Salvatore's POV
The kitchen was the only room in the fortress that was never fully dark.
Even at three in the morning, even in February, even when the rest of the house had pulled itself into the deep, dreamless sleep of stone and old timber, the kitchen held light. A single lamp above the worktop. The low blue hum of the range pilot. The particular amber warmth of a room that had been feeding people for four hundred years and had not yet seen a reason to stop.
Giovanna was at the table.
She had a cup of chamomile in front of her and her rosary wound around her left hand and the specific, composed stillness of a woman who had been waiting for a very long time and had made her peace with it. She was wearing her winter dressing gown, the navy one with the fraying cuffs she refused to replace, and her hair was in the braid she slept in, silver-white in the lamp light.
She looked up when I came in.
