And it had cost herdecades.It had cost her time with her precious son, time she would never get back as she’d had to watch her relatives raise him when it ought to have beenher.But, and she had to be fair and give credit to her father, her time as a cat had enlightened her. She had come to appreciate true acts of kindness; had learned, too, how to observe and look into the soul of a creature.
The man standing in front of her, gaping like a fish, had no soul.
At least, not one she’d want to help or save.
“Claude,” she whispered, her voice hoarse from disuse.
“You,you,” he sputtered. “Simonetta. Where have youbeen?”
She straightened her shoulders as she eyed her former lover. Strange to think how she had once cared for him, how she had given birth to their son. She turned toward him now, the great politician on his knees before the pope.
“Lorenzo.” She let out an uneven breath. “My son.”
Lorenzo de’ Medici stared up at her in wonder. He’d been threeweeks old when she’d been turned into a cat. His voice shook with emotion. “Mamma?”
The pope’s face turned pale, his lips shaping words, inaudible. Shock twisted his handsome features. “Thisis our son?”
Her son gaped at his father in horror. Decades of fighting between them, father and son at war. Lorenzo’s horror turned sneering, as if he wouldn’t accept the pope as anything other than an enemy. Simonetta beamed at her son in approval.
“Not yours,mine,” she hissed. Her magic sang underneath her skin, near bursting, but she didn’t have an amplifier, she didn’t have a way—
A hooded figure crossed her line of sight; he threaded through the crowd and then turned to lock eyes with her. It was a hollow-cheeked man, grim, but for the flash of urgency in his bloodred eyes. He tossed something to her, a small object that sailed over the heads and shoulders of the spectators surrounding them.
Simonetta caught it, turned it over in her palm.
It was an amulet. She grinned, turning toward her former lover. Claude clutched at his vestments, and he visibly jolted as if remembering that his enchanted chain mail had been destroyed.
“I regret gifting it to you,” she said, advancing on him, still grinning. “But you’re all mine now, my love.”
She lifted her fingers higher, and a soft light sparkled and glittered as if she held a star. Simonetta blew the light toward Claude. He was rooted to the ground, transfixed, mesmerized by the sight of the magic. He had always been like that. Obsessed with enchantments and the power they could bring, while castigating anyone who had the talent to use them. How many lives had he ruined, searching for her? How many people had he burned, hanged, exiled, for who they were?
All because he would never be one of them.
The light reached him, spooling around him in one long coil.
“Simonetta,” he whispered, hoarse. “I love you, Simonetta,don’t.”
“You don’t know what love is, tesoro,” Simonetta said, andwatched as the man transformed, his body turning green and scaly, dropping in a heap to the ground. A long snake slithered out of the purple and white vestments, alive but doomed to crawl over the earth on its belly.
She turned toward the pyre, to the flames rising higher and higher, curling around Ravenna in a lethal embrace. The same hooded figure darted forward, carrying a short staff. He flicked his wrist and the staff expanded, revealing five small pietra magiche.
Moonhaze. Shadowglass. Lodestar. Sunspire. Nightflame.
Simonetta’s brows rose. He was a rare breed of wizard. His mother must have been a powerful witch to have passed on enough of her magic to allow him to have an affinity to five of the seven magical gemstones.
Intriguing.
The wizard threw his hood back, revealing a strong profile and chin-length brown hair. He flicked an impatient glance at her from over his shoulder. Cool brown eyes regarded her with the smallest bit of impatience.
“Don’t just stand there,” he said. “Help me.”
Only her father told her what to do. And he was king of all fae.
Veryintriguing.
He spun his wizard staff, muttering a spell. The gears of the colossal machine screeched to a halt, the tail frozen high in midair. Cries of relief rose up into the darkening sky, even as the fire spread from one building to the next.
Simonetta strode forward and spread her arms wide, fingers spread, the amulet dangling from her wrist. She brought her palms together in a snap, and the fire vanished, as if smothered by an enormous blanket. She came to stand next to the wizard. “Who are you?”
