“You said earlier you were thinking of something,” said Prudence.
Ambrose hesitated, but if not now, when?
“I was thinking about having a partner in crime. How it would be to go on all the adventures of the world together.”
Prudence’s glance was half startled, half disdainful. “You’re a romantic, aren’t you?”
It seemed like a night for confessions.
“I used to be. I wrote poetry. Even had a book of poems published when I was at Oxford—a mortal university. Quite old.”
Prudence didn’t seem impressed by Oxford. She was difficult to impress. It was one of the things Ambrose liked most about her.
“You can tell me one of your poems,” she said. “Please don’t pick an overly sentimental poem.”
Ambrose began to smile. He stopped by the ancient witch’s moondial on the bridge, pressed their joined hands to his heart, and declaimed:
“The lioness, you may move her
To give over her prey;
But you’ll ne’er stop a lover—
He will find out the way.”
“Catch this lioness giving up her prey.” Prudence’s lip curled. “I never would. Lions don’t belong in love poems.”
“That’s nonsense,” said Ambrose. “All the best love poems have lions. The oldest love poem in the world, four thousand years old, has a lion. ‘Lion, dear to my heart. Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet. ’ ”
The river Arno washed under the stone arches, waters new every minute under old shadows.
“You used to write poetry,” Prudence observed. “But you stopped. Why?”
“Lucifer came to me in my dreams,” said Ambrose. “He asked me to perform a dark devotion. To write a certain letter to a mortal I knew in Oxford, a tender mortal boy who … liked me. Among mortals, caring for someone of the same sex is sometimes seen as a crime. He was only a mortal. But somehow, after I did the Dark Lord’s bidding and ruined that mortal’s life, I didn’t have the heart to write poems any longer.”
They weren’t meant to speak of the devotions. They were meant to obey.
“The Dark Lord never wanted us to have the heart for much,” Ambrose murmured, soft as the sound of the river. “Did he?”
The Dark Lord, and his darker devotions. Asking them all to shut up their hearts, hurting themselves by being willing to hurt others. Until your ability to care for anyone became something that crawled in chains when it used to fly.
And they’d gone along with it, every witch soul, Ambrose included. Without even seeing that their lord had them trapped.
Nick Scratch saw it. Nick Scratch stopped it.
For love of Sabrina, a motive Ambrose entirely sympathized with.
He’d misjudged them, the students of Blackwood’s Academy. He’d been trapped so long away from witches and warlocks, he’d seen the Academy orphans as nothing but new amusements. He hadn’t taken Nick Scratch seriously. Not until the last second, when everything Ambrose had seen of Nick added up to more than he’d thought. Pretty boy who liked to have fun. Sharp guy who liked books and Sabrina. The curious sort, with his pleased, puzzled interest in mortal things like school dances and frozen drinks. None of that prepared Ambrose for the moment Nick stepped up to face down the Dark Lord and did what Ambrose would have died to do. Nick kept Sabrina safe.
“You’re thinking about Nicky,” remarked Prudence.
“I was thinking he was a brave boy. Raised by wolves and witches, but reaching for something else. I didn’t know.”
“He was a fool to do what he did,” Prudence announced. “He was always a fool. We used to date. He dumped me and my sisters, saying he wanted something real. As if we weren’t real. I should have stabbed him and saved him some pain.”
“Forget what I said just now,” Ambrose told her. “I didn’t like Nick that much. He dumped you ? The man was an idiot.”
That made her smile.
Worse than misjudging Nick, Ambrose had misjudged Prudence. She’d turned up one day and he’d thought, Why, hello there . She was perhaps the most stunning woman he’d ever seen, and from the first minute it was evident she thought Ambrose was cute too, so she was a stunner with great taste. The night they met, she knocked on his bedroom door with her hot friends in tow.
Months later, when Prudence approached him at the Academy to make her interest in further encounters clear, they had more great times. She was as fun to be with as she was to look at, and Ambrose never once thought about what she might feel.
But then Prudence rebelled against her father, the High Priest. When Blackwood hurt her sisters, she rose up against him in fury.
We are more than our dark god ever knew, Ambrose thought. We are more than we ever knew. The Morningstar was defeated because he believed we would turn over Sabrina to him without a fight.
Lucifer was sure love didn’t matter. But love mattered in spite of him.
They walked back to their hotel hand in hand. Ambrose had reserved separate rooms, but their chambers were linked by a marble balcony overlooking Florence. The balcony ceiling was red-and-blue encaustic tile. A chandelier sang in the breeze above them.
Ambrose left Prudence at her door every night with a promise they would get vengeance in the morning.
“Wait,” she said tonight, just before their hands parted.
Ambrose waited.
“Why are you here?” Prudence asked abruptly. “My father framed you for murder and threatened your family. I understand why you want to kill him. But that’s not the same as a hunt across the world. You’re not the kind of man who chases revenge.”
No. But he used to be a poet who chased beauty.
Ambrose opened his mouth to say: Because you wept and begged for your sisters, then wielded swords with deadly, furious precision. Because you were so many different kinds of beautiful I couldn’t look away.
“Never mind,” Prudence told him. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here.”
Prudence stopped his open mouth with a kiss. Ambrose went still. Then, because his auntie Hilda hadn’t raised a fool, Ambrose kissed her back with wild abandon. Prudence seized hold of his vest and began to drag him, a willing captive, to her bedroom.
Ambrose halted, catching Prudence’s gloriously merciless face in his hands for more kisses, and found himself surprised by tenderness. He didn’t know how old Prudence was. Such distinctions weren’t meaningful to witches, since they lived so long and didn’t mature fast. But he knew she was younger than he, still a student of the Academy. She’d hoped for something from her father, so recently. Blackwood had crushed Prudence’s dream. Ambrose wanted to kill him for that alone.
Once, when they thought Prudence doomed to die, he’d made a crack about missing her body. As though a body was all she was.
Ambrose didn’t want to make the mistake of acting like she didn’t matter. Not ever again.
“Lioness,” Ambrose breathed. “Stop. Perhaps we shouldn’t.”
Prudence wrenched herself away from him, eyes outraged black holes.
“Wait,” Ambrose said. “Let me explain.”
“There’s no need.” Prudence’s voice was very calm. “I understand you perfectly. And I don’t care much, either way. Why should I? You don’t matter to me.”