The Mosaic

Chapter 78 | All the World's a Stage

I am so sorry for the delay of this chapter — it was difficult to write, since it's so close to the finish line and I don't want to miss anything important. Some of you may know I struggle with PTSD ( a reason why I like to represent it in my writing, too, with both Giacinto and Alessandro) and the past months haven't been easy. I needed to step away for a bit.

I cannot thank you enough for your patience and your support. So many of you commented and cheered for this story, it would not be here without you. So thank you, for being the best!

Summary for the special chapter — a while ago, I published a special chapter featuring Antonio and Daniele making a deal, an order of stars and a lot of hints and secrets. Since it was a special chapter and not everyone might have read it and it was quite a while back, I will leave a very short summary of the most important details of this chapter in a comment here. Or, if you want to go and 'Sherlock' it on your own — it was chapter 53, Way Down We Go.

This is the second to last chapter! Without further ado ...

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.

The scale threatened to tilt with every smile.

Never had their table been long enough, the room big enough, Laelia sweet enough. With her parents presiding at each end, as far from each other as possible and yet never far enough, Laelia was always trapped in the no-man's-land.

When she had jumped out of the gondola, waving Alessandro good-bye, wild hope had exploded in her chest. They were home. They had done it. They had survived it all, solved it all, beaten every odd.

Excitement had bubbled up in her chest with every step closer to home. But then, just a heartbeat away, she had realized she could not tell anyone. She had worn a tattered, threadbare dress, gloves stained with blood, hair a bird's nest, her parents still believed she had been with her cousin, reading love-poems and giggling over little pastries. Head hung low, she had shuffled back into the shadows, sneaking in through the servant's back entrance. Her heart had sunk when she realized instead of sneaking out with Lorenzo for a secret midnight stroll, she was sneaking in, alone.

But then, this morning! Her old nanny had yanked her from sweet dreams and sweeter pillows – finally, no sticks and stones poking her back every way she turned – whispering about her parents awaiting her for breakfast. Her parents never had breakfast together. Laelia had leapt out of bed and into her dress like a dolphin through the waves, the poor old women must have thought her a faery's changeling.

It was no secret the Lord and Lady Contarini avoided each other like the plague – well, perhaps not the plague, her mother's heart beat for poison and pestilence. If her husband were the plague, she might actually like him.

So breakfast, together? That had to be more rare than Alessandro letting a smile slip through! Even if they didn't know their little princess had fought a creepy, overly dramatic, old assassin, slept in the ditches at side of dirt roads and worn the same dress for the better part of a week like some hopeless spinster, they had missed her.

But the second Laelia had whirled into the room, the tension had nearly sliced her in half.

Her mother had a servant move Laelia's seating arrangement to her right hand, the satisfied smile at her husband's frown cutting through the silence.

Her father had just shaken his head and complimented Laelia's dress. She had spun around for him, trying to show off the way the light bounced off the silver pearls reaching up the skirt like wild-flowers bowing in the wind. Her mother's sharp voice had cut through the salon not a second later. "Yes, what a pretty dress, isn't it? What limited vocabulary you have. To you every dress is pretty, just like every ring is pretty and every necklace –"