Page 74 of A Dangerous Bargain

Yellow stone stacked fifteen feet tall. If I tilt my head back, I can just spy the merlons staggered at the very top.

A curious helmeted head peers down at me from between two of them.

Guards behind us, guards on top of the wall.

My jaw clenches so hard, I see stars.

There’s nowhere to go.

“Virgil.” Leonardo’s eyes dart all around. “What do we do?”

A sour taste floods my mouth. There’s nothing for us to do, but I can’t be the one to dash his hopes. It should only be me caught alone at the end. He wasn’t supposed to be here. This is why I pushed him away. Sodding hell, why can’t he ever listen?

The Medici guards draw closer, bellowing for help from the men above. I hear the shift and clink of armor. Their attention sharpens on us, hands going to blades. Leonardo gives a soft cry.

I knot my fingers fiercely through his and yank him closer, wishing with all of my wild, racing heart that I could stand between him and whatever’s next.

There’s a dash of gold along the rooftop.

I jerk up, but it’s gone.

Gold flashes again, right overhead. A scream pierces the night.

“Watch out!” Leonardo pushes me. A sword plummets to the spot I was just standing in.

Then something far larger thumps to the ground before us.

“Into my arms!” Lupa, her body alight with a green-gold glow. Her hair floats in an otherworldly breeze, the black of her pupils gone entirely in a gold haze.

The Medici guards stop, mouths hanging open. One of them drops to his knees and makes the sign of the cross.

“C’mon!” she shouts.

We throw our arms around her shoulders. Lupa starts running, not away from the approaching Medici guards, but toward them, the glow surrounding her getting brighter and brighter until I have to squint my eyes against it.

Most of the men cower, but one nocks an arrow to his crossbow. He levels it with the center of my chest. His finger twitches on the trigger.

Lupa leaps as the arrow twangs, lifting us up with her. The arrow passes under my feet.

And my feet don’t touch the ground again.

Wings arch from Lupa’s shoulder blades, a million golden filaments burning against the deep violet sky. They flare brighter with each downward stroke, showering little golden sparks on the red rooftops beneath us.

We’re flying.

The whole city falls away. I feel like I’m looking at one of Leonardo’s blueprints, an overwhelming whole broken down into its little details right at my fingertips. Terra-cotta roofs reduced to rectangles, steepled bell towers to marsh reeds.

The only thing taller than us now is the redbrick duomo. Lupa cants toward it, gaining more altitude.

“I’ve always dreamed of flying.” The stars gleam in Leonardo’s overbright eyes. He stretches out a hand, as if the distant lights are close enough to touch.

At least one of us is enjoying this. I cling to Lupa more tightly, feeling like my stomach might fall out of me with each wing stroke.

“You escaped and showed everyone your strange magic. They know you’re different now. This wasn’t worth the risk!” I say.

Lupa’s holding one of us in each arm. She turns her lips to my ear and my ear alone. “It was. It will be.”

Brunelleschi’s great red dome grows bigger and bigger. Catching a glimpse of the cathedral’s marble walls at the end of a street always felt to me like stumbling across a sleeping giant, yet it somehow seems even bigger from the sky. Huge white ribs hold up the thousands and thousands of bricks that compose the dome. An octagonal white marble lantern tower caps the dome’s very top, the highest point in all of Florence.