“Dear God—” he said in alarm, pounding on her back to help her clear her throat. The smell—the smell—

“Something to help her get the vile poison out of her,” Li Min said, finally answering his earlier questions.

“Thank you,” he said, wiping his chin against the shoulder of his tunic, “for that timely warning.”

“Lay her back,” Li Min said, sitting back on her heels. “She needs to rest now. Some of the poison has been absorbed by her body, but we may have luck on our side yet. The Thorn’s intention wasn’t to kill her. Ironwood’s bounty specifies he wants you both alive, or else the payment will be forfeit.”

Nicholas didn’t realize his sword hadn’t made the journey with them until he tried reaching for it. His fingers had to settle for a broken shard of stone, some crumbled section of the statue behind them. “Is that the reason you’ve come, then? You caught wind of the bounty and knew where to find us?”

Li Min snorted, smoothing Sophia’s hair out of her face. “I came to ensure I might be able to claim my end of our bargain. The bounty is a handsome windfall from the gods, but the Ironwoods can rot.”

“I warn you—” Nicholas blinked, trying to clear the spots floating in his vision. “I warn you that we won’t…we won’t be taken.”

Li Min ignored him, taking Sophia’s hand. She spoke to the other young woman firmly, leaning over her as if to drag her spirit back, should it try to escape. And with time, those same words became embroidered with soft pleading, though their meaning couldn’t penetrate the fog growing in his mind.

“That’s not—” Nicholas tried to push up onto his feet, but the world swung wild and unhinged around him, knocking him back into place. “Won’t be…taken…”

The ring on his hand burned as he felt his body betray him. Nicholas slumped back to the ground, fighting the way the light faded around him, gently receding in waves until there was nothing left of the world but blissful emptiness.

NICHOLAS WOKE TO A SHARP COMPLAINT FROM HIS LEFT SHOULDER, a badgering, insistent sting that dragged him forward again each time he tried to slip back into the darkness.

He was flat on his stomach, the side of his face pressed against the ridges of the mosaic beneath him. By the time his vision cleared and the cotton stuffing inside his skull was plucked out, Nicholas had the very disturbing realization that someone was stabbing him repeatedly and quite literally in the back.

“You—” His attempt to surge off the ground was met with firm resistance; a hand easily pushed him back down.

“Be still while I finish,” the voice growled back. “Unless you’d like me to accidentally sew your neck to your shoulder? It might improve your looks.”

Li Min. His gaze pivoted; from his vantage point, he could just see Sophia, still stretched out on the ground. The tiny bottles, herbs, and medicines had been stowed in the bag again, but now Li Min was rummaging through it for something else, muttering to herself. When she returned, her touch was as rough and uncaring as it had been before.

“Did you…give me something…to make me pass out?” he asked, teeth gritted. He’d had at least a dozen slashes stitched up in his career at sea, and the feeling of being sewn back together like a doll never improved.

Li Min leaned forward, so he had a clear view of her face as she raised a dark brow. “No. You are weak and faltering—not only in body, it would appear, but in judgment.”

He followed her gaze to where his hand was splayed out against the dirt. The ring looked like a tattoo in the darkness.

“Nonsense,” he said, even as the band burned, tightened. The wave of nausea that passed through him momentarily stole the feeling from his lower half. Nicholas jerked, bucking like a horse.

“Settle yourself,” Li Min ordered. “Activity will only make her poison work faster. I might ask what you traded this favor for, but I already know. You were a fool, but you are even more foolish to avoid the terms of your contract. What was her task?”

“Murder,” he muttered.

“Ah,” was her reply. “A life for a life, then.”

“You might have…warned us,” he said, letting the bitterness bleed into his voice.

“I never thought you foolish enough to go through with it,” she said simply.

“Foolish,” he agreed, “and desperate. Where are we?”

She continued her work. “The Necropolis of the Vatican. 1499.”

He rubbed at his eyes, clearing the dust and grime. He’d been right, then, to feel as though they were descending through the levels of hell to the dark heart of the earth.

There was another sarcophagus flush against the far wall, and he wondered idly if they’d moved the poor occupant from his rest upstairs to this…chamber. More importantly, he wondered who “they” were.

“Is this…your hiding place?” he asked. If nothing else, talking was a distraction.

“Yes. It belongs to a particular line of my family—the Hemlock clan, I should say.” Li Min pressed a hand flat against his bare back, holding him steady. The last surge of pain was short, at least—she knotted the thread she’d used to patch the wound in his shoulder and gave him a pitying pat on the head.

He wasn’t feeling up to it, but he forced himself to sit up regardless, hating the disadvantage the prostrate position had put him in. The Ironwoods and Lindens had secret homes and hoards—he shouldn’t have been surprised to find the same of the Hemlock family.