Chapter Nineteen
The chair closest to me pulls back. I only just manage to move away before it pushes in again filled with the lower half of a man’s body.
Leonardo squashes against me as the same thing happens to him.
We’re practically sitting on each other now, the red and ermine-trimmed robes of the elected priori brushing our skin, Leonardo’s too-long legs scrunched a hairbreadth away from the tablecloth’s edge.
His eyes meet mine, huge and ringed with white. One sound, one wrong movement, and we’ll be discovered.
Merda! This is what we get for poking fun at God’s muscular, glowering glory on Easter Sunday.
“Piero, what’s the meaning of this? It won’t be long before someone notices the entire city council is missing from mass.” The man’s voice is cajoling, but there’s an edge of steel underneath it.
Piero de’ Medici laughs. “Well, I suppose we should get on with it, then. Guards, seize him.”
There’s a stomp of boots, a flurry of gasps and murmurs, then the unmistakable sound of a body being dragged from a chair. Desperate to see more—and ignoring Leonardo’s frantic gestures to stay still—I twist to press my face to the floor and peer underneath the tablecloth’s edge.
The prior is on his knees before the blades of two Medici guards’ pikes, which gleam beneath his jaw. His shocked look is mirrored on the other men’s faces.
“Tell us, Signore Soderini, why you haven’t been able to find the person responsible for the fountain miracle. It’s blasphemous that a human would attempt to parade as an angel and lie to all those poor people!”
My body goes statue still. They’re talking about Lupa.
Except… Piero is saying it was no miracle, even though I saw the healing waters with my own eyes. Is he lying to his government allies, or does he not believe in the magic?
“Signore Medici, I can assure you, we have been searching for the culprit. It hasn’t been easy. One man claims he saw a vision of the Virgin Mary right on the fountain’s edge—”
“Liar. I know you raced to the fountain yourself to take some of its water. Don’t try to deny it happened.” Piero’s voice is silk-smooth. “My son Lorenzo followed you.”
The hair rises on my arms as if I’m scurrying through a piazza moments before lightning cracks through the sky.
Why do the Medici care so much about what happened to people who needed help?
What Lupa did was odd and unheard of, but angels and their magic are sacred.
Their ways are not for people to question or control. That’s what the church says.
I bite the inside of my cheek, sucking salt.
“Is he certain it was me?” Soderini says cooly. “He could have seen anyone.”
Piero’s voice grows cajoling, almost cloying. “And yet, he saw you. Come now, tell the truth.”
The running-before-the-storm feeling grows stronger. I nearly yelp when a heaviness squashes my hand. Leonardo. I glance down at our hands pressed together, then up to his face. He’s looking at me, too, face wide and frightened. His freckles are hidden in the darkness.
Those freckles are the only thing I want to draw. The wild confession surges to the tip of my tongue. I choke it back, appalled that my peach-fuzzy brain has decided now is the time to unearth this mortifying fact.
Leonardo’s tongue darts along his lips. They part, as if he wants to say something too.
Pulse spiking, I clap a hand over his mouth, shouting at him with my eyes.
Whatever it is can wait!
He sighs against my palm. It warms my skin—and somewhere deeper.
“I went to the holy waters to study it.” Soderini’s voice is an anguished whisper, as if he’s speaking against his will. “It felt like a true miracle, unlike the false ones you parade before us.”
Piero’s laugh holds no warmth. “How can you say that? My family is blessed with no angel of our own.”
“And yet, I have lived long enough to notice how their magic always tips fortune in your family’s favor. Why is that, Piero? You are hiding a secret from us, and I will find out what it is!”
The treasonous words congeal like a miasma, deadly and catching. I’d give anything to see the council members’ faces. Are they leaning away from their ninth member, as if he’ll poison them next? Or have they gone stone-still, too afraid to agree with their traitor in front of the Medici?
Piero makes a disappointed noise. “Thank you for your honesty.”
A ringing rasp of drawn steel. With a gasp, Soderini falls, blood fountaining from his throat. It’s a shocking dark red, spreading rapidly across the stone floor, pooling and racing along the cracks in the mortar.
Right under our table.
Leonardo flinches, only my hand over his mouth stifling his cry.
The blood seeps beneath the tablecloth, reaching for him.
He shudders closer to me, his panic a writhing, feral beast. All the man sitting closest to him has to do is cross his ankles, and he’ll find Leonardo.
Madonna santa, I thought he was jesting when he said he was afraid of blood!
Moving carefully, I wedge my body between him and the spreading puddle.
I grit my teeth as it soaks into my trousers, lukewarm and sticky.
The metallic scent swirls around my head, nauseating.
I nearly gag, tasting it with each breath.
I’m too close to the edge of the tablecloth, my smallest finger in the light.
If someone looked, they’d see me. One glance, and they’d slit our throats too.
Leonardo’s arm circles me, pulling me away from the damning sliver of daylight and against his side.
I close my eyes and hook my chin over his shoulder, willing myself to stay still while the blood seeps up my thigh.
He smells familiar, like the soap in Verrocchio’s house, the nutty musk of linseed oil from the workshop, and a scent all his own, skin-warm and sweet.
I inhale deeply, anchoring myself to the scent to crowd out the stink of blood, distract me from the fact that—dear God—the wetness is creeping up my waist now—
There’s a sharp pinch on my earlobe. My eyes fly open, a shock jolting down my spine.
Did he just bite me?
Leonardo’s mouth twists ruefully, confirming my suspicion that yes, he absolutely did, but he’s nodding toward the center of the room, his fingernails curling into my bicep.
Stay with this. Pay attention.
“Does anyone else have a complaint they’d like to share?” Piero de’ Medici sounds amused, of all things. As if he hasn’t just ordered his own guard to kill a man in cold blood. As if he hasn’t just violated one of the most sacred rules in our republic.
No one speaks up. A delighted clap rings out. “Perfetto,” Piero says. “This meeting is over. If anyone finds out more about the fountain incident, tell me and me alone.”
A murmur of assent goes around the room. Then the chairs boxing me and Leonardo slide backward. Footsteps grow fainter as the priori flee into the corridor. Leonardo moves away from me, unfurling his cramped legs with a long sigh. I clasp my arms around myself, cold without his warmth.
I’m about to crawl out from under the tablecloth when a hand appears inches from my face.
“What’s this?”
My pulse spikes. The hand is unlined, young. A beat too late, I recognize Lorenzo de’ Medici’s voice.
We’re not alone yet.
He picks something up. There’s a shhh of flipping paper. Copper floods my mouth.
It’s the ledger with Niccolo’s name. The one I dropped before the meeting started.
They know someone’s been in here.
“Leave it for the servants,” Piero barks.
Lorenzo’s voice grows surly. “What if someone was going through it for a reason—”
A whump of fist meeting wood. “I don’t care! What I care about is how you managed to lose the key the one and only time I left you here unaccompanied.”
I flinch, a wounded thing in my chest curling in on itself.
This isn’t your father, I remind myself.
This isn’t your problem. Even still, I can imagine Lorenzo’s gaze sliding to the side, his shoulders rising as if someone else’s disappointment is a physical thing he could protect himself from.
I almost feel bad that I have his missing key in my bedchamber.
Piero continues berating his son, voice a low hiss. “Did you not hear Soderini? If someone learns the truth about angels, it’s over for us.”
“It’s already happening,” Lorenzo hazards to say, proving himself braver than I ever was with my own father. “What about Verrocchio’s old angel? He attacked a boy. He tried to drink his blood. People aren’t stupid. That’s not the work of an angel; it’s the work of a—”
Lorenzo cuts off abruptly. As if someone put a hand over his mouth.
“Do not ever say what they are out loud. Do you understand?”
The silence is knife-sharp.
After an eon, Piero and Lorenzo de’ Medici finally leave, taking the book with Niccolo’s whereabouts with them.
The body of the slain prior is left oozing and abandoned.
I barely even notice his cooling blood anymore. My pulse is a jagged, cutting quiver.
If the old angel wasn’t an angel, then he must’ve been a—
We scramble out from under the table, shoulders bumping. Leonardo looks at Lupa and says it first, a whisper fringed with fear. “Demon.”
Lupa’s eyes smolder a dark, glinting gold. She presses into the corner and hisses.