Chapter Forty-Three
Lorenzo leads us through the palazzo, to a door hidden behind an especially gruesome hunting tapestry. My pulse stutters when he takes out a key hanging from a chain around his neck.
The skull-headed key’s little ruby eyes wink.
“It was so kind of you to bring this back.” Lorenzo unlocks the door. “It’s been hard to get in here and the painting studio without it.”
“Wouldn’t have been a problem at all if you weren’t so goddamn careless,” Piero hisses.
Lorenzo’s smirk falls, replaced with an icy calm that’s somehow worse.
The door opens silently into the dark room. Eerie green-gold light pulses to life inside at Piero’s first step. He glances over his shoulder with another impatient sigh when he sees us hesitating. “Do you want to know, or not?”
Leonardo’s hand lights on the small of my back. The single touch steels my courage.
It’s an art gallery, but I’ve seen all the paintings before.
I spin around the room, a waterfall roar in my ears. It’s all the portraits from the Palazzo della Signoria. There are even more of them here, so many, I can barely see the wall underneath.
They’re painted in the same style—a face-on portrait, from the shoulders up—but the expressions are a spectrum of emotions. Fear. Resolution. Joy. Most of the portraits are slashed, a single cut bisecting the frame.
“The portraits are essential.” Piero rights a crooked one with a single finger. “They serve as a tether that allows the demon to possess their human host by pushing out their soul. When it’s destroyed, the demon leaves the body.”
“Kills the host, you mean,” Leonardo corrects.
I grow still when one face leaps out from the sea.
Niccolo.
I brush my fingers along the canvas, the paint’s rough texture catching on my skin.
The portrait on either side of it has been slashed, but his remains whole.
It makes me want to tear it down from the wall.
Hide it in an iron-banded strongbox so no one can hurt it, even though a stranger dwells inside my brother.
“Your brother begged to become a host. I’ve never met someone so desperate to escape their life.”
A feeling like lightning splinters through me—the hot strike of surprise chased with burning pain. “Escape?”
You already know, an awful voice whispers. You’ve always known.
“The pressure of your father’s terrible deals seemed to be crushing your brother, but of course, you’d understand that more than me.
” Piero’s grin shows every single one of his teeth.
Like he knows he’s drawn my blood and revels in the taste of it.
“Forfeit your life to send your soul to heaven. A lie, of course, but a necessary one if Florence is to keep her magic.”
A disbelieving noise escapes me. I think of my brother’s red-rimmed eyes the day he trudged to me through the snow and told me he was leaving.
He thought he was leaving to die.
He chose to die rather than ask for help. To be honest with me.
And I wouldn’t hug him. Refused to say goodbye.
Now his soul is drifting in hell, lost for eternity.
I touch his face again, my fingers unsteady. Was he struggling that much? Was I such a selfish sibling that I couldn’t see it?
“That’s not true. Don’t listen to him.” Leonardo’s voice rings like a sword being pulled from a scabbard. “It wasn’t your fault, Virgil.”
Piero’s mouth pulls. “After your brother gave up his soul, a demon refused to possess him. It’s happened before, but there was always a flaw with the host. Nothing was obviously wrong with your brother, but I suppose there must be a hidden defect in your family.
” He notes my clenched jaw with a satisfied smirk.
“Your brother became a shell, an empty vessel who could remember nothing of his past, or even what he’d done the day before.
What use did we have a for a boy like that?
We almost killed him. But then we thought it would be useful to have an…
ally of sorts. After Soderini chose to spread his slander instead of keeping his mouth shut, we thought it best to replace him with someone more sympathetic to our family. ”
Leonardo’s arm wraps around my shoulder.
He pulls me to his side, his entire body quivering.
“Niccolo’s not an ally. An ally can disagree with you, fight back.
An ally is a person. You’re using a boy who lost his soul.
Who believes he is whoever you tell him he is.
Who can do your dirty work and never complain.
Why be a banker when you can be a king?” His fury picks up speed, a boulder crashing down a hill.
I feel his warmth pouring into me. “Why be a king when you can be God?”
Lorenzo flinches, his eyes flaring wide and darting to his father. Piero’s expression clouds over, his friendliness dropping like a mask. I hear a set of heavy footsteps approaching from the corridor.
“Can I interest you in a bargain?” The patriarch’s voice is as soft as smoke and twice as deadly.
I slide closer to Leonardo, hands fisted and shoulders raised. “I think we’ve made enough bargains.”
“I’m afraid it’s not a request. We need a new painter for the angelic bargains.” His chin dips to me. “And a new angel, since a workshop has so tragically lost one.”
A shadow slinks into the room. A guard, a body in his arms. He drops it at Piero’s feet. I flinch at the horrible thud. The corpse’s head lolls toward me, eyes vacant.
Bartolomeo Rucellai.
“I’m afraid my daughter-in-law didn’t pick a painter who could stomach the task.”
A foul taste swells up my throat. The wedding portrait commission was an audition.
A way for the Medici to admire a promising crop of younger artists without anyone knowing what dark prize awaited the winner.
Is Bartolomeo’s death our fault too? There’s a jagged feeling in my chest. A knife of panic and guilt that plunges deeper and deeper.
“I’ll give you three days. And if you can’t do it, like he couldn’t…” Piero nods toward Bartolomeo. His smile curves like a cutlass. “We’ll kill you both.”