I didn't know you were such a vampire

When Joya first saw the cup with the crooked Apollo in the Auditore Manor, she thought it was just a potter's accidental work, and that night she saw five identical cups in the old Clo's tavern. , I thought that a bad-hearted Florentine pottery merchant had sold a batch of defective products to Monteriggioni.

And after Totti's mansion, which should have been locked up a year ago, found such a cup, Qiao Ya realized that all this was not just an accident.

With the cup in her hand, she sat back on the chair in front of the table, and looked at her feet as she did when she told Marco a story. There was only a small golden stool with legs There are even thin cobwebs formed between them.She turned her head to look at the window, there was no moonlight outside the window, and no raindrops hitting the window glass, only the reflection of waves on the Arno River.

Those waves of light seem to be alive, slowly floating and shaking, like the golden hair of a standing person being gently blown by the night wind.

On that rainy night, a teenager with such blond hair half-kneeled in front of this window and knocked on her window. The heavy rain drenched his hair, and the strands of blond hair that he usually took care of meticulously The ground was pressed against his pale cheek, but he didn't feel any embarrassment after being drenched in the rain. He raised his chin and looked down at her with blood-red eyes, as if he had just walked slowly from a holy spring. The ancient Greek gods who stepped forward.

The last time she dreamed of Caius was when she first came to Monteriggioni.

At that time, she was not used to the pillows and beds in the Auditore Manor, just like when she just returned to the Vatican and stayed in her room, she was awakened by various dreams in the middle of the night, and when she sat up from the bed, She would subconsciously look at the window, and whenever she looked at the window, she would feel a pale and beautiful young man half kneeling there, staring at her.

For others, the scene was terrifying, but for her, there was an inexplicable sense of security.Because she still clearly remembered that when she was dying, that boy said in her ear that he would not let her die.

So when she slipped back on the pillow and started trying to fall asleep for the second time, she always dreamed of him.

Maybe it was when he was full of hostility and threatened to kill her, or when he told a story as if he had personally experienced it with an expression that had nothing to do with him, or it was the last time they met, he grabbed the girl who was already walking from the window sill. She jumped up and down, looked at her with burning eyes, and said:

"Two years, I allow you to live another two years."

Qiao Ya turned her head, lowered her eyelids, and looked at the cup in her hand. The strokes of Apollo on the cup were immature and the lines were blurred. In pagan mythology, the heroic god who drove the sun chariot tilted his neck, looking extremely funny, But Qiao Ya knew the hidden meaning here.

This cup refers to the statue of Apollo whose head was beheaded by a sword in the later period of the war, as recorded in "History of the Peloponnesian War".

"Is that you?" Joya murmured.

After she finished speaking, the corners of her mouth raised a small arc, then she put the cup into the small bag tied around her waist, stood up, opened the window, and jumped onto the window sill.

The way back was quieter than when she came, and there were even fewer night watch guards holding torches. She only stopped for a while when she passed by the Lord's Palace, and then went down the tall tower erected on the battlements. The tower, the tower is about the same height as the tower of the Orsini Palace. The flag with the red iris logo is hung on the tower, which is the symbol of Florence. I don’t know if the tower was built specifically to hold prisoners. The windows are very narrow and separated by several black iron pillars.

She looked across the square of the Lord's Palace, until the voices and footsteps of the nearby night guards got closer and closer, before she turned her head and left.

Joya thought that when she got up the next day, she would see a rainy Florence, but when she was woken up by the sound of birdsong, she first saw the morning light coming in from the window, and she slowly walked out of the room. Sitting up on the bed and thinking about the next journey, there were a few knocks on the door outside the house, she answered, and saw the door was pushed open from the outside, and the round-headed little girl from the master's house poked Head came in, and asked a little timidly: "My mother asked me to ask my brother, do you want to have a breakfast before leaving?"

She spoke a Florentine dialect with a strong accent, and even some accents from other places. If Joya hadn't lived in Florence for more than a month, she might have been confused.

Joya originally wanted to leave before the peasant family got up, but she didn't expect that she could sleep until the sun was high after running around the rooftops of Florence. She had the most peaceful sleep she had had in a long time.

She looked into the little girl's round eyes, smiled, and said, "Okay, thank your mother for me."

The hostess of the farmer is a short middle-aged woman, probably because the common people seldom eat meat these days, she looks a little malnourished and her complexion is a little yellow, but she is in good spirits, no matter what she sees Everyone is smiling.

The owner of the farmer went out to work before dawn, while the mistress was busy at home, leaving Joya with two coarse grain breads, a portion of butter, and a glass of wine.

Qiao Ya went to the table and glanced at it. Before she could speak, the hostess smiled and said, "I saw that you didn't drink goat's milk yesterday, so I thought you probably didn't like it, so I didn't prepare it for you. "

Qiao Ya smiled and thanked her, then took her seat calmly, picked up the glass of wine, and took a sip.

Seeing that Qiao Ya didn't show any dissatisfaction on her face, the hostess relaxed her eyebrows and turned around to prepare the materials needed for lunch.

The civilian kitchen and dining room are not completely separated. Joya is sitting at the dining table eating breakfast, and she can still see the background of the hostess busy. After she took a sip of wine, she began to spread butter on the bread. The Orsini Palace or Totti's Mansion were as slow, soft and elegant as before, but after smearing some hastily, it began to be chewed in the mouth, and even made a click sound.

But in the face of her completely civilian eating appearance, the little girl standing beside her and the hostess who was turning her back were completely relaxed.

During dinner the day before, the family still treated her as warm and casual as an ordinary guest, but after just one meal, she was so cautious the next day, which should be seen from her dining habits the night before. She should be of noble origin.

Qiao Ya has learned table manners since she was a child. No matter how painful it was at the beginning, she has been stared at by so many eyes every time she goes to the table for more than ten years, and it has naturally become a habit engraved in her muscle memory. I also forgot to eat when I pretended to be a poor boy who went to relatives.

While Joya was gnawing on the bread roughly, the hostess had returned to the enthusiastic and talkative appearance of the previous night. She put the pot on the stove and asked with a smile: "Young man, where do you plan to go next?" How about a rest?"

Qiao Ya was chewing a mouthful of bread, and said vaguely, "Isaac Village."

The hostess turned her head back, with a bit of surprise in her eyes: "Isaac Village?" She quickly rubbed her hands on the apron, then went to sit down opposite Qiao Ya, and said excitedly, "I'm from that neighborhood! "

Qiao Ya nodded, no wonder the accent of this family is a bit strange, it is obviously a Florentine dialect, but it also has accents from other places.

She took a sip of wine, finally swallowed the dry bread stuck in her esophagus, then patted her chest, feeling that she had just escaped the fate of being choked to death, so she sighed like the rest of her life, and then looked at the hostess, asked, "Do you live in Isaac Village?"

"No, but I live very close to Isaac Village, less than a day's walk away." The hostess said with a smile, "To be precise, I am a resident of the town, and every St. Many people from the surrounding area will spontaneously come to the town to participate in the carnival, and many of them are from Isaac Village."

"St. Marcus' Day?" Joya asked curiously.Starting with "Holy", then such a festival should be related to Catholicism, but she has lived in the Vatican for more than ten years, but she has never heard of a St. Marcus' Day.

The hostess seemed to understand her question, and said with a smile: "This festival is unique to our town, commemorating the missionary Marcus who drove out the bloodthirsty monsters in the city, and it has a history of only more than 20 years. On that day, people in the city will put on red robes and spontaneously come to the Bell Tower Square in the center of the city to participate in the celebration.”

"Bloodthirsty monster?" Qiao Ya frowned. Is this... a vampire?

She suddenly thought of a place name, then took a breath, and asked tentatively to the hostess: "Excuse me, are you from...Wotra City?"

The eyes of the hostess lit up immediately, as if hearing about this place from a stranger made her very excited, she smiled and said, "Yes! It's Votra!"

And Qiao Ya was stunned after she confirmed it, holding a bit of dry food bread in her hand, she was stunned in place, and she came back to her senses only after the hostess asked her where she heard about Votra Come, and said: "I once met a... friend who was also from Voltra."

"That's really rare." The hostess sighed.

Qiao Ya looked at her with some doubts.

She said with a smile: "Wotra is a small town, and the people of Wotra seldom go out. Most of the shops in the city are opened by the lord, and most of the residents in the city are employed by the lord's family. Whether it is farming or working in those shops, although everyone is not rich, they are also very happy. And I met my husband who came to Isaac Village to visit relatives by chance, so I didn’t care about it. My parents objected, I married to Florence." She said, and paused, "It's just that after I came to Florence, I never went back to the city of Voltra."

As she spoke, her voice gradually lowered, and her eyes dimmed.

Joya frowned and said, "The journey from Florence to Voltra City is not too far..."

The hostess waved her hand: "It's not a matter of distance."

"That is?"

The hostess sighed, and said: "This is the rule in the city of Voltra. If you leave there, you can never go back."