Page 6 of A Dangerous Bargain

The cursed millipede dog swims before me. The first bargain I made after my brother left was a decade of my life for a sense of when a painting was going wrong. The staggering price should’ve frightened me—when I told Verrocchio, he had to sit down—but instead, it felt like freedom. Art always takes something from its maker. Your time, your eyesight, a piece of your heart—why not give it ten years instead? At least then I’d know exactly what I was losing.

“Virgil,” Leonardo says, not looking at me. “What happens to the bargains you make with an angel when he dies instead of going back to heaven?”

Every black mark on my skin burns like a bargain newly struck. I inhale sharply, the horrible truth worming through my veins. Human life keeps the angels alive, but Verrocchio’s angel was killed. Which means—

All the magic, all the power I bartered away my life for, is gone.

CHAPTER THREE

I stand outside my family home and feel like a stranger.

Casa delle Volpi looks no different from any other of the merchants’ houses save for the pair of marble foxes bracketing the front stairs. I place my hand on one of their heads, thumb brushing the familiar chip in its ear.

Verrocchio gave everyone the week off. I’m not the only artist who’s missing his magic, and he saw no point asking people to work when it would take twice as long and be half as good. Most of the other apprentices have gone to visit family for the unexpected holiday—even poor Giorgio found someone to take him to his nonna’s house—but I stayed behind, until it was time for me to visit the bank.

“Fret not,” Verrocchio said as I left. “We’ll get a new angel soon, and then we’ll all redo our bargains, and everything will go back the way it was.”

When I hear the soft sounds of life from inside Casa delle Volpi, I sigh and trudge to the door. The sooner I go in, the sooner the nerves twisting in my belly will disappear.

“My boy.” I’m greeted by my mother’s camphor-scented embrace. Her too-powerful perfume hits me like a gut punch. I hug her back and breathe through my mouth.

“Hi, Mamma.”

She holds me out at arm’s length, frowning at the paint on my skin. “Could you not have scrubbed this off before you came?”

I flex my stained fingers. “Still worried about what the neighbors think?”

She scoffs and lets me go. One son disappearing was bad enough—but then the one left is an artist? Mamma has never gotten over the scandal of it, as if I chose my career on purpose to annoy her. As if we both don’t know the real reason why a wealthy merchant’s son left home at thirteen for a tradesman’s apprenticeship across the river.

Mamma spots my gift. “What’s that?”

“I stopped by the flower stall on the Ponte Vecchio.”

One of her dark eyebrows rises. “And you bought stinging nettles?”

Feeling nettle-stung myself, I fling the plants onto a sideboard. In truth, they were the only thing I could afford, and it felt rude to show up empty-handed. “I thought the cook could use them. Elisabetta likes nettles.” I hate how defensive I sound. Coming home always turns me into the worst version of myself. Perhaps I should step out and come back in. Start on a fresh page like this visit is a sketch I’ve already botched beyond saving.

Mamma’s smile glitters. “Of course. How practical. I have something for you, as well.”

She leaves me under the foyer’s three monstrous, overbearing portraits, all of them Niccolo Pitti, because either my father was cursed by a primordial deity on a trading trip to name all his sons after himself, or because nine months was somehow not enough time for him to come up with another boy’s name.

My father’s portrait is the biggest: a glaring, gray-bearded man. He was old before he married my mother and older still when I was born. He died when I was fourteen.

The second portrait is my brother, Niccolo. My sight goes fuzzy when it passes over it.

Last, and smallest, is the portrait of me.

I was in the throes of puberty when it was painted, and dear God, does it show. My face is entirely round, a burst of pimples scattered across my forehead that the painter tried and failed to transform into charming freckles. I’d begged Father not to make me sit for him. I wasn’t daft. I knew what the girls were giggling about when I was forced to dance with them. I didn’t want a record of the ugliest, most insecure period of my life hanging where everyone could see it. Father had laughed and said it was his house and he could do as he pleased with it. I’ve since grown into my looks, but I’ve never been able to fill the part of me he hollowed out.

Mamma returns in swirl of crimson brocade. “Your father’s solicitor stopped by. He’s done up the papers for you.”

I whip toward her with a skeptical, narrow-eyed look. “What papers?”

Mamma’s eyebrows lift. “Shall I read them to you?”

The implication that I’ll take forever to read them myself—even though it’s true—stings worse than the nettles. I take the stack and slowly leaf through them until three things become clear. The word “marriage,” Giovannia’s name, and a rich old man I vaguely remember nodding off at my father’s parties.

“An ancient man wants to make a bride of my baby sister? Absolutely not!”