My name is Octavia Maria, first daughter of Octavius Caesonius, a farmer. I was born on a small farm outside of Tuscany in 1503; my mother died during childbirth and my father never remarried. I was the fifth of five children; all four of my older brothers were able to help tend the farm during my childhood. I am a 21-year-old female assassin who takes jobs in Tuscany. I’m often hired to take out members of political organizations for reasons that are of no concern to me.

The two people who mean the most to me in my life are my father, a kind but uneducated man, and my mentor Claudius Marcus, a man who taught me everything I know about the art of assassinating.

My weapon of choice for assassination is the dagger, my prized possession handed down by Claudius of which I am skilled at using swiftly and clandestinely. I am also very good with a slingshot, a sentimental object I carried around as a child as if it were an extension of my body. It was gifted to me by my father after he discovered my impish, mischievous personality (I liked to climb trees and, occasionally, scare the cows). Killing old, fat men’s political enemies requires a lot of smooth-talking, something I excel at as a woman with certain accessories that please men of all stations. I am also adept at slinking around quietly, which is useful for creeping up on targets and merchants with wares I don’t have the coin to afford. I have a locket that belonged to my mother that I wear around my neck in honor of her memory. My older brothers have been treating me poorly for years and they blame me for our mother’s death. Once, my eldest brother Livius Lucanus stole the locket straight off my neck and threw it on a rafter in the barn. It took me hours to retrieve it, and I’ve never forgiven him for it.

Three weeks after my 21st name day, I was hired to kill a young, handsome man named Bonizzone Petruccio. I learned his daily habits and routines, which were, for the most part, fairly repetitive. He would leave his manor shortly before the sun rose and head for the court, where he stayed until well after the sun went down (never leaving during the day to meet with and/or dine with political allies, something other members of the monarch’s court dabbled in frequently to secure funding for their nasty political agendas). I spied on Bonizzone for six days, perched atop buildings in inconspicuous areas, before following him home after one particularly late night at the court. I skulked in the shadows, darted from alley to alley, as Bonizzone took the twisty path through the Tuscan streets back to his family’s manor…

At one point I lost him in a particularly empty quarter of the merchant’s sector. There were five paths before me in the square, and I didn’t know which one to take until, suddenly, a figure dropped down from an awning behind me. I reached for my dagger, but the figure kicked it out of my hand. It was the only time during my career as an assassin that I was sure I was going to die. Was I followed? Was I betrayed? I was seething with anxiety and anger.

“Octavia Maria…” said the figure. “I am not here to hurt you.”

I didn’t believe the words I heard. I turned around and stared into the eyes of the handsome face of Bonizzone Petruccio, member of the House of Habsburg and a high-level secretary of King Charles V’s court. I could have killed him right there while he thought my guard was down, but there was something enchanting about those steel-blue eyes. I couldn’t look away. “I have been keeping an eye on you, Octavia Maria,” Bonizzone said seductively, “and I believe your services could be very useful to me for a very long time. Whomever hired you to kill me, I’ll pay you eight times over to kill him instead.”

Bonizzone was not unkind to me. He became my chief employer. I took all of his contracts with nary an argument, becoming his private assassin, and fairly soon I was wealthy enough to afford paying back my many of my father’s debts and funding the farm where appropriate. Of course, that fateful night in the Tuscany merchant’s square Bonizzone bent my head to the side and turned me. I was left with two puncture marks on my neck, but those faded over time. What was permanent was the new blood-red iris of my right eye. I’m told it is unnoticeable in the dark, and it actually looks quite fetching when paired with the smoky gray iris of my left eye. Nonetheless, to maintain my inconspicuousness I now wear an eyepatch and claim that an illness required removal of my right eye.