Chapter 25 #2
“I tried diplomacy, and that failed, no surprise there. This is about honoring old promises. Older than you and me. You should have taken the deal, tesoro. Now you’ll just have to take me, instead.
” He turned back to the priest, his anger growing.
The kind of barely repressed rage that had me curling my hands into fists and wishing I had one of my knives handy.
“You’re going to marry us. Here. Now.”
“No, this asshole is deluding himself, and you are definitely not going to marry us.”
The priest looked between us, then made a strangled sound. “I cannot, sire.” The poor man’s eyes bulged. “The Don—”
“Has no power in here,” Dante gestured to the circle around us.
“In here, I am the only master you need to obey.” His hand flexed, and the circle tightened until I could barely breathe, the stench of ozone choking the air.
“You feel my magic, don’t you? You’re standing in an invoked circle.
The old kind. The ones they used before the dynasties even existed. You know what that means.”
Gods, I hoped he fucking explained himself, because I didn’t have a godsdamned clue what he meant.
The priest’s hands shook around his beads. “I… it means… any union sealed here…”
“Can never broken,” Dante finished for him. “So. Say the words. Or die.”
“What do you mean, never broken?” I demanded. “I will not—”
Dante’s eyes went very dark. “You will,” he demanded as a smothering coldness slid over my skin like smoke, sank into the spaces between every panicked breath as he compelled me to obey.
I was trapped in place, the priest’s jaw trembling as he pulled out that knife, Dante grasping my wrist, turning my hand so it was palm up. Held his hand out, right beside mine.
“Finish this, priest.”
Sweat trickled down the priest’s temple. Pale lips moved, his voice hollow and distant. “Emberline of House DiRavello. Dante of House Dominico. You stand here before blood and witness to enter into a sacred union. In this time of…”
“Skip to the end,” Dante growled.
Gabriel shoved at the barrier with both hands as black-suited soldiers streamed in through every doorway.
Marcello’s reinforcements had finally arrived.
Too late for me, though.
Silver flashed in my peripheral, pain streaked across my palm, then my hand was crushed between Dante’s big, battered ones, warm and calloused and slippery with blood. Tight enough, I couldn’t pull free.
“Let bone remember, and blood obey… I join this flesh, by night and day,”—the priest’s halting voice broke as he tried to force the words out—“from first dark breath to last dying star, what is joined tonight may never part.”
Dante’s grip on my hand tightened, his face blurring as a wall of darkness slammed into me, like the fist of a god, driving the breath from my lungs. His magic.
What was happening?
Somehow, this was Dante’s magic, and the priest’s, together with the ritual, all three combining into a force so powerful, I lost my ability to think, to breathe, to feel. A force that ripped me apart and pieced me back together, leaving me swaying, my hand gripped in Dante’s big, calloused hand.
Outside our bubble, chaos reigned, the magic muffling the shouting and gunfire, turning orders and screams into garbled, indistinct noise. Nico’s fists thundered against the invisible wall, shock and fury twisting his beautiful face.
But that was the real world.
In here, I was choking on magic and the reek of coppery blood, trapped in a place where I had no power, no way to break free. All I could manage right now was to try to survive… What had he called this? An invoked circle?
“What are you doing to me? This is getting worse,” I slurred, my tongue thick.
Heat flared where our palms were pressed together. Dante’s hand closed around mine with unyielding strength, rough and calloused, never letting go.
“Hang on, tesoro mio, it’s only the pagan magic forging our bond. This is nearly over.”
I tried to focus on his words but couldn’t as rough, primitive magic coiled around us like a chain, looping, tightening, knotting itself through muscle and marrow and bone. What the fuck had I agreed to?
“By blood and vow and witness, you are bound. It is done,” the priest intoned mechanically.
The second that last word crossed his lips, I collapsed to the floor, a faint glow of magic prickling my skin.
What had he done to me?
I was bound to a stranger. To some brutal, feral stranger with his fighting scars, pagan magic, and burning, blue eyes full of vengeance. My carefully constructed plan—marry Gabriel, infiltrate the Dominicos, sabotage them from within—lay in ashes.
The barrier shattered like breaking glass.
Voices crashed over us—angry, shouted orders for us to kneel, to put our hands behind our heads… Wait, maybe those were only for Dante, not me… the guards staggering around as if they’d been drugged.
Luca was screaming inside my head, Ember, what should I do? I’m going to get you out of here, I’ll… But my gaze flew to my uncle, to the prim, satisfied smile on his face, like this had been his plan all along.
Marcello surged forward, only to be cut off as Gabriel took one step toward me, face ashen.
Then he stopped, his expression hardening to stone when he saw our bloody hands still somehow pressed together. The priest’s red-stained blade.
The deed done.
My stomach twisted violently as I yanked my hand out of Dante’s, blood splattering across my white dress, the floor, and up the front of Gabriel’s suit.
Fucking gods, what a disaster. For a moment, our eyes caught, the cut on my palm throbbing in time with my heart, every panicked beat crashing against my ribs.
“You have no idea what you’ve ruined tonight,” Gabriel whispered, voice shredded.
“On the contrary.” Dante’s voice was rougher now, the edges scraped raw by whatever that ritual had done to him.
“For the first time in a century, I know exactly what I’m doing, brother.
” He looked down at me in a way that made me want to sink a blade into his throat, twist, and watch the life drain out of him.
“A word of advice. She belongs to me now,” he snarled, like a dog warning the rest of the pack away from his kill. “Emberline is mine. Anyone who touches her, anyone who so much as looks at her wrong is dead, and that includes every one of you fuckers in this room.”
Then the world turned upside down, the air punching out of my lungs as the bastard tossed me over his shoulder and stalked out of the chapel.