Lorenzo woke to the soft sound of water shifting.
She blinked, still heavy with sleep, and turned her head. Marie was already awake, seated in the wooden tub the innkeeper had brought up the night before.
Early light slipped through the narrow window, laying a pale gold glow across the room and tracing the line of Marie's silhouette.
Lorenzo smiled faintly, propping herself onto one elbow as she watched.
"You rise early," she murmured, her voice rough with sleep. "Could you not bear to wait until I woke?"
Marie glanced at her, but said nothing. She turned back to her bathing, drawing the sponge slowly over her arms.
Lorenzo's smile faltered, just slightly, though she pushed herself upright and slipped from the bed. Crossing the room, she knelt beside the tub, a hint of mischief returning to her expression.
"There is space enough for two, you know."
Marie offered a small, distracted smile, but did not pause in her movements.
"I could assist you," Lorenzo added, her tone lowering, soft with suggestion. "There are places you cannot so easily reach on your own…"
"I am quite all right," Marie replied, her voice calm, distant. "Thank you."
It was not sharp. Not unkind.
But it landed all the same.
Lorenzo leaned back a fraction, the playfulness draining from her expression. "Right,"she muttered under her breath, rubbing the back of her neck as Marie rose from the tub then.
Water was trailing down her skin in glistening rivulets, catching the morning light. Her hair clung damply to her shoulders and back, her skin warmed and faintly flushed.
For a heartbeat, Lorenzo felt the familiar pull, to touch, to press down on her, but something in Marie's posture held her still.
But there was a stillness in Marie's posture that stopped her.
Not cold. Not quite.
Just… set.
Lorenzo swallowed the urge and looked away first.
They dressed in near silence.
It was not an angry silence, not loud or brittle—but it pressed in all the same, thick and stubborn, as though it had settled between them overnight and refused to move.
A passing remark about the weather. A crooked joke about the inn. A comment about the road ahead.
Marie answered each attempt kindly enough. A small smile here. A soft hum of agreement there. Once, she stepped close enough to press a quick kiss to Lorenzo's lips.
But only quick.
Always quick.
She never lingered. Never allowed Lorenzo to deepen it, to anchor her there.
It was as though she could sense that Lorenzo would take advantage of her need for her, would try to distract her with passion and deflect from the truth.
They mounted soon after, and the pace they set was faster than it needed to be.
Lorenzo glanced at her more than once, trying to catch her expression, to read something in it—but Marie kept her gaze forward, fixed on the road ahead, her focus unyielding.
The Meeting Point
They reached the clearing after hours of hard riding—the place where the narrow forest road met the wider thoroughfare, just as planned. The citadel walls lay still a few miles beyond, hidden behind the rise of land and trees.
Lorenzo dismounted first, quick and efficient, leading both horses into the cover of the trees and tying them off where they would not be easily seen.
Then she set to work.
The fire caught quickly, and Lorenzo fed it until thick smoke began to rise in a steady column—dark and deliberate against the pale morning sky.
She adjusted the green boughs she'd laid beneath the kindling, forcing the smoke to billow heavier, denser.
Then she shaped it.
Three long pulses. A pause. Two short. Another pause. One final, lingering plume.
The signal.
She stepped back, eyes fixed on the horizon, watching as the column thinned and stretched into the open air.
For a moment—nothing.
Then—
There.
Far to the south, just above the treeline, a faint thread of smoke stirred upward. Easy to miss if you didn't know where to look.
Lorenzo narrowed her eyes.
It came again.
One long plume.
A pause.
Then two quick bursts, thinner but unmistakable.
Acknowledgment.
They had seen her.
A breath she hadn't realized she was holding slipped free as a grin spread across her face.
She climbed down the tree she was standing on and jogged back toward the clearing's edge, a breathless energy in her step.
"They saw it!" she called, unable to keep the brightness from her voice. "They will be here within four hours. We made it, Marie...we are almost there."
Marie did not mirror her excitement.
She stood with her arms folded, her weight settled evenly, her expression composed to the point of indifference.
"Good," she said. Flat. Measured. "Then we have time."
Lorenzo's smile wavered. "Time for what?"
Marie turned her head then, fixing her with a look that was sharp enough to still everything else.
Marie tilted her head slightly
"Time for you to explain why my husband, who claims to want me so badly, seems determined not to touch me."
There it was.
"No." Marie stepped closer, cutting her off with a small shake of her head. "No more delays. No more clever distractions." Her voice did not rise, but it hardened, steady as iron. "You promised me the truth. I am done waiting"
Marie hesitated.
Then she walked over and sat close for the first time the whole day.
She rubbed her thumb slowly against her knuckles, buying herself a few seconds she didn't really have.
When she finally spoke, her voice was lower than before. Stripped of its usual ease.
"You know," Lorenzo began quietly, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the clearing, "life has a way of turning on itself. I was born… different. Not in the way people like to boast of. Truly different."
She swallowed, her throat tightening.
"In truth, I was never meant to be allowed to live."
Marie's eyes widened at once. Her hand came up to Lorenzo's shoulder, gripping hard, instinctive.
"Why?" she breathed. "Was it your family? Did they—"
"Go on...Tell me what you know" Lorenzo turned her head, her voice soft but firm enough to halt her. "About my family. About House Sforza."
Marie hesitated, then shifted closer despite herself. Her hand slid from Lorenzo's shoulder to the back of her neck, fingers working there in a slow, absent motion—comfort offered without thought.
"I read something, once," Marie said, searching her memory. "A passing mention, buried in a book on the Italian houses. It claimed the Sforza practiced… blood rites. That, from time to time, an heir was sacrificed to preserve the family's strength."
Her brow furrowed faintly.
"But it was dismissed. Said to be nothing more than a story spread by their rivals...the Medici, I think...to weaken them. To turn Florence against them."
Lorenzo's hand rose, closing gently—but decisively—around Marie's wrist, stilling the motion at her neck.
"It was true," she said.
Marie went very still.
"But they misunderstood," Lorenzo continued, her voice tightening at the edges. "It was never just any heir."
A pause.
"Only those born female were marked for it."
She lifted her eyes, meeting Marie's.
"It was not a sacrifice," she said, quieter now. "It was an execution."
For a heartbeat, Marie only stared.
Then she gave a small, uncertain smile, one that faltered almost as soon as it formed. A breath of laughter followed, brittle and misplaced.
"And what has that to do with you?" she asked, shaking her head as if to clear it. "You are a man. I would know that well enough." A faint, strained attempt at lightness slipped into her tone. "Come now, Lorenzo. Tell me the truth."
She drew in a breath, steadier this time, though it trembled at the edges.
"If there is someone else....another woman....you may say so. I forfeited the right to protest when I refused you. Is that it? Have you made a life elsewhere?"
"I am a woman."
The words came out flat, blunt, anxious.
Marie froze.
She frowned, then stood abruptly, stepping back from the log.
"How?"Marie asked, her voice rising. "Are you mental? Perhaps you hit your head during the ride?"
She gestured wildly at Lorenzo.
"Your chest is flat! And you have a pretty thick manhood...She blushed ...I have had a taste of it a couple of times! Stop playing with me!"
Lorenzo grunted in frustration and stood as well.
She grabbed Marie's wrist and pulled her behind a nearby tree, away from the open clearing, her movements sharp with impatience and desperation.
She looked deep into Marie's eyes, her own burning with intensity and fear.
Then, without a word, Lorenzo began impatiently undoing her trousers, loosening the leather straps that held the prosthetic in place.
Marie's eyes widened. "What are you—"
Lorenzo grabbed Marie's hand and shoved it down the front of her trousers.
Marie rolled her eyes, clearly assuming this was Lorenzo's attempt to escape the conversation through seduction.
"If this is your way of avoiding telling me the truth by getting freaky with me," Marie said with forced lightness, though her voice shook, "I will make you pay for it."
Lorenzo exhaled sharply, shaking her head.
"If that were true," Lorenzo said through gritted teeth, "I would be happy. But I mean it, Marie."
She tightened her grip on Marie's wrist, forcing her hand lower, past the prosthetic.
"I. Am. A. Woman."
Marie's expression shifted from annoyance to confusion to shock as her fingers moved past the hard leather surface and encountered soft, warm flesh beneath.
The unmistakable folds of a woman's sex.
Slick and undeniably real.
Marie's breath caught audibly.
She felt around for another second—as though she could not quite believe what her hand was telling her—then yanked her hand back as though burned.
Lorenzo quickly fastened her trousers properly, her movements jerky with anxiety.
Marie stepped away, putting several feet of distance between them.
She was speechless, her mouth opening and closing without sound.
"How is that even possible?"Marie finally managed, her voice barely a whisper.
Lorenzo took a step toward her.
Marie immediately stepped back, maintaining the distance.
"How can I tell you if you keep moving away?" Lorenzo asked, frustration and desperation bleeding into her voice.
Marie laughed—a sharp, bitter sound edged with hysteria.
"You lied to me about this for so long!" Marie said, her voice rising with anger. "How dare you try to dictate my reaction! Oh my God! You are the absolute worst!"
Tears were streaming down her face now.
"This is so wrong! How did you manage to fool the whole world? Are you some sort of hermaphrodite? How are your features so masculine? How is any of this possible?"
Lorenzo held up a fist in frustration, trembling with the effort of not shouting.
"I will explain everything if you just sit down!" Lorenzo said through clenched teeth.
Marie glared at her for a long moment.
Then, slowly, she walked back to the log and sat—but on the opposite end, as far from Lorenzo as possible.
Lorenzo sat as well, taking a deep breath, trying to organize her thoughts.
"I was born a woman," Lorenzo began quietly, staring at her hands. "The daughter of Ludovico il Magnifico...my grandfather's eldest son. The one he loved most."
She paused, her voice growing thick.
"My father was assassinated when my mother was heavily pregnant with me. He died protecting the Emperor, my grandfather, from an attempt on his life."
Marie was already crying silently, tears streaming down her face.
"I was born shortly after my father's death," Lorenzo continued. "The legitimate heir. The firstborn child of the firstborn son. By all rights and laws, the throne should have been mine."
She looked up at Marie with raw pain in her eyes.
"But my grandfather knew immediately. He could see it in me, even as an infant."
"What exactly is IT?" Marie whispered.
Lorenzo ignored the question for now, pressing on.
"My grandfather loved my father more than anything in this world. And I was all he had left of his beloved son. He could not bring himself to kill me, even though tradition demanded it."
She swallowed hard.
"And his second son—my uncle—was a drunk and a tyrant. Cruel, power-hungry, unfit to rule. My grandfather could not allow that man anywhere near the throne."
Lorenzo's hands clenched into fists.
"So my grandfather made a decision. A brilliant, ruthless decision."
She looked at Marie directly.
"My uncle's wife gave birth to a son around the same time I was born. A male heir. Legitimate, but secondary in the line of succession."
Understanding began to dawn on Marie's face.
"My grandfather arranged for us to be switched," Lorenzo said. "I was presented to the world as my uncle's son, a secondary heir with more claim to the throne than my uncle. My cousin was raised as the heir to the Sforza throne."
Marie's hand came up to cover her mouth.
She laughed—a broken, humorless sound.
"I have lived as a man since I was old enough to understand what that meant. The physicians gave me herbs that stopped my body from developing as a woman's. From Marcello, I learned to walk like a man, talk like a man, fight like a man. I became the prince my grandfather needed me to be."
Marie wiped at her tears with shaking hands, then laughed—a broken, disbelieving sound.
"This is insane," she whispered. "This is absolutely insane."
Lorenzo nodded slowly. "I know."
"I never meant to drag you into my life," Lorenzo said, her own voice breaking now. "I fell in love with you, and I even tried to give you up. Tried to let you go. But then that whole plot with the King lusting after you, your family trying to sell you to him—"
She shook her head.
"I had to do something. I could not let them have you. I could not lose you."
"Why?" she asked, her voice trembling, ignoring anything else that was said. "Why were they killing female heirs? What could possibly justify murdering infants... girls?"
Lorenzo took a deep breath.
"Because we are cursed."
Marie stood abruptly, backing away again.
"No," Marie said, shaking her head violently. "No, I cannot—this is too much—"
She was sobbing and laughing at the same time, hysteria creeping into her voice.
"A mistress behind my back would make more sense! Any of this doesn't!"
Marie turned and started walking away, her steps quick and unsteady.
Then she broke into a run.
Lorenzo shot to her feet. "Marie, wait—!"
She ran after her, calling her name.
"Marie! Please, just listen—!"
Then Marie screamed.
Lorenzo's blood turned to ice.
She put on a burst of inhuman speed and broke through the tree line—
And stopped dead.