Chapter 18 #2
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. She wasn’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 were faithful.” 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. Their captive,” 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 calling miraculous,” 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 their ire,” he added in the same ironic tone with which he’d said faithful.
“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?”
The courier’s lips thinned. It must have been his favorite expression. Disdain laced with impatience. “He’s launching a war against the Medici, surely even you have noticed.”
She thought of her conversation with Saturnino in the mercato. He’d spoken passionately of a city flourishing side by side with magic and faith and art. A trinity the pope would never let stand.
“Yes,” Ravenna said. “But it’s not like His Holiness can handle the Nightflames himself—” She broke off abruptly. “He can’t mean that I have something to do with his plot? With his war?” Ravenna placed both her hands on the table, her eyes widening. “What more will he ask of me?”
“He will use every tool within reach, Ravenna.” He paused. “Even me.”
She stared at him. His rugged appearance highlighted his innocuous employment. A road-weary wizard carting messages back and forth, one who slept little, who clearly kept to himself. His voice sounded gruff. From disuse, probably.
But was that all he was?
Perhaps not.
After all, she wasn’t just a sculptress.
“What is His Holiness planning?” Ravenna asked. “What will he have you do?”
“That is information you don’t need right now,” he said. “But His Holiness does want you to know one thing.”
Ravenna stilled, dreading what he would say. “What is it?”
His tone was curiously flat, devoid of any emotion, to say nothing of his expression. It held no emotion at all, save for the subtle tightening of his eyes. “If you complete this task, the pope will grant you absolution for your soul, despite your heritage.”
All the air went out of her; she felt weightless, as if she’d been thrown off a horse. Ravenna gripped the ends of the table, her knuckles white. She forced a word out through bloodless lips. “Absolution.”
The courier nodded, grim. “The pope’s forgiveness is your protection.”
She couldn’t speak. She hardly dared to hope. Did that mean…?
The courier continued, answering the question written across her face. “You will never need to fear the stake.”
Ravenna crumpled against her seat, boneless.
It was one of her worst fears, being set on fire, the flames consuming her in one slow burn.
She wanted to be spared from such a fate.
But there was no way she could complete that task.
Not with Saturnino spying on her. Not with Imelda hovering over her shoulder.
Ravenna’s throat no longer worked. A sharp ache left it dry and useless.
But she managed a single nod.
“Good.” He stood, pulling his hood back over his head.
“Wait ten minutes before leaving the tavern. Make sure you’re not followed back to the palazzo.
I’ll be in touch with your next assignment.
” He turned to leave, but then paused. There was a slight pitying note in his expression, in the loosening of his jaw, the uncoiling of his hands.
“It will get much worse, Ravenna, before it gets better. If it gets better at all. Do what you’re told.
It’s your only hope of living through this ordeal. ”
She blinked, her lips parting.
The courier vanished before she could say a word.