22. Dante #2
I smile at her. It's the smile I've used across a thousand conference tables—pleasant, patient, and utterly in control.
"I've never been particularly good at sharing authority. Perhaps oblivion suits me better."
Her jaw clenches, just slightly. She recovers quickly, but I've seen it. The flash of frustration. The desperation beneath.
"You navigate this realm with unusual ease," she presses. "Have you considered that you might be suited to it? That you belong here?"
"I've had a good guide. Perhaps that explains my resilience.”
The words land harder than I intend. Her composure cracks, just for a moment, but enough.
"If he's anything like he used to be, he does no guiding at all." Her voice turns harsh, edges sharpening. "He watches. He waits. He lets you make your own choices and calls it freedom. Everything you've accomplished here, Mr. Dante, you've accomplished yourself. It has nothing to do with him."
"Everything you wanted in life," she continues, smoothing her voice back to silk, "you could have here.
But magnified. Perfected. You've only seen the miserable corners of this realm—the bogs, the loops, the drowning souls.
But there are territories where you could be a god.
Entire dominions you could shape to your will. "
I glance around the clearing at the withered bushes, the sulfurous sky, the distant orange pulse of ashy fire on the horizon. "If that's so, why are you here? Playing messenger in a wasteland?"
Something flickers across her face. She clacks her heel against a stone at her feet, and it crumbles to dust.
"I've had to earn my way to my position." She looks up again, and there's something raw beneath the polish now. "But some gather his attention immediately. They don't have to claw their way into his good graces. They simply... arrive. And he wants them."
I file that away. She's been here for some time, then. Worked for whatever status she's accumulated. And she resents those who might skip the climb she had to make.
Useful information.
But I'm done with this conversation. Virgil will have reached the tree by now.
He'll have discovered I'm not there. I can picture the panic he's trying to hide, the way his hands might tremble at his sides.
Hands that can't touch anything, can't help anyone, can't pull me back from whatever edge I've wandered toward.
"What is it you actually want from me?" I ask, letting impatience sharpen my tone.
"For you to have a conversation with him." She says it simply, as though she's proposing lunch. "That's all. Hear what he has to offer. Then make your decision."
I remember Virgil's reaction every time Satan’s name surfaced, the way he shrank into himself, the way his voice dropped to something barely audible.
His specific warning, delivered with more gravity than anything else he'd told me: never make deals with the Devil.
I have to assume any bargains through his emissaries would receive the same counsel.
"This offer holds no interest for me."
"Oh, but it should." Her eyes narrow, running down me like she's reassessing my value, and I recognize the look.
It's the same one I've given a hundred opponents when I've found the leverage I needed.
"You see, should you slip away without this conversation, I believe our leader would take his disappointment out on your guide.
Virgil has been a thorn in his side for centuries.
It wouldn't take much provocation for him to decide the thorn needs removing. "
I swallow. It takes me a moment to find my voice.
"Then I'll have the conversation before my journey ends." The words taste like ash, but I keep my expression neutral. "For now, I return to my journey.”
Her lips press thin—disappointment, frustration—but then the expression transforms into something almost amused. "Very well, Mr. Dante. Then make me a vow." She tilts her head, calculating. "On Virgil's name. Vow that you'll have that conversation before you reach ascension."
So I was right about the mechanics of vows here. The confirmation offers little comfort as I weigh my options.
I believe her. That she has some connection to Satan, that he wants something from me.
But I don't believe for a moment that he intends to grant me a realm of my own.
I've been a man in positions of authority.
I know how such men think. They don't share power; they delegate it strategically, and only when the arrangement benefits them more than it costs.
Whatever he wants from me, generosity isn't the motive.
But can I walk away? Can I risk what she might do to Virgil if I refuse?
"I—"
"Do not agree to anything she asks.”
Virgil's voice cuts through the clearing. I sense him before I see him, that particular quality of presence he carries, warm and uncertain all at once. He steps up beside me, and something in my chest loosens.
He's the only one here who admits his limitations. His doubts. Everyone else in this realm wears their confidence like armor. Virgil wears his uncertainty like an offering.
"Virgil." Constance's smile turns sharp. “How nice to see you once more.”
I turn toward him, relief flooding through me faster than I’d like to admit. “Your conversation ran long.”
“I apologize.” His eyes sweep over me, searching for damage, then flick to Constance. Whatever he finds in her expression makes his jaw tighten almost imperceptibly. “It was a matter of some delicacy. I came as quickly as I could.”
Constance says nothing. She simply watches us, the way Virgil positions himself slightly in front of me, the way my shoulders loosen at his arrival, the way we orient toward each other like compass needles finding north.
I see her cataloging it. Filing it away. She smiles, slow and knowing, and I understand that she's already calculating how to use what she's just learned.
Virgil ignores her entirely. "We should be going."
I shrug and attempt to appear unaffected. I hope my mask holds better than my confidence in it. “It would seem I've run out of time."
"A pity." She withdraws her cigarette case again, the silver catching what little light exists here.
She doesn't light one—just holds it, turning it over in her fingers like a talisman.
"Just remember, Mr. Dante, when you've caught a god's attention, you don't outrun it. You only delay the meeting."
"I'll keep that in mind." I hold her gaze a moment longer than necessary.
"Until we meet again, Mr. Dante." She inclines her head, a mockery of courtesy. "Virgil."
She turns and walks into the fog, her silhouette swallowed by the murk within moments. The click of her heels against stone fades to silence.
I stand there, watching the space where she disappeared.
"Dante." Virgil's voice is quiet. Careful. "What did she say to you?"
I turn to him, to his golden curls and ancient eyes, to the worry he's trying so hard to hide.
"Nothing I believed," I say. "Come on. We should keep moving."
It's not the whole truth. But it's not a lie either.
And right now, with the fog closing in around us and the memory of Constance's warning echoing in my skull, it's the best I can offer.