“I think your plan is flawed.”
“Do tell.”
“Humans are fickle and unpredictable creatures,” Fortuna said softly. “They change loyalties and are governed by the needs of their flesh.”
“Unlike you?” Saturnino asked, sardonic humor curling his lip. His eyes drifted up to the second floor, to a row of windows. A line was notched between his black brows, his lips moving silently. He seemed to be counting.
“I’m serious,” Fortuna snapped. “You’re handling this human wrong.”
His attention swerved back to her; his words came out as a taunt. “Am I?”
“This human isn’t swayed by wealth or by our influence. Bribery won’t work with her, but there is somethingelseyou can do.”
Saturnino waved his hand, which Fortuna interpreted to mean that she ought to continue. “I think you ought to go back to your original plan and seduce her.”
He let out a low, humorless laugh. “No.”
“Why not?”
“That might have worked before I met her. Not only is she the last sort of person I would want, but we met under less-than-favorable circumstances,” he said, his eyes latching on to a window on the second floor. “She disapproves of me. That girl is a sanctimonious, rigid sort.”
“That hasn’t stopped you before.”
He turned toward her, his eyes darkening in anger. “I have it under control.”
“The human might be afraid of you, of us, but she’s no coward. She broke curfew to get to her brother. Revealed her magical inheritance to the people of Volterra when she knew they would hate her for it. If word about her reached the pope’s ears, he’d order a bounty on her head and her execution.”
He waved this off with another roll of his dark eyes. “She participated in the competition not to save her brother but for some other ulterior motive. Perhaps she’s tired of living under the demands of her family and of that pitiful inn.”
“It’s possible, but regardless, I think you ought to reassess your strategy. It’s doomed to fail,” Fortuna said, exasperated. She stepped closer and reached for his sleeve, but he shifted away. “Can’t youseethat?”
He went preternaturally still. Unholy fury burned in his eyes, and tension brewed in the air around him, a swirling tempest of raw emotion. His face flickered in and out of the moonlight that beamed through wispy storm clouds.
“You have notseenhumans the way I have.”
A dozen memories swam in her mind. Humans on their knees before her, tied up in her silk sheets, feeding her ripe fruit. Crying for mercy, begging for release, pleading for more. And when she was bored with them, she brewed them a cup of her deadly tea and forced them to drink it. “I know humans.”
“You don’t,” he said flatly. “They are playthings to you.”
She used his words against him. “Unlike to you?”
His words bled into the night. “They didn’t used to be.”
Fortuna’s breath caught. They all knew her brother had gone through something terrible years earlier, decades now. But he’d never spoken of it, and since then, he kept everyone at a distance. Magical creatures, humans, his own family.
Nothing and nobody could reach him.
“What happened to you?” Fortuna edged closer, her words like the soft rustling of leaves against stone. “You can tell me.”
Saturnino bared his teeth at her. “You have not known them at their worst, at their most cruel. You don’t know humans. Iknowhumans, and”—he drew close to Fortuna, half-hidden in shadow, but she could make out the cold glimmer of his eyes in the near dark— “I will never let a human get the best of me ever again.”
Capitolo Sette
By the time Ravenna returned to her room, she felt buzzy, as if a swarm of bees lived underneath her skin. The guards stood directly behind her; one of them had the flat of his hand against the door to keep her from shutting it.
“I need privacy to dress for bed,” Ravenna said.
“Is there a problem?”
