Chapter 33
EMBERLINE
We returned to a villa in chaos.
Guards shouting orders, windows boarded over, doors being chained shut.
“Two of my best men are dead.” A furious Valeria strode in, heels clicking, hair streaming behind her like a battle flag. “We found their bodies in the lower level. No sign of struggle, no blood, just… dead.”
More guards rushed past, the stomping of feet matching the tension in the air.
“What sort of injuries?” I was still shaking from what happened at the fortress, the devouring shadows that had snapped at our faces before Dante burst into flames and dove straight into that chaotic cloud. He’d emerged dragging a beat-to-shit Nico across the ground, and now we had two dead guards.
Yup. Today was definitely going to be a shit day.
“Nothing.” Valeria shook her head. “Gia and her healers are looking them over more closely, but there were no noticeable wounds. Poison is the leading theory so far, but we’ll know more in an hour.”
“How did someone get onto the island?” I asked, panic spiking through me like a sharpened blade. And for one small second, doubts rose—had Valeria herself sold us out? Would she, to save her own skin?
“Has Blackwood found us?”
Should we run? Nico barely had the strength to dematerialize back here; anything more, and he’d be incapacitated altogether. And we had no place to go, except back to the Draconi fortress, which was currently a smoking heap of stone.
“We haven’t found the assailants. Yet,” she muttered darkly. “But we will. My men are searching the island, and there are only so many places to hide. We’ll have them soon enough. As for Blackwood…” Her lips pinched. “If he came for us, he’d come all at once, with his forces by his side.”
“You sound sure of that,” Nico said, wincing uncomfortably beneath the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders. Severin’s healers had done what they could for his burns, but they were battlefield healers, lacking the skill of the ones here.
Too bad Gia was hunched over a couple of corpses at the moment, her talents wasted, because I’d planned on conscripting her into service the moment we’d returned.
“This feels… different. I endured yet another tediously boring conversation about following proper committee procedure with him today that made me want to gouge my eyes out. I don’t think he suspects.
” She shook her head, then went on, as if she was reasoning with herself, “No, he can’t suspect I’m involved, or I’d be in a cell right now. So, it’s not him. Then who?”
“If it’s poison, then someone who knows their way around the kitchen?” I shrugged. “Or laced their drink?”
“I had the same thought, so we’re searching the pantries, every room in the villa, and the outbuildings. If it’s an inside job, we’ll know soon enough.”
“That’s more likely,” Gabriel agreed. “Perhaps one of Giovanni’s spies, planted in your household back when your father was still in command. An easy thing to miss,” he added sympathetically. “Marcello died by poison in his own home, and I was too late to save him.”
“Because you’re a fool,” Rocco sneered, creeping out of the shadows. “No wonder you’re here, hiding under my daughter’s skirts while the entire Dynasty is being stolen from you. Some Don you’ve turned out to be.”
Gabriel spun on his heel.
His entire demeanor iced over as if winter had arrived, shoulders squared.
Rocco just licked his lips, looking more like a treacherous lizard than anything else. I remembered how he’d humiliated me months ago in front of the entire Dynasty. Used his daughter as his pawn and leveraged Dante’s past mistakes against him.
“Slither back under your rock, old snake,” I crooned, stepping between him and my family. The family I loved. The family he’d never touch again. “Nobody cares what a washed-up old Pentarch has to say.”
His venomous gaze landed on us, one by one, his lips curling back further. “Soon enough, you’ll be the ones under rocks, mark my words. He’s coming, you know. Those guards were just a warning. Who do you think you are to stand against the inevitable?”
“The ones who will take him down.” My husband prowled forward, step after step, until he towered over Rocco. Until the male retreated, cradling his missing hand as though he could still feel it.
“Behind your arrogance and your silver cane, you always were a sniveling coward, Rocco.”
I couldn’t see Dante’s face, but he’d let the ifrit out to play, an orange glow lighting Rocco’s face as my husband leaned closer, flames reflected in the old male’s eyes.
“Soon enough, there will be a reckoning for you,” my husband crooned. “Your daughter bought you the second chance you never deserved. That will be your last, I guarantee it.”
“You can’t threaten me, you monster.”
“I believe I just did,” Dante said easily, straightening up to his full height. “Or is your hearing going, along with your mind? You’re the fool, Rocco. Now…” He turned to me. “What did you say before?”
“Slither back under your rock,” I supplied, enjoying Rocco’s brewing, impotent rage. “And don’t come back out.”
He cursed us all the way back to his room, and when I turned, Valeria was right there behind me. “Gods, he’s vile.” She stared after him, bottom lip trembling. “I know he’s vile. I ask myself why I bothered, and honestly, on days like today, I can’t tell you I did the right thing.”
“No,” I said slowly, measuring the regret in her long, pained sigh. “You did. Because if you hadn’t, you’d be just like him.”