29. Virgil
VIRGIL
Following Constance, we no longer need to take side paths or roundabout methods.
The ashen landscape softens as we walk. The smoldering crags give way to gentler slopes, the sulfurous air thins until it lightens to something almost pleasant.
We leave behind the sacred place where Dante had given me such an extraordinary gift, his home, rendered within my sanctuary.
A piece of him I can return to when he is gone, could anchor and keep if I choose.
And we walk directly into the fate I've spent all these precious hours and days and years avoiding.
Because if Satan wants a conversation with Dante, I know the purpose. It's not what Dante fears; it’s not merely to torment me. That would only be an additional benefit.
No, it's because he's seen enough pieces of Dante—through Constance, through Malrec, through the impressions left in his loops—to know that Dante is desirable for his own ends.
A soul this strong, this capable, this newly cracked open and rebuilding itself?
Such a thing has value beyond measure to one who collects power the way others collect art.
Dante appears entirely calm, though that means nothing.
He and I are creatures cut from similar cloth.
We long ago learned to swallow vulnerability and pain, to keep those sacred things hidden from anyone who would exploit them.
I wish I possessed Constance's lack of moral compunction at this moment so I could reach into his mind and sense his intent.
Perhaps it's better I cannot. I'm struggling against rising panic as we approach the soaring garden gates—wrought iron twined with living ivy that has no business thriving in this realm.
Dread floods through me like water through a breached hull.
I'd rather Dante not feel it. Rather he not know that I'm holding onto him the way drowning men hold onto wreckage, and I don’t want him to realize how quickly we’re sinking.
Even Dante's flawlessly practiced mask slips for just a moment when we step through the gates and into the garden.
It's not the garden of ancient lore any longer. Not some half-wild beast filled with fairies and magic-infused serpents and fruit imbued with the kind of power that killed gods.
It's refined now. Beautiful in a way that nothing I've ever seen has been.
On a rising hill in the distance, massive olive trees rustle in a gentle breeze, their silver-green leaves catching light that shouldn't exist here.
Birds sing sweetly, their music tangling with the burble of a stream winding over rocks that shimmer with opalescent color.
Sweeping willows and ancient oaks drape over the water, creating cool retreats from the golden sunshine dancing against a sky of impossible, cloudless blue.
On the other side of the path, hedges twice our height bloom in wild profusion—roses climbing through jasmine, wisteria cascading over arched trellises, beds of lavender and sage that feel stolen from another world.
It's the marriage of an English country estate and a Persian paradise garden, every element cultivated to suggest both effortless beauty and absolute control.
Constance walks ahead of us with easy familiarity, her heels finding the flagstone path without hesitation. She belongs here. That realization settles into me like a stone. I don’t know how I led her so poorly, nor how she ended up trapped by the very net I struggled to free her from.
Dante quickly masters his expression, swallowing down surprise into cool indifference once more.
But his eyes watch everything, brushing against all the symbols of a language he once spoke fluently: wealth without limit, power without apology, authority over even natural elements.
Resources so vast that endless indulgences—a garden requiring an army to maintain—make perfect sense.
We have stepped back into his world.
A pit grows in my stomach, though I don't show it. If I could touch him, I would brush a finger against his thumb. Ground him. Remind him I'm here. That he knows himself now.
"Beautiful gardens, aren't they, Dante?" I ask, emphasizing his name, pressing into the power of it.
He turns to me and smiles, a sincere, soft thing he never would have offered when he first arrived here.
"I rather think I preferred your realm, Virgil," he says, using my name the same way. A rope. A tether.
For a moment, we simply look into each other's eyes, and every doubt swirling through me washes away. This man isn't the same one I met at the beginning, marching endless empty roads, easily swayed by deals made over polished tables.
He's someone new. Fragile in that newness, perhaps, but strengthening with each moment.
He nods at me, assurance in the gesture. I don't know what comfort he's offering, but I accept it.
We turn a corner and approach the estate.
It's a thing of staggering beauty, even I cannot deny it.
He's taken the greatest architecture from every era and woven them into something that should be impossible.
Sumerian cone mosaics frame the entrance.
Gothic flying buttresses support walls inlaid with Byzantine gold leaf.
Renaissance colonnades give way to Moorish arches, which open onto Baroque balconies.
Half palace, half basilica, wholly breathtaking. It looks too fragile to exist, yet grounded as though it rooted here ten thousand years ago and will endure for ten thousand more.
Dante gives nothing in his expression, but those bright, clever eyes sweep the facade with calculation and a flicker of surprise.
Perhaps he expected hellfire. Three-headed dogs. A swampy river filled with grasping dead. A great black throne and theatrical pronouncements of doom.
Not this. Not beauty wielded as a weapon.
Servants in crisp livery open the front doors, and we step inside to polished marble floors veined with gold, soaring ceilings decorated with understated ivory plasterwork—acanthus leaves and geometric patterns that draw the eye upward without overwhelming it.
Crystal chandeliers hang from chains so delicate they seem to float.
Constance's heels clack against the marble. Dante's shoes make a softer sound, muffled leather against stone.
I make no impression at all.
"Virgil." Constance stops and turns. "He'll see you separately first."
"No." Dante steps in front of me, his body rigid, fists curled at his sides. "That wasn't part of the arrangement."
Constance smiles slowly, her eyes tracing up Dante's form in a way that makes me wish I could shield him. I should have briefed him better. Should have spoken of these things instead of hoping we would never end up here, within these whitewashed walls that hide so much rot.
"Dante," I whisper, trying desperately not to let my attachment show through too clearly. From the gleam in Constance's eyes, I fear my efforts are both pointless and poorly executed. "It's fine."
He looks back at me, brow furrowed.
But I mean what I say. Satan isn't one for exhibition. For drama. He won't rip us apart, won't glut and boast and preen as some of his demons do. As he once did. He learned from that long ago.
He's smarter now.
Dante hesitates another moment, then nods. He'll trust me in this.
How I wish that faith were more deserved. My choices have led him here from the very beginning. I drew into his mindscape when I should have kept my distance. I stayed with him when I should have released him. Opened my heart and soul letting him drift into them indelibly.
Irrevocably.
Constance leads Dante toward the dining room. I watch him go, his back straight, his stride measured, every line of him armored against whatever comes next.
Leaving me alone in the grand foyer.
I know where to go.
I walk toward a hallway and follow it to its end, then pass through the open door.
The office is stately, filled with bookshelves that climb to the ceiling, their spines a careful arrangement of ancient texts and modern philosophy.
Large, curtained windows overlook a pond where a graceful marble statue stands at the center—a god frozen in eternal youth, a vessel in his hands, and water arcing from it in crystalline streams. Afternoon light falls in buttery sweeps across the wooden floors, illuminating the delicate furniture, the intricate Persian rugs, the Venetian glass globe on its brass stand, and the ancient mortal artworks hung upon the walls.
Many are pieces I recognize from memories of souls who wept for their loss.
A chair behind the desk turns, and the man sitting in it smiles at me.
"Virgil. How good it is to see you."
I clench my teeth.
It isn't Satan in his favored form before me.
It's Satan wearing Musa's skin.
He always captures the appearance perfectly.
Musa was no classical beauty—middle-aged when I knew him, past the careless handsomeness of youth.
Dark hair threaded with silver, cut short as physicians wore it.
A broad face rather than a fine one, marked by a strong, serviceable nose broken once and healed imperfectly.
Lines gathered around the mouth from years of concentration, of calming the frightened, setting bones, and delivering hard truths with care.
But Satan always gets the gestures wrong. The expressions.
For it was those that made Musa indescribably beautiful to me in the short time I had the gift of treasuring his company. His devotion. Satan renders his eyes too dark, too calculating. His smile too sharp. His posture too perfected.
Musa was anything but perfect. He laughed loud and hard. Ate with gusto. Wept with feeling. His smile was crooked, his hands scarred from years of work, and the way he listened, it was like whoever sat before him was entirely worthy of his complete attention.
Satan has certainly never mastered that.
No more than he’s learned to tame that wicked smile he's currently stretching across my long-dead love's face.