27. Virgil #2
"I did not know.” I smile at him, and it feels fragile on my face. "Thank you."
But his frown only deepens. His eyes search my face with an intensity that makes me want to look away.
"You've never been in these springs either, have you?"
I let out a soft sound that might pass for amusement. "It wouldn't do me any good. I can't feel them as you do."
Dante leans forward, lifting his chest from the water, and my traitorous eyes fix on his form—on beads of water gliding down the sculpted planes of his chest, tracing paths I cannot follow.
I force my gaze back up. Dante seems not to have noticed my focus. He's studying me the way one might study the Laocoon upon first encounter, expecting something simpler, and finding instead a complexity that demands longer contemplation.
"You love all of this," he says. I'm not certain if he's asking or simply observing.
"The art. The experiences. The food." He cocks his head again, that youthful, curious gesture that makes him look so young, so unburdened.
So close to ascension. So close to leaving me. "But you don't get to have any of it."
I move closer to the edge of the pool. At some point, I’ve shifted into Roman sandals, the sight of them pulling me back toward a life I no longer possess. And never shall again.
"Perhaps you understand now why the stories mean so much to me." I chuckle, but it' feels hollow, and Dante doesn't join me. His expression scarcely changes.
"You give so much, Virgil. But what about you?"
"I made my choices."
"So you believe one choice deserves damnation for eternity?" His voice is quiet but relentless. "Yet you tell me you're not sure anyone deserves hell. You believed in a man like me, someone who damned himself through his own repeated choices. You've offered me so much grace."
My mouth hangs open, prepared to respond, to wield words as I've always done. My weapon. My gilded laurel. My tool. My shield. My tomb.
None come.
I can't stop meeting his gaze. Can't find language. I barely manage to shake my head.
Dante runs a damp hand back through his hair, pressing it flat, the dark locks slick and glistening.
"Feed on me," he says.
"What?" I stumble back from the pool, from his words.
"Just a small amount." He places his hands before him, palms up, offering. Or pleading. "I trust you to use restraint. Feed on my pain, or whatever it is demons do. Just enough for you to feel again." His eyes don't waver. "Then you could join me here. Have a moment of sensation. Of pleasure."
I say nothing. Neither does he.
We remain frozen for what feels like eternity. Him—the picture of beauty and masculine grace, gleaming bronze and gold in the candlelight, warmed by steam and flame. An artist would paint a scene such as this.
They'd use atramentum for his hair, adding the smallest touch of umber and white to catch the sheen, but leaving it mostly to shadow.
To raven's wings. To ink pooled on parchment.
Then his body—they'd need a great deal of paint for that.
Brushing golden warmth along his sides, the flush of color in his cheeks, rendered with the sweeping strokes a lover's hands might make.
The water next, the way it embraces him, reflects his earnestness and beauty like a mirror that adores what it holds.
But those eyes, the depth of them holding things even I cannot read. The sincerity in them, the longing, the something else I cannot name. They'd save rendering those for last.
For a thousand years, people would stand before that painting. They'd study the books and manuscripts behind him, the Mexican tiles, the cathedral walls, the Roman ceiling. They'd wonder what the scene meant. Where it came from.
But his eyes are what they'd always return to.
What was he thinking in that moment? What would his mind reveal if only we could peel it back, reach into it, hear the thoughts burning behind that expression?
"No," I finally whisper. The word emerges breathless.
Dante swims across the pool, closer to me, his muscled arms coming to rest on the stone lip. Water drips from his shoulders onto the tile.
"Can't you craft your own food here? I can bear a small amount of pain.
I'd do this for you, Virgil, so you could enjoy this moment with me.
" He says my name like an anchor, like he means to pull me in with it.
"You could eat again. Steaming bread. Fresh fruit.
Whatever you've been missing. Whatever you desire.”
I take a single step forward. My sandaled foot rests one tile away from where he glistens, close enough that if I knelt, if I reached out—
"You think if I could feel right now, it's food I'd be interested in?"
His brows rise. The words have left me. There is no retrieving them.
Shame rushes through me, hot and swelling, though I know it doesn't show on my face. But he's reading my eyes as I've been reading his. So he likely sees it anyway.
He lifts himself partially from the pool, water streaming down his chest in rivulets that catch the light. "You could partake in whatever you wished, Virgil."
I abandon the rhythm of my imagined breaths. I stop moving entirely.
For a second time since meeting this man, I do something again that will shame me forever.
I pause once more.
If I'm anything, I am disciplined. I could feed the smallest amount from him. It would fracture something within him, set his journey back. But he's so close to ascension now. It wouldn't take long for him to recover what he'd lost.
And then I would feel.
The steam of the room pressing against my skin.
The tile cool and damp beneath my feet as I stepped toward the pool.
I'd breathe in all the scents Dante had described—mineral water, honey, smoke, paper, leather, warm stone.
I'd run my hand down the cashmere sweater and finally know its weight, its softness under my palm.
I'd pull it over my head. Remove my trousers.
Slide into water so warm it would sting, and I'd gasp, overwhelmed by sensation after two thousand years of nothing.
I'd cross the pool to where Dante waited. Reach out a hand and—
I turn and march as far as I can get from the water.
Perhaps Dante was right. Perhaps I am trapped in a loop. Because this feels like the greatest temptation I have ever faced.
"Please." The word comes out broken. Unashamed in its desperation. "Please don't ask this of me. I have vowed to myself to live by the principles of love after I squandered my soul so grievously. I shall never forgive myself if I abandon that principle in this moment."
I look back over my shoulder to where he stands in the pool, watching me.
"Love does not consume, Dante."
He nods slowly, his eyes grown sad, entirely readable. "What is love, then?"
I shift back toward him and only then realize I'm pressed against the writing desk.
The altar where I once bled my soul dry, sold my principles for a legacy I thought would save me.
But though I may dwell in hell, though I may have damned myself, no one else dictates my actions.
No matter what becomes of me, I choose who I am.
"Love is showing up," I say quietly. "Remaining steadfast. Choosing what is right over what is easy.
It's choosing responsibility for another for no reason except that you choose to.
" I pause, feeling the words take shape, words I've carried for centuries without ever speaking aloud.
"It's sacrificing. Protecting. Giving whatever helps the other flourish, even when it costs you everything.
Even when it ensures your own sorrow." I meet his eyes.
"And bearing that sorrow without turning it into harm. "
Dante blinks at me.
Then nods, something shifting in his expression.
"I see," he says softly.
The words settle between us, and they land, not just on him, but on me. The weight of what I've described. The shape of it.
It is what he has done for me. Offering his memory to Charon so I wouldn't have to surrender Musa. Walking into darkness at my side when he could have fled toward the light. Refusing to leave me behind.
And it is what I have done for him. Staying when I could have turned back. Guiding him when it required facing my own temptations. Choosing his ascension over my hunger, again and again.
I don't let myself think the word. I don't let it form fully in my mind.
But it's there anyway, burning at the edges, undeniable.
Dante rises from the pool, and I turn away, waiting while he dries himself, while he dresses. The sounds are intimate—the rustle of fabric, the soft pad of his feet on tile. I stare at the painted ceiling and try to remember how to breathe.
"Virgil."
His voice pulls me back.
He's clothed again. His hair is still damp and his expression open in a way that makes my chest ache.
"Can you still create within this space? Could I add something without damaging what you've built?"
I nod. "Yes."
"I'd like to show you one thing before we leave, then."