I thought my hands would be trembling if I ever said those words. I thought my heart would be racing, my palms sweating and my words cracking from a dry throat. But I felt nothing, sitting there with my boots propped on a table and my head tilted back to look Cesare Borgia in the eye—nothing, that is, but excitement.

“The odd thing is,” I added, “I don’t know how you did it. At least one of those deaths happened when you were occupied at the Vatican, soothing your Holy Father over La Bella’s abduction. I don’t know how you managed that one. But you did. Maybe you succeeded in being in two places at once. Maybe you really are the Devil, Eminence.”

“You think the Devil would bother killing common whores?” Cesare seemed more amused than angry. “Why would a cardinal bother, for that matter?”

“I think you have dark moods, Your Eminence, that only blood satisfies.”

“Do you not have such moods yourself?”

“I do. But I don’t kill women to purge them.”

Giulia was looking over her shoulder at me now. I saw her frown from the corner of my vision, but I could not look at her. I could not look at anything but those bottomless Borgia eyes.

“Follow me,” said Cesare, “and I will give you your answer.”

His boots made a crunch as he jumped down from the makeshift dais into the arena. I rose to follow him, and Giulia Farnese gasped, leaning forward to seize my arm. “Leonello, what are you—”

I planted a great loud smack of a kiss right at the corner of her mouth, giving a grin as her hand released my sleeve. “If a man’s about to die, he should get to kiss a beautiful woman first,” I said with a comic waggle of my eyebrows. “Even a dwarf!” I dashed a salute off to the whole company at large, and a heartbeat later my boots crunched as I swung myself over the railing and strode into the arena after Cesare Borgia.