22. Dante
DANTE
I keep my hands tucked in my pockets, my eyes downcast, my form pressed into the shadows as I navigate my way across the ridge.
I understand, logically, that Virgil is a demon himself. He isn't in danger walking down into that valley to speak with four of his kind standing around a fire.
But something coils tight in my chest as I watch him go.
The demons around the fire laugh too brightly, shriek, and tease one another with performative abandon. They remind me of freshmen at their first fraternity party—three drinks past their limit and entirely unaware of how obvious their loss of control appears to anyone watching. Sloppy. Unguarded.
I force my feet forward. Virgil said he'd continue on with me if I followed his rules.
Rules are a framework I comprehend. And I need Virgil to walk with me.
I need Virgil free from this place. So I move through the darkness, step by careful step, until I reach the ragged tree he'd described. It’s a gnarled thing, half-collapsed against the ground, its trunk split and weeping some dark substance.
Rotted fruit litters the brown-dead grass at its base, filling the air with the cloying sweetness of decay.
I glance back toward the fire. Virgil stands among them now, hands tucked behind his back, his posture composed, his attention fixed on the demon who violated me.
Even from this distance, I can read the tension in Virgil’s shoulders, the careful blankness of his expression.
But he was right. He’s captured their attention entirely.
"Mr. Dante." A voice purrs my name from the darkness. Rich and unhurried.
I flinch and turn toward the sound. A woman stands beneath the tree, half-hidden in shadow.
Dark curls fall in waves past her shoulders.
Her makeup is immaculate—sharp winged liner, and lips painted the color of arterial blood.
She withdraws a slim silver cigarette case from the pocket of her coat, extracts a cigarette with manicured fingers, and lights it with a practiced flick.
The flame briefly illuminates her face before she inhales, then turns toward the dim orange glow from the valley below.
I have to fight to keep my expression neutral.
It's Constance. But not the Constance I met before—not the drowned and desperate creature with matted hair and wild eyes. This Constance wears a double-breasted blazer beneath a camel cashmere coat, tailored trousers with a precise break at the ankle, and heels with red-lacquered soles. She looks like she just stepped out of a corner office on the forty-seventh floor, someone who signs termination letters before lunch and doesn’t think about them after.
She takes another drag and smiles at me in a way that’s bold, unhurried, utterly in command. It's like watching someone remove a mask, except I'm beginning to suspect the drowned woman was the performance, and this is the closest thing to her true face I'll ever see.
"Constance." I resist the urge to look back, to check if Virgil is moving this way yet.
Her smile sharpens with pleasure. "Forgive my appearance at our initial meeting, Mr. Dante." She gives her wrist an elegant flick, ash drifting to the cracked soil at her feet. "I find it necessary to remind Virgil of our acquaintanceship from time to time. Keep him humble."
"Strange," I say, keeping my voice slow, unbothered. I'm buying time. Virgil should arrive any moment. "He's seemed the humblest of anyone I've met here so far."
She chuckles, smoke curling from her nostrils. Above us, the sky pulses with that sickly orange glow, and somewhere in the distance, something shrieks—whether in pain or pleasure, I can't tell.
"Well," she says, "I suppose this isn't a realm renowned for its humility." She taps ash from her cigarette and regards me with frank appraisal. "I have a matter I wish to discuss with you. Take a walk with me?"
I roll my shoulders. "I'm afraid I've walked a great deal since arriving here. I'd prefer to rest."
She smirks, running her tongue along the underside of her teeth.
The gesture is slow, deliberate; it reminds me of a snake scenting the air.
She takes one last drag on the cigarette, drops it to the ground, and crushes it beneath her heel with the kind of finality that suggests she's extinguished more than tobacco in her time.
"It's your choice, of course." Her voice remains pleasant, conversational.
"But I'm afraid if we remain here, I may find myself announcing our presence to our friends below.
" Her dark eyes flick their direction, glittering with something between hunger and amusement.
"Have you yet had the pleasure of being cornered by a pack of newly glutted demons, Mr. Dante?
They become rather... insatiable after a fresh feeding. Undiscerning in their appetites."
I use her glance toward the group as an excuse to look back myself. Virgil still stands among them, not a step closer than when this conversation began. His golden curls catch the firelight. He is the golden sun of this damned reality.
I watch him a moment longer than I should. He hasn’t moved toward the ridge yet.
I turn back to Constance. One slim eyebrow arches in question, waiting.
"You'd call demons on yourself?"
"Demons fear me now, Mr. Dante." She says this without bravado, the way one might mention the weather. "This is precisely what I wish to discuss with you."
I can spot a bluff from across a boardroom table. I've built a career on reading the micro-expressions that betray a weak hand—the slight dilation of pupils, the almost imperceptible tightening around the mouth, the way hands find reasons to move.
She's not bluffing.
She would call those demons down on me without a flicker of hesitation. There isn't a trace of fear on her—no widened eyes, no quickened breath, no tension in her jaw. She stands perfectly still, perfectly composed, entirely certain of her position.
The memory of Malrec's tongue on my jaw, his fingers around my throat, the pain—physical and psychological—surges through me unbidden. I fail to suppress a shiver.
"Vow to me, then," I say quickly, hoping my assumptions about the rules of this place prove correct.
Hoping the architecture Virgil described holds firm.
"Vow to me on your name that you will walk me only a short distance, that you intend me no harm, and that you'll allow me to return to Virgil freely when our conversation concludes. "
At this, her smile softens into something almost genuine. Almost warm.
"You're a clever one." She tilts her head, studying me with renewed interest. "I like that about you. I can see why he's so interested.”
She licks her crimson lips, then speaks with careful precision: "I vow on my name that I will walk you only a short distance, that I intend you no harm, and that I will allow you to return to Virgil freely when our conversation concludes."
Each stipulation is repeated word-for-word. Exactly as I stated them.
It leaves me wondering if the vow means nothing at all, if she's found some loophole I haven't anticipated, some technicality that renders my careful conditions worthless.
But there's nothing more to be done. Virgil still hasn't arrived, and I imagine that watching demons shatter me would only break him further.
He said his failures were already fracturing him. I refuse to be the final fissure.
"Very well." I gesture toward the path, indicating she should lead.
She smiles—victorious, knowing, and begins to walk. I follow, casting one last glance toward the firelight where Virgil stands among monsters, unaware that I'm walking into the dark with one of them.
"Is there some reason," I ask coolly, "this conversation needed to happen on a walk?"
"Yes." I recognize the feeling that prickles along my spine, the same instinct that fires when you realize the person across the negotiating table has already decided how this ends, and it isn't in your favor.
"I needed distance from Virgil. He has a way of coloring things with his opinions.
All I want is to present you with an offer. "
"An offer?"
The path narrows between two dead oaks, their branches tangled overhead. She passes through without hesitation. I follow, stepping over roots that clutch at the cracked earth like grasping hands.
Constance stops at a clearing, if it can be called that. A circle of dead grass surrounded by stones worn smooth by time or something else entirely. She turns and levels me with a gaze sharp enough to cut glass.
"An offer from the Lord of this realm." She lets the title hang in the air between us. "To stay in hell. Permanently. As one of his chosen."
I nearly laugh. I don't, but it's close.
I have no idea what this woman did in life, but I would wager everything I once owned that it wasn't negotiations. One always leads with the benefit. You discover the client’s need first, what I might have once called weakness, though I'm less certain of that word now.
And this woman, for all her confident posture and polished appearance, bleeds her need like a wound she doesn't realize is open.
She wants to be indispensable. Chosen. Important. But she doesn't believe it of herself, not truly. No one secure in their position postures the way she has. Security is quiet. Hers is deafening.
Which means she's vulnerable. She needs this deal to close.
That changes everything.
"Why would I want to stay in hell?" I ask, letting genuine curiosity color the question. Let her think I'm considering it.
"Why would you want to dissolve into nothingness when you could remain here and rule?
" She spreads her hands, gesturing at the blighted landscape around us as though it were a kingdom worth inheriting.
"Ascension isn't salvation, Mr. Dante. It's annihilation.
Everything you are—erased. Absorbed into something you'll never understand because you won't exist anymore to understand it. "