Turin, 1850.
Can love survive when the world condemns it?
Can a feeling burn without ever being spoken?
Alessandro Crepuett, a young aristocrat, has always known his place: heir to a powerful family, cousin of the king, a man who must obey the rul...
*If these pages should fall into unfamiliar hands, I ask whoever leafs through them to close them again with respect. You will find no tales of heroic deeds here, nor the glorious chronicle of an age. These are but thoughts, fragments of life, traces of emotions that time threatens to erase.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I write to remember, to preserve what I have loved, what I have feared, and what has shaped me into the man I am. Here, you will find the uncertain beating of a heart torn between duty and desire, between the dazzling lights of a society that demands masks and the whisper of truths too fragile to be spoken aloud.
Should you choose to read on, know that every word has been written with sincerity and longing, in the steadfast hope that, at least on paper, nothing is ever truly lost.*
—A.*
It is a late afternoon in October 1850, and Turin is wrapped in a cold that heralds a harsh winter. I walk through the city's cobbled streets, observing the lamplighters hurrying to fill the lanterns with oil and the coachmen gathering the last ladies returning from the park. For a moment, I lose myself in the hum of voices that fills the air: hurried footsteps, the crunch of wheels against the stones, the rustle of skirts.
Turin is an orchestra of sounds, ceaseless even as the cold begins to bite.
I return to the palazzo with a steady step. My tall figure reflects in the window panes: my brown hair tousled slightly by the wind, my blue eyes, tinged with deeper shades, studying every detail. In my right hand, I hold a book on politics, a volume I always carry—a reminder of the world I wish to change. At my neck, a pendant gleams imperceptibly, a small glimmer that seems to answer my deepest thoughts.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I already know my mother will be in her rooms, immersed in her papers. The Countess is never idle; every detail, every action appears part of a grander design known only to her. I pause for a moment before the door to her study, but a familiar voice distracts me.
Amalia, with her usual determination, crosses the corridor, Marianna in her wake. The woollen mantle draped over her shoulders stirs slightly in the cold draught that has followed them inside. Her face, framed by golden curls and eyes as intense as the autumn sky, conveys a mixture of fragility and strength. At nineteen, betrothed to the Marquis of Valle, Amalia carries the weight of the family's expectations like a crown of invisible steel. But beneath that composure, I sense her turmoil—the longing for freedom she cannot entirely conceal.
