Chapter 32
EMBERLINE
Dante’s ‘house’ looked like it was one storm away from collapsing.
Three stories of sun-bleached stone leaned against its neighbors on Calle Morgana like a drunk at closing time—watched over by a row of chipped, worn gargoyles perched along the roofline.
Moss crawled up the foundation, and one of the shutters on the second floor hung at a sad, defeated angle, creaking with the wind.
“Home sweet ruin,” I muttered, swaying as Dante set me down on the stone landing. Feeding from him had been… life-altering. Not that I’d tell him that. I still felt like I was floating and wanted nothing more than to fall face-first into a nice, soft bed and sleep for a century.
Unfortunately, any bed inside this wreck probably had bedbugs.
“Charming, isn’t it?” Dante pushed the door open. “I think the place has character.”
“Rats, more likely.” I followed him inside. “Toxic black mold. And possibly ghosts.”
“Good.” He slid his hand under my elbow to steady me. “Then we’ll have lots of company.”
The moment my bare feet hit the threshold, wards hummed over my skin—nothing like the polite, gentile protections of my family palazzo. This magic was sharper. Wilder. Layers and layers of old spells woven together with whatever Dante had dragged back to Venice with him.
Vampire magic with an… unfamiliar twist.
Something almost cruel and vicious, edged with fire.
I glanced up at Dante’s face, brutal by polite standards—his jaw just a shade too strong, eyes too piercing to be considered handsome—but he was compelling. Magnetic. Hard around the edges. The Fossa had peeled away every layer of civilization, leaving nothing behind but pure grit and rage.
“This place is warded like a war bunker,” I muttered beneath my breath.
“Again,”—he cocked an eyebrow—“it has character.”
I shot him a look. “You realize most of us actually like the places we live?”
“Comfort’s overrated,” he said easily. “Survivability isn’t. There’s not a mage in the world who could get through my protections. You’re safe here, Emberline.”
I snorted, but his words struck me in the heart.
Unfair, the way he made me feel all off balance and unsure. The way my body sang at his touch, the way I craved more of his blood. Even worse was this drowsy, relaxed after-feeding glow. I wanted him to sweep me off my feet again and make me feel like I was flying.
Hopefully, this would all wear off soon, and I could go back to hating him.
Weakness was dangerous, especially around Dante and his magic blood, which was making me feel things and think things I should not be thinking.
Perhaps this was the real reason I’d been limited to bagged blood all my life, this warm, sensual heaviness that saturated my bones and made me feel like I was made of honey. It will wear off. And when you wake up, he’ll only be the brute who trapped you for his own gain.
Easy enough to stick a knife in him then.
The entryway was narrow and dim, the floor uneven, the plaster cracked, revealing the original stone beneath. But the bones of the house were solid—shifted a little, maybe, on the mud floor of the lagoon, but not rotten.
The rafters smelled of dust and old magic. No servants, no polished wood, no glass chandeliers dripping beeswax. Just a battered table, a few worn, mismatched mugs in the sink, and a staircase that looked like it had seen better centuries.
I pushed up my sleeves and followed him through the rest of the rooms, trying not to think about how my family would react if they saw where I’d ended up.
Not the gleaming Dominico island palace, the fortress on the water.
Not the sprawling, luxurious Sala del Giuramento at the east end of Venice.
This… shit hole.
“I think I’ll call this place Casa Di Merda,” I announced with a grin. “Every house needs a name, after all.”
Somehow, that cheered me up, the idea that Uncle Giovanni—with his pretend vow of poverty and his false humility—would be offended by this humble place.
“Where is all your stuff?” I studied the table in the kitchen and the two plain wooden chairs. “Or do you travel with nothing but a couple of knives and a bad attitude?”
He smirked, plucking a shirt off a hook on the wall and covering up all that damaged skin. “You say that like knives and attitude aren’t enough.” Then his expression sobered. “I expect you will want to bring some things from home, tesoro?”
I lifted my skirt. “If you want to see me in anything other than this dress and bare feet, then, yes, I could use a few personal items. If I leave now, I can meet Luca and my uncle at the house and…”
“No,” he cut me off with a slash of his hand. “For now, you need to keep your distance from your uncle. And your brother.”
“You don’t tell me what to do. I played your games in front of your family, but I trust my kin, and my brother is worried about me. We aren’t… used to being separated.” Now that some of the drowsiness was wearing off, my body was humming with energy.
Dante’s blood was a powerful thing, humming through my bones. Like I’d been stuffed full of raw, untapped magic, waiting to explode into movement, which might explain my restlessness.
“You’re twins?” He arched a brow when I nodded.
“He’ll be safe enough, and the distance is necessary.
” His rough tone smoothed over. “Marcello will have soldiers—spies—posted around your family palazzo. Your brother has a temper, made worse by last night’s…
events. A day or two of keeping your heads down will prevent any overambitious guards from making a mistake. ”
I leveled a glare at my pretend husband, and he sighed.
“I wouldn’t put it past Marcello to give his men instructions to hurt your brother to draw you—and therefore me—into a confrontation. Let’s not tempt fate and keep Luca safe at the same time, shall we? But you are correct, and as much as I like seeing you barefoot…”
How I wished I could kill someone with a look.
“I will go to the palazzo and get your things,” he said, after a pause. “But I will need a list.”
After a short argument with myself over his controlling attitude, I acquiesced because I very much wanted to get out of this dress.
I rattled off everything I required and then some. Dante supposedly memorized my very long list, warning me I should stay put, that we wouldn’t want to risk another incident, as if I had anything to do with last night’s chaos.
Then he vanished.
I entertained myself imagining him dragging back twenty steamer trunks worth of things I both needed and asked for out of sheer spite. Who was I kidding? He’d probably stopped paying attention after I mentioned everything I owned was on the third floor.
As soon as he was gone, my chest loosened for the first time since the island.
Maybe for the first time since I’d found Father in the garden.
The kitchen had three cracked plates and a handful of mismatched forks, two pots for cooking, and a hodgepodge of old, bent cooking utensils. “This is… just fucking lovely,” I muttered, sweeping my hair up off my neck when I sensed it—the faintest tug at the edge of my awareness.
Magic. Strong. Strange.
Somewhere up above me.
There was another protective seal in this house. Not the main ward—the one surrounding the building, woven into every crack. This was more concentrated. More precisely focused.
I started up the stairs, following the faint hum of power in the air.
Four doors, all cracked open, showed me a glimpse of Dante’s world.
A cramped study with maps on the walls and books stacked in precarious towers.
A washroom with chipped tiles and a tub that looked big enough to drown in.
Two bedrooms—one small, one larger facing the canal, with a narrow bed and deep scars in the floorboards that somehow reminded me of him.
At the end of the hall, another set of stairs led up to a top floor.
The magic tugged harder, and while instinct warned me to turn away, curiosity sat on my shoulder and told me to keep going.
At the top of the steps, a heavy wood door, reinforced with iron, was locked shut with a discrete line of warding runes carved along the jamb. I touched one of the markings, and the ends of my fingers tingled, not in pain, more like... recognition.
“Don’t be a fool, Ember,” I scolded, but whatever was behind this door called to me, as though the magic had a voice, as if the house was speaking straight into my heart, urging me to discover its deepest secrets.
I pulled a pin from my tangled hair.
A pearl fell to the floor as I dropped to my knees, inserting the pin and twisting to the right.
The lock surrendered with humiliating speed.
One touch of my fingers and that whispered unsealing charm had the runes flaring with light, then going inert as the door swung inward, revealing a long room tucked under the high beamed roof, each cross-member dark with age.
The floor was high-tech rubber mats, the kind that softened falls, and practice dummies stood along one wall, all of them battered and patched.
Weapons racks lined the other—blunted swords, staffs, a few steel blades gleaming among the wooden training ones.
Target circles were painted on the far wall, scarred by the wounds of a hundred perfect throws.
Dante had his own training room.
My lungs did some strange, sort of half-sob that I swallowed down before the sound escaped my lips. This room was so like my own back at the DiRavello palazzo—and so much rougher. No frescoes.
No polished mirrors for practicing my stance.
Just a utilitarian space built for stabbing things until they stopped moving.
I stepped inside, trailing my fingers over the nearest rack of battered swords. The magic here was wild and strange, Dante’s layered over much older spells, a haze of dust hanging in the still air. Air that was thick with Dante’s scent, a hint of salty sweat, the echo of movement.
“Of course,” I muttered, secretly elated by the discovery. “Of course you have one of these.”
“I knew I sensed trouble.”
I spun, going for the knife at my thigh and finding nothing but wrinkled black silk.
“Imagine my surprise when I was away on an errand for my little wife and sensed my wards being broken. Whatever are you doing up here, tesoro?”
Dante leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, shoulder propped against the jamb where the wards had flared. His hair was damp, shirt clinging to his body, dark curls falling into his sparkling blue eyes. He looked… pissed off. And a little impressed.
“How the fuck did you get in?” he demanded, eyes glinting. “That door’s keyed to my sigil and mine alone.”
“Then your sigil is sloppy,” I shrugged, reveling in my shiver of triumph. “The lock is easy enough to pick; a child could get in here.”
He looked like he wanted to punch the wall. Or strangle me. Or both.
“For your information, that lock is a fine piece of Venetian craftsmanship. Now, how did you really get in? Don’t tell me you’re a professional lock picker because I’ll know you’re lying.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, my pride bristling as I brandished my hairpin.
“Pfft. That lock was practically begging to be picked.”
“It was explicitly warded not to be picked.”
“And yet,”—I spread my hands wide—“here I am.”
For a long moment, we stared, and I decided I would rather go blind than be the loser who blinked first. Finally, he scowled.
“You fed from me,” He declared, as if that explained everything. Stepping inside, he slammed the door shut with his foot. “The magic recognized you, maybe even thought you were me. You seem to have a problem with boundaries, wife.”
“Your mistake for leaving me alone then, husband,” I shot back.
“Good luck getting me out of here now that I know this room exists. If you’re planning to keep me prisoner, I need a way to get my aggression out.
Otherwise, you might wake up with a knife in your chest.” I smiled sweetly. “Or not wake up at all.”
He snorted. “You’re more than welcome to try. But you should know, I don’t like sharing my toys.”
“Well, that’s a shame, because what’s yours is mine and all that.” I batted my eyes. “I am your wife, after all.”
We stood there, measuring each other in this space that fit him like a glove—and, in some aching way, fit me, too. The truth was, I’d always felt more at home throwing knives than parading around in a dress.
Just because I knew it would piss him off, I ambled to the center of the mat, testing the give as steam came out of his ears.
The proportions of the room were perfect for footwork and close-quarters combat.
The air held that faint, familiar tang of sweat and steel, and the high ceiling meant I could practice sword play.
“I think I love this place.”
His eyes darkened with infuriated annoyance. “You’re seriously using our pretend marriage to commandeer my training space?”
“Of course I am,” I grinned. “You’re the one who put a ring on it. Oh, wait, I’m still waiting on my diamond. Anyway… game, set, match, husband.” Maybe I was still a little bit woozy from his blood because this all felt a little too… fun.
He stalked closer, stopping a few paces away. With the low ceiling and those beams overhead, Dante loomed over me. Too much male for the room.
Definitely too much male for me.
Still, I wasn’t about to give an inch.
“Fine,” he conceded, teeth grinding. “We’ll share the space. Work out together. I have to say, I’m curious, tesoro, to see what you bring to the mat.”
“Share?” I laughed. “We’ll be splitting the time. Like mornings and evenings. Or Mondays and Tuesdays. Or maybe this can just be my wedding present.”
“Are you afraid to face me?” His deep voice turned into a purr, practically daring me to cave. “Is the poor little rich girl used to practicing all alone with her knives?”
“I’m not afraid of you.” I traced the edge of the mat with my bare foot. “I want that entire wall,” I jerked my head to a bank of stands and shelving.
“For what?”
“For my weapons.” I glared up at him. “Which I know you brought back, if you bothered to remember my list.”
He grinned outright this time. “Oh, I bothered. The servants are still packing, which will take a while since I suspect half your trunks will end up being small armories. But why wait? What do you say we break this place in right now?”
Fire burned in his blue eyes, and suddenly, I had a feeling I was the one who’d been outplayed.