“Does she belong to you?” Ravenna asked.
“I don’t keep pets.” He bared his teeth at the animal. “Flee.”
The cat sat on her hind legs and blinked up at him.
Saturnino hissed at the feline, but then something caught his attention and he stared past her shoulder. “Marco and Fortuna are frightfully dull and have little imagination between them. It’s time we try something my way.” Saturnino flicked her a glance. “Starting with you.”
Ravenna was instantly wary. “What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s just say matters are about to get very interesting.”
Dread pooled deep in her belly. She did not like the sound of that. “Are they?”
Saturnino gave her an oblique glance. “I should clarify; they’re about to get very interesting forme.”
“Which is all that matters,” Ravenna said dryly. “We all exist for your amusement.”
“Now you’re beginning to understand,” he said approvingly. Then he paused, his face arrested by a sudden thought. He drew closer, his lashes lowering over the dark pool of his eyes, and said under his breath, “Good girl.”
The words brushed over her in a silky caress, warm and intimate. A blush stole over her cheeks. Alarmed at her reaction, Ravennastepped away from him, as if creating distance would fix the sensation. But he merely regarded her with half-hooded eyes and a lazy smile, as if he’d expected Ravenna to betray herself in such a mortifying way.
A woman fawning over him.
It had taken only two hushed words spoken in a candlelit corridor to achieve his desired outcome. Ravenna bristled, profoundly annoyed, and Saturnino laughed softly, the sound barely audible.
He had expectedthatreaction, too.
“Cara sorella,” Saturnino said, addressing someone over Ravenna’s shoulder. “We were just talking about you.”
“Saturnino, there you are. You didn’t come up with us,” Fortuna scolded. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Ravenna half turned as Fortuna approached, noting his sister’s expression before she quickly rearranged it. Fortuna had looked at her older brother with a succession of quick emotions: alarm, annoyance, and panic.
Ravenna could empathize.
The cat arched her back and, with a loud hiss, scurried away the moment Fortuna joined them.
“Knowing you, I can’t hope it was anything flattering,” Fortuna said, her voice haughty. “But I hope you haven’t tried to scare her, have you?”
“Not in so many words.”
Ravenna held herself still. He was wrong. He did frighten her—they all did. They were expecting her to perform, exerting pressure from all sides.
But she would not break.
“Saturnino,” Fortuna chided, running a light hand down her arm. She wore a velvet overdress in a soft gray hue, sewn with pearl embroidery at the collar and hemline. Underneath, her long sleeves were made of a glossy silk, in the same color family as the gown. Fortuna noticed Ravenna’s admiring glance and tapped her sleeve, saying,“You didn’t really get to see it in the light, did you? So dreadfully dark in the dungeon, and the courtyard too wet and dull. But isn’t it lovely? The tailor told me this particular shade is called ‘throat of a dove.’”
“It’s exquisite,” Ravenna admitted.
Fortuna eyed Ravenna’s soiled dress, still damp from the rain, the hem stiff from the drying mud. Her lips pinched in disapproval. “You must be exhausted. You certainly look it.” She tilted her head to the side, her flaxen hair gleaming like spun gold. Ravenna supposed she brushed it to a buttery sheen every night before bed. “Shame on you, Saturnino, for keeping her up this late.”
“She had questions,” Saturnino said.
“I still do,” Ravenna said.
He lifted a brow. Just the one.
Ravenna had thought often about the night they first met and what she had seen. “I still want to know what happened to Capitano Lombardi. What were you and he arguing about?” She paused, and gave the knight a pointed look. “Did you pay him off?”
