9. Dante
DANTE
The door clicks open, and steam billows from utter darkness. I steady myself, then step inside, waiting to see if Virgil follows.
When he materializes alongside me, I suppress a sigh of relief. I've spent too many years monitoring body language not to recognize when someone nears the breaking point of a deal. The telltale loss of eye contact, the way the body angles away from commitment.
How precariously close he'd come to abandoning me in this realm.
Not that I need him—I don't. But he possesses familiarity with this place, with hell, that I lack.
He knows the vulnerabilities in the landscape, what to anticipate.
Despite his maddening reluctance to share useful information promptly, he does hold knowledge I require.
Plus, there's something about him, this quiet, poetic man from ancient history.
"You hesitated," I say, voice low in the shadows. "I thought you might not follow."
His lips quirk into one of those feather-light expressions that flit across his face as easily as the darker ones. "So you do wish for me to stay?"
"It would be... inefficient to proceed without you."
I deliver the words without inflection, but Virgil's gaze catches mine. Holds it. There's nothing intimidating in his expression, none of the subtle power dynamics that occur in boardrooms. Yet this gaze arrests me, pins me in place. I resist the urge to swallow, to look away first.
After what feels like an eternity, Virgil nods and breaks contact. "As long as you wish for me at your side, I shall remain, then.”
"You possess information I don't."
"Yes." His eyes appear shadowed in the strange, diffuse light emanating from some single, distant point.
It makes him look exhausted, creases pressed in sharp relief against his skin.
"I want to guide you properly, but it's difficult without access to your mind.
How can I determine if we occupy the same space? "
"It's dark and filled with steam."
"Of course." Virgil shrugs with apparent carelessness. "We've entered your first temptation. I know which one it is, but I won't know your specific struggle. I shall only witness my own variation of it.”
He delivers this with practiced ease, the words polished by centuries of use. But there’s a faint hitch in his voice, a hesitation so small I might have imagined it. "You're nervous," I observe. "You're afraid of facing your own temptations here."
He tilts his head, regarding me with sharp, glittering eyes. His response comes edged with steel. "You lead with directness, intending to intimidate others. Does that typically succeed in masking the insecurities writhing within you?"
I set my jaw, then deliberately unclench it. "And you deflect. Does that typically distract the souls you shepherd from examining their guide too closely?"
Something flickers across his expression, the slightest wrinkle across his forehead, the barest thinning of his lips. Then gone. We stare at each other for another small eternity. Then he chuckles. "Well, if we're both finished posturing, we should investigate what's around that corner."
"What is it?" The question escapes before I consider how much I'm letting myself slip. How this place—witnessing my past, processing my death, and something about this man—is causing me to bend more than I typically would.
Virgil's smile carries the complexity of bittersweet chocolate, appearing gentle but surprisingly deep in flavor. He merely gestures toward the path ahead.
Fine. I walk forward, feet moving decisively. Something ticks softly against my wrist. I'm certain my watch has finally advanced. I won't give Virgil the satisfaction of seeing me check it again, or pressing fingers against my throat seeking another nonexistent heartbeat.
I can imagine the sleepy smile that would cross his face, the look he'd give if he caught me checking my watch again, as if I'm amusing. As if this—him sifting through my memories—is entertainment for someone who apparently chooses to remain in hell.
I'm beginning to suspect my guide has more issues than I do.
The steam intensifies as we proceed deeper, great billowing clouds making my clothes heavy and skin clammy.
The air feels curated somehow, too warm, too close, as if calibrated to provoke rather than comfort.
My mind can't reconcile having no heartbeat yet still sweating.
It's a contradiction, like everything else about this realm.
Virgil makes no comment as we turn the corner, keeping his eyes averted to the floor. His silence presses harder than the steam. Whatever waits ahead isn’t merely unpleasant—it’s personal.
He knows what we're about to face but lacks the courage to confront it directly. I have no such limitations. I'll face this 'temptation,' whatever worthless human desire it represents, move past it, locate the next door, and advance. I'll do that a dozen times. A hundred.
Nothing has ever stood between me and my objectives, and that certainly won't begin in hell.
The steam clears enough to reveal a single spotlight pouring over a man standing beneath a shower's spray. His body displays muscular definition, a product of countless gym hours and precious discipline.
He moves beneath the spray, water following every contour and line. His head turns, slick black curls heavy with water sliding down his back, and his eyes meet mine. No surprise registers. No shame.
Instead, he angles more fully toward me, revealing a sculpted chest, taut skin.
There's an invitation in his eyes.
The steam softens everything—the edges of the room, the sharpness of thought. Water beads along his shoulders tracing the lines of his body as it catches in the dark curls at his neck. He turns a fraction more toward me, unhurried, as though time has slowed to accommodate us.
I let myself watch. Let the sight of him settle in my body, the quiet pleasure of it. The warmth. The familiarity. Desire without urgency, without cost.
I take a step forward.
Then stop.
What the hell am I doing?
I don't know this man. I don't even know where I am.
Then I remember Virgil standing beside me. He's lifted his face toward the figure, or whatever he perceives in this swampy, sultry cesspit. But there's caution in his expression, tension in his body. Like a cornered animal, uncertain if the approaching presence means harm.
"Who is that?" I ask.
Virgil's face snaps toward me. "You broke the loop."
I frown. "How long was I in it?"
"Only a few hours, I suppose, by mortal measurements of time."
Hours? Shame heats my cheeks and sends ice down my spine. I never surrender to this kind of base indulgence. Lust is a temptation I mastered a decade ago. Or so I’ve always believed. The more unsettling truth is not that I lingered, but that it felt effortless to do so.
Virgil's posture softens. Somehow, his cashmere hasn't gained the rumpled, damp appearance my clothing has acquired in the steam. He turns fully toward me. "Most souls I guide through this space spend days here. Months, even. Years sometimes.”
I scoff. Years. Wasted on desires of the flesh.
Virgil raises a brow but doesn't comment. He seems relieved to redirect attention from the figure still moving beyond us. "To answer your question, that's Satan's wife."
"Wife?" I glance back at the person in the shower. I understand there are different expressions of gender, but something in me knows this is a man.
Virgil considers me momentarily, and when he speaks, his voice quiets. "Do you see something else?"
"A man," I answer. The subject of our discussion runs his hands down his chest, soap sudsing and sliding along skin, drifting along defined abdominals, disappearing just beyond sight.
"You see a man as well?" Virgil asks, and it seems the first unguarded thing he's said, as though he speaks without thinking. He clears his throat and drops his gaze to the shadowy floor. "That is Satan's husband, then."
"Satan has both a husband and a wife?" I ask dryly. Of all the topics I wish to discuss with my perceptive guide, our mutual attraction to men is not among them.
Virgil's grin turns mischievous again. "None of this is real, Dante."
"So Satan—he isn't real?"
The smile vanishes. "No. He is very, very real.
And you should exercise extreme caution regarding him.
Don't speak one of his names unless absolutely necessary.
" There's such gravity in his expression that it sends a sudden chill through the environment, ice swallowing the shower's heat.
He glances at the scene. "And don't touch what belongs to him. "
"I have no interest in that man," I say.
Virgil gives me a look that suggests the hours we stood here contradict that statement. Shame courses through me again. Even disconnected from my mind, he's still privy to my secret failures.
He spares me from further self-examination by posing a question, laugh evident in his voice. "Do you see the door yet?"
I scan the room and realize, with a start, that I do. It's nowhere near the figure, but the knob glints dimly in a far corner. Virgil and I turn simultaneously, neither looking back as we exit. But something lingers in me, a foreboding sense that I’m not walking away from danger, but towards it.