Chapter 54
DANTE
The DiSangue chapel’s ceiling was low enough that the top of Nico’s head brushed the chiseled rock. Every wall was lined with niches, each holding a single burning candle, so much red wax dripping down the walls, they could have been bleeding.
In the center of the chamber, a stone slab served as a sacrificial altar.
Iron cuffs were bolted to the four corners, a pile of chains piled at the foot, as though they’d been recently used.
Emilia nodded to the slab. “Lay her there.”
It took a second for my muscles to unclench, another to lower Emberline onto the cold stone before I stepped back, frowning.
She looked too small, too fragile, too much like an offering.
Her braid had come loose, and dark hair spread around her in damp, curling waves, water seeping into the sandstone.
There was a dark bruise on the back of her head, deepened to a sickly bloom.
Cuts on her wrists, one of them to the bone.
Anger flared, deep and hot, etching into my bones like a promise.
She’d been struck from behind and tied up while incapacitated by a coward. A coward I was going to kill, in all the ways I’d learned over these past decades but never been cruel enough to use.
I was cruel enough now.
I stood at the head of the altar, smoothing a strand of hair from her face, tracing the slope of her cheek, wiping away the traces of my blood, the canal water. “I’m right here, Ember. Right here, waiting. Come back to me,” I whispered. “Please come back.”
Nico shoved the chains out of the way with his boot, then took his place at the foot of the slab, jaw set, looking like this was the worst idea in the world, even though it had been his.
Emilia set a thick, black, bound book on a narrow pedestal, then placed a narrow knife beside it, lighting four candles on each point of the slab, her feet crunching through…
I looked down.
The entire floor was covered in a layer of salt, thick enough to be freshly fallen snow.
She spoke—not in Italian, not in the Old Tongue we used for ceremonies, but in something harsher, more guttural. The words scraped along my nerves like claws.
“What is she chanting?” I muttered.
Nico shook his head, his face pale. “You don’t want to know.”
Emilia glanced over her shoulder. “Step closer, both of you. Hands on the slab.”
We obeyed, moving to stand on either side of Ember. Salt crunched beneath our feet. The stone was ice under my palms, the air thrummed with an undercurrent that started out chaotic, then settled into a rhythm, like a heartbeat.
“The ritual needs three things.” Emilia’s voice echoed faintly off the stone. “Water, blood, and will.”
She gestured to the faint dampness still clinging to Emberline’s throat, her hair. “The water is already present; the lagoon took her in its embrace. We will use that tie to drag her back to us, back to the world.”
She picked up the knife, candlelight glinting off the blade.
“The blood,” she explained, “is ours to give freely, a gift to the Goddess of Death. A token of our appreciation for returning something that rightfully belongs to her.”
Before I could blink, she sliced a shallow, clean line across my palm. Pain flared, blood welled, dark and viscous, before Emilia pressed my bleeding palm over Emberline’s heart. The dark stain spread outwards, seeping through soaked fabric.
“Nico,” she ordered. “Hand. Now.”
He extended his hand without flinching. She cut him just as ruthlessly, then pressed his palm over Emberline’s throat.
“And mine,” Emilia drew the blade across her own palm. The scent that hit the air was heavier than mine, older, carrying a sulphury undertone that made the candles flicker. I’d never smelled blood this ancient—the kind that carried the weight of millennia.
Emilia laid her hand over Ember’s mouth, and I shuddered as rivulets crawled down her cheeks.
“Do not move,” she warned. “Do not pull away. No matter what you see. No matter what you hear. If you break the connection, I cannot put it back together.”
A prickle of unease crawled down my spine. “What are we going to hear?”
Emilia’s smile was sharp. “Death does not let go peacefully. She will fight to keep your wife in the darkness. We must fight just as hard to drag her back to this realm. I do hope you are up to the challenge.”
She began to chant again in that strange, guttural language.
My hand was slick against Emberline’s skin, blood pooling in the base of her throat. Nico’s jaw clenched as our eyes met, both of us wondering if we’d miscalculated.
Her words rolled through the chamber like a tide, buffeting the candle flames, every breath tasting of salt and old stone as Emilia’s voice rose, then dropped, power rising in the room, enough to make my bones vibrate. The book’s pages turned on their own, riffling, as if caught in a wind.
The air around us shimmered.
Pain tore through my palm, up my arm, into my chest. My heart stuttered, then skipped a beat entirely. For one terrifying second, there was no rhythm in my body at all, and above Ember, a dark figure floated. Eyeless Death, malice seeping from its hazy form, lifted that soulless gaze to mine.
Power slammed into me like a closed fist.
I gasped, thrown backward from the force, palm slipping, slipping away… until Nico’s free hand shot out, caught me in an iron grip, and held me in place. Steady, he mouthed, sweat beading on his forehead.
Ember’s back arched into a taut line.
Water exploded from her mouth in a violent gush, mixed with my blood, splattering across Emilia’s hand, soaking the front of her negligee. Ember’s chest convulsed, heaving, expelling more water, more until she was choking on it, coughing, fighting for air.
Her heart kicked under my palm as I released a sobbing exhale.
Gods, yes, that’s it. Come back to me.
“Again,” Emilia hissed, sharper than a slap to the face. “Breathe, girl.”
My beautiful, fearless, rebellious wife’s eyes flew open.
They were wrong—all black, no whites, nothing but a shifting void of nothingness staring back at me, aching to swallow me alive.
She stared at me like she saw something no one else could.
In those twin voids, I was reflected as the outline of a hulking creature, nothing vampire in that bestial form.
My very soul trembled, because she was seeing me as the monster I truly was.
Then her body convulsed, torquing up off the slab as she sucked in a choking, ragged breath. The best fucking sound I’d ever heard in my entire life, and I went to lift my hand…
“Stop, don’t touch her,” Emilia snapped, and every muscle in my body froze.
Her knife flicked through the air. Phantom pain flared from my heart to the gash on my palm as she sliced through some invisible connection between the three of us, severing our contact. Sound crashed in. My own harsh breathing, Nico’s muttered curses, the wet coughs racking Emberline’s chest.
“Ember,” I choked out, leaning over her. “Tesoro. Look at me. Look at me.”
She struggled to focus, eyes rolling wildly, body wracked by shivers, legs shaking.
“Dante?” Her voice was shredded, raw, like she’d swallowed broken shells. “I… I was in the… Oh, gods.”
Her expression went from confused to horrified, eyes staring, wrapping her arms around herself. Her savaged wrists were bleeding, red streaking over white skin, dark eyes bouncing everywhere—to the candles, the knife in Emilia’s hand, back to me.
“Where am I? I was in the palazzo… beneath the…”
“You’re alive. I found you in the water. But I came… too late.” I swallowed. “I tried… every spell I knew, but I couldn’t bring you back.”
Ember turned her head slowly, wincing, eyes bleary with confusion and horror.
“So, you… brought me here, instead.” She swallowed, turned to Emilia, and grimaced. “And you saved me. Why?”
Emilia’s mouth curved. “Because your death would be… inconvenient at the moment. And because certain males have grown comfortable, believing themselves untouchable. I will enjoy watching them proven wrong.”
She stepped closer, resting two fingers lightly on my wife’s forehead.
Magic shivered through the air, the lightest touch of power, yet cold enough to frost every heartbeat, leave a chill on my battered skin.
Emberline shuddered, eyes slipping closed for a moment, then snapping open again. Clear. They were clear and espresso brown and… normal.
No… almost normal.
In the flickering light of a hundred red candles, there, at the very rim of the iris, was a thin, silver ring that hadn’t been there before. Like a reflection of a crescent moon on still water. Like the moon that hung above Venice, right now.
Like a brand on her soul.
“What did you do?” I demanded, shoving Emilia’s hand away.
She arched one elegant brow, studying me like I was an idiot. “I anchored her. She crossed the threshold, Dante. Entering the death realm for even a short time leaves a darkness behind. I merely… tidied up the edges a bit.
“You will find,”—she turned to Emberline—“that things feel different now. The world will be sharper. The dark will whisper your name more loudly. Death does not like to be cheated.”
My wife licked her cracked lips. “What do you want for this?” she asked, seeming less afraid than she was curious. “I’m sure you have a price.”
Emilia laughed softly. “Smart girl. Enzo brought you up right, but then, your father always was my favorite.”
Her gaze glanced off Nico, landing on me.
“The price is not for you to pay, child. Whatever cost there is for this will come out of another’s pocket, so to speak. Worry not, go home. Sleep. Recover.”
Emilia’s mouth pinched in displeasure. “You understand,” she warned, “that what we did tonight can never be spoken of. Not to your fathers, not to your brothers, not to Luca or Marcello or Rocco. If the rest of the Council knew, they would demand all our heads, and I am rather attached to mine.”
“It’ll be our little secret,” Nico promised, mimicking zipping his lips.
Emilia’s eyes gleamed. “If you betray me, know this… what happened with the wards will seem like a kindness.”