The SECRETS of the ETERNAL ROSE.

Venom.

FIONA PAUL.

"It is human nature to fear the dead, but it is the living who are capable of malice, evil, and utter destruction."

-THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE.

one.

Man falls down before the Angel of Death like a beast before the slaughterer." The priest's low voice echoed across the cavernous church. Thin shafts of sunlight cut paths through the stained-glass windows high above the altar.

Cass tugged at the neckline of her deep purple dress, wishing Siena hadn't laced her stays so tightly. The stiff undergarments pressed down on her chest; she could hardly breathe. She looked over at Madalena. Mada's expression was partially hidden beneath layers of black silk. Cass wondered if her friend was thinking the same thing she was: that the priest made it sound like this was an execution, not the funeral of a fourteen-year-old contessa from one of Venice's most prominent families. Madalena dabbed at her kohl-lined eyes with a handkerchief.

Cass turned her gaze back to the priest. His robes were cinched with a belt of fraying rope, and his eyes were as sharp and dark as volcanic glass. He gestured expansively with his arms as he spoke, making his cloak billow from his shoulders like a pair of wings.

In front of the priest, a flimsily wrapped bundle lay on a stone pedestal. Liviana. The young girl had spent her last few weeks in bed, coughing up blood, growing weaker and weaker. Gradually, her thin, pale figure had disappeared into her silken sheets.

Now her body-for that's all it was, Cass had to keep reminding herself-lay shrouded in white burial wrappings and covered in flower petals.

After the service, Liviana would be carried out of the church, rowed through the canals of Venice, and then transported across the lagoon to tiny San Domenico Island. There, she would be entombed in the old family crypt within the church graveyard just next to where Cass lived.

Cass had caught a glimpse as the body was being wrapped and prepared for this final journey. Dressed in a pale pink gown that emphasized Livi's porcelain skin and gaunt figure, the young blonde girl had looked more ghost than human. Livi's mother had hung a loop of amethyst stones around her neck. The color would have perfectly highlighted the contessa's light blue eyes.

Only now those eyes were closed. Forever.

Cass swallowed back a lump that rose suddenly and painfully in her throat. She had known Liviana for years-had spent many days playing in Livi's family palazzo. And yet, she'd never felt close to her, never felt they could share secrets. Liviana had been angelic, and not just in her looks. She always behaved according to expectations, always spoke in a quiet murmur, was always docile and agreeable.

And that was precisely why Cass had never understood her.

Cass tried to behave; she really did. But sometimes the urge to do something completely overrode her education and upbringing. She didn't want to break rules, but saw nothing wrong with climbing up the side of a building to get a better view of the busy Grand Canal, or running her hand across the velvety forehead of one of the Doge's horses as they paraded through the narrow streets during a festival. Impulsive, her aunt, Agnese, called her. Cass preferred to think of it as living.

A loud sniffling attracted Cass's attention. She looked around. Many of her friends were in attendance, clothed in mourning garb: girls in dresses dark as thunderclouds, boys in their finest velvet cloaks.

Madalena was now covering her mouth with her handkerchief. She let out another dainty sob. Mada was a year older than Cass and almost three years older than Liviana. She hadn't even really been friends with Livi, but that didn't matter. Mada felt everything intensely, and it made her all the more striking. It was as though the depth of her emotions had been written in the curve of her cheekbones and the darkness of her eyes.

Madalena's fiance, Marco, stood to Mada's left, tracing soft circles on the small of her back with his fingertips. The tender gesture made Cass's chest tighten. She couldn't help but think of her own fiance, Luca da Peraga-a boy she hadn't even laid eyes on in the last three years, and had never liked much as a child. She wondered if Luca would ever touch her like that. Probably not.

She gave Madalena's gloved hand a squeeze.

Mada squeezed back and whispered, "It's just...she's so good. So sweet. Was, I mean. I can't believe she's-"

"I know," Cass murmured. "It doesn't feel real."

Her friend was dead and she was just beginning to live. If you could call it that.

Cass knew that the grief she was feeling-the hard, sharp pain behind her breastbone-was not only for Livi's death, but for herself as well. With Liviana gone, Cass was more alone than ever. She might as well be dead; her life was spread in front of her, a series of high walls and predetermined paths, rules, and expectations, all as narrow as the canals, as stifling as a coffin.

She glanced over at her aunt, Agnese, who stood stiffly to her right. Cass had moved into Agnese's crumbling old villa five years ago, after her parents died. Her aunt had the money to maintain the estate properly, but seemed to relish the fact that the place was mimicking her own physical deterioration. Even some of the servants seemed just a tumble down the stairs away from disintegrating into dust. Plenty of people floated in and out of the villa-tutors and washerwomen, a near-constant flow of doctors and apothecaries-but no one that Cass could really talk to. Her lady's maid, Siena, did her best, but she was so shy and obedient that Cass felt awkward speaking to her about anything but the most superficial subjects.

Her aunt swayed dangerously, and Cass grabbed Agnese's elbow to keep her from toppling over. No one is falling down before any angels today. The old lady regained her balance, but Cass thought she detected a soft snuffling sound coming from beneath Agnese's veil. She leaned in toward her aunt. Agnese was snoring. She'd fallen asleep standing up! Cass bit back the wild and inappropriate urge to laugh. Good thing the maids were generous with the starch in their dresses. It was likely the only thing keeping her aunt from tumbling to the floor in a heap.

"Aunt Agnese," Cass whispered sharply.

The old woman awoke with a grunt and refocused on the service, where the priest was now talking about how death was the great equalizer of men.

As the priest droned on, Agnese's eyelids drooped again. The stiff lace collar of the old woman's dress kept her head from bobbing back on her neck, but her legs started to wobble. This time it was Siena, on Agnese's other side, who steadied her. The lady's maid flashed Cass a small smile before turning back to the ceremony.

The priest waved his wooden crucifix in front of him. "It is not only the wicked that the serpent chooses to tempt. Like Eve, the righteous may also fall victim to his trickery." His voice was reaching a crescendo. He slashed the air with the crucifix again, as if it were a weapon and he thought the devil himself might be present at the funeral. "You must always be mindful. Even in the waters of this city-no, especially in the waters of this city!-evil flows silently among us like venom. We are at its mercy."

Cass swore the priest's eyes lingered on her for a moment. She suddenly felt unsteady, as if she were standing on water instead of solid ground. Recoiling slightly, she stepped backward to maintain her balance. She was grateful when the priest motioned for the mourners to be seated.

As she gathered her skirts and settled into the wooden pew, Cass's eyes flicked around the inside of the church. Everything looked slightly off, the way it did in dreams. Darkness merged with light. Liviana's family and friends sat in orderly rows, black hats and veils obscuring their pale faces. Sunbeams ignited the brightly colored panes of stained glass, bathing the deep mahogany altar in hues of gold and green.

The first days of spring had been wet and gray as always, but today had brought a brief reprieve: outside the church, songbirds warbled and tree limbs bowed toward the ground, heavy with white blossoms. The sun filtered through a new layer of haze that had just begun to settle over the city, and the wet surfaces of walls and cobblestones almost seemed to sparkle.

It would rain again, and soon. But for now, it was like God was watching down on Liviana's service, waiting for her to ascend. It gave Cass a strange feeling of hope intermingled with a restlessness to be out, away from the ceremony, away from all the death. Her heavy dress was too hot, too tight. It was suffocating her. The funeral was suffocating her.

The idea of her whole life already decided, that was even worse-strangling.

Beads of sweat formed on the back of her neck. She needed to get out.

She blotted her eyes and scooted away from her still-dozing aunt. Sliding past Madalena, Cass tiptoed down the side aisle of the church. She made her way to the narthex and slipped quietly through one of the heavy wooden doors. Outside, a few men from Liviana's family stood stiffly in their mourning attire; they would be in charge of moving the body from the church to a gondola for the ride out to San Domenico Island.

Cass headed past them, to the corner of the cobblestone street that ran along the Grand Canal. If only she had her journal with her. She could jot down some thoughts, calm herself, see things as they really were. Cass's journal had become a necessity; she wrote in it daily, and even when she had nothing to write about, the mere feel of her quill scratching across the paper soothed her. Agnese had forbidden her to bring it today, and Cass felt almost as if she were missing a limb.

She paused in the shadow of a stately palazzo, leaning against the smooth marble wall, breathing in the familiar smells of Venice: moss and salt, the faint tinge of rotting garbage. Cass often took walks around her aunt's estate at night; being unaccompanied in the light of day felt strange and a little bit frightening-but also freeing. She probably had only a few minutes to herself before Agnese woke up and sent Siena after her.

Thick clouds were rolling in, but the spring day was still humid and hot. Cass pulled a black lacquer fan embellished with amethyst and gold leaf from the pocket of her cloak and waved it in front of her face. A piece of auburn hair fell across her eyes. She tucked the wayward strand back into her bun as she watched the people bustling past her-merchants carrying baskets of fish and vegetables, a pair of soldiers walking stiffly, the hilts of their swords clanking against their armor, a man with a long gray beard wearing a bright red cap that marked him as a Jew.

This was more of Venice than Cass usually saw. Agnese rarely permitted her to leave San Domenico anymore. Even when she had lived on the Rialto, the commercial center of Venice proper, Cass's parents had always given the gondoliers extra gold to take Cass and her lady's maid straight from doorstep to doorstep. She had never been allowed to walk along the canals or loiter in the street as she was doing now. It wasn't safe, her parents said, and of course, it wasn't proper.

Down the street, two men were shouting at each other in the alley outside a butcher shop. The argument seemed to be about a small white goat that the larger of the two men was holding. The other man kept trying to grab the goat. The poor animal bleated in fear as the men threatened to tear it in two. Venice...la Serenissima. The most serene republic. Cass knew Venice had gotten the nickname because the government preferred trade to war, but that didn't mean the place was always peaceful.

Just beyond them, a circle of boys were waving and hollering at her. They pushed and shoved one another and laughed as they beckoned. She scanned the group, looking for someone she recognized. There were four of them: unkempt hair and plain clothing marked them as commoners. One had an old fraying hat tipped at a crooked angle. The tallest of the group wore a brown suede doublet, covered in splotches of blue and green paint.

Cass felt her heartbeat quicken. Artists. She had always been fascinated by art, but she'd never met a real artist. So why were they acting like they knew her? The tall boy paused to take a long drink from a leather canteen. He tossed the container to one of his friends, who caught it just before it would have bounced off the damp cobblestones. A couple of peasant children hanging out of a doorway cheered and applauded. Maybe the boys were drunk and had confused her with someone else? Still, Cass raised her gloved hand in a hesitant half wave.

Too late she realized the boys weren't motioning to her at all. They were looking past her, shouting at someone behind her. She had just started to turn around when a boy slammed into her with the force of a bull.

"Accidempoli!" Cass hit the cobbled ground hard, her back landing in a dirty puddle, the palm of her left glove ripping on the rough stone street. Miraculously, she had not hit her head.

Cass felt warm breath against her chin. She had clenched her eyes shut, but opened them now to find herself pinned underneath a boy a couple of years older than she was. She could feel his body radiating heat into hers. The boy wore a thin smock spattered with paint. Dots of blood red and bright yellow swam before Cass's eyes. She struggled to focus.

He had dark brown hair that curled under at the ends and eyes as blue as the Adriatic. His smile tilted a little to the right. It was the smile of someone who loved getting into trouble.

"Molte scuse!" He hopped back onto his feet. "I didn't see you at all, bella signorina." He bowed, then reached out a hand and yanked Cass off the ground unceremoniously. She felt a little dizzy as she stood. "Though I can't say it wasn't a pleasure running into you." Letting go of her hand, he brushed a droplet of dirty water from the side of her face. He leaned in close to murmur in her ear. "You should be more careful, you know."

Cass opened her mouth but no words came out. Again, she felt her stays crushing down on her chest. "Careful?" she managed to croak. "You're the one who knocked me over."

"I couldn't resist," he said, and he actually had the nerve to wink at her. "It's not often I get the chance to put my hands on such a beautiful woman."

Cass stared at him, speechless. Without another word, he turned away and followed the group of laughing artists into a crowded campo, his muscular form disappearing among merchants' sacks of cabbages and potatoes. The scene blurred a little, like a painting, and for a second Cass wondered if maybe she had hit her head and had imagined the whole exchange.

Liviana's uncle Pietro materialized suddenly by her side, followed by Madalena. "What were you thinking, running off by yourself?" Pietro frowned severely. "And that common street thug put his hands on you! Do you want me to go after him?"

"No, no," Cass said quickly. "It was just an accident." Still, the nerve of the boy to tell her to be careful. He, clearly, was the one who needed to watch where he was going.

"Your dress!" Madalena reached toward Cass, but stopped short of touching the soiled fabric. "You must be furious."

Cass looked down at her soggy gown. Even the rosary hanging from her belt had gotten dirty. Cass wiped the coral and rosewood crucifix clean in the folds of her skirt. The dress was obviously ruined, but she had always found it a bit uncomfortable, and she had plenty of others.

"You're lucky you weren't hurt," Liviana's uncle said sternly. "I hope that teaches you not to wander the streets unaccompanied again."

"Who was he?" Madalena asked in a whisper as Cass allowed her to take her arm and lead her back to the church.

"No idea." Cass realized she was trembling. Her heart thudded against the walls of her rib cage. The sting in her palm was already fading to a dull throb, but she couldn't stop thinking about the boy's devilish smile, or the feeling of his hands on her. Mostly, she couldn't shake the image of those bright blue eyes that just for a second had gazed at her so intensely, in a way no one had ever looked at her before.

"At the instant of death, the workings of the body grind to a halt.

The gates of the vessels fall open, flooding the tissues with bile and other humors.

The eyes glaze.

The flesh turns a ghastly hue."

-THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE

two.

The gondola moved slowly through the murky water of the canal. A warm rain began to fall, clouding the air with a pale white fog. Cass, Siena, and Agnese huddled together in the felze, the three-sided enclosure in the middle of the boat. With a vigorous tug, Cass flipped open the slats on the felze and peered out across the canal. She followed the path of the rain, watching the drops form tiny circles on the surface of the water. A cluster of grand reddish-brown stone buildings floated by, their black shutters pulled tight like closed eyes. Agnese leaned over and snapped the blinds closed.

Cass sighed. "I still don't see why we had to disturb everyone by leaving in the middle of the service." Her face burned as she remembered the way her aunt had grabbed hold of her and Siena and dragged them through the group of mourners, coasting from the church on a wave of concerned whispers.

"You should have thought about that before you went tramping through mud puddles." Agnese clucked her tongue. "At a funeral one must always respect the dead and one's attire. Today you showed respect for neither."

Cass frowned at the way Agnese emphasized the word tramping, as though it were her fault, but she kept her mouth shut. Her aunt had spent the first half of the canal ride huffing about the ruined dress, and Cass knew that further misbehavior would earn her a punishment. Maybe Agnese would force her to spend hours embroidering pillowcases for the divans or sewing shirts for the poor. Cass hated to sew, but the skill was expected-no, demanded-of her. Her aunt had also been fond of assigning extra hours with the tutors when Cass misbehaved, but since Cass had turned fifteen, her lessons had dwindled to just a couple of sessions per month. The subject matter seemed to be increasingly geared toward the skills required to run a household-more about basic math and inventory, less about the more interesting subjects like architecture and literature.

Aunt Agnese reached over and fingered a bit of the torn lace on Cass's dress before releasing it with an expression of disgust. "Really, Cass. What would Matteo think?"

Cass knew better than to answer this question. Matteo was Agnese's nephew by marriage, whom Cass had never met. When he came of age, he would inherit her aunt's estate. Agnese fretted constantly about what Matteo would think about this or that, even though the boy lived on the mainland nearly a hundred miles away. Privately, Cass believed he probably didn't think much about anything besides women and wine, just like every other boy his age.

Agnese grimaced as she adjusted her body on the cushioned seat, and Cass thought, as she often did, of how fragile her aunt was becoming. Agnese's face softened. "Perhaps I should cancel my trip to Abano. Maybe now isn't the best time to leave you alone. You're obviously distressed about poor, dear Liviana. And when you're distressed, you're simply impossible."

"No," Cass said quickly. Twice a year her aunt traveled to the mainland to the therapeutic salt baths at Abano. She always came back refreshed, talking about how the warm water healed her aching bones. Cass didn't want to deny her this. Plus, she always looked forward to a little time away from her aunt's watchful eye. "I won't get into any trouble. I promise."

Agnese snorted, as if everyone in the gondola knew this was highly unlikely, but she didn't argue.

Across from Agnese, Siena studied her palms, trying to appear as if she hadn't been eavesdropping, though there was really no way for her to avoid it. Her fingers were tiny, half the size of Cass's. Doll-like. Cass felt gigantic next to her. She couldn't help wishing Siena's older sister, Feliciana, was still working for her aunt. The girl had recently accepted a position with a wealthy foreigner living in the most glamorous district on the Rialto, not far from where Madalena lived. Siena was then promoted from kitchen servant to lady's maid, but Feliciana was everything Siena was not: vibrant, funny, curious. She had kept Cass entertained during endless lonely dinners and always brought in gossip from the Rialto.

Cass leaned forward. "You should have seen the boy who ran into me, Siena," she whispered. "He had eyes like yours. So blue!"

Siena nibbled on one of her impossibly tiny fingernails. "I'm just relieved that only your dress was harmed."

Cass shot a glance in her aunt's direction. "And my social standing, apparently," she whispered, just loud enough for Siena to hear.

Her lady's maid smothered a smile. Cass pressed her eyes to the slats of the felze, watching the outskirts of the city pass her by. The canals ran like veins through the body of the Rialto and then bled into a vast lagoon that separated the city from the southern islands of the republic.

Cass and her parents had lived in a popular district of the Rialto, and moving in with her aunt after her parents' death had meant relocating to San Domenico, an islet just south of the sandbar island of the Giudecca. On the Rialto, Cass had always been in the thick of things, with the glitz and glamour of Venice proper right outside her door. On San Domenico, the "town" was more a wide spot in the road, and the only things right outside her door were corpses.

Even though Cass longed for the excitement of the city, she had actually grown fond of the church graveyard that flanked Agnese's villa. It served as a refuge from her aunt's watchful eye. The place was rarely used, and the tall iron gates were shut tight most of the time. That would change today when men laid the contessa's body inside her ancient family crypt. She and Livi would be neighbors now.

Once again the lump appeared in Cass's throat, unmovable. She blinked, trying not to think of how her life would be different now that Liviana was gone. At least Cass still had Mada and her wedding to distract her. Once that was over, the only thing to occupy Cass's time would be preparations for her own wedding. And that was one thing she didn't want to think about.

Aunt Agnese's aging gardener, Giuseppe, steered the gondola around the coast of the Giudecca. The old man hummed to himself as he rowed the boat through the bluish waters of the lagoon. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy shucking off his gardening clothes and donning the blue and silver livery of the estate to play gondolier.

The Isle of Giudecca rose out of the lagoon like a sea monster that protected the southern border of Venice. Giuseppe followed the shoreline, steering the boat between the Giudecca and the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. San Giorgio's giant church had been under construction since before Cass was born. Clusters of stonemasons huddled together on wooden scaffolding, chiseling away at the facade, the only aspect that was not yet completed.

Southwest of San Giorgio Maggiore, San Domenico peeped out of the lagoon waters like a green teardrop. Only about twenty families lived on the tiny island that was named for the church that abutted her aunt's property. A thin strip of golden sand ringed the island's northern side. The rest of the place was overgrown with moss and wild grass.

As Giuseppe approached the mold-slicked dock in front of Agnese's villa, Cass stood up, mindless of the rain, and prepared to exit the gondola. She wobbled slightly in her tall chopines. After carefully lifting her soiled skirts over the side of the boat, Cass turned to wait for Siena to assist her aunt from the gondola. Once the old woman was safely on the ground, Siena unfastened a leather umbrella and lifted it above Agnese's head to help protect her from the weather.

Agnese shooed the umbrella away. "Look at me, girl. Do you really think a few drops of spring rain are going to make much of a difference?"

"Mi dispiace, Signora." Siena meekly tucked the umbrella under her arm.

It was Cass's turn to hide a smile as she took one of her aunt's swollen arms. She found the old woman's sharp tongue hilarious-when it wasn't directed at her. Siena moved to Agnese's other side. Agnese often required assistance walking. The trip to the Rialto had been taxing. She wheezed as she hobbled up the steps, and Cass wondered at the deep bluish circles under her eyes. The skin on her face was practically translucent.

The doctors said her aunt suffered from an imbalance of the four humors. Her body was overloaded with both blood and black bile, so they came often to the villa to perform leeching. Agnese had undergone the procedure just two nights ago, and even though it always helped her condition temporarily, Cass detested it. Seeing those slimy black sluglike monsters attached to her aunt's skin made her nauseated.

Sometimes a doctor would sniff a chamber pot full of her aunt's urine and administer foul-smelling syrupy medicines that made Agnese vomit. Cass didn't know how her aunt could stand being so ill, but she didn't want to think about what would happen if Agnese didn't make it through one of her episodes. Aunt Agnese was the only family Cass had left. If something happened to her, Cass would have to choose between joining her fiance, Luca, in France and asking Matteo's permission to remain in the villa on San Domenico. Neither seemed an ideal option.