Page 88 of A Dangerous Bargain

I don’t know what to do about Niccolo. He’s gone, but he’s here. He’s soulless, but alive. I found him, but he’s never felt further away. I can’t leave him here, but I don’t know how to save him.

I don’t know if it’s possible.

Leonardo’s fingers lace through mine. His pulse gallops in the hollow of his throat. “You know what would happen next. The Medici would find another unsuspecting painter to lock up. They’d find more desperate, innocent people to agree to end their lives and be possessed by demons. More people would make bargains. More people would die. I can’t let that happen. My mother, your brother, Bartolomeo. How many more people will suffer? I can’t run away from this now that I know the truth.”

Panic lunges in me, a frightened, snapping dog. He can’t ask me to leave him here. I won’t. “If we escaped, we could get help. Tell people what’s going on—”

“You said it yourself. Who would believe us over the Medici?”

Rage seethes through me, a bruising, wild river of it. I shouldn’t be angry at him—none of this is his fault—but I’ve been so angry for so long, I don’t know how to feel anything else.

“So that’s it? You’re just going to give up?”

His warm lips brush across my frigid knuckles. “It’s not giving up.”

I rip away from him, even though it feels like sinking a knife into my own skin. “You should do it, then.”

“Do what?”

“Paint me.”

His umber eyes pierce me, drawing the air from the room. “No.”

“Yes. I was never going to survive this year anyway.”

If Leonardo does what they demand—if he paints this one portrait—it might buy him the time he needs to come up with a way to tear it all down forever. The Medici only have need of one artist, and it’s not me. I’m a spare, a body good for filling up with something more useful.

But not to Leonardo. Never to him.

A spasm shakes his body. “I won’t end your life.”

Why can’t he see the obvious? I’ve been waiting for this moment the entire year. “Then someone else will soon!”

He makes a soft, furious noise and shoves me.

I fall back on the pallet, gaping at his blazing face. The dying sunlight has caught in his hair, spinning it all to glorious fire.

“You can’t ask me to take a life. Especially not yours.”

“It’s the only way to save yourself and end this—”

“Then after, I’ll do what? Live a life without you?” His breath is ragged, stirring up flurries of golden dust motes. The hand pinning me down is a brand, a stone, a cathedral over my heart.

“I thought you wanted to end the age of angels and magic?” Can he feel how I’m shaking? “I’m giving you the chance to do it.”

As abruptly as it swept over him, the anger clears. Disappears into some distant part of him I’ve never seen before. He yanks me up roughly. “I need to show you something.” He drags me to the worktable, flipping open one of the leather folders and gesturing for me to look.

I make eye contact with a sketch of my own face.

It’s not the sort of image anyone would want in their house, certainly not one they’d commission. My brow is furrowed, expression angry, a paintbrush clamped betwixt my teeth.

“That’s from when you were doing the Strozzi commission,” he says. “You were fighting with the canvas the entire time.”

I trail my fingers over the feverish lines of my face. Each one is rendered in exquisite, loving detail. It’s like someone saw past my skin to the soul beneath.

His hand is a torch against my back. “Keep looking.”

The folder is filled with drawings of me. At work, at the dining table, alone in my window overlooking the garden. There’s even one of me holding up Giorgio’s phallic apples.