I gave an even blacker scowl. “Nothing.” In truth, I frowned because otherwise I would be grinning like a loon. A grinning dwarf is such a comic sight. Even more comic is a dwarf who capers, dances, and carols love songs, and I felt like doing all three this morning, but I did none of them. I forced myself to scowl, planted my boots firmly, and locked my hands behind my back. “A private word, Your Eminence?”

“I am very busy this morning, as you well know.” Cesare frowned into a glass held up by one of his manservants, giving a twitch to his sword belt about his hips. The wedding festivities for the new Duke and Duchess of Bisceglie had run past dawn, and it was not yet anywhere near noon, but the Pope’s eldest son looked as bright-eyed as if he had slept the night through. His private chambers adjacent to the Holy Father’s were all a-bustle: pages running to fetch wine and sweetmeats, servants holding up doublets and pairs of hose for the young Cardinal’s inspection, squires hovering with basins and towels for shaving, and of course Michelotto blearily cleaning under his nails with a dagger. Cesare glanced at me as he dunked his hands in a basin of rosewater. “What is so important, little lion man?”

Giulia, I thought. Giulia is important. The only thing important on this earth. The warm fragrance of her, the golden ripple of her voice, her velvet mouth as she whispered my name in the darkness. I had been glad of the darkness last night, hardly wanting her to look on me no matter how much I ached for her—and I had felt the heat of her cheeks between my hands and realized she was blushing too. She was one of the most notorious names in Rome and I was one of the most feared, yet the pair of us came together shy as children. The dawn had brought her maids knocking on the chamber door, and me flying up from a sound sleep ready to scuttle under the bed. But Giulia had called through the door for the maids to go away for another hour, and then tossed a loop of her hair about me like a rope and tugged me back down to the pillow. Where we’d lain quietly, braiding our fingers together and unbraiding them again, as the light crept across the bed. By the time the sun reached my pillow I no longer wanted the dark, no longer wanted it anywhere around me or within me, and that was important.

But to Cesare Borgia none of that mattered, or ever would, and I pitied him.

“What hour will the ceremony be held?” I asked instead.

“Noon.” My master’s scarlet cloak and red hat lay across the wall bench, ready to be put on for the last time. After noon today, Cesare Borgia would be cardinal of the Church no longer.