Chapter 58
EMBERLINE
Emilia’s temple had never looked as good as it did right now, rising out of the water like a broken stone shard against the star-filled sky.
The low-lying island was little more than a dark smear against a bruised horizon, no lights or fires to mark the rocky bump as anything other than completely uninhabited. Exactly how Emilia wanted it.
“There, cut to the right.” Nico pointed, his other hand braced on the railing, the wind peeling his long hair back from his face.
There had been a moment between us—more like a split second—where I thought I’d glimpsed something behind his eyes. Some dark, vast emptiness staring down at me, a connection taking shape before he’d looked away.
I shook my head.
I was exhausted and was imagining things.
“Dante.” I shook my sleeping husband, and his snoring cut off a second before he opened his eyes, blinking owlishly at me as if he wasn’t quite sure where we were. “We’re almost to Emilia’s; we’ll be tying up soon.”
Torches sprang to life around a stone dock as Gabriel swung us around, cutting the engine to a low idle as he made the turn.
At the end of the stone pier, a dozen figures waited in silence—priests in their dark robes, hoods pushed back to reveal their glowing crimson sigils, and scattered among them were the white linen of the healers, unmistakable in the dark.
“Huh. What do you know? Looks like she was expecting us,” I murmured, rolling my eyes at Nico’s I-told-you-so grin.
At their center, still as a statue, her dark hair piled immaculately high, stood Emilia, completely focused on the iron boat as we slid up along the dock, Nico tossing a rope to the waiting priests.
She stepped to the edge of the pier, her red dress barely moving in the windless night, lips curled back in distaste.
“All this iron is making me ill. I want this foul thing off my shores as soon as possible.”
“Never fear, I’m on it.” Nico strode up to the front and jumped from the bow to the dock, mooring line in hand. “As soon as everyone is offloaded, I’m sinking this fucker in the middle of the lagoon.”
“Help the injured up first,” Emilia told the healers, gesturing at Valeria, slumped against the cabin wall, something like pity in her expression blooming before she smoothed it away.
“I know there’s a lot of blood, but she’s not injured,” I whispered, climbing out of my husband’s warm lap and taking Nico’s outstretched hand. “Not physically, anyway.”
Emilia’s dark gaze cut to mine. “Bring her up first, anyway. We will treat her inside.”
Two healers descended into the boat and helped Valeria to her feet. She went without protest, moving like a sleepwalker through a dream.
“Up you go, princess.” Nico pulled me onto the dock one-handed, and I’d never been so happy to feel solid ground under my feet. Finally on land, some of my nausea eased off, my legs feeling incrementally steadier. Dante followed me up, giving the boat a baleful glare.
“Sink it somewhere deep,” Gabriel told Nico, already scanning the dark water beyond the island.
“I’ll take it out past the northern point.” Nico leapt back onto the deck. “Somewhere it can rot for the next millennium. Let our disappearance be a mystery that keeps Giovanni up at night.”
“Evil.” Gabriel’s eyes shone. “I like it.”
Dante cast off the lines, and Nico reversed away from the dock, the engine running at a whisper until he reached open water and opened up the throttle, leaving a wake behind him as he roared into the darkness.
“Come,” Emilia said simply. “You need to rest. There is food and drink, and I have a place for you to sleep after my healers have looked you over and you’ve eaten something.”
Gods, I could have hugged the prickly High Priestess right now, and as if she could read my mind, her whole body stiffened.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hug you, even though I want to.”
“I’m not exactly the hugging type.” But she was smiling as she turned away, heading for the temple, the hem of her dress whispering over the stones.
“I still might, you know,” I said, following so close, I was nipping at her heels. “Hug you. One of these days. If I can work up the courage.”
“Just try it, piccola, and I’ll turn you into a lizard. An ugly one.”
We followed the priests and their torches to the temple. This place smelled different from Valeria’s island, and I already missed the clean, salty air, the way the waves crashed on the…
I blinked, and the idyllic retreat became blood-splattered stone and burning beams, black spiders creeping over the ground like a living mat of black.
No, I wasn’t going to think about what happened.
Not yet. Not when everything was still so fresh.
As usual, the temple’s interior was lit with a host of candles, the light not quite reaching the high ceiling, gold veins sparkling along the black onyx columns as we passed cabinet after cabinet of relics, an arcane display meant either to impress… or warn.
I took special care to avoid the runed patterns in the floor, shivering at the memory of being trapped inside that circle. Even in bare feet, every step echoed against the hard surfaces, and I wondered how the priests remained so silent.
“Where did the healers take Valeria?” I asked, drawing even with Emilia. “I should check on her before I do anything else.”
“Down that hall, second door on the left. Her injuries will be tended to, but after what she saw today…” Emilia’s voice trailed off, and I nodded.
Valeria had lost everyone in that villa today.
Vampires she’d likely known since she was a child, and then her piece of shit father had thrown her to the wolves.
I found Valeria sitting on the edge of a big, comfortable bed, wrapped in a fluffy blanket, and she looked…
smaller. Not once had I imagined I’d feel pity for her, but sitting there with her gold hair matted with blood and her eyes glassy…
she looked like someone whose entire world had just collapsed around her.
I paused in the doorway. Unsure.
We weren’t… friends.
But we weren’t enemies, either.
“Hey. I thought I’d see how you were doing.” One of the healer-priests glanced at me, and I nodded toward the door, in a not-so-subtle hint. Leave us. They both slipped out around me, leaving me fumbling for what to say.
Wondering how to comfort someone who’d just lost everything.
Valeria didn’t look up as I crossed the room and sat beside her, close enough that our shoulders brushed. After a brief internal debate, I put my arm around her, and she laid her head on my shoulder, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“He didn’t even try to save me,” she whispered flatly. “He said the most awful things. Then left me there to die.”
“He did. And I’m sorry,” I told the truth, because she didn’t need me to pretend right now.
“My father was never kind, but I always thought he was fair.” The word came out broken.
“I tried all my life to make him proud. I would have done anything for him to…” Valeria heaved out a ragged breath, tugged the blanket tighter.
“I tried so hard, and look where it got me. On my knees in the dirt while he told me what a failure I was.”
Valeria deserved better.
She deserved so fucking much better.
Valeria’s jaw tightened. “I put everything on the line to save him… you put everything on the line to save him, and for what? So he could sell us out and join the very people who were going to execute us? The whole time I was on my knees, I kept telling myself, he has a plan. He’s going to save us.
But he just… walked away and left me there. ”
I studied the elegant bones of her face, the exotic tilt of her eyes. I’d always been jealous of Valeria’s looks. Her poise. Of everything, really, but I wasn’t jealous now. Not now. Not knowing what a terrible weight she’d carried all these years.
“I need you to listen to me. You are strong and smart. You understand the business better than he ever could. It’s not your fault his hatred makes him blind to how clever you are,” I said gently.
“Rocco Demente is a greedy male with a hole inside him that will never be full. He wouldn’t have been satisfied until he used you up, Valeria.
You deserved better than having him as a father. ”
“I’m just so godsdamned tired,” she admitted brokenly. “Of never being good enough.” Her face was red and puffy, and she was still in her ruined clothes, soaked in the blood of the healer she’d tried—and failed—to save.
“You’re good enough for me,” I told her fiercely.
“You’re good enough for us. You are stronger and smarter than Rocco ever was, and when this is over and you’re the one sitting at the council table, when you’re the one making the decisions that shape our future, your father will be rotting away, and nobody in this Dynasty will remember his name. ”
“Do you really think that?” She sounded slightly surprised.
“Of course I do.” I took her hand. “I’m glad you saved us that day at the Arsenale. I’m glad I got to know you. And I want us to be friends. Real friends.”
Surprise flickered across her face—followed by the ghost of a smile. She looked down at our joined hands, then picked at her bloodstained shirt. “I should get cleaned up,” she murmured, as if she could barely form the words, “and sleep for a year.”
“That sounds like a good plan. By now, they’ll know we’ve escaped.” I grinned. “I’ll bet your father is so pissed right now, he can’t even see straight.”
She sat up straighter, her eyes brightening with something other than tears. “My father doesn’t like it when things don’t go to plan. It ruins his entire day.”
I gave her a savage grin.
“Well, then, what do you say we completely fuck up the rest of his very short life?”