" Your problem is that you do believe in all of that nonsense. And that’s why you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared,” she insisted, but even she wasn’t convinced by the thin protestation.
“Yes, you are, or you wouldn’t be asking all these questions. You’re stalling.”
Falco bent down and started untying the gondola’s rigging. His hands worked through the ropes easily, as if this were a trick he’d performed many times before. “Hop aboard before I let it go completely loose.”
Cass swore she saw him wink at her through the gloom. “My aunt will positively murder me if she finds out I took her gondola without asking.” In the middle of the night. With a strange boy.
“Oh, don’t get your laces all in a knot. We’re just going to borrow it. We can have it back before your precious auntie realizes it’s missing.”
Cass stood by the dock, staring at the sleek gondola. The early morning was cool, but the blood racing through her veins kept her warm. As long as Falco was certain they could return before anyone found out…
Falco knelt in the middle of the boat, one hand held out in Cass’s direction, the other poised to release the gondola from the dock with a quick tug of the rope.
“I understand if you don’t want to come. So many rules to break.” Falco’s voice still had that lilting quality to it, but his eyes were serious. “It is safer in the cage, isn’t it?”
It was safer. If her parents had stayed in Venice instead of plunging themselves into plague-afflicted foreign cities, they might still be alive. They had wandered outside the little circle of safety and expectations, and had paid the ultimate price.
But Cass didn’t want to stay in the circle. She wanted to live.
Besides, if there really was a murderer out there, and he had his eye on Cass, what was the point in sitting around waiting for him to come to her? "

― Fiona Paul , Venom (Secrets of the Eternal Rose, #1)