To my brother who loves me,

I scarce can contain my joy upon the news of your elevation to Cardinal Borgia. Father has told me that you will perform the marriage rite at my wedding when your vows are done. There is no other I could wish to stand before on that day, my love, for there is no other whom I love so dearly.

You have ever been first in my heart, dearest brother, and I have watched as you have grown from the darling boy who desired that I would never learn to walk lest he be forced to cease carrying me everywhere, to the most beautiful man my eyes have ever beheld. I danced with you last night and felt myself drown within the deep pools of your eyes. I looked up into your face, my love, and I felt as though I was seeing the very face of God. Did you notice me stumble? When you pressed against me, did you feel the beating of my heart in my breast?

How can I go through with this marriage, Cesare, for I will never love a husband as I have loved you all my life…as I love you now, still…as I will love you always, beyond this world and the next?

I have no wish to disappoint our Father, yet I question now my ability to stand before you and bind myself to another with a lie upon my lips, my hands aching to reach out and touch you. Will you come to me the night before or perhaps the morn of that day? Will you take my hands in yours, raise them to your lips, whisper my name and kiss them as you lean down to press your forehead to mine?

O brother mine, even now I feel your breath on my skin, your lips as they raise from my fingertips to ghost over my nose, my eyelids, my cheeks…oh God, my lips. How will I stand before God and all assembled and deny the deepest desire of my soul? Cesare, my Cesare, how will I live without you, without the other half of myself?

I will go to you, my priest, to confess my unholy yearnings. I will go down upon my knees and declare myself to be the immoral, sinful creature we both know me to be. Then, with the thin wooden wall between us, and with my hands upon my wicked flesh, I will profess my love, my burning, aching craving for your flesh within me, your arms around me, your lips upon me. I will plead for absolution with your name on my tongue as I come undone in that little death so sweet, to be reborn and newly baptized with your holy waters.

I am ever yours, my love,

Lucrezia

Her silent tears fell as a cleansing rain to wash the pain from her soul as she lovingly consigned the letter to the flames. Her beloved brother would never read it, as he would never read any of the other letters she had written to him over the years. Like this one, she had sent each letter to heaven as a pray upon the smoke of the fire in her bedroom hearth.

'Perhaps someday,' she thought, 'someday when our lives are done and we lie together in the earth, perhaps those letters delivered to the heavens will be delivered to my love at last.'