She released the bar, stiffening. “Yes, I am.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Antonio asked. “You’re a woman. Who’s going to let you participate?No one.” He shook his head at her, baffled and despairing all at once. “I’m surprised at you, Ravenna. Our parents have already suffered a blow with my being locked up in here, why degrade their name further?”
“Because I want to help you,” Ravenna said quietly, stung.
“Ravenna—”
She held up her hand to ward off another one of his protests. “You haven’t asked me what the winner will receive.”
He made a scoffing noise at the back of his throat. “It hardly signifies.”
“It does. If I win, the prize is a boon. Anything I want.” Antonio widened his eyes, and Ravenna held his gaze. “My prize will be your release, and the dropping of the charges against you.”
Her brother gaped at her, hope unspooling in his dark eyes. But his face shuttered, and any hope he had felt vanished. “There’s no chance of you winning. Not when you’re competing against Mirandola and Bramante.”
Ravenna resisted the urge to rattle the cage.
Because he was right. Itwasan impossible feat.
Her odds of winning were practically nonexistent. Their parents were honorable innkeepers, known for their hospitality, not for their artistic abilities. The only artist in the family had been her aunt, and she’d taught Ravenna everything she knew, but she was long gone. Her parents allowed her this one eccentricity because she so adroitly managed everything else at the locanda.
However, shewastalented, and she would do whatever it took to free her brother from the literal cage he sat in fifteen feet off the ground.
She wished he’d have faith in her.
Especially because she still couldn’t breathe seeing him locked up.
“Go back home,” he muttered.
She gaped at him. “Antonio, I’m only trying to help.”
“That’s not what you’re doing. It’s cruel to give a man hope when there is none.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Ravenna pleaded. “Don’t give up, there’s always hope. You’ve been acting different ever since the Medici came, Antonio. This isn’t like you. Angry all the time, bitter and defeated.”
He glowered at her, anger curling his lip in an ugly sneer. “I know you think you can fix everything in the known universe, but this is something out of your control. You can’t save Volterra. You can’t even save yourself.” Ravenna flinched. “You can’t save me. I’m who I am because of what they’ve done to our home, to my friends.”
“But—”
“Leave me.”
Ravenna wouldn’t accept that.
She reached again into her bag, pulling out a wheel of cheese wrapped in a cloth napkin. Wordlessly, she handed it to him. Antonio stared at it with clear yearning, but Ravenna knew he’d rather yell at her instead.
“Please eat. Do it for our parents if not for me.”
Antonio sighed, but took the food. “You’re only delaying the inevitable.”
To speak further would be to invite another argument. She kept her mouth shut as she descended the ladder, but this time she was the one who wanted to yell. The whole way home, she made a vow to herself.
Ravenna would save her brother, even if it killed her.
Capitolo Due
The hour grew late, and the night became longer and darker as Ravenna laid her tools in a neat row on the scarred wooden table in her studio. The flat and claw chisels, the rasp, a file, her hammer—practically an extension of her palm—her favorite pumice stone, and a soft-bristled brush. Ravenna glanced at the single window that allowed spools of moonlight to gloss over the cramped space. She’d lined the sill with eggshells filled with cinnamon and cloves, painted stones, and snips of parchment with poetry, riddles, and fragments of stories written on them.
Offerings to keep the fae at bay.
