Chapter Forty-Five
I mix together my blood and the paints.
Then I lift a brush to the canvas and start.
The Medici didn’t tell us how a portrait tethers a demon and a human, but they didn’t have to. Their forearms are bare, unmarked. Lorenzo and Piero have never made a bargain in their entire lives. I’ve made dozens and dozens of them. Blood, a whispered wish.
Then, a bargain.
My very last one.
Leonardo can argue with me all he wants, but I know in my bones this is what I’m meant to do. I wish I didn’t have to go, but dying to save someone I love feels like a fair trade. The period on a life well lived. The sort of end I can be proud of.
I’m painting for the first time in months with no inhibitions, no worries about what anyone else thinks. Fiery colors for the sky. Almost black for the trees. Two figures in the foreground, but not the ones you’d expect.
I pray Lupa is on the other side, waiting for me like she promised.
We can’t defeat the Medici here. They’re so certain they’ve already won.
They banished Lupa and locked us in their highest tower and carried on with their days of wedding festivities like nothing had happened.
Another ordinary day of destroying other peoples’ lives to shore up their own power and might.
If I can get to hell, perhaps I can stop this. Lupa gave me everything I needed to bring myself there; there must be a reason why. There must still be a chance, or my heart wouldn’t pound so fiercely.
My whole life, I wanted something that was just mine, except I kept letting other people tell me what that was. I cared too much about what they thought, learned to hide from my own wanting heart.
I know what I want now.
When I’m almost done, I walk over to Leonardo and smooth his hair from his face. Press a soft kiss to his temple. He’ll remember me forever, I know he will. It was wrong of me to think he wouldn’t. One day I hope he understands why I had to do it. I hope he knows I never, ever wanted to leave him.
“Please don’t be too mad at me, caro.”
I sit on my knees before the still-dripping painting.
Gray city walls beneath a red sky. A snarled black forest clawing at its edges. Two boys stand before a gate in the very center, so similar-looking, they can only be brothers.
I uncork the vial of Lupa’s blood and tip my finger in gold. Trace a heart-shaped scar on one of the boy’s faces. Linger there even as ichor bleeds down the surface.
Then I swallow back my fear and speak my last words. “Take me to hell.”