Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) Read Free Page A

part of another night. Sometime in the dark hours, in the depths of the Great Silence, she died.
    And all at once the world was empty, and Giulia was empty too.
I should have gone back,
she thought, curled up on her bed with the covers drawn over her head.
I should have gone back.
In the rawness of her grief, it seemed the worst mistake she had ever made.

CHAPTER 3
    THE SIN OF PRIDE
    Giulia had never wanted to be a nun.
    That decision had been made for her when she was seventeen, after her father had died and she became an orphan. Desperate to escape her unchosen fate, she’d paid an astrologer-sorcerer to seal a celestial spirit inside a talisman, bound to her heart’s desire: true love, as she believed then, a man to save her from the convent. The spirit’s name was Anasurymboriel, and though the sorcerer swore he’d summoned it from the realms of angels, Giulia knew such magic was a sin. Faced with a barren lifetime as a nun, she hadn’t cared.
    But magic did not announce itself, or come neatly labeled. She’d mistaken fair-haired, charming Ormanno Trovatelli for Anasurymboriel’s gift. By the time she realized her mistake, hehad gotten what he really wanted: Humilità’s book of secrets, and with it, the formula for Passion blue.
    Giulia had taken back the book. She’d returned it to Humilità and confessed everything. She was punished for her transgressions: burdened with penances, condemned to live apart from the other novices so she would not infect them with her dishonesty. But for the sake of her talent, she was allowed to remain in the workshop—and by then she had wanted to stay. For she understood at last that painting was her true heart’s desire. She’d chosen to embrace it, even though it meant she must become a nun.
    She had destroyed the talisman, releasing Anasurymboriel back to the heavens from which the little spirit had briefly been drawn down. She’d been glad to see it go.
No more magic
, she promised herself. She was finished with such remedies, with their tricks and their traps and their risk to her immortal soul.
    But magic was not finished with her. When Anasurymboriel departed, it left her changed. At least she thought it must have—for how else could she explain why she’d suddenly become able to hear the colors singing?
    —
    The workshop reopened the day after Humilità’s funeral.
    Arriving, Giulia paused before the open doors. The whole world had changed—how could it be that the great chamber looked the same as always, with its vaulted ceiling and red-tiled floor and orderly work areas, and smelled the same as always too, of oil and charcoal smoke and chalk dust and exotic materials? For the first time since she had become Humilità’s apprentice, Giulia wanted to turn away, to flee from this placethat would never again be filled with Humilità’s voice and her genius and the force of her brilliant, restless personality. It took all the will she had to cross the threshold.
    Domenica had come in first, as always. She had already tied back the curtains that were drawn at night across the workshop’s open north side and brought her easel over to the light. Now she was laying out her palette and brushes with her usual tight efficiency.
    “Good morning, Maestra,” Giulia said.
    Domenica raised her head and fixed Giulia with a raking stare, then returned to her work without replying.
    Sighing, Giulia went to tie on her apron. Unlike the other painters, Domenica had never forgiven her for her part in the theft of Passion blue. Domenica had kept her animosity more or less in check while Humilità was well, but once Humilità had left the workshop and Domenica became Maestra in all but name, she’d ceased troubling to hide it. Giulia had never told Humilità about the sharp criticism, the undeserved reprimands, the efforts to deny her any personal drawing or painting time. She wished now that she had not been so reticent.
    This is how it’s going to be from now on.
A grinding