But my Pope had sailed through it all: Parading some truly disgusting relics through the city (the severed heads of various apostles! Really, no one would ever want to be an apostle if they knew how their poor bodies would be hacked apart after death!). Washing the feet of twelve beggars all overcome at the honor they were receiving. Bestowing charity dowries on eighteen girls who should have been overcome at the honor they were receiving but were instead giggling at Rodrigo’s roguish winks. Nothing had assailed my Pope’s poise that week, not running out of palm branches on Palm Sunday, not Burchard’s horror when Rodrigo was too busy blowing a kiss at me to come in properly with the Alleluia on Holy Saturday, not even the tense moment when one of the Spanish generals refused to take a palm from the Pope’s hand because he was still furious that Juan Borgia had received all the credit for the recent battles. No, my Pope had sailed through it all, and from the gleam in his eye I could see he was now ready to celebrate. His hands on my bare shoulders were warmer than firelight.

I stood on tiptoe, reaching behind his head for the mask’s ties, but he caught my wrists. “Leave the masks,” he whispered, and the bull and the unicorn slid entwined to the floor of my chamber. The familiar heat burned between us, our bodies moving with long ease, our mouths drinking and clashing below the masks. That at least had not changed.

We even managed not to get our horns tangled up. How I hate it when that happens!

Rodrigo gave a bull’s growl as he helped me dress afterward, lacing up my gown. “You women! How do you manage all these fiddly little ties?” I straightened his horns for him, then sat before my glass to refasten the diamond roses that had come loose from my piled hair.

“I thought you might care to wear this.” He sounded faintly anxious, and I felt something cold drop between my breasts. Looking down, I saw a brooch in the shape of a massive diamond rose, matching the ones in my hair. “Pretty, eh? I knew it would suit you.”

I met his eyes in the glass, through the eye holes of my mask. Quite a confection, that mask; all white velvet and gold embroidery and tiny winking beads of rose quartz, and perhaps hiding my face made me blunt. “It’s beautiful, truly—but I don’t need jewels, Your Holiness.”

“But I want to give them to you.” His lips touched the back of my neck as he pinned the diamond rose at my bosom. “Weigh my unicorn down with diamonds and perhaps she won’t go dashing away again.”