Chapter Fifty-Seven
Lorenzo de’ Medici.
Deep burgundy stains his white wedding tunic. One of the sleeves is missing, torn off completely. Scarlet weeps down his thigh from a cut, and the hand that holds the slick dagger trembles.
It falls with a clatter. “You were dead.”
I spit out a mouthful of blood. “Not anymore.”
But perhaps soon again.
Crimson pours from my side in a dark rush, a thick, pulsing hurt. There’s a high keening in my head, the terrified animal instinct of wanting to save myself and fearing it’s too late.
I have to believe it’s not. I have to keep going. I need to see my brother again and have him recognize me.
Leonardo grabs my shoulders and shakes. “Why didn’t you listen?”
I cup his face with a bloodied hand, even though the movement sets all my nerves on fire. “One of us had to do it.”
Better me than him.
There’s a soft, disgusted sigh. Then Lorenzo flies across the room.
He slams into the wall, one hand clutching his throat.
Piero de’ Medici erupts from his throne-like chair, stomping over to where his son is pinned against the wall with a scolding finger and a snarl. “You said you took care of them!”
Lorenzo winces, then gasps, finally able to breathe again. “I carried the boy’s body to the chapel myself. The demons were attacking. I thought it would be enough—”
Piero scoffs and twists his hand. Lorenzo jolts up on his toes, both hands ringed around his neck. He gasps, the sound cut off with a sputter. As if a noose has slipped around his neck and all it takes is a single tug to strangle him.
“I told you to kill them both when the demons attacked. Does this look like enough to you?” Piero demands.
Compared to his bedraggled son, the Medici patriarch looks well.
His fine clothes are spotless, his hands steady.
The only sign he bears of the siege assailing his city is a single scabbed-over cut under his eye.
Piero makes another motion, and the toes of his son’s boots scrape against the floor.
He slowly rotates Lorenzo to face Leonardo and me.
“Do they look dead to you?” Piero unfurls his hands, and Lorenzo stumbles to his knees.
“I’ll do better next time,” he pants. “I swear it.”
I stare at Piero, hands pressed to my wound. Warm rivulets trickle through my fingers.
He still has his devil’s magic.
But the portrait behind me is slashed. I destroyed it. His magic should be gone.
“You’re not Piero de’ Medici anymore, are you?” I say.
The old man smirks, a gleam shining predator-slick behind his pupils.
“I don’t need a portal. Each Medici was foolish enough to let my magic inside them deeper and deeper for the promise of more power.
I possess this body entirely now.” He examines his hands, the lines and wrinkles on them, grimacing.
There’s a wash of crimson over the skin, and they vanish.
Red lingers in his eyes now, no longer hidden but two sweltering coals.
They burn right through me, a brand on my soul, black and spreading and more terrible than any nightmare.
We were too late.
The devil’s here already.
And he’s going to destroy everything and everyone I care for.
Piero snaps his fingers. One after another, demons land on the sills outside each window. They press their monstrous faces to the glass, all gnashing teeth and too many eyes.
An invisible force drags Leonardo to the closest one.
He twists sideways, his frantic breaths fogging the windowpane.
The demon mirrors the position, cheek to cheek with him if not for the barrier.
Long strings of drool drip from its double-hinged jaws to puddle on the frame outside.
The window starts to sizzle. A sharp, acrid scent fills the air.
“How would you like to see him die?” Piero taps his chin. “I’m partial to dismemberment myself, but I’d hate to ruin the room.”
My vision pulses with heat, each beat in time with the agonizing throb in my side.
I’ve never wanted to kill someone before.
I don’t like the feeling—a tangle of rage and desperation too big for my body. It feels choking, overwhelming. All the worst parts of me eclipsing everything else.
The devil smirks, his face a decade younger than before. The cut on his face starts weeping a dark, deep gold. “Ah, there’s your darkness. Not so courageous without your demon friend, are you?”
I scoff, and even though ’tis hell, even though every movement screams with pain, I stagger upright and turn to the only person who can possibly still make a difference.
Lorenzo’s face goes pale. He runs, plucking his dagger from the floor, knuckles white on the grip—
I raise my hands. “Wait.”
I’m wounded, weaponless, out of ideas. I have nothing except the wild, furious rush of blood under my skin, a reminder of my second chance, my second life.
“You don’t have to be like him,” I say softly. “You can be someone else. Someone better.”
I haven’t forgotten how Lorenzo stood behind his father’s chair like a servant.
Piero’s careless cruelty. It reminds me of my own father, how his voice boomed like God’s, listing out all my failures and shortcomings.
How my brother always reassured me that he was wrong.
How I didn’t always believe him. The worst things someone says about you are the words that linger, the ones that gnaw after midnight.
I don’t know if Lorenzo has ever had someone stand beside him in the darkness.
But I’ll try now. He should have a chance to change. I don’t know if he deserves it, but I didn’t believe I deserved one either.
Lorenzo squares his jaw and glances out to the window. The demons glare back, their red eyes smoldering through the mist.
“He’s gone,” Leonardo whispers. “You know it.”
If this doesn’t work, nothing else will. My brother will be trapped in hell forever. Florence will drown.
Lorenzo’s eyes lift. Cut to mine.
He lifts his hand. Sends something sailing across the room.
Feeling like my heart might explode, I catch it.
The dagger.
Pain is a crushing, wailing force, threatening to gut me, but I grit my teeth and heave forward, my gaze tunneling to the metallic blood on Piero’s face.
I plunge the dagger up into his belly with all my might.
He shudders, just as the old angel shuddered when Verrocchio’s sword ran him through. I remember how my magic faded the moment those hungry, haunted eyes went dark. The demon inside the workshop’s angel might’ve been immortal, but the body he possessed on earth wasn’t.
The devil’s eyes bulge wide. He slumps to his knees, pink bubbles frothing from his shocked mouth. He covers my shaking, blood-soaked hands with his and starts pulling the dagger from his body. The edges of the wound start to close—
Another force slams behind me, adds strength to my cause.
Leonardo pants in my ear, his body a furnace against my freezing back. “I can’t believe Verrocchio’s sodding morning lessons were useful!”
Together, we thrust the dagger deeper, higher.
And with a final spurt of blood, Piero falls against me.
Leonardo pulls me away, and Piero collapses face-first on the floor with a wet crunch.
The demons howl. One by one, they disappear in a scarlet blur. The roar of the storm becomes a growl, even if the oppressive sky remains. I hear hysterical footsteps race past and fade. Lorenzo fleeing.
Leonardo makes an awful, wounded sound. He gathers my broken body in his arms.
I murmur softly—the syllables of his name coming out scrambled—and brush his thigh, the only part of him I can reach. The edges of my vision wave and dance. “Find my brother.”
“No!” He presses his brow against mine. “You’ll find him yourself!”
I let myself hang heavy in his arms. He can believe whatever he wants, but the feeling in my hands and feet is already gone, the spreading numbness a dark shroud pulling over my sight. The warmth of him is a rocking boat, one to carry me into the afterlife.
I think I hear him begging someone.
A flare of light burns through my eyelids right as I’m about to tip over the edge of consciousness. I jolt back from the cliff with a pained moan.
“Leonardo da Vinci. I’ve come to honor my bargain with you.”
That voice.
I know it.
The room is noon-bright, all the light coming from a figure that radiates gold power.
Lupa.
Gone are the horns, the bloodied armor. The face she wears is the one she had when I met her, the stolen girl’s. Maddalena. The thought is a hazy dust mote. Someone needs to tell her family what happened.
Leonardo runs his hand over the black mark on his wrist, each breath a ragged pant. “I didn’t think you’d come. I thought you’d already done it.”
She bows her head, like an artist before an angel, begging for magic. “I gave Virgil his soul back before. Now I’m here for your bargain.”
The one he wouldn’t tell me about.
I gasp, iron thick in my mouth.
Lupa’s burning gaze flickers, almost guilty. “You remember the price, do you not?”
Leonardo shudders. He cradles me closer, sweeps the matted hair from my brow with a long, lingering touch. “Yes. The memory of the person I love for their life.”
I don’t understand for a moment.
And then I do.
A blow of anguish follows the knowing, cutting deeper than my mortal wound. “You’ll forget me.”
He kisses my brow fiercely, making a broken noise that I feel everywhere. “Yes, but you’ll live.”
I comforted myself imagining his future, a glorious long life without me.
Never for a single moment did I consider living without him.
I’m not ready for it. What if I let this final gift of his sail past me? What if I don’t make enough of it?
A cough punches through me—and something in my side crumples.
I twist, gasping for air. The sounds and smells of the room fade.
Charred linen, the soft low keen of my name over and over again, a wonderfully hot hand on my cold face.
I want to catch those longer fingers in mine, press the heat closer, but I can’t move.
“I can’t feel his pulse!” The voice is frantic, near. But still so distant, it could be the wind whispering through the empty workshop. I reach toward it, a golden ribbon in the dark, but it slips through my fingers.
“Give him to me.”
A mouth bruises my throat, a rose-sharp kiss. I gasp at the pain of it. “If you find a human who doesn’t mind…” I feel a smile on my skin. “Don’t forget about the second vial.”