His eyes widened thoughtfully over my hand at that. God rot him, he had no right to look so cool, not when my whole inside was bubbling panic. I’d been nothing but a whirl of fear since he confronted me, just after the French attack. Throwing my secret in my face, just to make me cringe. Because according to him, his wounds were all my doing.

“You’ve no cause to blame me,” I hissed. “I don’t care what you say, it was not my fault the French found us. It wasn’t my fault you had to go throwing yourself into some useless fight and nearly get killed, either. None of it was my fault, Leonello, and you’ve got no right to destroy me just because you want someone to blame—”

I heard myself babbling and clamped my teeth on my tongue. For a second I could taste splinters, wood splinters and old blood—that would be the last thing I tasted, if an executioner ever drew my tongue out on the block to slice it off, with my hands to follow for the sin of robbing an altar. Sweet Santa Marta save me. Because Leonello was looking at me with no pity at all, no pity and no forgiveness either. I hadn’t known the French advance would be staking out the road we’d taken, but the only reason we’d taken that road at all was that I was desperate to avoid a fellow traveler in Capodimonte who had recognized me from my girlhood in Venice. I’d spun a web of lies to persuade Madonna Giulia to change course the next day, and we’d ridden straight into the French advance, and Leonello to his wounds and nearly his death.

Not my fault, I told myself. I’d robbed a convent and broken my vows as a nun; those sins I was entirely guilty of committing—but it was not my fault Leonello was wrapped in all these bloodied bandages.

“So believe me,” I snarled, gulping down my fear, “I know you can ruin me, little man. You can see to it I lose my hands and my tongue, and I might as well be dead after that because a cook isn’t much good without hands and a tongue. But I can ruin you, too.”

A gamble. Sweet Santa Marta, it was a gamble, but it was the only one I had.

“Now you know what I am,” I went on. “And if you turn me in, I’ll tell them you knew from the beginning. Knew that I was a desecrator, knew it for years, and didn’t do anything—and that makes you as guilty as me. They’ll chop your hands and nose off, too, and I don’t see you making a living throwing your knives unless you’ve got hands to throw them with.”