“We’re asking the questions,” Pietro snapped. “Tell us who you really work for—”
“I don’t understand—”
Pietro tightened his grip around her throat.
“The pope,” Ravenna gasped.
They looked at each other, conversing silently. Then Imelda visibly came to a decision. “His Holiness gave you instructions,” shesaid accusingly. Her hand dove into the pocket of her tunic and she drew out Ravenna’s letter, creased and wrinkled, but with the pope’s seal clearly visible. “He demanded you thwart the plans of the Luni famiglia, gather information, and extract the Nightflames. I have it right here.”
Ravenna stared at the letter in dull amazement.
She had hidden the letter inside the wardrobe in her bedroom. She thought someone might go looking through her things, Tomasso, perhaps. She hadn’t thought it could be Imelda. Ravenna had been fooled.
Cool air glossed over her skin and she licked her dry lips. Her voice came out shaky and garbled, Pietro’s hand like a noose around her throat. “That’s what I’m doing.”
Imelda narrowed her eyes. “It does not appear so. Why were you taken to see Lorenzo de’ Medici?”
Her mind scrambled; she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“What are you planning with the Lunis’ allies?” Pietro demanded.
“Nothing,” Ravenna gasped. “I was only negotiating on behalf of Volterra. The lifting of the curfew. For the Medici to stop arresting citizens. I asked that citizens be restored of their property, their homes. That’s all, I swear it.”
“Lies,” Pietro growled. “If that’s all it was, why not tell the courier?”
Ravenna thought quickly. “None of it seemed useful, I was only trying to find a way back home so Volterra might accept me.”
“You’ve become dangerously ambitious,” Imelda said. “Those weren’t part of your orders.”
“Three days have gone by and you’ve madenoprogress,” Pietro growled.
“I’m still experimenting, trying out the best way to extract the Nightflames,” Ravenna said, stumbling over the words. “You’ve seen them, Imelda. The stones are volatile.”
“Not our problem,” Pietro snarled.
Ravenna’s eyes darted from left to right. They were alone, but perhaps someone could hear her scream?
“You’re up to something,” Imelda accused her. “And whatever you’re up to hinders the workI’mdoing for His Holiness. Do you understand? What you do reflects poorly onme.And I can’t have that, not when I’m so close to completing his task, to finally becoming a part of his inner circle.”
“I need more time,” Ravenna gasped. “Per favore.”
“I don’t like it,” Pietro continued, flicking a look at Imelda. “She’s too crafty.”
“The other sculptors,” Ravenna blurted. “I don’t want to end up like them. Please, I’ll try harder.”
Imelda had been about to reply to Pietro but at Ravenna’s words she paused. Disappointment twisted her expression, her lips crimping, eyebrows lowering over her wide-set eyes.
“Do you think only your life matters?” Imelda asked.
Ravenna flinched at the quiet intensity. Imelda stared back at her with her chin held high, shoulders straight, eyes filled with desperation. She looked like a woman starved of all hope.
“His Holiness still doesn’t trust me, even though I have given a year of my life to this endeavor,” Imelda continued. “I’ll never get that time back. I won’t see it ruined by your bumbling.”
Pietro was nodding along with her. Panic built within Ravenna, block by suffocating block. “I don’t understand—”
“That much is clear,” Imelda said. She looked at Pietro. “I don’t think it’s worth keeping her. Drop her. I will tell Signora Luni some story, perhaps she succumbed to the pressure of the work.”
Pietro surged forward, his hand banding around her in a viselike grasp.
