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Beyond the walls of the rest house, the Venetian festivities lingered on. The clamour of drunken escapades and squeals of delight still echoed despite the late hour. If the window had been open, Percy would have perhaps caught the scent of celebratory delicacies wafting across the plaza. Surely the scent alone would have been mouthwatering.
Still he stood, unfazed.
It had been over an hour since he had left Monty behind in a blind rage. None of that feeling had dissipated; Percy almost wanted Monty to walk through the little room’s door just so he could release all his anger on him.
Some friend you are.
Percy shook the thought out of his head and turned away from the window.
The Italians could have their fun. It was their night, after all. Percy wasn’t supposed to be here. None of them were supposed to be here. He, Monty, and Felicity should’ve still been in Marseilles, attempting to escape the ever watchful eye of Mr. Lockwood while attempting to keep Monty from causing more trouble.
Monty
The mere thought of the man brought a flush to Percy’s cheeks and a new bite of anger in his heart. Stupid, selfish, senseless Monty, who couldn’t think about anyone besides himself for one goddamned second. Foolish Monty, who rerouted his entire Tour just to investigate the key that he stole, which had set a squadron of French royal officers on their tails.
Abso-bloody-lutely shameless Monty, who had cornered Percy in that alley only an hour before, unabashed and breathless with hands roaming-
His thoughts were interrupted by a barrage of knocks on the door.
Percy felt as though the rest house room walls were closing in on him.
There’s no one else that would reasonably be knocking at this hour. No one, except.....
Percy could cross the room in a few steps, and there he would be, face-to-face with the last bleeding person he wanted to see right now.
What would Monty do first? Grovel? Or at least attempt to? Then find a way to shrug off the blame of his words, act like they had no ill effect on Percy and pretend that their relationship was fine?
Or would Monty be so piss-dead drunk, it wouldn’t matter what reprimanding speech Percy would make up? Percy would be surprised if he showed back up to the hotel sober. His message would go in one ear and out the other, at least until the lad slumped over on the bed and passed out until mid morning.
No. One way or another, Percy was determined to make Monty understand the gravity of their situation. The two of them and Felicity were being followed across the continent by an obsessed duke. They had been dragged into an alchemical cure-all conspiracy. Their lives were in danger. Was Monty so daft that he couldn’t see what was happening to them?
And what the hell was going on between the two of them?
There was another steady hiss of knocks, this time more frantic. Percy ran his hands through his hair, begging whatever God there was above for strength.
So help me if Monty hasn’t killed himself already with all his drinks, give me strength not to do it myself.
As another set of raps set upon the door, Percy let out a huff and crossed the room. As he swung the door open, Percy decided that he would not even let Monty into the room if he wasn’t at least begging for forgiveness from down on his knees.
“Whatever the hell you're doing here, I don’t-“
“Percy.”
Percy stopped short. He had begun his rant as the door was opening, and didn’t even consider the possibility of it not being Monty knocking.
Scipio stood on the other end of the door, with Felicity behind.
“Scipio. Sorry, I thought you were Monty,” Percy said, his shoulders slumping.
Why? Was I really expecting it to be Monty? He thought, then pushed the thought to the back of his mind as he took in Scipio’s panicked look.
“Percy, this is urgent. I hate to wake you and Miss Montague but-“
“No matter,” Percy interrupted, holding the door open for the two. “Come in and talk.” Scipio suddenly looked a bit timid, perhaps about the idea of being in such close proximity with Felicity in her nightdress, but ultimately entered the room.
“I swear if that bastard brother of mine got arrested again, I will march into that prison and stitch his mouth shut,” Felicity vowed coldly as Percy shut the door behind them. He couldn’t help but silently agree with her, but voiced no such opinion.
“That’s what we need to talk about,” Scipio said. “Monty and I ran into trouble in town tonight.”
Now that Scipio was standing by the window, the light of the moon made the presence known of some ugly newborn bruises molting on his face. Felicity must’ve seen them the same moment Percy did, as they both seemed to have twin intakes of breath at the sight.
“By God, Scipio what happened?” Felicity asked, her earlier sarcastic manner completely gone.
Scipio ran a hand through unwashed hair, apparently gathering his thoughts. Percy then realized what was missing from the room.
“Scipio....were you with Monty?” He asked, suddenly feeling the worst possible sense of unease begin to prick at his mind.
Slowly, jerkily, the captain nodded, still at a loss for words.
“Scipio,” Percy started, feeling a sense of foreboding grow under his skin. “.....where’s Monty?”
Scipio took a breath. Percy’s heart dropped to his toes.
“The Duke of Bourbon.....he found us.”
His speech picked up in speed as the gravitas of their situation began to set in. He motioned toward Percy. “The guards thought I was you, because of my skin. He let me go but he has Monty.”
A beat of silence. All three of them seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.
“Oh my god,” Felicity whispered, her face having drained of blood. Her hands raised to her face in an attempt to ease the panic. “Oh my god.”
Percy felt as though Felicity and Scipio were suddenly at the edge of a very long tunnel, one where Percy was at the opposite end. They wouldn’t hear the intrusive thoughts in his mind but they could all sense the triplet pounding of their hearts.
I left him out there. I got so mad I left him there and now he’s going to die. Monty is going to die and the last time I spoke to him was to chastise him. He’ll never know I didn’t mean it. I never meant that I didn’t care about him.
He won’t know how deeply in love with him I am.
“The Duke gave me an ultimatum,” Scipio continued. “He told me to tell you two that there’s still a way you can get Monty back.”
“He wants the Lazarus Key,” Felicity said, knowing exactly how the devious man was scheming.
“Fine. He can have the key. I don’t care about some stupid cure-all anyways,” Percy interjected. The anger in his mind from earlier was still present, but something much stronger began to overpower it. Hopelessness. Panic. Regret. Fear.
Longing.
Dear Lord, he felt pathetic. He was supposed to be angry. He was supposed to be putting Monty’s head on straight. But now.....
“That’s not all,” Scipio continued, ending the comments from the other two. “He wants the key delivered to him at Maria e Marta tomorrow morning at dawn. The delivery must be made on the island. If you fail to show up....”
Percy watched as Felicity’s throat bobbed, her voice quavering. He didn’t want to hear the end of Scipio’s sentence, but heard her voice it anyways.
“He threatened to kill Monty if we don’t give him the key.”
The look in Scipio’s eyes was all the confirmation they needed.
There was a tense silence that fell over the group. Scipio regretted, Felicity fretted, and Percy....
Well, Percy had a lot to think about.
He walked past the two of them, finding the window once again and staring out into the city. Maybe, just maybe if he looked closely enough, he’d see a shoe that Monty left behind on the stones, like some old children’s folktale. Or maybe he’d glimpse a trail of crumbs, that would lead them together and end all this madness.
Scipio and Felicity had slipped out of the room, perhaps to get some rest or to plan their trip to the Lagoon in a few hours time. Percy vaguely heard Scipio warn them that the Eleftheria could not be seen with the two of them, per the Duke’s orders, before he was left in silence once again.
Percy’s gaze fell on his fiddle case, where he had tucked the key back into after his fight with Monty. The key had kind of taken residence in the pouch behind the neck of the violin. His sole inheritance, the last piece of his father, protecting it from the greed of the outside world. With a gripping breath, he realized that the key could possibly be the last thing Monty ever gave to him, a last will to his best friend. Percy’s final inheritance from the two men he had loved most, both tucked within the wooden case he carried everywhere.
He ghosted across the room, urged by the need to hold the last remnants of his family’s lives. The case clicked open, and the light of the moon shone on the smooth, syrupy face of the fiddle. With a delicate touch, Percy reached behind the neck and into the felt alcove, where the Lazarus Key was stowed away safely.
The key to Monty’s freedom.
The key itself wasn’t that grand. When Percy really studied it, it was hard to believe this whittled piece of bone held the power to unlock the panacea. Under the light of the moon, however, the key looked ethereal. It looked ghastly and darkly magical.
I am the key between life and death. Between sickness and cure-all; between Monty coming home and him dying alone on a sinking island.
Percy was still mad. God, he was furious. Between the stress of the Tour going wrong, the threat of the asylum in Holland lying right around the corner, and his goddamn epilepsy spiking, Percy was downright pissed. Being diseased as the person he was had already been stinging his life. But having Monty obsess over curing him, and slowly fall into the same path that the Robles family had? Having him obsess over Percy, just so his own life would be easier?
Monty wasn’t even in the building and he still found a way to make everything about him.
Percy wanted to scream. He wanted to punch a wall and smash that bloody key into a million bits. He didn’t want to be dragged into this alchemical mess; why should he have to answer a ransom and play dumb? He was sick of playing dumb. He was so tired of being seen as dumb.
As the anger picked at his mind, the enshrouding loneliness of the room began to make itself noticeable. Shaking himself out of his stupor, he realized just how badly he wanted someone to sit upon the bed and help him figure out what to do about this.
And by someone, he meant Monty. It was always Monty.
Percy expected Monty to be there. He should’ve been there, passed out on the mattress in a drunken haze or teasing him about something. Anything. At least he would’ve been safe and under Percy’s care.
Monty should’ve been the one staring out the window earlier, observing the festivities outside. He’d make a joke about how cruel it would be to lock him up like a dog when such enjoyment and company could be found out and about.
That last thought hit Percy like a lance to the gut. He tried not to think of Monty, probably drunk, alone and confused and at the hands of the Duke. He tried so hard not to think of fists flying and Monty cowering under them, because Percy knew the face of the Duke would eventually become the face of someone far more familiar and far worse in Monty’s eyes.
Percy sat with his back against the wall, clutching at the little key of bone in his hand. He tried not to think of his friend, his Monty, locked up and disoriented and confused and afraid and alone.
Did Monty feel as alone as Percy did in this moment? Were their feelings synched like those of the Siamese twins from the London freak show they had visited together?
Dear Lord, let him be alright.
The longer he sat, the longer he contemplated, the more he noticed the passing of time.
Hours must've gone by, or perhaps only a minute.
Percy could no longer tell how far into the night it was.
The soft moonlight had eventually become hidden by rain clouds, and the world began to shed its tears onto the city. The bed in the corner sat, unused and untouched. When Percy wasn’t sitting against the wall, he was pacing the small room. When he began to realize the room was probably about the size of a holding cell, he slid back down the wall until he was sitting upon the floor, only to rise again a few minutes later and continue his pacing.
He’s lost. You left him. He could be hurt. You left him. He was right there and he was in your arms and you left him alone in the streets to be taken hostage.
Serves you right.
Percy couldn’t stand the thoughts anymore.
The numb panic slowly sunk into a grim acceptance. A dull determination. As the first blinks of dawn began to appear, Percy stood up from his worn place on the floor and, feeling detached and threadbare, began to dress for the day.
If it hadn’t been so gloomy outside, the light of the morning would’ve began to graze upon the city. Instead, a sickly hue bounced off the rainy streets as if it were reflected off a shattered mirror. Within the lonely room, Percy shut case of his fiddle tight, ready to be delivered to Scipio’s ship. The blasted Lazarus key was tucked safely into his pocket, hidden from the elements the Lagoon would throw at them.
Percy took a deep breath, which ended with his heart in his throat. He picked up his fiddle case and walked to the tavern below.
Felicity and Scipio stood at the rest house entrance, looking about as rested as Percy felt. Without a word, Percy handed his inheritance off to Scipio, and entered the dreariness of the morning with Felicity by his side.
The world seemed to mirror his mood. The clouds continued to spit and the winds sounded as if it was sighing, as if nature itself knew what Percy and Felicity were getting themselves into.
The trek to the canal was quiet, their steps echoing off the damp cobblestones as they went. As the rain continued to patter from above, Percy was suddenly very glad he didn’t have to go about this alone. He had Felicity. And at the end of all this, they’d leave with Monty between them.
There was an air about the two, one of impending finality. Whatever this game the Duke was playing, it was going to end on Maria e Marta.
The pair reached the canal, where a dock of empty gondolas waited. A few of the docking points were empty, and Percy couldn’t help but wonder if any of those had watched Monty drift away.
Percy caught Felicity’s gaze before they stepped onto the boat. She nodded at him, both sincere in knowing what they had to do and what was likely to come.
They both had one goal. If they could also manage to defeat the Duke of Bourbon and perhaps destroy the alchemical heart, that would be a plus. Even better if they could all escape the island without it sinking.
But they both knew. Their trip to the canal, their trade of the key, their risk, was all for Monty. Everything was being put on the table for him.
The two stepped onto the gondola, Felicity grabbed a covered lantern hanging on a hook near the dock post, as Percy grabbed the oars and pushed them away from the harbour.
This is it. The point of no return.
The boat fell into the curve of the current, gliding the two travelers into the early morning fog toward the sinking island.
As they sailed out towards the open water, they both saw the Eleftheria anchored at the nearby docks. Percy tried to catch a glimpse of any possible crew onboard; Scipio had, after all, promised Felicity they’d follow a long enough distance behind to ensure their getaway, but not be seen from the island.
The coast of parked ships slowly blended into the mist, until their boat was well and truly out in the open sea.
No going back.
The duo sailed for the latter part of an hour, miserable from the rain and the fear of the impending scenario. The time seemed to crawl as slow as their little boat, but yet flew by as if the wind had caught just right in its supposed sail. The two watched as a form emerged from the mist, until it took the form of a craggy, waterlogged, even more miserable island.
Scipio had warned them about a possible crew of soldiers policing the island. So far, there had been no one to reinforce the rule of entrance. Perhaps the rain and fog was hiding them from view, but the lack of surveillance made Percy uneasy. This was too easy.
Dear Lord, how he wished he was anywhere but here. Anywhere. London, Barcelona, Paris, even bloody awful Versailles.
How he wished he wasn’t sailing into the mist toward a danger he couldn’t promise that Monty would escape from.
Maria e Marta drifted into view, becoming less of a silhouette and more of a watery-lensed reality. The boat glided over a submerged graveyard, the headstones reaching up towards the surface of the water like ragged fingers.
Upon the boat, Percy clenched his jaw. The gravestones meant absolutely nothing. They would not come to be a premonition. He would not let that happen.
He turned back to face toward the bay and made a silent vow.
Only he could hear it.
On the bank of the deserted island, an empty gondola already sat upon the shore. A sense of relief, but also anxiety and foreboding washed upon the duo. Whoever was involved in this, whoever had a part in this, they were here. Everyone was gathered here upon the desolate island.
Percy heard Felicity take some deep breaths from behind his position on the gondola.
He made a simple vow. A silent promise that he hoped upon hope that Monty would eventually hear for himself.
My last words to you will not be ones in rage.
We’ll tell each other more silly poems and laugh until we cannot breathe.
We’ll gripe and jab at each other once again, like the friends we grew up as.
Not everyone in your life will get angry at you, beat you, take advantage of you, leave you behind. I promise that I’ll have the chance to prove that to you. I’ll prove myself to you, epilepsy and all.
I’ll prove that you’re always worth going back for. Even when you’re being a right sod, I won’t ever walk away from you. Not again.
We will not let you die on this bleeding island. It’s too barren a place for someone like Henry bleeding Montague to die on.
I will never leave you behind again.
The gondola splashed onto the shore.
One last look toward Felicity, who nodded solemnly. Percy mirrored her action, and willed himself to be steeled for the upcoming venture.
Don’t worry, darling. We’re coming for you.