Chapter 9
Capitolo Nove
Saturnino’s tone was all gracious host, his black brow rose expectantly.
She had never met anyone like him, hard to read clearly, as if he were made of swirling mist. Dealing with him felt perilous, like crossing a rickety bridge that stretched high over a keening river.
Ravenna never knew if she would make it safely to the other side.
She eyed him warily. “Are you taking me back down into the dungeons? Is that where I’ll be sleeping?”
“That can be arranged, if you prefer it,” came his sardonic reply.
“At least it would be honest,” she muttered.
“But inconvenient,” he said. “Best for you to stay up here with the rest of the family.”
“Where you can keep an eye on me.”
“That, too.” He regarded her with a faint smile, a knowing gleam in his dark eyes.
The lush line of his full mouth remained straight.
It really was a beautiful face, the kind of face that demanded notice—or, more troubling, the kind of face that could lure someone into the depths of a turbulent sea.
“I will require a chaperone,” Ravenna said. “It isn’t proper for us to be alone like this, let alone at this time of night.”
“We don’t stand on ceremony here, and even if we did, as the artist in residence you’re granted liberties.”
“What kind of liberties?”
“In appearance only,” he said. “Not in actuality. No one will look down upon your association with us, but that doesn’t grant you free rein over the palazzo. There are rules.”
“And they are?”
“Don’t go here, don’t go there.”
“Thank you for clarifying,” she said, exasperated. “I have questions.”
He raised an eyebrow and waited. Ravenna hated how much his beauty distracted her. She wanted to carve his face, that exact expression. Politely inquisitive, a little exacting.
An intriguing combination.
Instead she took herself back to the moment when Tomasso had pushed her into the carriage, the door locking behind her. That shocking moment had nearly suffocated her. The Luni family’s demand had been senseless, cruel even. Ravenna’s nostrils flared. “Why was I taken?”
It was the first time she’d seen him baffled. “We just showed you.”
She gave him a look, coolly disapproving. It was an expression that always worked with her rowdy brothers, but Saturnino didn’t flinch. “No, I meant, why not ask me to come?”
He stared back at her, incredulous. “Why would we?”
Ravenna held on to her patience by a thread. “Are you trying to provoke me?”
Saturnino leaned against the stone railing and folded his arms across his chest. She blinked at the sight of him, lounging. That stubborn lock of hair fell at an angle across his pale brow. “No.” He paused, brows pulling together in a brief frown. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
She gestured to his long frame. “It’s the first time I’ve seen you behave like a human.”
He stared at her.
“You look more approachable,” Ravenna said, feeling the need to explain. “Relaxed.”
“Do I seem relaxed to you?”
Ravenna felt a pins-and-needles sensation of warning.
“You do not.”
“I am as human as I allow myself to be,” he said. “Like right now, but only because I was up late making sure our strong-willed guest didn’t try to escape again, followed by long hours in a jostling carriage where I had to listen to Marco belabor a moot point.”
“You will not get any sympathy from me.”
“I wasn’t looking for any. I’m merely replying to your rude observation.”
Ravenna furrowed her brow. “I observed you were behaving like a human.”
He shot her a baleful look. “Exactly.”
In a million years this immortal would never make sense to her. “Why wasn’t I given time to pack, to say goodbye to my family?”
“It was easier than dealing with dramatic emotions and protests,” Saturnino said. “Everyone calms down at the sight of gold, anyway.” He smiled unpleasantly. “Even your family stopped crying for you when they were presented with more money than they knew what to do with.”
Ravenna stared at him. “You bought me?”
“No. The prize for winning was money and a boon. You chose to save your brother, and your family was given the money since you have no need of it while here in Florence.”
“You’re lying,” she scoffed.
“No,” Saturnino repeated. He watched her closely, almost clinically, as if he were tallying her weaknesses. “Your mother demanded more than one bag of it.”
A pit formed in her belly, deep and yawning. Her mother, much like her, valued security and pragmatism. She understood why the coin would have appealed to her; running the inn was lucrative but it wasn’t without sacrifice or monetary cost. A horrible thought struck her.
She knew her parents loved her, just like she knew they were afraid of the magic running through her veins. Ravenna had a fear she had never dared to speak out loud, but now it surfaced, nearly suffocating her.
What if her parents were glad to finally be rid of her?
Their daughter, who worked so hard for them, earning a place in the inn and in their hearts, but could hurt them without thought if she lost control of her emotions.
Her throat felt tight and narrow; it hurt to swallow.
“They seemed eager for you to be gone. Relieved, somehow.”
Ravenna let out a ragged breath. “Now you’re being cruel.”
He lifted an indolent shoulder. “I’m proving my own point.”
“Which is?”
“Humans and their love of money. It’s all they seem to care about.”
“It’s a bit rich to disparage the human race when it is you and your immortal family who justify kidnapping to suit their interests.”
“But we have never pretended to be anything other than what we are,” he countered.
“Despicable?” Ravenna said coolly.
“I’ll allow morally bankrupt.” The corner of his lips turned downward. “Like self-righteous humans who say they care for a family member, only to be distracted by coin.”
Ravenna inwardly cringed. Maybe he was wrong.
Maybe her worst fear had come to pass, but she wouldn’t know until she saw her family again.
What mattered now was acquiring more information.
Just what manner of man was she dealing with?
A creature with both a human side and an inhuman one? “What are you?”
“What are you?” he countered. “You say you’re human but I’ve felt and seen your magic at work.”
Shame burned in her cheeks. “I’m not a witch, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Aren’t you?”
Her voice shook in an effort to control the emotion powering through her. “There are only two magical talents I inherited from a witch ancestor. By any measure and definition, I am not a full-blooded witch.”
“I didn’t take you for a liar, Samaritan.” His dark eyes narrowed. “You’re hiding something, I can feel it. How powerful are you?”
Ravenna was the eldest of five children. She could see his attempt to rile her from miles away. She returned his narrow-eyed look. “Are you always this suspicious?”
“Live as long as I have, and you’ll have good cause to be.”
“I am a human who is ashamed of the little magic I possess. That’s the truth.” She drew a breath. “Have you always been immortal?”
“What a question, Ravenna.”
“Well, you don’t follow the rules of polite conversation so here we are. We don’t know each other, so we may as well—”
“But I do know you,” he said softly.
“Really.”
“Whatever else you are, you are also human,” he said. “Every one of you is the same.”
She jerked her own chin up. She thought of the many people she’d crossed paths with, their differences, not just in appearance but in their hopes and wishes and desires. No two people were alike. Anyone could see that. “You’ve drawn the wrong conclusion.”
“Have I?” He waited a beat. “We’ll see.”
She stared hard at him as her intuition spiked.
Emotion bled out of him, hard to define, but it reminded her of a time when her brother had wished, above anything else, to see a group of traveling troubadours performing in the piazza one summer.
He had begged their parents until they finally relented.
But the experience hadn’t lived up to his expectations.
It wasn’t funny, the music had been flat. The singing terrible.
Ravenna knew, then, what name to call the emotion she felt radiating off him. “You’re disappointed.”
He stared at her with an inscrutable look on his face.
“By us humans,” she explained. “Possibly you’ve been hurt.”
Ravenna had the impression that she’d broken off the directed path, veering unexpectedly off course.
He was trying to bring her out to a turbulent sea, but she’d found safer ground.
And it had surprised him. Saturnino recovered quickly; his expression turned haughty. “That would imply that I have a heart.”
“You don’t?”
He seemed to look straight through her, past flesh and bone. It turned her inside out, that close assessment, and the way his voice turned flat. “I do not.”
“Is that true for all of you?”
He inclined his head.
Ravenna made a low frazzled sound at the back of her throat. Panic bubbled deep in her belly, making her nauseous, unsettled. She’d never crossed paths with anyone like him, like them. It made her feel unprepared and out of her depth. A state of being that upended her sense of rightness.
“What creatures don’t have a heart?” Ravenna whispered bleakly.
“Creatures on the wrong side of magic. And Ravenna…”
Saturnino came up a step closer to her. Then another.
Ravenna’s heart thrummed hard against her ribs.
His dark eyes were locked on hers, making her pulse riot under her skin.
He lowered his lashes, a heavy black fringe that crested like the wings of a raven.
They almost brushed against the smooth curve of his cheeks as he looked down at her.
He could have uttered an enchantment and she wouldn’t have noticed.
There was no arguing with his immortal beauty and the way it drew her eye.
“I have not always been what I am.”
She let out a whoosh of air.