Chapter 22
DANTE
Motherfucker.
Emberline stood in the middle of the ring, her braid undone, her sweat-lined face turned toward the platform as if the sight of me was somehow her tether, the Overseer’s shadow looming over her like a curse. That thin shirt clung to her body, showing every rib, every vertebra.
She hadn’t been feeding enough; that much was clear.
Her shoulders were squared, but I could tell she was afraid.
Yet she was still standing, straight as a queen.
The Overseer’s lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear over the murmurs of the crowd. Couldn’t hear the wicked words coming out of his mouth, only that Ember went paler and paler, her hands trembling where she kept them clasped into fists at her sides.
Then the bastard touched her. Touched my wife, and my vision went white.
I growled, straining against the chains, guards cursing, iron clanking on the wooden platform. He was planning on fighting her. He’d stripped off his armor—no plated chest, no bracers—just a brutalized torso and dark trousers. His personal guards had disappeared.
For weapons?
Or to bring up another one of the foul creatures they kept in the lower levels of this place?
Emberline would never beat him, never…
My thoughts were stuck in an endless loop of panic when the bastard turned his head, made eye contact, and smiled.
The kind of smile that froze my blood in my veins.
He was going to kill her. Hurt her. Make me watch. Breathing hard, I strained against the guards until their boots slid across the platform. Chains rattled, then went taut. The males holding me cursed.
“She came for you,” one of them grunted. “Came to save a worthless cause, and now all three of them will die here. Your wife, the soldier, and your brother. I suppose your sire will have to look for another heir.”
“You’re already dead, you just don’t know it yet,” I muttered, imagining the fucker bleeding out as I finally located Gabriel in the crowd.
I couldn’t read my brother’s expression through the blood and swelling, couldn’t tell anything except that his gaze kept flicking upward, again and again, to the narrow slit in the stone dome above, where a thread of daylight shone like a promise.
The guard followed my stare and chuckled, dragging me back down to my knees.
“Even now, the fool is searching for a way out.” He grinned behind his mask. “As you know, there isn’t one.”
His hand clamped down on my jaw, forcing my face back toward the ring. Yeah, I was going to kill this fucker, and then I’d kill the Overseer and every other bastard here.
“The boss wants you to watch.” His fingers dug in until skin tore. “This will be entertaining, that’s for sure. He doesn’t want you to miss a minute of the excitement.”
Two things happened at once.
The gate on the opposite side of the ring grated open.
And Nico walked out.
Relief hit me like a punch.
He was on his feet. He was breathing. He didn’t look half-dead, and while it was just like the Overseer to turn ally against ally. Nico would never hurt Emberline. Never.
Then he lifted his head.
His pupils were blown wide, swallowing the pale brown of his irises until his eyes looked wholly black. His skin had a sheen to it, not sweat exactly—something unnatural crawling under the surface, feverish. His jaw worked as if he were chewing on his tongue.
I’d seen that look so many times before. They’d given him the draught. He held a sword sharp enough to carve her head off her shoulders in one strike.
My eyes found Gabriel’s, and even he was leaning forward, face paling beneath the bruising and blood, hands clutching the edge of the metal baluster in front of him. He didn’t know about the draught, but he recognized the danger.
A laughing guard tossed something at her feet, then walked away.
A sword.
Not a blade worthy of a duel. Even from here, I could spot the flaws—metal pocked and tired, a long crack running along one side of the blade like a scar, the tip snapped clean off.
A broken thing, made to fail.
Emberline stared at it for a heartbeat. Then she bent, picked it up with both hands, and tested the weight.
Her knuckles whitened around the hilt as she swung the too-heavy weapon, her footwork impeccable, her stance perfect.
The Overseer stalked back to me, a satisfied smirk on his face.
“No,” I rasped. “No… don’t do this. Don’t—”
His smile widened. “What’s the matter, Prisoner 1445? Lost your appetite for blood?”
“Put me in there instead,” I pleaded, beyond pride, beyond anything but saving the female I loved. “I’ll fight him. We’ll give you the spectacle you want. Just let her go free. Her uncle will kill you if you let this happen.”
He chuffed out a dry laugh. “I know for a fact her uncle already believes she is dead, which means she’s mine to do with as I wish. Save your begging, Prisoner 1445; it will be your turn soon enough.”
I didn’t know where to look. At Emberline, braced for that first strike. At Nico, spinning that curved sword like a scythe, nothing on his face except the promise of death. Or at my brother, leaning further out over the railing now, as if he was thinking of jumping.
Two guards shouldered down through the crowd and dragged Gabriel back, pinning him in place with their shoulders, forcing him to watch.
Emberline’s shoulders tightened. “Nico,” she said, voice carrying across the sands as she lifted her broken sword, not to defend herself, but to point at me. “Nico, it’s Emberline. Remember why we’re here. We came to save your friend. We’re here to save Dante.”
He blinked once, then lunged.
Emberline barely got the blade up in time. Metal met metal with a jarring shriek, and the impact drove her back a full step. Nico pressed his advantage immediately, faster than he should’ve been, stronger than any male had the right to be. An empty blankness on his face.
I’d been force-fed that draught myself.
Woken up hours later, covered in blood and gore, with no memory of what had happened except… to know I’d killed. Violently.
“Nico, please. Please don’t do this.”
Emberline pivoted, using the broken sword more like a shield than a weapon, deflecting blow after blow, her already bruised arms and shoulders taking the full force of Nico’s strikes. She moved with that quick, lethal grace I’d seen before—sharp, efficient, controlled.
But grace didn’t count against pure aggression.
Against a fighter trained in these pits for five long years, honed to perfection by ten-hour days of grueling matches against opponents bigger and faster and meaner.
Nico’s blade came down, again and again, each strike meant to end her. Emberline parried, the cracked sword shuddering. She ducked, rolled under his arm, came up, and tried to land a cut across his ribs—
She stopped herself before the blow connected.
Even in the middle of the ring, even with death coming straight at her, she hesitated.
Because she couldn’t hurt him.
I swallowed, focusing on her face, the emotions warring there, hopelessness mixed with despair, the same helpless fear I was feeling right now, and realization slammed into place, sure and heavy.
Emberline couldn’t hurt Nico because she cared too much about him.
And if she didn’t defend herself, she was going to die. Fear ripped a hole wide open in my chest—nothing mattered except preventing my best friend from killing my wife.
“Nico,” I screamed, my voice breaking on his name. “Nico, stop. It’s Emberline—you can’t hurt her. You swore to protect her.”
His head snapped toward the platform for a fraction of a second, and he paused, logic fighting the draught’s compulsion, sword raised up over her head, gripped in his white-knuckled hand as his eyes found mine.
Black drained from his eyes, a flash of brown showing through.
Yes, that’s it, fight it.
Hope flared in Emberline’s face, and she braced her hand on his chest. “Nico, please… please, it’s me.” Her pleas faintly carried to where I stood. “It’s Emberline. You know me. You know me, Nico.”
Nico’s gaze returned to her. His mouth twisted.
He surged forward, bringing the sword down hard enough, she had no option but to throw herself sideways to keep from being split in half. Ember came up to her feet, spitting out sand, but Nico was already there. A machine with no mercy.
I screamed when he kicked her legs out from under her.
She hit the sand with a groan I felt through my bones.
The crowd went insane, stomping bare feet on the floor in their frenzy. Dust rose in the air, my vision narrowed on the only thing in the world that mattered.
Emberline pushed up on one elbow, barely managing to get her weapon between them. Nico’s sword slashed downward, and she brought the broken blade up in a desperate block.
The crack in the metal widened.
One more hit, and her only protection would snap.
The Overseer leaned close to my ear. “I have half a mind to call it off,” he murmured, as if he was sharing a secret between old friends. “She’s tougher than she looks. I think I’ll keep her, long after you’re gone. I doubt her uncle would come looking, given he thinks she’s dead.”
My throat closed as bile swept up, hot and sour. “You're fucking dead. Before the sun sets. That’s a fucking promise.”
“Your killing days are over.” His voice turned thoughtful.
“I had plans for you, and I resent Giovanni denying me my revenge. But let’s see what we can wring out of these next few hours.
I expect hurting her… and your brother will do more damage than my fists ever did.
Watching someone you love suffer… now that’s the purest kind of despair. ”
I braced myself to attack…
Then Emberline screamed.
She’d gotten a few blows in, a cut on his shoulder, a small nick on his forearm.
Nico kept driving her back, back, until her back hit the ring’s stone wall, prisoners hanging over the edge to get a closer look. She was trapped, her breath coming fast, her eyes bright with panic.
Gabriel was fighting to reach her in time, dragging the crush of guards forward a step, but he would never make it in time. Neither of us would.