Her feet ached. Her throat scratched with each breath she gasped, each one more difficult than the last. Every part of the woman begged her to cease her flight, but her mind denied all other parts the relief they sought.
She did not know how long and how far she had run. The Borcan sky was dark and hopeless, and pelted her with heavy rain. The road was like mud beneath her, and she feared to slip. And yet ceaseless did the footsteps of her pursuers press on. Their blades cut through the woodland brush. Their hounds bayed, her scent their focus and target.
Heaviness pressed against her heart, a deep dread brought on by her looming demise. In an instant, her mind's eye turned its gaze across the expanse of time; the clock turned back thirty years. She saw herself, a girl of fourteen. She saw the wine goblets strewn across the floor, their dark red content hissing softly with the remnants of the poison that had sealed her parents' throats shut. The large home she had known, befitting its noble inhabitants, became at once a labyrinth of unknown horrors, for their killers could yet linger in the many corners and shadows. She had felt that dread for the first time, then, but her death had not come. She fled then, as she fled now.
To what had she fled? Fleeting refuge and false hope gave way to a debt she could never repay, stretching further away the harder she tried to pay it. The contract was simple.
An exchange of flesh for a roof over her head. But no matter how many men she took into her bed, or how well she pleased them, the debt was ever out of reach. The worth of her innocence, and the possession of her youth, was weighed, measured, and found wanting by her creditors.
The years rolled on without mercy. Ten years before this moment of flight, the youthful beauty she possessed began to fade. In time, the sorts of patrons who paid her a visit were not interested in the pleasures she had been trained to provide. They were hateful men, who saw in her visage the image of their own despised mothers, and this did not inspire familial love in them. Her makeup thickened, her smile clownesque as she sought to cover the marks their beatings left. Though her creditors eventually saw the bruises healed, they had already taken their toll. The woman was given to involuntary shakes and spasms. Her balance faltered. Her hands trembled.
Yet more they had taken. The cries of new life. Save one. A pang of guilt filled her heart as she remembered once more that she did not know where he was.
A rumble of thunder drew her hurtling back to the present. Lightning streaked the oppressive black sky, for a moment illuminating the rusted necklace that usually hid beneath the woman's dress, but had won free as she fled. The blade was broken. The belladonna twisted. The shield bent. The necklace had been a gift from her mother, so long ago that it felt like an inheritance from another life. It had rusted as her faith had done. Seeing the necklace now, the woman thought of how she had passed the Church during her first flight. At fourteen, she feared that it was too open, too obvious a destination in which to hide. How different would her life have been, had she held to faith then?
The hounds bayed again. They were closer, and her own steps slowed. She trembled with the onset of another fit, and she fell upon her knees in the mud.
She gripped the rusted Ezrite necklace in one hand, trying to still the trembling in the other. Tears filled her weary gaze, and in pained breaths, she gasped a desperate prayer.
"Blessed Ezra, I have not been faithful. I do not expect an answer to my prayer. Prayers ought not to be lifted from lips like mine." Another streak of lightning broke the sky. Steel flashed nearby, and the teeth of the dogs glimmered in anticipation. She wept, seeking in vain to lift her voice above the storm. Her heart swelled, and what began in desperation became clearer, more purposeful. "Ezra, preserve me! Spare me now, and I shall give all that remains of my life, pitiful as it is, to your service!"
The footsteps did not cease. The gnashing of teeth continued. The woman closed her eyes, as she became sure that she had been abandoned to her fate. As she should have expected, she thought. On her unworthiness, she continued to dwell. She continued to think, to breathe. Death had not come. But the air was colder, now, and brought with it another sort of damp. She lifted her gaze, eyes widening at the rising mist that swirled in tbe woodland. The gnashing of the dogs turned to puzzled whines. Their keepers did not dare to tread into the twisting vapour. They stepped back, wary, eyes darting as they wrestled with existential doubt. And then, they were gone. All that sounded was the howling of the wind and rain upon the world, and the slow swirling dance of the mist.
The woman lifted her eyes to the heavens and wept anew, this time for joy. She raised many, many grateful prayers, the vow she had uttered in the face of death coalescing into righteous purpose.
The woman did her utmost to leave the noble orphan and the fallen woman she had become behind her on that muddy road. Ezra, she believed, would save all who sought her in faith and conviction, but she did not wish to sully Her name by association with what came before. Hence, she resolved that to fulfil this role, she must do so under a new name.
Fiametta Scavo was the name and woman she sought to leave behind. The name she chose?
Rosaria Vescovi.