“I’m no saint,” Ravenna said, and privately she thought,If they only knew of the monster they’d found instead.“Whatever your plans are, I can’t and won’t be involved.”
Saturnino surveyed her with sardonic dark eyes. “You don’t know what they are.”
“And what’s more, you don’t have a choice,” Marco growled.
Ravenna sat back against her chair, tightened her hands in her lap. “This is about the Nightflame.”
“Of course it is,” Signor Luni said, waving his hands expressively. “But it’s more than that, too.”
“How, signore?”
“We will cover the details once we reach the palazzo and after you’ve settled in. The work will be extensive, and unfortunately has a strict deadline.” Signor Luni cleared his throat. “It must be completed by the tenth of May.”
Ravenna wouldn’t be completing the task at all. God willing, she would be long gone by then. But still, she had a role to play. She pretended to consider Signor Luni’s words, and then asked, “Why by the tenth of May?”
“Because we said so,” Marco snarled.
Fortuna sent a frigid glance toward her brother, but he ignored her.
“We are planning on hosting a jousting tournament centeredaround a grand reveal of the sculptures,” Signora Luni explained. “A feat of marvelous artistry and skill from our private collection. The first of its kind to be displayed prominently in the Palazzo della Signoria.”
“And how manyworksare you forcing me to sculpt?”
No one blinked at Ravenna’s choice of words.
“Five,” Signor Luni said.
Five works of art? By the tenth of May? That would give her less than a month to complete the task. Even if she were to work night and day, sculpting stone took time and care, and an attention to detail that could not be rushed. But Ravenna said nothing—it wasn’t her problem. Had they hired her to complete the job, that would have been different. They stole her instead, and now Ravenna would never willingly toil for them on principle.
“But let us not dwell on the particulars,” Signor Luni said. “All you need to know is that as the guest of honor in our home, you will be given every conceivable comfort, and if you complete what we require, you and your family will never want for money or status ever again. For the rest of your life, every door will open for you.”
Ravenna pointed to the only exit. “Every door but the one I want to walk through right now.”
Signor Luni stared at her for one torturous beat, a faint frown line between his graying eyebrows. He looked at her as if she were a wild animal without hope of ever being domesticated.
“Nonsense. You may leave whenever you wish.” Signor Luni deliberately paused. “Provided it is to return to your chamber for the rest of the night. The guards will escort you.” Then he lifted a plate filled with the meat covered in a rich sauce. His voice was sickeningly polite. “Or you can behave and try the pheasant?”
Fortuna dei Luni
The guards came for the human at the end of dinner. Fortuna regarded the girl with sharp amusement as it dawned on the sculptress that she wouldn’t be left to her own devices. Not even to climb back up the stairs.
Fortuna tilted her head, studying the sculptress with a critical eye.
She had an interesting face.
Pretty, but nothing extraordinary. Wide-set eyes, expressive and alert, brown of a color that some people might find attractive if they liked the look of medicinal apothecary bottles. A slender nose, straight with a delicate bridge and a refined tip, and a well-defined mouth that badly needed rouge. Her hair fell in tangled waves around her slim shoulders. It was the color of fall leaves, autumnal, sort of red and chestnut, sort of golden brown, a bit of mahogany, as if it didn’t know what it wanted to be. Either way, it wasn’t blond like her own, the favorite and prized shade in Florence. The gown the sculptress wore wasn’t up to current fashion, and her fingers were bare and unadorned, and much worse: calloused. Her skin was olive toned, smooth and supple, but had the appearance of someone who spent too much time outdoors.
Ravenna did, Fortuna grudgingly admitted, have nice cheekbones. High and prominent, lending an air of sculpted perfection.
Her own were nicer, though.
“We’ve enjoyed your company,” Fortuna’s mother said to Ravenna when the last of the plates had been cleared. “But it’s time for you to rest. We all have an early start in the morning.”
Ravenna stared back at Fortuna’s mother with a stony expression,her mouth set in a mulish line. She went to push away from the table, but her dress was caught beneath the leg of her chair. Saturnino stood up, his manner abrupt and impatient, and easily freed the hem. The girl muttered a thank-you, which Saturnino didn’t acknowledge, and in her haste to quit the room she stupidly tripped over the leg of that same chair.
But then Saturnino did something odd.
Instead of letting her stumble in front of all of them, giving her opportunity to humiliate herself, he reached for her hand, the motion propelling her toward him. Her shoulder, her autumn hair, swept against his chest. It was the first time Fortuna had seen Saturnino touch the human. Fortuna expected seething annoyance but instead he settled Ravenna back onto her feet, his face disappointingly devoid of any of its usual irreverent qualities. He’d done it instinctively, and Ravenna mumbled another thank-you, her cheeks rosy and warm, before the guards escorted her out and upstairs to her room.
