Chapter 16 #2
Crouched down, I stared past the torches into the darkness, and beneath the stench, Dante’s familiar scent threaded out in a faint but insistent stream. Like a siren’s song, calling me to the waters to drown.
Or like bait in a trap, waiting to snap shut around us.
Because along with his scent was the coppery smell of his blood. A lot of his blood.
He was injured. Badly. My fingers flexed around the hilt of my blade.
“How far away is the prison section?” I asked Nico in a hushed voice.
“At the very center of the Fossa. If memory serves, and we don’t make any wrong turns, ten minutes.” He paused. “There will be more guards. We kill them quick before they raise the alarm. No quarter, no hesitating, principessa.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t,” I whispered, then the darkness swallowed me whole, the world vanishing as if someone had blindfolded me. Even my enhanced sight was useless here—no moonlight, no torches. Just pure, suffocating black.
I reached out until I touched the wall to my right.
“Grab my shoulder and stay with me.” My whisper sounded impossibly loud in the inky blackness, but Gabriel’s fingers curled around my shoulder and squeezed. Just once, then I took one tentative step, and then another.
The wall was rough, still warm, the floor sloping down in an endless incline, the corridor magnifying every sound we made—breaths, footfalls, the faint shift of clothing—until even the blink of an eye felt too loud.
I made myself focus on Dante’s scent, not the growing amount of his blood I kept smelling.
But the deeper we went, the more the air thickened. Grew heavier with rot and waste and old sweat. I’d never smelled anything so foul and gagged, unable to stop myself, burying my nose into the crook of my arm.
Nico’s voice came from behind me. “You’ll get used to it.”
“We’re not staying long enough to get used to it,” I snapped, not losing contact with the wall to keep my bearings. “We’re getting Dante out and back to the gate, then once we’re in Venice, we’re burning everything down.”
Gabriel made a sound that started as a laugh but ended in a grunt of pain. “That’s the spirit.”
We descended, turning once, twice, three times, Dante’s scent growing stronger with every turn.
Gabriel was moving better, the smell of the poison waning, his grip on my shoulder firm and reassuring.
My right palm was rubbed raw from dragging along the stone, my fingernails worn ragged, the air growing colder. Not just the underground coolness of the sleeping desert. This was different. This was magic.
“Stop,” Nico murmured.
We froze.
Down here, the silence came alive—the slow drip of water, a sound like… breathing. The hush of the night wind, picking a path through these endless tunnels, followed by the scrape of something hard against sanded stone.
“We’re almost there.” Nico’s voice was quiet. Worried. “The Fossa is filled with prisoners. Hundreds on some days. There should be torches, so stay clear of the bars, stick to the center of the corridor. Some of these prisoners deserve to be here.”
“No one deserves to be here,” I muttered.
We rounded the next corner, and the stench hit like a punch to the face.
This wasn’t just waste. This was centuries of spilled blood—old and layered, sunk into the very stone. It was infection. It was human fear that had been breathed out so many times, it had become part of the atmosphere. It was horror and hopelessness.
It was—
Pain. I was smelling the prisoners’ pain, somehow amplified by this horrible place.
I’d heard of spells like this, ancient ones, forbidden now, used to torture and cause pain, spells to amplify the worst of our emotions, twist them into weapons.
I clamped my mouth shut and forced myself not to retch.
Gabriel swore under his breath, his hand squeezing down, as if he wanted to drag me out of here. “Pull your shirt up over your face; it’ll cut down the smell.”
I did as he said.
Nico pushed up beside me, and in the distance, a single torch flickered, then further down, another. “Those are the cells up ahead, carved into the rock. Hard to say where he is, and there’s no rhyme nor reason to the layout.”
My chest constricted. In the darkness, I couldn’t see much, but I sensed the way air currents rushed upward, the labored breathing of prisoners in the dark, the maze stretching out around us.
“So many,” Gabriel murmured. “How do we know—”
“I don’t.” Nico’s quiet voice was blunt. “But she does. Where is he, Emberline?”
You are the only one who can find him in the maze. I swallowed, focusing on that faint thread of Dante’s scent, cutting through the rot like a blade. Smoke and iron and sheer male stubbornness.
“This way,” I said, “he’s not far, he’s right here, right here…”
The corridor leveled out, and we slipped past the first torch, past cell after cell, then straight ahead where the air tasted of leather and clove. The labyrinth was built to confuse, but it didn’t understand one thing.
Dante Dominico was mine.
He was a brand burned deep into my soul. There was nothing standing between us except darkness. No walls. No soldiers.
Nothing could stop me from reaching him now.
“There are no wards, no guards,” Gabriel hissed, dogging my heels, not limping as badly now. “Why not? There are prisoners down here.”
Nico’s answer came fast—grim fact. “Because the Overseer doesn’t need them.”
Gabriel’s voice sharpened. “Explain.”
We hurried past the second torch, and Nico’s answer came slow. “Magic is the luxury of the privileged. The Overseer… he keeps control with brutality. With the fact that broken prisoners can’t escape across a hundred miles of sand.”
My stomach twisted as I hurried past more cells, past eyes peering out from the dark. A chill slid down my spine. I’d better never meet this Overseer.
Dante’s scent surged again, sharp enough to steal my breath away.
This corridor opened into a wider space, and for the first time, I sensed scale—the vastness of the place below the earth. The stench was… mindboggling, even with my shirt pulled up over my mouth and nose.
And yet, beneath it all, through the rot and blood and fear— I took another deep breath, sifting out everything that didn’t matter to find the one thing that did.
Smoke and iron. Leather and clove.
Dante.
My heart beating against my ribs, I tightened my grip on my knife until my knuckles ached, letting that familiar scent pull me forward into the darkest end of the corridor.
“He’s right here,” I pointed into the darkness with my blade. “There.”