Chapter 25
DANTE
Icouldn’t believe they came for me.
Couldn’t believe we were all still breathing.
If we got out of here, I was kicking all three of their asses from here to the fucking Underworld.
“Here.” Nico reached out for the executioner’s axe. “Chop off the fucker’s head, then we can go home. I wouldn’t be opposed to blowing this shithole off the face of the earth on our way out.”
Out of the choking dust, a guard barreled straight toward us, and my heart caught in my throat as, without hesitation, my wife stepped in front of me, tossed her broken sword away, and angled her body to intercept.
“Get down, Emberline.” I shoved her to safety with one hand, then swung the axe with the other.
Solid armor met cleaving metal. Skin split, bone shattered with the impact, the guard’s head landing in the sand, his helmet rolling away, body toppling in the other direction.
“Thanks, caro marito. Good to see you’re still pretty agile for an old bird,” Emberline teased, her whole face glowing with joy.
I didn’t think I’d ever felt more whole than I did right then, half-dead and broken, my wife looking up at me like I was the most powerful male in the world.
“Fucking show-off. I’ll draw away a few more of those guards, give you better odds.” Nico winked and was gone, racing straight toward the Overseer, three of his guards breaking off to meet him.
Gabriel gave me a what the fuck are you waiting for look, jerking his chin toward the Overseer and his shrinking detail.
“Get the fuck on with it; clock’s ticking.”
I had no idea what he meant, except there must be a plan, and whatever it was, it had better end with us all getting out of here. I checked my wife over one last time, making sure none of her injuries were life-threatening.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, just go ahead and just say it. I know you want to.”
“He’s mine. Stay out of this,” I warned her. “I mean it.”
“Fine.” She shot me a saucy grin. “But when you get into trouble, I’m swooping in to save you like usual.”
I grinned, deciding I’d never been happier than I was right now, then hefted the axe in one hand.
Solid. Balanced. Sharp. The perfect weapon for what needed to be done.
Across the fight pit, the Overseer spread his arms, exposing that barrel chest and brawny arms. I could barely believe my luck. After all this time, I had my chance.
No tricks, no drugs… and if we played this right, no guards to interfere.
My body was weak, my leg a mess, but the guard’s superpowered blood and a rush of adrenaline gave me all the edge I’d need. And I knew one thing, more clearly than anything else. If I left the Overseer here alive, I would never know a moment’s peace.
After imagining this moment for years, I wanted to take my time. Wanted him to pay for every ugly word he’d said to my wife, for touching her with his filthy hands.
For hurting her.
My eyes caught again on her bruised cheekbone. Heat crested over my skin like a wave of fire, and I took a breath, forced myself back to calm.
“Stop mooning over your wife and get on with it. I’ll go help Nico with the rest of the guards.” Gabriel gripped my arm. “You’ve got eight minutes to kill the bastard. Don’t fuck around, make this quick and clean.”
Across the sand, Nico had already downed two of the guards and was about to take out a third. The Overseer was laughing as he motioned another guard to join the fray. Nico’s jaw clenched as he took a hard blow to the arm.
“I’d hoped to make it slow and ugly,” I muttered.
Gabriel threw his head back and laughed. “No doubt, but unless you want to haul him back to Venice with us, I suggest taking his head and being done with it.”
I stalked forward, shoulders squared, every movement sharpened into purpose. The axe was an extension of my rage, divine justice; today was supposed to be my ending, but instead, it would be the Overseer’s.
Banked fire burned in my gut, a reminder of how badly this could go if I lost control of myself and a reminder that I was more dangerous than any of my friends knew.
“Prisoner 1445,” the Overseer crooned. “Still breathing. How disappointing.”
I didn’t bother with words. I brought the axe down.
My first strike wasn’t elegant. It was fury given form, a blow meant to carve the world in half. The Overseer blocked with his heavy blade, stumbled a step, surprise written all over his face.
I struck again, and his expression shifted from surprise to shock as he realized I wasn’t as weak as he expected.
Outside my periphery, Nico and Gabriel battled the enormous guards, no mean feat, but they fought well together, while the guards were confused by their broken ranks, by their world crashing down around them. My friends picked them off, like shooting fish in the canal.
The Overseer fought masterfully, every strike economical, precisely placed. He was faster than I was. Stronger than me. He knew how to exploit every injury. Every weakness.
But I wasn’t here to lose.
I was here to settle a fifty-year-old grudge.
Every blow was fueled by my time spent in this hellhole, every cruelty, every humiliation I’d endured, but even more, by every second Emberline had suffered at his hands.
I drove the Overseer back, one step after another, to the platform’s edge.
Not until his back hit the railing, not until I sent his weapon flying, did the arrogant bastard realize… he had nowhere else to go.
He scanned the chaos behind me, strewn with the bodies of his dead guards. There was no one coming to save him, and I was the judgment he would face before he crossed the veil to whatever waited on the other side.
“This must be a surprise,” I mused. “I’ll bet you never thought this place would collapse around you. That you would die in the sand, like one of your prisoners.”
“You think this is over. You think you’ve won, but you’re only stepping from one prison into another,” he sneered. “Even if you kill me, nothing will save you.”
“Yeah, no shit,” I snorted, assuming he was talking about the demon the witch had put inside me, but then his baleful glare drifted past me…
To Emberline.
“Nor will this victory save her. You are all as doomed as any of these pathetic creatures.”
“Better than being eaten by worms, which is where you’re going, soon enough,” I countered.
“Better to be eaten by worms than live as I have for all these centuries.” The Overseer stared up at me, and the look on his face made me pause. That wasn’t fear, it wasn’t even hate… that was relief.
“Go ahead then, end my misery. When I see you in the Underworld, I’ll buy you a fucking drink as a thank you.”
I leaned down and wrapped my hand around his throat.
“If I could, I’d peel you apart one layer at a time and make you suffer. But I don’t have the fucking time.”
“Make me suffer?” He laughed. “You don’t know what suffering is.
” He pointed to the brand on his cheek. “Recognize this? It’s the mark of a thrall.
And soon enough, you’ll have one, too. He’s going to turn all of you into his slaves, a Dynasty of thralls, and there is nothing you can do to stop him. ”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I hissed, the axe gripped in one hand, every instinct urging me to be done with this and cut off these lies… except they didn’t feel like lies.
I glanced at Nico and Gabriel, on the other side of the Pit, scuffling with the final group of guards. I could wait. Call them over… Nico was a Truthteller.
He’d know if the Overseer was lying, but—I ground my teeth together—we didn’t have time.
“Be glad it’s been fifty years since you’ve bled into the Basin. Your woman won’t be so lucky. And as for you, execution would have been a kindness.” He laughed, blood frothing at his lips. “This way, at least I’ll die knowing you’ll suffer for the rest of …”
“Shut your mouth,” I roared, bringing down the axe. “I am done listening to your poisonous lies.”
The blade cleaved through flesh and arteries and bone in one pass, not stopping until the edge was buried in the wooden edge of the platform.
The Overseer’s head landed face up in the sand ten feet away, mouth open, as if still halfway through whatever bullshit he’d been spewing, and I was glad I’d cut him off.
I didn’t realize I was on my knees until a small hand curled around my shoulder, screams filtering past the roaring in my ears as another explosion detonated outside.
“We have got to go,” Emberline crouched down to stare into my eyes. “We have to go now, Dante. You have to get up.”
The entire compound shuddered, like the earth itself had split open. The dome above us finally cracked, coming down, not in pieces, but in a roaring avalanche.
Emberline grabbed my arm as sunlight vanished behind a wall of dust, the air thick enough to chew. My lungs burned. Tears streamed from my grit-filled eyes.
Then Nico was there, Gabriel, too, and we plunged into the surge of desperate prisoners scrambling toward the gap torn open in the outer wall where daylight poured in like a promise.
Freedom smelled like explosives and blood, and I’d never wanted it more.
We stumbled out of the Fossa together—four survivors of a nightmare—into a skeletal landscape still rocked by the aftershock of explosions, covered by rolling black smoke driven by high winds. Behind us, the prison roared one final time as the dome collapsed completely.
Somewhere in that ruin, the Overseer was dead.
We were alive.
I kept my hand on Emberline, trying to reassure myself that this was real and not some fever dream. I didn’t know where we were going next, or what the plan was, but I wasn’t about to let her out of my sight.
Not for a single moment.