“I’ll decide what’s significant.” He stopped tapping. “Were you able to make progress on the stones?”
Ravenna nodded. “Some, but it’s tedious and still painful, at least initially.”
Annoyance crept back over his features. His brows drew together in a straight line, stern and terrible. “There’s been a change of plans. Your new task is to extract all five Nightflames from their protective shells and give them to me. His Holiness has need of them.”
“Doing so will draw the Luni family’s ire in my direction,” Ravenna said, exasperated. “Were you aware Cavaliere Saturnino is the family’s assassin? That they’ve brought in other sculptors before me who did not survive the work?”
“Interesting. Did any of them have your particular talent?”
She shook her head. “It didn’t sound like it.”
The courier made a noncommittal noise. “To answer your question: Yes, we knew about them. None of the other sculptors worked for His Holiness. They were each found by Signor Luni over a period of years. We didn’t know why, though, until you.”
There was one question that she had never asked, one question she had never cared to know the answer to, but for the first time she was curious. “Do you know what magic the Nightflame gemstone can do?”
“Of course.”
“What is it?”
The courier fell silent. It was clear he wouldn’t help her or offer any information. “I don’t see why you need to know.”
Impatience bit at her. Not just at him, but at the child she had been, who had refused to learn from her aunt. “I’ve inherited two kinds of magic. The first allows me to touch a Nightflame, when other humans cannot, and the second…” Her voice trailed off. Shewasn’t used to talking about her shameful secret out loud. It felt like opening the doors to a crypt. Wrong, sinful, disobedient.
“You are thinking of them as two separate things,” the courier said. “What if they are one and the same?”
“I don’t understand.”
“The reason why you can hold a Nightflame is because the magic inherent in you kills life. Fire is a living and breathing entity. When you touch the gemstone, you are drawing its life force from it, making it cooler, bearable, safer. Use that knowledge to overcome the protective nature of the virgin stones guarding the Nightflames.”
“I don’t think I can,” she said.
He regarded her, quietly stubborn.
Ravenna tried another tactic. “I won’t be able to steal them. Not without personal risk.”
“Your fate is bound to your magic, for better or for worse. You are either helping us, or you are not. Where is your allegiance? Because His Holiness was under the impression that you werefaithful.” His tone had turned sarcastic when he said the word. “I’m sure you can appreciate his confusion when word of a banquet being hosted in your honor reached his ears. It seems you are the family’s favorite possession.”
“That banquet was not my idea, and it has more to do with flaunting their power than honoring me. Theircaptive,” Ravenna retorted. “And I am no one’s possession.”
“It doesn’t look that way. To everyone else in Florence and beyond its city walls, word has spread of the Luni famiglia’s newest artist in residence, a mysterious young woman no one has ever heard of before now, but who is capable of magic—which they are callingmiraculous,” the courier said. “The pope is growing increasingly nervous of the family’s influence and reach when he has made it his life’s work to rid the peninsula of all witches and their magic.”
“Why does he hate witches so much?” Ravenna asked. “Why hunt them down? Why forbid them from trading with humans and other magical creatures? Why the obsession with them?”
The courier ignored her questions. “I’ll need you to devise a way to retrieve the gemstones without drawing their suspicion. Or theirire,” he added in the same ironic tone with which he’d saidfaithful.
“But how?” Ravenna sputtered.
“It’s up to you how you complete the task.” His fingers started tapping again.
She glared at him narrowly.
He stared back, unperturbed.
Ravenna tried another tactic. “How are your messages getting to me in the palazzo?”
“Don’t concern yourself with that.” He waved a dismissive hand. “You have a much bigger problem to deal with. Five of them.”
She tried another question. “What does the pope need with the gemstones?”
