Page 32 of A Dangerous Bargain

I promised I wouldn’t lie to him anymore, but if I had known his past, I never would’ve asked him to help me. Losing a beloved parent is awful—but losing his only sibling as well? Niccolo’s disappearance was soul-rending. Trying to imagine life without Giovannia and Elisabetta makes my eyes burn. My siblings shaped the best parts of me. Without them, I’d be a lifeless lump of clay.

I never suspected Leonardo and I were both broken in the same places.

“I’m so sorry that happened.” My voice catches. “And I’m sorry I kept telling you to make bargains.”

He shrugs again. “You didn’t know. I never trusted the angels enough to make a bargain, so at least some good came from it.”

“You don’t have to find the silver lining in something so terrible!”

At my sharp tone, his eyes fly open. “Virgil. Looking for the silver lining is what I do best. Life is too unbearable if we linger on the sorrow of it.” He tips his head and smirks just a little, as if to suggest I could learn from him.

Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Brooding is the respectable, honorable birthright of every artist. I scoff, but there’s nothing behind the sound. We’re Virgil-and-Leonardo, and this is how I’m supposed to react. If sadness is a place he doesn’t want to visit, I won’t make him sit there with me.

There’s a sudden, dazzling burst of light. My arm flies up over my face, but the burning glare vanishes as quickly as it arrived.

“Lupa!” For fuck’s sake, how long has she been there eavesdropping? “You’re not supposed—”

The angel cuts me off. She doesn’t even look at me. All her words are for Leonardo. “If I convince you I won’t hurt people, will you help Virgil?”

Leonardo gapes. He startled so hard, his half-eaten focaccia went flying. Pigeons swarm on it—the cyclone of noise and feathers enough to drive everyone else away.

“I—yes?” His eyes slide toward mine helplessly. “Is that why you dragged me out here? You didn’t want to search the palazzo alone?”

A blush bolts across my cheeks. Why is it so hard for me to say what I want? “If—if you want to help, then sure—”

“Great.” Lupa snaps her fingers. An invisible hand pushes me upright, so strong, I nearly topple forward. “Come with me, then.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Lupa parades through the Florentine streets like a queen, Leonardo and me trailing after her. Two bumbling, bickering attendants.

“Why is she taking us to the apothecary?” Leonardo says when we go north of the duomo. “You already got the pigments this week.”

My insides tense when we pass people holding camphor-drenched rags to their noses and mouths. “We’re not picking up pigments.”

We’re going back to the scene of the angry mob.

This time, when the people turn toward us, their eyes slide over Lupa and settle hungrily on me and Leonardo. I give away the last of my focaccia to the first child who begs for it, but my fine clothes still scream wealthy outsider!

I keep one hand on the knife at my belt. I barely know how to use it, but after Lupa startled me, I didn’t want to be caught off guard and unarmed again.

The dirty piazza is nearly the same as before, except more crowded. People coughing on one another, breathing in the same rank air full of pestilence. I cover my mouth and nose with my hand to avoid inhaling the miasma.

Leonardo doesn’t bother. “I’m not certain disease is caused by miasma, you know.”

“We’ll see if you still feel that way when you start choking on your snot.”

A crowd gathers around the cracked fountain, filling up their buckets. Leonardo’s nose scrunches at the green algae staining the white marble basin. “Are people really supposed to drink that?”

The water has a yellow tinge to it. “I think this is all they have.”

The mob wasn’t wrong to be angry with me before; I just didn’t want to be their scapegoat. The Medici threaten to take my family’s house, but how much more have they taken from these people, who have so much less to begin with? People forced to work for long hours and low wages in foul conditions? Florence is a republic, but the Medici might as well be kings.

“Come!” Lupa muscles to the fountain’s edge. The crowd parts for her easily, their attention sluicing off her like water from glass. She must be using magic to make herself unnoticed.

The same can’t be said for me and Leonardo.

“Come to gawk at us—”