Catharine took a sip of her coffee and sank deeper into the reclined chair, looking like a modern Cleopatra. Her skin was like alabaster, with just a hint of rose in her high cheekbones. “Well, at least it’s off the news.”

“What is?”

“The plane crash. They’ve moved on to some new disaster. It’s been over a week since they released the list and supposedly the last news crews got tired of staking out the New York house and left yesterday.”

“The list?”

“The list of the dead. Hephaestion was on it. Of course the media had a heyday with it.”

Xander sat motionless, imagining the three-ring circus that must have been made over his lover’s death. His precious Hephaestion, who though younger than him in calendar years had changed so drastically as he aged naturally, while Xander looked nearly the same as he had when they’d first met in their late twenties. He knew the tabloids loved to poke fun at the romance that had begun between two young princes and was more recently appearing like an eccentric pairing of a senior citizen and a thirty-year-old. It didn’t bother him, age was all in the mind, and Hephaestion had always remained carefree and young at heart even as his bones grew brittle, his hair turned to a regal mane of silver, and he began forgetting. That was the worst part, to see him incrementally slipping into longer and more frequent states of disorientation. He was sailing a swift ship away from lucidity.

“We always knew it would come more quickly for him, Xander. That was his choice.” Catharine interrupted his thoughts and he became present in the room again, taking in its rich, dark paneling and frescoed walls and ceiling. A troubadour barely suppressed a secret smile as he played his mandolin, frozen in time forever in an oil painting as he watched the coming and goings of Gianni Versace’s former bed.

Xander wondered if Gianni had worked the paintbrush himself on this troubadour. It was a little-known fact that the designer hand-painted much of the intricate designs on the pillars and walls of his lover’s bedchamber, which was separated from this by an octagonal foyer of stained glass windows and four Renaissance-era portraits challenging each other from four of the eight parallel walls. The other rooms of the house—once frequented by the likes of Madonna, Princess Diana, Michael Jackson and more than a few beautiful male models with bronzed physiques that would stir the envy of Apollo—all had private entrances. But the Persian Room and Italian Room were situated on the third floor of the impressive casa and shared an elegant foyer entrance, allowing for a plausible plea of innocence even if discreet visits between the two bedchambers did occur during the night.