My eyes hunted behind him for a weapon. More casks, more cups. A spiderweb. I couldn’t attack the Pope’s son, I knew that, I knew it—if I did, I’d be as dead as that guest at the masquerade who had ended up hanging from the loggia. But I wanted my favorite kitchen knife. I wanted it so badly I could feel the weight of the hilt in my hand, almost see the comforting gleam of the sharp edge. Because I didn’t think the Pope’s son would be satisfied with a poke and a fumble, not tonight. There was a strange glassy gleam in his eyes that wasn’t wine, and he padded toward me with a soft-footed prowl utterly unlike his usual posing swagger.

“I’ve never fucked a giraffe,” he remarked, and raised his arm to hit me again. I ducked his fist this time and ran for the doors again, so stupid because the guardsman stood in my way with folded arms, but I couldn’t stop myself from fleeing the Duke of Gandia in a raw surge of panic. I rebounded off the guard’s hard shoulder, and then I felt the Duke’s hand in my hair, jerking me back. I staggered into a branch of candles, knocking it flying. It tumbled into Juan Borgia, and I hoped it would set him on fire, but it didn’t; it just doused him in hot wax, and I heard him yell in surprise. A giggle of pure hysteria burst out of me to see the Duke of Gandia, the Gonfalonier of the papal forces, the Pope’s beloved son, covered in hot wax like a message case.

Stupid of me, so stupid of me to laugh.

“Bitch!” he howled, and when he began hitting me again I couldn’t duck this time. The guardsman came forward, stone-faced, holding me in place like a piece of furniture as Juan Borgia rained blows on my head and my ears rang like a kettle. “Down on the table,” I dimly heard him snarl, and I felt myself being lifted, slammed down on a hard surface. Don’t fight, I thought disjointedly, don’t fight him—my head cracked against the trestle boards, and I couldn’t help crying out. “Shut the bitch up,” Juan snarled. I could hardly focus my swimming eyes, but I could see him coming toward me with that terrifying prowl again, and everything in my blood shrieked warning. I didn’t even know I was moving until I got an arm free and lunged.

“You scratched me.” Juan sounded shocked, sincerely shocked, and I felt the strange hysterical urge to giggle again. If I hadn’t been bleeding from the nose and mouth by this time, leaking tears from the eyes, my ears ringing and my skin crawling with more raw wailing terror than I’d ever felt in my life.