She clenched her eyes.
“I have you, Ravenna.” Saturnino reached for her, cradled her jaw. “Let it come.”
Her eyes flew open, locking with his. They were heavy-lidded, filled with a consuming passion. Forher.She finally gave in to the unknown and let herself become undone.
Out of control.
Saturnino held her against him, moving deep inside her, but then abruptly lifted her up higher and he slipped out of her. He let out a low moan as he found his pleasure, fingers digging into her hips, his forehead pressed against the flat of her belly. Ravenna wrapped her arms around his trembling body, and he drew her back down, his hand gliding up her back, into her nape, stroking her wet hair.They stayed together until the water in the tub grew cold, and then he carried her out of the room and to his bed. She lay partially over the smooth expanse of his chest, her head tucked under his chin.
“You didn’t finish inside me,” Ravenna murmured.
Saturnino’s arms tightened around her. “I won’t risk leaving you with a child to take care of and raise on your own.”
Ravenna had never let herself think of motherhood. She knew that if she did, the thought would turn into a dream. And she had enough dreams that wouldn’t come true, enough heartaches to fill a lifetime. Having a child meant risking a daughter who might inherit the same strain of magic as her. The very idea had always been unbearable to her.
But now… she didn’t mind the idea so much anymore.
Not with Saturnino.
“Can you have children?” She shifted onto her elbow.
“I’ve never thought about it,” he said slowly. “I have all the needs of a human being. I need food and water to survive, I need sleep to function. I bleed, feel pain.” He gave her a heated glance. “I experience pleasure. It seems possible that I could sire a child.”
“Would you want to?”
He sighed. “Ravenna.”
“If things were different.”
He arched a brow. “If I wasn’t turning to stone in a handful of days? If the world wasn’t on fire, if we weren’t on the brink of war? If my family didn’t want your head on a platter?” His voice turned wistful. “If all those things weren’t true, then yes. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
He brushed the rim of her ear with his index finger. “It seems selfish to bring a child into a world full of despair and hate.”
“I see your point,” she whispered. She shifted, coming up on her elbow, and looked down at him. “But there’s a part of me that believes that other people feel the same. That they’d raise their children to have hope for a better world, teach them empathy and grace, to care for trees and cats, to embrace love and life.”
Saturnino pressed a kiss under her chin. She felt him smiling against her skin. “Trees and cats?”
“I miss Ombretta,” Ravenna admitted.
“Me too,” he said in marveling tones. His voice deepened, became huskier. “If things were different, I’d love to have a child with you. Watching you become a mother…” Saturnino swallowed, stark yearning tiptoeing across his face. “It would be a miracle.”
Pain closed around her, as if she were locking herself away in a room where she stood alone, with only despair and grief for company. She could imagine the years before her, long and lonely, on her knees praying for a different past, a different life, a different fate.
A world where Saturnino was still alive.
A world where she could have saved her brother.
Saturnino brushed the palm of his hand up and down her back, tracing the subtle curve of her spine. Tears gathered in her eyes as the horror of the day replayed in her mind, a devastating loop that began and ended with Antonio. She hadn’t been able to save her little brother. She hadn’t been able to save him from a terrible fate. She hadn’t—
Saturnino urged her down to lie across his chest.
“Ravenna,” Saturnino whispered against her temple. “Ravenna, amore mio.”
She hadn’t realized she’d been crying, sobbing. Saturnino held her tight against him, whispering love softly into her ear, sweet words that soothed the rapid beating of her heart, that chased the awful last moments of Antonio’s life. Saturnino dragged the furs and blankets over them, and sleep came for them both.
The next morning, they woke to the sight of twenty bodies hanging off the balcony of the Palazzo della Signoria. A herald stood in the center of the piazza, calling the names of all the remaining conspirators. The people of Florence were to hunt them down.
