Chapter 52
DANTE
Emberline.
Her name rang off the walls of the training room, echoing back the growing panic in my voice, as I raced through the house, throwing open door after door to dark, empty rooms. Panic sluiced through my veins, heart beating feverishly as I took the steps two at a time.
Her citrusy scent lingered through the house, leading straight to the hatch in the roof.
I stared at that unlatched door, cursing myself for leaving.
For thinking I could sneak off to clear my head while she slept. To go over my plan again, make sure I was doing everything possible to keep my wife safe. And I’d fucking failed at that, too, because now she was gone.
I should have stayed in bed, arms wrapped around her, keeping her safe.
She wouldn’t have gone far, I told myself.
I laughed bitterly. I was a fool. After what she’d just learned, of course, she’d gone after her uncle. Alone. With a fistful of knives and a heart filled with rage, she was headed to the DiRavello palazzo.
Well, I was right behind her. I shoved the hatch open and leapt onto the roof, staring out over the slumbering city, the slivered moon hung low in the dark sky.
My gaze fixed on the DiRavello palazzo, towering over Cannaregio.
I inhaled the damp night air, catching a hint of Ember’s scent.
An hour, possibly more since she’d left; fear spiked through my chest at what might have happened in those scant minutes.
I closed my eyes and reached inward, searching for the other end of the blood bond, the trace of my own blood in her system.
There—a faint echo tugged at my chest, low and insistent, dragging me east.
For a heartbeat, something else flared. Cold. Panic. A sharp spike of smothering, not being able to breathe… drowning. Then the bond went dark, as if night had fallen.
My heart stuttered.
“Dare I ask why you’re on the godsdamned roof?”
Nico’s head popped through the opening, annoyance carving lines into his face. “Gabriel sent me to deliver a message. Marcello met with Giovanni tonight. He didn’t know about what.” My old friend stopped, his eyes narrowing. “Why do you look like you’re having a godsdamned stroke?”
“Emberline’s gone.” My voice came out rougher than I intended as I pointed, my finger shaking. “But I felt her… there.”
Nico’s gaze flicked over the rooflines to the palazzo, then back to me. I watched realization hit him, the way his posture sharpened. “She wouldn’t confront Giovanni by herself, would she?”
“She would, and she’d go alone because she thinks she’s fucking invincible,” I snarled, reaching down the empty space between us, grasping for something—anything—on the other end.
Nothing.
Fucking darkness and cold and… no, not darkness cutting us off, but water.
I was a fool. A stupid, idiotic fool, and once I dragged her foolhardy, stubborn, reckless ass back home, I was never letting her out of my sight again.
“Is she in trouble?” Nico asked, then, more sharply, “How much trouble, Dante? Fucking talk to me.”
“I… think she’s somewhere under the palazzo, beneath the waterline.” The image that popped into my head lodged under my ribs like a knife. “And it’s high tide,” I rasped, rubbing the knot closing off my air. “We’re close to the turn. The canals are already swollen.”
“The basement… of the palazzo… fuck.” Nico swore softly. “Why would you think that?”
“Because after you left, she confided that might be where her uncle hid the stolen documents.” I paced to the edge of the roof, trembling, heart racing wildly, “I’m going to get her, bring her back.”
“Ember… she can’t swim, Dante.” Nico’s nostrils flared, “She told me before the wedding on the boat when we…” he shook his head. “Never mind. She can’t fucking swim.”
“You can come or stay, I don’t give a fuck.” I turned, and Nico grasped the back of my jacket and dragged me back.
“You charge in there like a bull, and you’re dead. If Giovanni doesn’t kill you outright, he’ll order the Draconi guards to, and you won’t be able to help her.”
My hands curled into fists. “Then take me there,” I panted, chest heaving. “You’re keyed in for security. You can dematerialize past their wards.”
Nico hopped onto the roof. “Take my arm.” I crossed the distance in three strides and gripped his forearm, eyes fixed on our destination, reaching, reaching down that long, empty bond between me and my wife.
“I’ll shield you from the Draconi protections around the palazzo. I can get you close, and with luck, Giovanni won’t even know we’re there. Hold on,” he warned, and the world dropped away.
We reformed on rough stone beside the swollen canal, and I staggered, boots scraping against the edge before Nico caught the back of my coat and hauled me back. The palazzo loomed above us, reflected all around us.
The canal overran the edges of the Fondamenta, water lapping hungrily at the stone in small, greedy waves.
High tide—and then some.
Nico swore under his breath. “If she went into the basement…”
“She did. I fucking know she did.” The bond was completely dark now, nothing but a void. I peeled off my coat, yanked off my boots, stripped off my weapons, anything that would weigh me down.
“The basement’s warded by some old ass magic.” Nico’s pale eyes danced between my face and the canal. “Had to do a thorough inspection before Gabriel’s wedding, part of standard security protocol.”
For one second, my eyes flicked to those heavy wooden doors, debating. We could break in, cut through the house. Find the kitchens, this storage room, then the steps to the lower levels, but that would take time, and every second was precious.
“Dante, you should…” Nico warned.
I dove.
Water closed over my head in a freezing rush, heavy and suffocating. The cold punched the air from my lungs for a heartbeat before I kicked hard, letting instinct guide me now that the bond had gone dark.
The hazy world below the surface was another universe entirely, where the palazzo’s foundation was a wall of ancient wooden pilings and softened stone, algae clinging to every surface. The weak moonlight from above was swallowed by murk until everything was a dim blur of shape and shadow.
But I didn’t need to see.
The bond grew colder the deeper I went, but I’d fed recently, so I sensed her on the other side of this wall. I angled my body, threading between two thick pilings, fingers brushing nothing but rough stone, and then…
Cold metal.
A thick-barred grate set into the foundation. Water rushed through in a steady, forceful stream, dragging at my clothes, my hair.
She was right here. So close I could almost smell her.
I planted my feet against the stone, wrapped both hands around two of the bars, and yanked. With a grinding shriek, the iron gave way. One bar tore free, a jagged and twisted mess, then the next, ripped out of the stone itself. Another.
This was taking too fucking long.
Punching my fists into the wall around the grate, I pulverized ancient sandstone, clouding the water with blow after blow and opening up a hole. I forced my shoulders through, rough edges scraping skin raw as I let the water suck me down into complete and utter darkness.
My lungs burned, I couldn’t see a thing as I was dragged through a chute of some kind, blind and starving for air, then spat out into an open room, and there… movement, illuminated by the vague flicker of golden light on the surface of the water.
A snake… no… a long black braid weaving in the water like a serpent.
Emberline.
For one painful, nauseating heartbeat, the sight didn’t make sense. She never looked that still, like a rag doll. Even asleep in my bed, her body stayed coiled, ready, fingers tensed like she was waiting for a fight.
Now my brave, fearless wife floated limp, arms bound behind her, eyes wide open, staring up at the surface, a good foot above her head now.
I was too fucking late.
I never felt as helpless as I did right now. For one second, I considered wrapping myself around her and dying, too, staying down here so she wasn’t alone. Then the urge disappeared, canceled out by boiling rage.
I’m getting you out of here.
I reached her in two strokes, hands closing around her shoulders. Her skin was cold when I tugged her toward me, but she was bound tight, and it took me too fucking long to tear the razor wire free, to untie her legs.
I kicked and kicked, hauling her toward the gap, twisting my body to shield her from the edges of the broken grate. Jagged metal gouged chunks out of my back, my shoulders, and my arms until the water tasted like blood, but I barely felt the pain.
The moment we cleared the opening, I swam for the surface, lungs collapsing, vision darkening for lack of air. The water felt heavier now, as if the canal resented me stealing her away from its greedy claws.
“She is not yours,” I snarled into the water. “She is mine, and you cannot have her.”
The surface broke, and we emerged into a rush of air and sound. I sucked in a breath so deep, my chest hurt, then another, swimming for Nico’s outstretched hand. Emberline’s head bounced against my shoulder, her face slack, lips tinged a faint deathly blue.
“Dante,” Nico’s hiss cracked across the canal.
A second later, he was on the edge, reaching down, hauling Ember up. I scrambled ashore behind her, palms flat on the wet stone, water streaming from my clothes, and the night spinning in circles as my brain caught up with reality.
My wife lay on her back—too pale even for a vampire, all the color washed out. Her chest was still, her dark eyes wide, reflecting the stars above.
“Emberline.” I leaned over her and tapped lightly at her cheek. “Ember, wake up. Come on. Take a breath, baby.”
Vampires could survive almost anything. I’d seen gruesome, career-ending wounds that hadn’t ended lives, but… she’d been under a long time, and she was barely thirty.
So fucking young.
My entire body shook, fear I hadn’t tasted in centuries clawing up my throat as I tried to gather my scrambled thoughts.
I could barely keep my hand still enough to press two fingers to her neck, just below her jaw, where a pulse should have been. Horror choked me at the slick chill of her gray skin, the same shade as the stone around us. I pressed harder.
Fucking nothing.
“Anything?” Nico’s rough voice came from far away, swallowed by the roaring in my ears, the horror consuming me whole. I was hyperventilating, trapped in a nightmare I couldn’t claw my way out of.
My wife is dead.
My fingers trembled where they were pressed against that silent vein, my other hand splayed over her sternum, and beneath my palm, there was no subtle rise and fall of breath, no reassuring thud against my bones.
My life was slipping away… no, my life was gone.
Everything had ended when my wife took her last breath.