Page 92 of The Familiar

Valentina gasped and even Marius looked surprised.

“Are you done being frightening?” asked Santángel.

“I don’t know,” Don Víctor growled. “Are you sufficiently frightened, little nun?”

Luzia nodded.

“Then go.” He turned to Santángel. “And if she fails me, drown her in the lake.”

Don Víctor had dropped every pretense of civility, and that worried Luzia—not because the truth of him was any kind of surprise, but because something had changed. Was it the insult from the king? The end of the torneo? Or some new threat she couldn’t see coming?

Santángel herded her away from the others. “Tell me what he said to you last night.”

She resisted the urge to curl into the shelter of his black cloak. She couldn’t afford to be weak now. “He warned me away from you. He isn’t the first.”

“Has the Prince of Olives renewed his campaign against me?”

“Yes. As has Valentina. She says our children will have tails.”

“I can’t father children.”

“You can’t?”

“Luzia, don’t be foolish. If I could have given you a child, I never would have spent the night in your bed.”

She didn’t know what to say. Should she be glad? Grateful?

“Why do you look as if I’ve insulted you?” he asked. “That’s not a risk I would take with your reputation.”

Luzia had let herself get distracted. She didn’t know how much time she had before the trial began, and she didn’t want to think more on children or lost futures that were never meant to be.

“Did Don Víctor want Donadei as his champion?” she asked.

Santángel glanced at her, his expression unreadable. “Víctor had thoughts of building a menagerie, a collection of people like us. The torneo only added urgency to his intentions.”

“How many of them ended up in the Inquisition’s cells?”

“Too many.”

“Because of you?”

Now he stopped and turned to her. “What is it you think I’ve done?”

“I don’t know exactly. I only know I don’t want it to happen to me.”

“Some were frauds. Some had real power but no sense. Their own heretical talk drew the Inquisition’s attention. Víctor understood your potential for greatness well before I did. He believed you could win the torneo and offer him a path to a title.”

Luzia could see Donadei and Doña Beatriz waiting by the ruins of the old pier, but she wasn’t ready to think on alliances.

“You never finished the story,” she said. “Tell me now. Tell me the real ending for the cursed prince.”

Santángel watched her with his strange eyes. “For him to be free, a new bargain must be struck.”

“Is that why you flattered me and fucked me? So that I would love you? So that I would take your place in Víctor’s service?”

His laugh was low and bitter. “I never intended any of this. I didn’t want to want you.”

“You would bargain me away to him.”