Chapter 9 #2
He had not always been immortal. Which meant that he had once been human. What happened to him? To all of them? She opened her mouth with another question, but he smoothly stepped around her and continued up the stairs. He tossed a glance over his shoulder. “You’re dripping all over the floor.”
Ravenna startled, gave herself a mental shake, getting rid of the sensation that he’d yanked her into a spell.
She set out after him, stepping through the door at the top of the staircase as if she’d ventured into a mystical otherworld.
A place where the Luni family reigned, and where she was now a subject.
She followed the knight onto a landing, lined by several tall wooden doors. She barely noticed when he went through the first, so caught up in her thoughts.
What were they?
Ravenna didn’t like not knowing.
Witches roamed the peninsula in secret, constantly wandering, exploring, hardly ever setting down roots, thanks in large part to the pope’s relentless pursuit of them.
Vampyres dwelled in the cavernous kingdoms to the north, hidden behind stone and granite.
The fae were guardians of the forests that stretched along the eastern side, preferring leaf and fern over cobbled avenues and industry.
They dealt with enchantments bartered from witches, and they thrived in the natural world, not with trade or commerce or gold coins but with magic and spells.
Their origins were shrouded in half-remembered stories and whispered rumors, rumors she heard from travelers who stayed at the locanda.
Ravenna struggled to piece it all together.
The fae were thought to be the descendants of angels, some said, warriors of God who had fallen not out of rebellion, but sacrifice.
Custodus Lignorum, they were sometimes called.
They’d given their lives in some ancient celestial battle between the light and the dark.
Afterward, they lingered on earth, immortal and yet removed.
Perhaps it was their devotion in protecting the primordial forests and crystalline lakes, and the pietra magiche, gemstones that held the essence of divine magic. Or perhaps it was punishment.
The stories were never clear.
The Luni famiglia didn’t fit in with any of those categories.
The wrong side of magic, he’d said.
She snuck a glance at Saturnino from the corner of her eye.
He remained close to her side as he escorted her into a grand hall, the four walls painted in a blue and mint-green geometric pattern.
On a second look, Ravenna was delighted to find that the pattern also included parrots.
Saturnino ushered her through another arched doorway—Ravenna had yet to see any sharp corners—that opened to a long corridor with polished floors that gleamed like rich honey in the candlelight.
Ravenna glanced over her shoulder, memorizing the turn they’d just taken.
She had a good sense of direction, but this was the largest home she had ever seen.
Like conversations with Saturnino, one wrong turn and she could walk straight into disaster.
She was replaying all the turns they’d taken, the number of arched doorways they’d passed, when she felt a curious tingle at the back of her neck.
They were being followed.
She turned around as a black cat approached them. The feline pressed herself against Saturnino’s ankles, purring loudly. Saturnino glanced down and firmly nudged the cat away. It ignored him and darted back to his side.
“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 for me.”
“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, Ravenna stepped 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 expected that reaction, 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?”
If Saturnino was surprised by her question, he didn’t show it.
Instead, his sister abruptly turned to Ravenna.
“Aren’t you cold? My deplorable brother has neglected your comforts.
Come, let me take you to your room so you may look like a lady and not a street urchin.
” She threw an exasperated glance at Saturnino.
“Dinner will be brought to you, Ravenna, no need to exert yourself.”
Fortuna held out her arm, fully expecting Ravenna to link her arm with hers.
But a feeling of unease bloomed deep in Ravenna’s belly. “I want an answer.”
“He was caught disobeying the rules,” came Saturnino’s oblique reply.
There were many who still did, many who outright refused the Medici’s stronghold on their town. The captain wasn’t a novelty. “Capitano Lombardi was loyal to Volterra. Why would he follow your orders?”
“Because the Medici won, and his side lost, but that didn’t stop him from trying to rouse the rabble.”
“I see.” Ravenna paused. “So you offered him money to go away.”
Saturnino’s flat, dark eyes narrowed. Ravenna had the uncanny sense that she was staring back into that pitch-black cave and she’d just thrown a rock into it. Her body trembled as she waited for whatever sinister creature to creep out.
“Saturnino,” Fortuna warned. “Don’t.”
Too late, Ravenna realized there was something within that cave after all.
Saturnino’s inner hostility slithered out of him, devoid of any humanity and unscrupulous to the very bone.
In a voice that reminded Ravenna of the coldest nights in Volterra, when bitter winds swept over the hills, Saturnino said, “I slit his throat from ear to ear.”