by Anja Hudson (@anjahudson.bsky.social)
Adult Gothic Historical Thriller
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Query
I am seeking representation for What Remains of Aurelio, an 83,000-word Gothic Historical Thriller. Blending suffocating political intrigue with a tragic, star-crossed romance, it will appeal to fans of the opulent dread in S. T. Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood and the blood-soaked world-building of Micah Nemerever’s These Violent Delights.
Twenty-seven-year-old Valerius de Luca is the heir to a dying Venetian legacy, forced to play the part of the perfect, obedient son under the tyrannical surveillance of his father, Giovanni. Valerius’s only escape from the expectations of his bloodline—and the impending reality of an arranged marriage—is in the city’s labyrinthine slums, where he trades his father’s strict rules for a life of reckless freedom. There, he discovers Aurelio, a mesmerizing street violinist whose music feels like a direct act of rebellion against the oppressive nobility.
What begins as a transactional patronage quickly spirals into a secret romance. Aurelio’s garret becomes Valerius’s only sanctuary, where he finally can dream of a life beyond his family’s decaying palazzo. But in Venice, beauty is a commodity, and secrets are currency. When Giovanni catches wind of his son’s latest rebellion, Valerius attempts a dangerous gambit: He introduces Aurelio to the city’s elite as a de Luca protégé.
The ruse works too well. Aurelio’s debut is a triumph, but the nobility’s adoration curdles into mockery as they refuse to treat a prodigy from the slums as an equal. And when Giovanni discovers their secret romance, the threat elevates from social ruin to mortal danger. Pushed to the brink by his father, Valerius is forced to embrace his family’s legacy of violence. He must decide how much blood he will spill for the right to forge his own future—and whether living as a de Luca is worth surviving at all.
I am a registered nurse and a lifelong lover of gothic literature, and I tend to craft my stories in the quiet hours after the moon is high. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
First Five Pages
Chapter 1
My ancestors built the palazzo to impress God.
I have always known this, even as a child sliding across the waxed marble in slippers of silk and staring up at the ceilings flecked with gold, struck by the terror and wonder of one who suspects that heaven is not for the likes of him. Every stone of the de Luca estate had been quarried for display, each inch lacquered and painted to reflect the taste of its master, and that taste was as immutable as death itself. The ballrooms alone could swallow lesser homes whole. There were windows enough to ensure no corner remained shadowed for long, and yet the place contrived, through an alchemy of architecture and psychology, to remain perpetually dark. It was as though the sun itself had been bribed to avert its gaze from us. It was in one of these ballrooms, just before dawn, that I found myself wandering the checkerboard floor, the echo of my footsteps the only evidence that I was not, in fact, a ghost.
If I were a man of faith, I might have said I haunted the room rather than the reverse, but faith had survived neither my education nor the regime of my father. Instead, I regarded the mirrored walls with suspicion, as if the glass might remember my secrets long after I was gone. The mirrors were everywhere in the house, hung with such relentless symmetry that one could never escape their own reflection or the reflections of their ancestors. It was the family’s tradition to greet one another every morning and every evening, as if to remind the bloodline that its face was its fortune. I, in this season of my life, found it increasingly difficult to look at myself, though I suppose most men in their third decade come to this crossroads eventually.
On this morning, I did not resist the compulsion, pausing before the nearest pane to study my features as the faint light filtered in from the canal. My hair had been a tangle of colorlessness in my youth, yet it turned silver before my twenty-seventh year. I wore it bound at the nape with velvet as my only tribute to fashion. My eyes were glacial, less the hue of the Mediterranean than of its depths where the sun does not reach. The skin beneath my eyes was permanently bruised, a badge awarded by insomnia or perhaps by heredity. My mouth had set itself into an expression of amusement years ago, never once relaxing even in sleep. My cheekbones were sharp enough to threaten glass, and my chin, though small, remained as insistent as my father’s. I hated the sight of my hands the most, as they were soft and uncalloused, resembling the appendages of an invalid or a parasite. Sometimes I flexed them before the glass just to convince myself they were mine and not a pair of porcelain gloves fitted by a sinister craftsman during my infancy.
I did not smile, only nodding at my reflection to acknowledge its persistence before moving on through the chamber. The main ballroom was an ocean of polished marble where the inky and pearl squares sat in precise opposition, like the chessboard for a game no one played any longer. At this hour, the candelabra were entirely extinguished, leaving only the last embers of moonlight to trickle in from the frost-blurred windows. I imagined myself a revenant or a burglar, and for once I preferred it to the reality of who I truly was.
At the far end of the ballroom, past a pair of doors twice my height and finished with arabesques of gold leaf, waited my sanctuary. No one in the house ever bothered me in the music room at this hour. Even the staff regarded the harpsichord with awe or disgust, depending on their disposition. It served as my private confession booth and my chapel of failure. The air inside was always a degree colder than the rest of the house, and dust motes swirled in the half-light like the ghosts of burnt sheet music—a phenomenon I adored.
I settled before the instrument, cradling my hands in my lap. The harpsichord was a monstrosity of three manuals, adorned with painted lilies and inlays of ivory. My father had imported it from France at a ruinous expense, convinced that no Italian instrument could compete with Gallic clarity, though he was wrong, of course. The harpsichord was beautiful, yet its brittle sound only called attention to an impending shatter, making it perfectly suited to the family in that sense. I splayed my fingers over the keys and left them there, unweighted.
I had never possessed the talent for music.
Oh, but I adored it.
I lived for the tight logic of the old masters, captivated by the way a theme could be handed from one voice to another and return altered but unbroken. But my appreciation was purely intellectual, as I had not been given the gift. This was my greatest torment, for I could hear the music so clearly in my mind, feel it humming in my blood, and yet produce only a bloodless imitation when my fingers met the keys. Maestros resigned in frustration after a single lesson. My early attempts to play at public salons ended in polite silence, dampening the prestige of the de Luca name. Instead of offering guidance, my father barred me from performing at our banquets, viewing my lack of skill as a public embarrassment. I grieved the loss of my musical aspirations bitterly, longing for a single ounce of his grace to offset the crushing weight of his disappointment. With my true passion dead, I buried my grief and retreated behind a mask of compliance, surviving only by playing the part of the obedient heir.
I struck a chord at random and listened as the sound bled out across the room. It was ugly, and the harpsichord punished me for my lack of precision. I began, in spite of myself, to play the opening bars of a Bach fugue, the one I always returned to when sleep refused me. It was not a difficult piece, not for anyone with the proper training and a modicum of patience. I had both, and yet I could not make it sing. Every phrase limped, and every line fell short of its mark. I pressed harder on the keys, as if force could compensate for deficiency, but the instrument only repaid me with a metallic clatter, a parody of music that made the mirrors tremble with laughter.
It was at this moment, at the nadir of my performance, that my father entered the room.
Giovanni de Luca did not announce himself, as he preferred to let his presence make itself felt, like the sudden chill preceding a thunderstorm. He was an immense man, built on a scale that suggested overcompensation or some ancient vendetta with the laws of proportion. His beard was black and shot with iron, his skin resembling the color of old money, and his eyes were so dark as to seem bottomless when he turned them on you. He was dressed in mourning even when there was no death in the family, and he moved with the confidence of one who had never in his life been interrupted, not even by God. I stopped playing at once, more out of reflex than respect, watching my father’s mouth bend sideways into an expression I had come to know as the precursor to commentary.
“You play like a banker counting coins,” he said, never raising his voice. “The notes are all there, but the music has fled in terror.” He stepped into the room, his cane tapping a counter-rhythm against the marble floor with an intensity that seemed to reverberate in my teeth. “I see you have not improved in my absence,” he continued. “Is it possible, Valerius, that you practice every morning for the express purpose of proving me right?”
I offered no reply since he was not expecting one. He had entered, I suspect, for the pleasure of watching me fail at something he despised.
He ran his fingers over the harpsichord’s painted lid, leaving a trail in the dust. “We paid a fortune for this, you know. Half the city starved last winter so you could bang at this carcass every morning. I hope you are at least grateful.”
I regarded him through lowered lashes. “Immensely.”
He snorted before settling himself into a chair opposite me, regarding me the way one regards a ledger or a flawed diamond to recalculate the loss. “I did not come here to watch you murder Bach. There are matters you are required to attend.”
The word required landed with a weight, as my father never wasted such vocabulary.
I released a breath, more a shudder than a sigh, and turned to face him fully. “What is the matter?”
“There is a seat open on the Doge’s council. It is expected that our family will fill it.” He watched my face for any sign of rebellion or hope, and finding neither, continued. “You will present yourself at the next council session and conduct yourself with the dignity appropriate to our name. You will sign the pending contracts, including the one with the Moretti syndicate. And you will cease this—” He gestured at the harpsichord as if waving away a foul odor. “This mortification.”
I nodded, already expecting the command, for he never asked for anything but only told, relying on it as his preferred mode of conversation.
“And,” he added, “Lord and Lady Foscari’s daughter remains unsullied. They have inquired about your intentions.” He smiled, showing his long canines. “If you must squander your talents, do it in service to the family. Marry well. Produce an heir that might one day at least sing in tune.”
I stared at the sheet music before me as the notes blurred and ran together, forming a score composed in the script of a migraine. I briefly wondered what it would be like to have a father who allowed for the possibility of choice, but dismissed the fantasy as quickly as it arrived. “I will do as you ask,” I said.
My father leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees. “I do not ask, Valerius. I expect.”