Page 67 of A Dangerous Bargain

“You’ll look good,” Giovannia said as she helped me get ready this afternoon. “You’ll look like you belong.”

Except I don’t want to look like I belong to the Medici’s glittering, rotting world. In these fine clothes, I’m a version of Virgil who never discovered art, who never insisted on bucking my family’s expectations to work in an artist’s workshop.

I don’t look like the boy who fell for Leonardo da Vinci and broke his heart.

Even though I’m not here for Leonardo—even though he’d better not be here for me—I can’t help pushing up on my toes to scan the crowd for him. Did he finish the wedding portrait? Did Verrocchio have him hire a horse and cart to bring it over this morning? What did he think of all the grandeur?

“Your invitation, signore,” the Medici herald says. The two-story garden doors are carved with images of Proserpina. Torches burn inside, beckoning like crooked fingers.

Niccolo’s already inside. Three more steps, and I’ll be there too.

I swallow and pull out the gilded paper. “Of course.”

The herald frowns at the guest name. “Isn’t he…?” He trails off, doubtlessly unable to find a tactful way to say about three inches from death without being rude. My family might be too poor to make the Medici’s guest list, but Giovannia’s ancient would-be fiancé isn’t.

“Yes. I’m his nephew. We have the same name.”

People scowl and mutter behind me, sullen about what’s taking so long. A guard whistles and makes a hurry up gesture.

The herald sighs, finally giving in to my plan. “Welcome, signore.”

Two guards search me next. One frowns when he upends my empty sword scabbard and out falls a rolled-up paper. “What’s this?”

The paper unfurls. The foxes look at me from the gravel path, a smaller one tucked into the bigger one’s side. I snatch them up before anyone steps on them. “My sister must’ve hidden it there.”

It was my first commissioned artwork. Niccolo bought it with a single coin. When I presented it to him, he hugged me to his side and whispered, “You’re a real artist now, aren’t you?”

It was the first time someone else wanted my art. The first time anyone stuck a name to what I could become. If this drawing can’t get my brother to remember me, if it can’t spark knowing in his distant soul, then nothing else will.

The guards shrug and motion me through the doors at last.

The courtyard garden is all a delightful fantasy. Vining roses wrap around delicate lattices and box hedges. Rearing lions and unicorns flank the paths, cut with such precision, I touch one just to be sure it’s greenery and not another magicked object. Exquisite marble statues line the paths—prophets and kings and saints—who bow and usher guests deeper into the courtyard. Even the torches seem to glow brighter, little pops of gold and silver fizzing from them like bubbles in a pale gold wine.

Keep your mouth shut, I remind myself. Don’t gape like a bumpkin.

This could be straight from a fairy tale, a dream. I grew up wealthy, but not like this.

I spot Niccolo in the crowd. He’s deep in conversation with a man whose back is to me. My brother’s wedding finery is black and gold, just like mine.

I tug my doublet’s collar, the skin too hot beneath it. My brain insists it’s a coincidence, but my heart whispers it’s a sign. A hidden thread connecting us, one waiting for me to make obvious to him once more. The drawing of the fox burns like an ember at my side.

I take a step closer, then another.

The person talking to Niccolo turns.

And I freeze.

Lorenzo de’ Medici.

The groom’s dark eyes scan the room, as if searching for a threat. Pulse kicking into a higher tempo, I duck behind a lemon tree before he sees me.

“And you, signore.” An older man with salt-and-pepper hair turns to me. A sapphire winks on every single one of his fingers, a gorgeous woman is under his arm. She’s decades younger than him and so attentive, she must be a courtesan. “Do you make your gold from banking or commerce or”—he runs his hands up the woman’s backside—“flesh?”

Gesù Cristo! I just bathed, but watching this man makes me feel like I need to scrub dirt off my skin again.

A silk-clad arm slithers around my neck. “Painting.” Bartolomeo Rucellai grins. His dark blue wedding finery is working hard to make him look like a handsome young man and not a pile of rats in expensive brocade. “He’s also a painter, Zio. The Pitti one.”

His uncle? Splendid. I bet he heard everything about me snogging Bartolomeo as a boy.