Page 48 of A Dangerous Bargain

“As you’ve noticed many, many times, I find it hard to draw when I’m asked to.” He glances aside, turmoil in his eyes. For one heart-stopping second, I think he’s going to bring up the almost kiss. “I… don’t think my mind works like other people’s.”

What an odd thing to say. “What do you mean?”

“When I’m assigned a project, I can’t work on it, no matter how much I want to. There needs to be a pressure—a deadline or a person—to force me to do the work. Sometimes even that doesn’t help. I get sucked into a new idea, and I can’t climb out of it. Here, come look at this.”

He stands abruptly, paint-sticky fingers dragging me along to the worktable. He fans a series of strange blueprints across it, hidden beneath everything else. They’re… wagons? Wagons with wings?

“Flying machines,” he says. “Verrocchio told me to come up with ideas for a church fresco, and I spent the entire day doing this instead.”

The blueprints are incredibly detailed and involve an upsetting amount of math. I trace my fingers over the lines, feeling timid and tongue-tied. This glimpse into Leonardo’s rich, frenetic mind feels like a gift I don’t deserve. “They’re good. You should keep working on them.”

He laughs again, the sound bitter. “Sure. Until they put me behind on my next deadline and Verrocchio’s glaring at me again.” He shoves the blueprints away roughly. I want to say that I’d like to look at them for longer, but I’m not sure I’ve earned the right to. A cold feeling trickles down my back.

Leonardo says Verrocchio chides him for not doing what he’s supposed to be doing, but I’ve done the same.

“My stepmother told me the way my mind worked was a gift, and it would take me far in life. But after four years here… I’m not so sure it’s true.” He tips his head toward the lofted ceiling. “There’s so much I want to do and not even time to do it all. Perhaps I should’ve just picked one thing and stuck to it.”

I hate the uncertainty in his voice. I want to tear it out and stomp on it.

“I love how your mind works.” Oh no. Did I just say I loved him?

I keep talking before the embarrassment can catch up, before it leads me to make a joke or self-deprecating comment that undercuts what I want him to know. “I’m sorry if I made you feel smaller.” I think of how long it takes words to make sense when I read. How sometimes I can’t make them make sense at all. Father screaming at me that no son of his would be illiterate, me crying back that I wasn’t, but I needed more time to do it.

“What makes you different is what makes your work so good. If other people can’t see that, to hell with them.” I make a rude gesture, and he laughs. “If you opened a flying-machine workshop, I’d be your first patron.”

I never will—I’d be gone by then—but he doesn’t need to know that.

“I know you will.” He smiles. The soft caress on the back of my hand could be an accident, but I know it’s not. “I can’t promise they’ll work, though. You might condemn yourself to a painful death.”

“Better death by flying machine than by Medici.”

A realization comes over me—not a new one, but one I’m immediately, excruciatingly aware of. The feeling of standing too close to the fire and not knowing until you’re already scorched.

I have a thing for Leonardo.

For his cunning, quick brain that moves so fast, I can barely keep up.

Sure, yes, the rest of him too—I have eyes, I was trained to appreciate a good aesthetic—but this: him stripped down and vulnerable, that shy smile lighting up those goddamn freckles like flecks of gold—it fills my chest with such a big bright feeling, I could burst.

God, no wonder I was ready to kiss him.

How did I ever think it was jealousy that made my heart riot when his dark gaze brushed mine? That I couldn’t stop thinking about him because he was my rival? He hasn’t been for ages. Perhaps he never was.

There’s a whole, secret world in him, and even though it’s a terrible idea, I want to explore every inch of it. I wet my lips and lean forward.

“Leo—”

“Yes?” He’s never said anything faster.

My hand travels the space I put between us, reaching for his. Our fingertips collide—

A scream shatters the silence.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The scream comes from Lupa’s corner. She thrashes, grappling with a dark, hooded figure. They careen into the storage cupboards. Pigments and brushes rain to the floor.

She screams again. This one has an unearthly deep note underneath it that rings my head like a bell. Leonardo claps his hands over his ears and sinks to his knees. The scream fills up my skull, throbs in the spaces between my bones. An agonized moan slides past my lips, then I’m slipping to the floor myself.