magnificent spirit, momentarily shackled, just like himself, he mused, sometimes feeling both bound by the rigid strictures of Volterran society and utterly adrift in its unforgiving currents. He imagined mapping its lineage, its strength, the boundless energy simmering beneath its sleek hide. He stared for a beat too long, lost in the unspoken parallels, then tore his gaze away, hailing a passing public carriage with a sharp, decisive gesture.
The wooden wheels groaned on the cobblestones, a dull, rhythmic complaint, the driver oblivious to Niccolò's internal turmoil in the early light. Niccolò tried to fix his eyes on the passing streetscape – the sleeping storefronts with their drawn shutters, the ghostly shapes of bell towers piercing the lightening sky, the occasional lone figure hurrying through the mist. He noted the way the nascent light softened the harsh lines of the ancient buildings, making Volterra seem almost tender. But his stomach churned, a familiar, acidic discomfort that had become his constant, unwelcome companion. He closed his eyes instead, leaning back against the worn velvet of the seat, the jostling motion a torment to his unsettled insides.
Silence filled the carriage, broken only by the rhythmic clop of hooves and the distant, muffled calls of waking street vendors.
For nearly a year now, food had often felt like a foreign body in his gut, a constant rebellion against his attempts at nourishment. A deep sigh escaped him, an unconscious, desperate effort to dislodge the persistent tightness lodged beneath his ribs, a knot of pure, unadulterated anxiety. He had cultivated, with arduous discipline, a habit of ignoring emotions that disrupted his carefully constructed internal maps, emotions that threatened to unravel his precise mental architecture, to expose the raw, insecure core beneath his intellectual pride. With strenuous, almost painful effort, he had maintained a composed facade, a meticulous drawing of calm, for months on end. Just like he was doing now, stepping from the rattling carriage, the predawn chill a stark reminder of his unwanted journey, and heading towards the discreet, unassuming entrance of the Locanda del Drago.
The Locanda del Drago. Its name hinted at myth, but its reality was mundane, a place of temporary comforts and hushed indiscretions. Inside the quiet inn, a shiver, not entirely from the cold, ran down his spine. The air, thick with the stale scent of cheap wine and human habitation, clung to him. He bit his lip, a sharp, almost painful pressure that drew a thin line of blood, then clenched his fist, nails digging into his palm, before slowly, deliberately, releasing the tension, forcing his muscles to relax. He focused on the small piece of parchment still clutched in his hand, the room number scrawled beneath Leandro Volkov’s unmistakable, imperious signature. Two-three-seven. He ascended the creaking stairs, each step a protest, the silence of the inn amplifying the frantic, desperate beat of his own heart. The banister felt cold and slick beneath his fingers.
He paused before the designated door, its dark wood solid and unforgiving. His knuckles, pale and trembling slightly, rapped three times, a measured, almost formal rhythm against the polished surface. A faint scent of rosewater and a heavier, musky perfume seemed to seep from beneath the door.
"Leandro," he murmured, his voice barely a breath, choked with a mixture of hope and resentment. "It's Niccolò. Open the door."
Only the hollow echo of his knock answered from within. The silence stretched, mocking him. An irritable flush crept up his neck, burning hot. He stared at the unforgiving wood, a vast, silent void that seemed to swallow his plea whole. A sharp exhale escaped his lips, a gust of frustrated air. This time, he pounded on the door, a sudden, violent demand that reverberated through the quiet corridor.
"Leandro, I said, open the damn door!"
This entire situation – it was, quite frankly, disgusting. The very air around him seemed thick with the phantom scents of clandestine encounters, of careless pleasure and heedless abandon, of a life so utterly contradictory to his own ordered existence. The thought of what might have transpired within those four walls overnight made his skin crawl, a profound revulsion that tightened his jaw until his teeth ached. Yet, he couldn't stop himself from knocking. Lord Leandro Volkov had summoned him, and he was enduring this repulsive scene because Leandro was the one who had, with such casual cruelty, infected him with that first, debilitating 'illness.' An illness of the heart and mind that defied all his intellectual remedies, mapping itself onto every corner of his being.
"Why in the seven hells do you summon me here, you worthless bastard, after your useless dalliance?" Niccolò’s voice was raw, laced with venom and a desperate, aching vulnerability. "Did you not find enough solace in whatever fleeting warmth you bought?"
Dio, this is truly unbearable. The indignity. The helplessness.
The life of an eighteen-year-old in Volterra.