“Place your hands on them, Ravenna,” Signora Luni said. Her voice held a subtle tremor, as if she stood on shifting ground. “Tell us what you feel.”
Ravenna didn’t have to touch the virgin stone to know what lay trapped within. The dark magic within her sang in response, recognizing the gemstone’s power.
Nightflame.
“What are you waiting for?” Fortuna asked. “A written invitation?”
Marco caught Ravenna up in two strides, his hands like iron chains around her wrists, and then he half dragged her forward until she stood in front of one of the stones. His fingers would leave bruises on her skin. “Do it.”
“Why can’t you?” she tossed back.
Marco shook her. Hard. “I said do—”
Saturnino’s voice cut between them.“Marco.”
Marco stilled, glancing at his brother over his shoulder. Saturnino looked at Ravenna, his face imperious and aloof, but when he’d said his brother’s name, it held all of his quiet malice and hostility. That frightened her more than Marco’s brutish treatment.
Ravenna placed her shaking hands onto the stone.
The heat scalded her skin, a second of sharp agony, and then vanished, the stone cooling under her palms. She let out a shuddering breath, dizzy from the abrupt relief flooding her body. Her gaze dropped to the stone’s surface; it seemed to shift under her fingers, as if it were alive, as though the Nightflame itself reached for her. The magic trapped within the stone leaped into her, communing with her own. They felt like reacquainted friends, recognizing each other.
Terror coated her mouth.
The Nightflame she’d inherited had been roughly the size of her palm, the magic potent but small, a mere whisper compared to the Nightflames bound in the large stones. She sensed their presence, loud like the booming sounds of cannon fire. Ravenna drew away, not wanting to hear anymore. The magic in her protested the loss of contact, roiling inside her until nausea gripped her. Dimly, she was aware of Signor Luni drawing closer to her, until he stood at her elbow.
“This is why you are here,” he whispered.
“I don’t understand,” Ravenna said through numb lips.
“We need you to extricate the five gemstones by the tenth of May,” Signor Luni replied. “You have twenty-nine days, Ravenna.”
“What happens after twenty-nine days?”
He spoke in the same quiet voice, solemn and grave, and said, “I’ll let you go.”
Ravenna didn’t look at him. She kept her gaze on the virgin stones, her mind latching on to his words. They didn’t sit well with her, as if she’d eaten something foul. They had been spoken by an immortal she didn’t trust.
But she did understand him well enough to intuit something crucial.
Signor Luni had just lied to her.
They were all silent the whole way back up to the courtyard. The steward was sent for, and he once again began directing the staff to haul everyone’s trunks to the upper levels. The courtyard filled with chatter as the orders were swiftly obeyed. Amid the hullabaloo, the Luni family left and Tomasso approached Ravenna, his manner quick and efficient.
“This way, if you please,” Tomasso said.
Ravenna drew toward him, her hand light on the stone balustrade as she climbed.
“I’ll take her.”
Everyone in the courtyard froze as if suddenly turned to stone. It would have been comical if the voice hadn’t sounded like the crack of lightning. It seemed no one had realized one of the Luni family had remained behind. Ravenna knew who had spoken, but looked over her shoulder anyway, bracing herself to meet Saturnino’s eyes. Staring into them unnerved her, as if she looked into a pitch-black cave and nothing at all reflected back at her. Not even the smallest glimmer of light.
He stood at the bottom, his chin tipped up.
Ravenna held his stare. She’d thought him handsome at firstglance; beautiful, a perilous cliff rising above the horizon. But now all she could see was an immortal who liked to play with humans, who aligned himself with a family who had no qualms about conquering her hometown. People who had put her brother in a cage. She could still hear the way he had said his brother’s name down in the dungeon, an ominous note from the first letter to the last.
Saturnino climbed up the staircase, only stopping when he stood on a step two lower than hers. Without taking his eyes off her, he said, “Go about your business.”
His voice was equal parts bored, dismissive, and autocratic.
