33. Virgil
VIRGIL
I don't return to the estate.
I can't.
My tears won't dry, and I cannot allow him to see me this undone. This exposed. If he knows I can still feel this deeply, he will fashion it into a blade and wield it against me for centuries.
"Virgil."
I startle. I hadn't noticed her standing at the edge of the path.
Constance's smirk is already forming, that familiar, sharpened thing she wears like armor, but it falters as she takes me in. Whatever she came to say dies on her lips.
I must look as wrecked as I feel.
"He waits for you," she says finally. Her voice lacks its usual edge.
"I know."
"Do you intend to evade him?"
A ragged breath escapes me. I don't bother to hide my tears. What would be the point?
"There is no evading him. You know this as well as I do. I am his creature, and when he wants me, he will pull the strings. I only seek a few moments to collect myself before I must perform again."
She stares at me. I wait for the barb, the twist of the knife. It's what we do, she and I—this endless dance of her resentment and my guilt.
But something shifts in her expression. Something I can't quite name.
Perhaps she's seeing me clearly for the first time. Not the guide who failed her, but simply a fellow prisoner. Someone else who made choices and must live with their weight.
I think of Dante, how he'd looked at me when I blamed myself for her fate. Everyone chooses, he'd said. You can't carry all of it.
I'd dismissed him then. But standing here, watching Constance watch me, I wonder if he was right. I stepped into her pain willingly. I've carried it for centuries, let it calcify into certainty that I destroy so much of what I touch. But she made choices too. We both did.
Maybe guilt is its own kind of arrogance.
"I'll see what I can do," she says abruptly. "Buy you some time."
I blink at her, uncertain I've heard correctly.
She's already turning away when she pauses, glancing back over her shoulder. Her jaw is tight. Her eyes are unreadable.
"This isn't forgiveness, Virgil."
"I have never expected that from you," I say quietly. "Nor would I ask it."
Our gaze holds for a long moment, two broken things recognizing each other in the dark.
Then she's gone, her silhouette swallowed by the path back toward his fortress.
My feet carry me through the long grasses and half-forgotten paths toward my sanctuary. I walk in, barely registering the hot springs, the painted ceiling, the stars glittering through impossible windows.
I stumble past it all and into the space Dante painted within this pocket of reality. The apartment, perpetually suspended at twilight, the city sprawled beneath it like a jeweled tapestry.
It already fades—just lightly, just at the edges, like watercolor left in the rain.
If I don't anchor it soon, it will dissolve into blank nothingness once more.
I could never replicate it faithfully. I never knew this space the way Dante did, the precise grain of the wood floors, the exact configuration of lights in the skyline, which windows belonged to which buildings.
If I don't anchor it, I'll lose it forever.
If I do, I'll carry this space with me for eternity.
This tomb reminds me of all I almost had. All I never quite touched.
I walk through the rooms and let my hands reach out, brushing over the counters, the marble table, the brown leather chairs. I can't feel any of it, but no one is here to watch me, and there's no harm in letting myself imagine.
Letting myself imagine walking into this space at the end of some long day and sinking into one of those chairs overlooking the glittering sprawl of Manhattan, at the ten thousand windows burning amber and white, the rivers of headlights flowing through the streets below like molten gold.
Imagine lifting a glass of wine and tasting the layered complexity on my tongue.
Imagine someone settling into the chair beside me, crossing his strong, elegant legs, offering a hand palm-up.
And me placing my hand into his and recognizing the texture of his calluses, the architecture of his fingers, the familiar certainty of his grip.
Because it would be a familiar thing. Because we would have done this a hundred times before.
I lower myself into the chair. I only manage to sit because I envision it so. Nothing can actually hold me up anymore. I am a ghost built of words, slowly sinking beneath the mire.
No companion will join me now.
Dante is gone.
I let the thought settle, bitter and raw, in my mind. It's good. I'm glad he went. He's safe now and will never again face this realm, the pain and misery of it, the dangers, the temptations.
But I am certain I have never, in all my existence, felt so decisively and utterly alone.
I rise and walk to the balcony. Dante had opened the doors the last time we stood here, of course. I could walk through the glass and stand where I'd stood beside him, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at a world he'd missed and finally learned to see.
Instead, I remain pressed against the glass, looking out at a world I do not belong to and will never touch.
Time passes. It matters not how much.
Finally, I step away from the door.
I'm going to anchor this space.
After all, I shall grieve Dante for all my remaining days.
That's what grief is, in the end, the love left over. It’s a river that has burst its banks and lost its course, spilling across the landscape with no destination, no purpose, only the relentless need to flow somewhere.
Grief is not tidy. It does not observe boundaries.
It floods the low places and the high places alike, and the only choice is whether to drown in it or learn to breathe water.
With a steadying breath I do not need, I reach out to the space. I feel the impression of Dante woven through it—his carefulness, his precision, his hidden tenderness, the way he saw beauty in things he'd trained himself to ignore. I gather all of it and bind it to me.
Now it will remain here, beside my retreat. Permanent. Indelible.
I suppose all ghosts need an empty place to haunt.
I let my tears dry and walk out of Dante's home, back into my sanctuary.
“Poet.”
The voice freezes me where I stand.
Satan sits at my writing desk, penning something on the parchment with an unhurried hand, his legs stretched out before him, ankles crossed. He looks up as though I've interrupted him in his own study, as if he were not the one who has invaded the single private space I possess.
I don't have blood, but somehow it runs cold.
"I had planned to come see you next, my Lord."
He lifts his eyes and smiles. "Yes, I'm aware. I wanted to spare you the journey. There's no need to trouble yourself."
I hesitate. Steam rises from the hot springs, curling upward like thin clouds against the windows that frame the ancient heavens.
There's a trap here—there's always a trap—and I have walked into his snares too many times, had my leg wrenched by them, learned to recognize their shapes.
But I can't see this one. I don't know where to step.
He rises, the smile still perfectly in place. "I've achieved my ends. What purpose would punishing you serve when there's nothing left to gain?"
"Is Dante—"
"Gone, yes." He waves a hand, dismissive. "You needn't worry."
My posture unwinds, imagined muscles untensing. Some part of me had feared Dante might not follow through, might have felt the pull to return to Satan's court and bargain for something he shouldn't. I'm relieved to be wrong.
I'm also devastated, in a selfish way I cannot justify, to be wrong.
Satan adjusts his cuffs with casual precision. "I have plans in motion, and I find I'm no longer in need of your particular services."
A moment passes. The soft burble of the springs echoes between us before I speak. "I'm afraid I don't understand."
"I'm releasing you from your bargain with me." His eyes meet mine, dark and fathomless. "You're free to do as you please." A pause, and something hardens in his gaze. "Within this realm, of course. Should you set foot in my territory, that's another matter entirely."
"You're releasing me?"
He turns and trails his fingers along the bookshelves, skimming over the spines, soft leather, rough vellum, cracked wood. Touching all the things I cannot feel.
"As I said, I'm evolving. I have no appetite for petty games any longer.
You are free to fill your hours however you see fit.
" He tilts his face upward, studying the stars scattered out the windows, the painted ceiling.
"The light still won't receive you, of course.
You'll always bear my mark. But I release you from service and any debt owed. "
He lowers his gaze and offers something that might almost be respect.
"It's a shame I couldn't convince you to join us. What beautiful worlds you might have created."
I say nothing. I do nothing. Not as a strategy, not as an attempt to navigate, but because I cannot grasp the shape of this moment.
I feel as though he's maneuvering me, but for once in our very long history, it isn't into a corner.
It's into open space. Wide and boundless and terrifying in its freedom.
He smiles to himself and moves toward the door.
"Let me not keep you any longer. I'll show myself out." He pauses at the threshold, appraising my sanctuary one final time. "Should you change your mind someday, you know where to find me."
"I do."
He walks out without another word.
I stare at the door as it closes, as the latch clicks softly into place.
This cannot be true.
Free? But not truly free—I still have no means of leaving this place. No debt to him is an improvement, perhaps, but it's like being told the chains around your ankles have been removed while you remain at the bottom of the sea.
Perhaps I can guide souls to the light now without so much interference. Perhaps that will mean something.
But I'm not certain any of it matters anymore.
Dante is gone.
I wander back into his apartment, sink back into one of the leather chairs—Dante's chair, in Dante's home, overlooking Dante's city—and watch the lights of Manhattan glitter in their eternal twilight.
This is what remains.
Memory without presence. Love without object. A ghost haunting a ghost of a place that belonged to someone who is no longer here.
I close my eyes and let the silence hold me.