“But you do have one,” Ravenna said quietly, acting on a hunch. “He has a hold over you, like the rest of us.”
The courier glared at her.
“Tell me it isn’t true,” Ravenna said, a thrill moving through her. Her hunch had been right. She wasn’t the only person the pope had blackmailed. Imelda had fallen prey to his tactics, too, and who knew how many countless others?
The courier dropped down onto the seat across from her, folded his arms, and stared. He stared at her for so long, she thought that perhaps he was waiting on her to continue, but then he said, “He has me, like he has you.” The words sounded like they’d been dragged out of him, and only because he hated to be under anyone’s thumb. She’d sensed that about him the first night they met; he’d been a rugged and wild creature captured by the throat. Run ragged.
“Then—”
“If you knew what was good for you, then you’d stop this, whatever it is you’re doing, and walk away from this table,” he went on. “But something tells me that you won’t. So tell me, Ravenna, what is it that you want.”
Ravenna dragged her palm over the table, thinking. She had planned her words carefully all afternoon, but sitting across from the courier with his too-perceptive gaze and preternatural stillness, she discarded every single one of them.
The courier wouldn’t appreciate anything but the unvarnished truth, said simply and without calculation. “My brother is in trouble.”
To her surprise, he clenched his jaw, turning his head partly away from her. A mop of wavy dark hair fell over his brow. His beard had grown wild, like the man himself. The low light from the lamps didn’t hide the hollows under his eyes, his sunken cheeks. He was beautiful in a way she hadn’t thought when she’d first met him. A wild kind of beauty, like a snowcapped mountain surrounded by a dark forest.
He sighed and looked back at her. “I know.”
“I want to help him.”
“A man like your brother can’t be helped,” the courier said flatly. “Too much anger inside of him, it’s burning him through. The pope has hellfire in his hands and knows exactly what to do with someone wanting to turn the world to ash.”
Everything he said was true, made worse by the smallest speck of sympathy gleaming in his gaze.
“I have to try,” Ravenna whispered.
The courier nodded. “I know that, too. But whatever you do reflects on me. Any mistake you make, any failure on your part, endangers what’s mine.”
“Who are you protecting?”
The courier fell silent.
The answer was too personal, too close to him. Ravenna switched tactics.
“There has to be a way,” she said, leaning forward and placing both of her palms on the table. “There must be. I only need to find him, I only need to talk to him—” She broke off, her voice cracking. “Please.”
“What if you can’t convince Antonio to leave with you?”
She shook her head, refusing to believe that her brother was so far out of her reach. Her control. He was her little brother who felt deeply, more sensitive than he cared to admit. She knew how to remind him of who he was. “Then I would know that I had done everything I could to help him.”
Firelight danced across the courier’s face, which was solemn and grim and terrifyingly still. He was listening to her, really listening to her, visibly weighing the costs of helping her.
“I could take you to His Holiness now,” he said softly. “He has use of someone with your ability.”
She sucked in a breath, hand dipping below the table, reaching for the knife in her shoe.
The courier let out a humorless laugh. “Don’t bother.”
Ravenna thought quickly, letting her intuition guide her. She brought her hand back up to the table, laid it flat. “I don’t think you will.”
His gaze dropped to her hand. “I have been playing this game far longer than you have, and I have done unspeakable things in the name of survival.”
“You’ve needed to survive for who you are trying to save,” she whispered. “I understand, and I don’t judge you for it. You know that’s true, don’t you?”
The courier looked up at her. Ravenna held her breath. His eyes tracked the movement and his lips thinned. On a low growl, he asked, “How much do you know about the pope?”
Her hands slipped into her lap as she leaned back against the chair. “He’s powerful, influential.” Her lips twisted. “Corrupt. At war with the Medici.”
