Chapter 53
DANTE
Iscooped my wife up off the floor at the same moment the wards came down.
I felt them collapse—my ears popping as the air pressure changed, the prickle of magic across my skin as ancient protections shattered apart.
There was no sound, only the absence of safety as we were exposed.
Beside me, Nico tensed, the terrible stillness of a soldier who sensed the incoming attack before it happened.
I gathered my magic, tightened my grip on Emberline, and willed myself to dematerialize.
And… nothing happened. I reached again, digging even deeper, and found a strange stillness, as if my magic was right there but wouldn’t do what I needed it to.
Luca’s smile crept across his face. “There’s no escaping now, fire demon.”
Emberline had lost consciousness. But my wife was still suffering, pupils moving frantically behind her lids, lips twisting against the pain. I advanced on Luca, backing him into the nearest wall.
“Let her the fuck go, or I swear to the gods, I will twist your head off your shoulders, and the consequences be damned. I don’t give a fuck whose body you are hiding inside, and I don’t give a fuck the price I’ll pay later. Let. Her. Go.”
Whatever he saw in my face had Luca—Blackwood—sucking in a quick breath, then my wife sagged in my arms, limp and sweaty but no longer suffering. I pressed two fingers to her pulse, thrumming weakly beneath my fingertips but there. Blood tracked from her ears down the line of her jaw.
“You’re going to pay for this,” I promised.
Blackwood watched me coldly through my brother-in-law’s eyes.
“I highly doubt you’ll have the chance. They’re finally here,” he taunted, in that cruel, ancient voice that had no business coming out of Luca’s mouth. “Took them long enough, but I suppose it does take time to materialize a full battalion of guards across the Adriatic.”
I let out a long, ragged breath as the truth hit me. We weren’t the ones launching an assault on our enemies and finishing this war… they were.
We were fucked. Blackwood had won.
We didn’t have the ability to dematerialize. If Blackwood and Giovanni brought Drax and Ashbound with them, we would be slaughtered where we stood. Somehow, I had to get Emberline off this island. Away from Venice.
And I had no idea how.
Where was Gabriel? I’d heard my brother shouting and then… nothing.
“What the fuck did you do?” Nico bore down on Luca. “I told you I’d go back to Rome with you. Now let them all go.”
“My fool of a son, thinking he could bargain with me. I sent the call out hours ago,” Blackwood mocked, “while your healers still believed they could save the boy, and you were talking about locking him away. I couldn’t have that, you see.
My vessel being trapped in an impenetrable fortress would be an… inconvenience.”
The fucker looked so godsdamned pleased with himself, I wanted to rip his face off. Or rather, the demon inside me did. The ifrit was coming unhinged, and the possessive bastard didn’t give a shit that this was my wife’s brother. Didn’t care about anything except that he’d hurt Emberline.
Calm the fuck down.
He’s still Luca, somewhere inside all that vile evilness.
We can’t dematerialize. Focus on some other way to get us off this godsdamned island.
“As for trading your life for that of your friends… well, why settle for one slave when I can have you all? Though I expect Giovanni will want his pound of flesh.”
The fucker’s attention landed on me, glowing with interest. “I might be able to convince him to leave me the fire demon as my new pet. As for the rest of your little ragtag group… fear is a powerful tool, and public executions have a way of controlling the masses. We don’t need the girl. Or the heir.”
I could burn the fucker to a crisp right the fuck now.
Nico could strangle him with his shadows.
And we would but for the female in my arms, and the fact that, like my wife, I knew that somewhere beneath the oozing cesspool of Blackwood’s vile personality, Luca still existed. According to the fucker, the kid was still fighting for his life.
And I wouldn’t be the one to take that away from him.
“Your wife is already dead, so is your brother; they just don’t know it yet.” A brief, dismissive gesture at the ash on the infirmary floor. “As for my pets, there are more where those came from. Many, many more.”
Nico’s shadows spilled out of his hands before I finished processing the words. The skittering of hundreds of legs rang down the hallway, growing closer and closer and then, impossibly… Gabriel was there.
Bleeding, black ichor streaked across his face, but he was alive.
“There’re too many, and they’re right behind me. We need to…” He assessed the room in a heartbeat, eyes bouncing between me and a grinning Luca, arriving at the same, irrefutable conclusion—we were totally fucked. His lips pulled back from his fangs.
“Get her out,” he roared. “Dematerialize while you still…”
“I’ve been trying,” I ground out. “I can’t.”
“Neither can I… watch out.”
Gabriel leapt inside the room at the same time Nico sent his magic through the door. Black shadows crashed against black-shelled monsters, spidery forms curling in on themselves, shriveling down to husks until they clogged the hallway.
“What did you do?” Gabriel bore down on Luca. “How many are coming?”
Blackwood smiled. “All of them. Enough, you’ll be leaving this island in shackles or in a box. Either way, you’ll never become Don.”
An explosion roared through the villa, the vibrations moving across the floor and up through my knees, and the windows rattled in their frames. Somewhere outside, someone screamed—not in fear but in pain—a brutal sound that cut off as soon as it began.
“With me,” Gabriel ordered sharply. “Dante.”
I sent a blast of fire through the door, clearing black, curled-up shells the way, Emberline’s head lolling against my shoulder, her legs and arms dangling. She made a small sound, and I pressed my lips to her ear.
“We’re getting you out of here. Hang on.”
Where the fuck we were going, I had no idea, but we had to get clear of this building.
Another explosion rocked the foundations, walls swaying as we stumbled down the hall.
I looked over my shoulder. Luca stared after us, that leering grin on his face, his entire being glittering with Blackwood’s malice.
Guilt gnawed at me as I ran, Emberline bouncing in my arms as I looked over my shoulder. We were leaving too many others behind. Valeria. The staff. The healers. Innocents who’d helped us. I slowed down, then Gabriel shoved me forward.
“Keep going, don’t you dare stop. We’ll head for the cove. From there, we’ll…”
A pause. Something in Gabriel’s face shifted, his eyes widening fractionally.
“Move,” he roared, “As fast as you can.”
I followed the line of his stare, out through the windows to the rocky coastline, where Drax swarmed up over the sand, heading for the villa. So many that the ground was completely covered in black. Behind them, uniformed guards materialized, charging up the hill toward us.
“Head for the trees. We can make it,” Gabriel panted, shoving me ahead of him as all around us the trees shook and swayed from the vibrations of thousands of approaching feet.
“We have to.”
Behind us, in the last light of the day, the villa was still burning.
Not all of it was gone, but most. Orange flames spilled through broken windows, smoke pouring out behind, and the screaming was already dying off, along with the last of the staff and Valeria’s loyal soldiers.
Three surviving healers were huddled into a frightened knot, surrounded by a sea of waiting Drax. Blackwood’s guards dragged a male out of the burning skeleton of the villa, dropped him on the ground, and snapped their fingers. The creatures dove for their meal, and his howls stopped immediately.
We were cornered, cut off from the path leading into the jungle, trapped against a solid wall of rock to our back, the burning villa to our left, and a hungry army everywhere else.
Nico’s shadows were writhing at his fingertips, his jaw set in a stiff, determined line. Out in the open, he could transform; the question was… this close, would any of us survive it?
I knew he was asking himself the same question; otherwise, he’d already be the Emissary. The problem was, we had nowhere to go if things went wrong.
“There are more coming.” Gabriel peered past me to the beach. “And they’re not stopping. He really did send everyone. Blackwood’s personal guard. Ashbound behind them. And more Drax than I can count. We need a plan.” His voice was controlled, flat. Devoid of everything except purpose.
“Nico and I take out the closest guards. The Summoners. Then Nico turns into the fucking Grim Reaper and kills every last one of those nasty little fuckers.”
“I can’t,” Nico said miserably. “I still have my shadows, but something’s preventing me from transforming.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s like… my magic is right fucking there. I can almost touch it, but it doesn’t respond. My father knows who I am. What I’m capable of. It’s possible he set up a containment field to keep my power locked down.”
“Like the runed circle he trapped us in before.”
Emberline’s breathy whisper had me dipping my head, running my fingers over her pale face, checking for any sign she was still in pain. But her eyes looked clear, her face pale, and she’d stopped shaking.
“I’m okay. Just…weak.” She looked around, blinking, as if trying to bring the world back into focus. “They found us.”
“But we’re not done for yet,” I assured her. “We’re pinned down at the moment, but all we need is one opening. We’ll head to the cove, and from there…”
From there… what?
If we had a boat, we might be able to get clear of the island, get far enough out into the water to dematerialize, but where would we go? Where did we even have to go?
“Luca?” she murmured. “My brother?”
“He’s… alive. Blackwood needs Luca’s body, so he won’t let anything happen to him.” That was the best I had to offer in a shit situation. I had no idea how to get her off this island, had no idea what even to do next.
“What about Valeria?”
We all looked at each other. Gabriel shook his head.
“I haven’t seen her since the attack started. With luck, she’s still in the city or had enough warning to get somewhere safe.”
“Dante.” Gabriel’s hissed warning was the only heads-up I got before three Ashbound came over the wall, followed by a dozen Drax, mandibles clicking. I couldn’t do anything about those little fuckers, but…
I set Emberline down behind me, then fire engulfed me, heat sheeting off my skin, raced up my arms, forming a wall of devouring flames between us and the threats.
The front line of Ashbound crashed straight into it, cracking and crumbling, falling into ashy heaps of bone. The Drax surged through my fire, the perfect targets for Nico’s shadows to sweep through the burning gap and rip through the cluster of Drax with quiet, precise efficiency.
But there were more coming. So many more.
Somewhere behind us, Luca—Blackwood—laughed, the sound even louder than the roar of the villa collapsing, louder than the blood pounding in my ears.
Then the pain hit.
Agony consumed me whole, and much like what I’d suffered in the Fossa, this rolled through me in relentless waves, one after another, too fast for me to catch my breath. I crashed to my knees, unrelenting pressure stealing my vision, wiping away every last thought inside my head.
Nico made the same, choked sound beside me, and I knew Blackwood was using Luca to worm inside our heads, twist our minds like he was wringing out a sponge. The pain was… I heaved, liquid spewing from my mouth into the sandy ground.
Pressure built and built, the world darkened around the edges, and then two pairs of hands gripped me roughly and I couldn’t…I couldn’t…
Something sharp and hot pierced my back, the top of my shoulder.
Another agonizing stab in my arm.
At the base of my neck.
The foul taste of metal coated my tongue in thick, gagging layers, my strength draining away like someone pulled the plug, the demon at my center going suddenly silent, as if he’d been bottled up.
Cold iron.
I registered what was happening a half second too late—the numbing bite in my flesh, around my wrists and ankles, the nausea that followed, my fiery magic guttering like a candle in a high wind. They’d driven iron pins into me, where I couldn’t reach them, couldn’t dig them out.
Then I’d been shackled. With the same chains they used at the Fossa.
As long as I had this iron in me, my magic was worthless.
On my right, I heard Nico’s sharp inhale, then Gabriel’s, then the pain in my head slowly eased off, and I became acutely aware of my situation. Our situation.
Shackled, pinned with iron, face down in the dirt.
Naked, courtesy of the demon.
Nico and Gabriel were on the ground beside me, boots planted between their shoulder blades to keep them down.
I couldn’t see Emberline. Because of the iron, I couldn’t sense her, only smell the faint trace of her scent in the air around us, fresh and clean above the reeking breath of dozens of Drax, rocking forward and back on those spindly legs, like they were waiting for the command to start feasting.
We were so fucked.
Blackwood had used Luca’s magic to incapacitate us long enough for his guards to pin us with iron. Between the pins and the shackles and the fact my fucking brain was bleeding, I was totally helpless.
None of us fought back when the guards hauled us to our feet—my body barely functioning, legs like trunks of wood beneath me. Gabriel bled from a fresh cut above his eye, Nico’s head hung limp, drool threading from his open mouth.
I didn’t even think he was conscious.
Luca strolled out on his own, unhurried, one of the guard’s black military jackets thrown over his shoulders, barely covering that grotesque blackness creeping up one side of his body and face.
Emberline was on her feet, shaken and pale, nipping glances toward her brother every few seconds, taking fast, choppy breaths.
They dragged us back toward the villa, smoke rolling across the bloodstained ground, over the bodies stacked in rows, and shoved us to our knees in front of Giovanni DiRavello, who looked as if he’d won the fucking lottery.