The Storm of Life by Amy Rose Capetta

Author:Amy Rose Capetta
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2020-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

I walked back toward the safe house, tracing our path. As I headed down the gauntlet of bakeries, I wished I had Cielo’s long fingers or reversible morals. When I was nervous, my appetite swelled. I could have eaten a dozen of the delicately layered sfogliatelle or the raised, puffy bombolone piled in the windows.

But the sugared tops of the pastries only reminded me of the snowy Neviane and the streghe I’d dragged there in the hopes of making Vinalia safer for them—only to place them in my brother’s path and then immediately storm off.

As I passed through the Evracco neighborhood, my boots hit the cobbles like flint. Hearing that hard sound in one ear and not the other left me feeling unbalanced.

I found myself missing Cielo, missing my family, missing everyone I could imagine, from my sisters all the way down to Favianne Rao.

Of course, she’d never actually become a Rao. Who would know the truth about what had happened to her after I vanished from Amalia? Vanni, most likely. The five families traded gossip with more vigor than old men before confession. I would have to ask on his return. Not that Favianne and I had been close. We’d only circled each other once or twice before I realized she was eager to use me in her endless search for power and pleasure—and the feeling was a bit too mutual for comfort.

Still, I was curious to know what had become of her. We were matched in ambition, and she was the only other person I knew who had slipped the hold of the five families. What did her new, handpicked fate look like?

Was it as strange and dire as my own? Or had she kept to a well-trodden path?

When I reached the safe house, I kept walking, marking its location from all directions so I would be able to find my way back. Then I left behind the building clad in shadows and vines, pressing toward the edge of Prai. Oreste had told us that the Bones of Erras would be found where the bone roads met the city.

I walked past so many doors painted in bold shades, so many people on their daily rounds of butcher and baker, a hundred packs of wild children. All I could think was how much this place would be changed if Beniamo had his way. I felt like I was seeing two cities at once—the one that existed now, and the one that would replace it if Beniamo was allowed to rise to power.

He would bleed Vinalia of color and life. He would not stop until every one of these people was as nervous as I had been as a child, casting glances over a shoulder, afraid of the moment when he noticed my happiness and crushed it underfoot, like that crown of violets. He wouldn’t do it for his own gain, or any kind of glory. Beniamo lived for the simple delight of watching my eyes go wide, and then empty.

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