Chapter Thirty-Two
Thirty-two
“Dante,” Luke grits out.
It takes a second for my concussed brain to realize Dante is Luke’s brother’s name. Their mother certainly has a sense of humor.
Maybe I’d laugh about it if terror wasn’t thrumming through my veins.
Dante bypasses us to stand by the windows. Like Luke, his jacket’s gone, and now he only sports a silky black dress shirt and matching vest. He unbuttons his sleeves and rolls them up, something I’ve watched Luke do hundreds of times in the office.
“Apologies for the wait,” Dante says casually in that smooth, seductive voice he used downstairs. “As you can imagine, things are a bit hectic tonight. The eclipse, the blood moon, my asshole brother crashing my fucking soiree—it’s all a delightful mix, until it isn’t.”
This can’t be real. He can’t be real. My brain can’t wrap around the truth that this is Luke’s brother, let alone the devil.
As he removes his mask—the ram horns coming with it—I get the first good look at his face.
Like Luke, he’s startlingly attractive. Tall and lean, with a sharp jaw and dark hair that frames his face, making his fair skin stand out.
His eyes are just as dark, rimmed with thick lashes that create spiderweb shadows across his angular cheekbones.
In his gaze, a crazed spark of power shines—the only tip-off that he is not who he seems.
Unlike Luke, he is terrifying. Beautiful and ethereal and terrifying.
He saunters to the far side of the room, pausing at a desk.
He swaps the mask for the crown sitting on it.
It’s the same one from the portraits downstairs, with jagged black edges that glint in the low light.
Like everything around us, it appears to be made of glass, but I know better—it’s obsidian.
“It doesn’t have to be like this.” Luke strains against his binds. I don’t even bother—if he’s not strong enough to break them, I’ve got no shot. “Let’s have a conversation. Talk it out.”
Dante’s laughter rings through the cavernous room, mirthless and maniacal.
He sharks around the table, kicking out the chair at the end that’s to my right and Luke’s left.
“Talk it out? Is that what you really want?” He leans forward to get in Luke’s face.
Luke holds Dante’s glare with his own. “For once in your life, be fucking honest. You’re here to kill me. ”
Luke huffs in annoyance. “No, I’m not. I’m here to fix the veil. Which, by the fucking way, why haven’t you? You have one job and you can’t even do that?”
God, please don’t let a you have one job joke come out of me right now, I pray, though I’m guessing God doesn’t listen much down here.
Dante fumes. “I tried. It’s a piece of shit and you know it. You were the one who was good at fixing it. Why do you think I sent Beliar after you?”
“To finish the job you didn’t have the guts to do,” Luke parries.
“You think me getting you to banish yourself to the overworld was because I didn’t have the guts to kill you? I don’t know if you recall, brother, but you couldn’t die. You had turned. Making you sign those papers wasn’t a death sentence—I was trying to save you, you ungrateful dick.”
Luke blinks at him, wholly caught off guard.
“It all makes sense,” I murmur, drawing their attention. I look at Luke. “You weren’t sure if he was the devil when you left because he wasn’t. Your mom said he banished you. But really…”
“I banished myself, technically,” Luke admits. “But only because he tricked me into signing the paperwork for pardoning someone to the overworld. I didn’t realize it until too late.”
“And whose fault is that?” Dante taunts.
“You didn’t read the fine print. You never did—just trusted me to.
You were becoming lazy and reckless. I was basically running the show at that point, so I figured, why not make it official?
But I couldn’t do that without killing you, and you were too far gone to be offed anyway, so I took the only option I could.
I sent you to the overworld in hopes it’d restore your humanity. Seems I was right.”
Luke’s lips part in shock, emotion crossing his face. He shakes his head. “All this time…I thought you did it to get rid of me.”
Dante plops onto the chair he kicked out. His crown tilts on his mess of curls. “I mean, yeah, partly. You were a fucking asshole toward the end.”
Up close, I can make out the rings of dark green that make up Dante’s irises, though they’re nearly swallowed by his black pupils.
The tail of his left brow has a split in it from a white, faded scar.
Luke carries his broadness in his shoulders, but Dante is long and lean.
It makes me wonder when was the last time he ate.
“I’m sorry,” Luke forces out.
“How was it?” Dante’s mocking tone betrays a hint of genuine curiosity.
“How was what?” Luke asks.
“The overworld. Was it everything we used to dream about?”
Luke swallows, gaze turning sad. “Even better. And sometimes worse. It’s not like here. There is good. But if we don’t fix the veil, it’s not going to stay that way.”
Dante contemplates this. “I’m starting to think that might be for the best.”
Luke frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dante shrugs. “Sure, at first I tried to fix the veil. Even sent Beliar after you to come back and deal with it. Though I knew he didn’t care for the veil to get fixed and suspected he’d disobey me, so that was mostly to get him out of my way before he tried to usurp me.”
“A woman died,” Luke stresses. “Three others would have if we hadn’t saved them. Many more will if we don’t fix the veil. All kinds of hell beings have slipped through in the months since it tore. You’re supposed to keep them here. It’s your job.”
Dante rolls his eyes. “So the other devils have reminded me. But as time wore on, I caught glimpses of the overworld and all its flaws through the torn veil and started to realize maybe a little hell on earth wouldn’t be so bad.
” Dante grins, a glimmer of excitement in his dark eyes.
“Maybe it’s time we branch out. Merge. Imagine the fun if we were all one big, happy family. ”
“It’d be chaos,” Luke counters.
“I’ve grown a taste for it. Thanks for bringing this back to me, by the way.”
Dante rises. From his belt, he pulls out Luke’s dagger, tossing it onto the table. It lands on its side, pointing at the windows Dante walks toward, keeping his back to us.
Which is preferable, because if he sees what’s happening on the table right now, we’ll lose our last chance of escaping.
The dagger is slowly turning to face me.
Luke said they’ll always point toward each other. But I can’t let it reveal I have its counterpart. Not when I’m so close to sawing through the last of the bindings around my wrist.
Being essentially useless in this conversation has had its perks.
Dante didn’t notice I still had my dagger strapped to my thigh.
Or that it was close enough for my fingers to carefully tug free.
It hasn’t been easy but turning it in my grip to slice through the ropes wasn’t impossible.
Now that I’m almost there, I am not going to fail.
Luke picks up on what I’m doing—and, more importantly, how imperative it is to keep his brother distracted. He nods at me. You can do this, the gesture says.
I can do this.
“Why send the hounds after me?” Luke asks, stalling. “If you no longer care about me fixing the veil, what was the point of that?”
Dante turns slightly. I still my movements. He doesn’t look my way. I continue.
“I couldn’t just let you run amuck. I needed to maintain some authority. If you were coming to kill me, having them bring you straight to me was a safer bet.”
“They were trying to kill me,” Luke reminds him.
“I didn’t realize you could be killed,” Dante scoffs. “Much less that you were carting an overworlder around with you. Who is she, anyway?”
“No one,” Luke answers quickly. Too quickly. It’s a little warming, actually, that he’s clearly trying to protect me. It’s the least he can do after keeping his devil identity a secret.
Dante looks at me, and for a moment, I think I’m caught. But he just grins. “You put on quite a show with that fall.”
He still hasn’t noticed the dagger on the table, which, thankfully, stopped moving but points at me now. “Yeah, well, the party was getting a little boring. I had to provide my own entertainment.”
Luke shoots me a glare. Okay, not the best time to run my mouth. Noted.
“These things do grow dull, don’t they?” Dante turns back to the windows. I resume my sawing motion. “I think they’d be so much more fun in the overworld.”
My right wrist comes free and I manage to catch the ropes before they hit the ground. Placing them in my lap, I make quick work of the bindings on my left wrist. All that remains are my ankles and then I’m free.
So close I can taste it.
“What are you going to do with us?” Luke asks.
Dante stuffs his hands into his pockets. “If you had done things my way and gotten caught by the hounds, maybe I could have spared you. But everyone below saw your face. What would you do, if you were still me?”
Dante faces Luke, but he’s come to the table so his back remains to me. I have one ankle free. Almost there.
Luke inhales deeply, meeting his brother’s eyes. “I’d kill me.”
Dante snaps, pointing at him. “Bingo. By the way—is that still big in the overworld? Remember when Mom used to tell us about it?”
“I…don’t know.” Luke seems thrown off. “I visited her. And you know what she told me?”
Dante leans close, daring. “What?”
Luke’s expression cracks open. “She said if I have the chance to go back to the overworld, I should take you with me. And I will. Let us fix the veil, and then you pardon the three of us. I’ll show you how to do it right so it won’t tear the veil again. We can all return together.”
Anger works in Dante’s jaw. “You think it’s that easy? That simple? And who becomes the devil? Who rules the underworld in our stead?”
“I don’t know and I don’t fucking care,” Luke explodes. “It’s not our problem. I should have never made it ours to begin with. I’m sorry. Let the hell beings figure it out. The other devils. The devil. It doesn’t need to be us. We fix the veil and we leave. It can be that simple.”
Dante seems to actually consider it, growing quiet and contemplative. The barest bones of hope etch across Luke’s face.
But then, slowly, Dante’s head starts to shake. “Hell is home. Maybe once upon a time, when we were young, I dreamt of leaving. But I don’t dream anymore. I have no desire to go. I like it here. And if here becomes there and the overworld and underworld merge, then it’s all the same, anyway.”
His gaze hardens as defeat fills Luke’s. “I’m not fixing the veil, Luke. And neither are you.”
The last rope falls from my ankle and I leap to my feet, shoving the dagger on the table so it spins across the surface to fall into Luke’s lap.
The element of surprise has my back as I fist my fingers in Dante’s admittedly gorgeous head of hair and shove his face into the table, right where my glob of bloody spit landed.
I bring my dagger to his throat so the tip rests against his Adam’s apple as I deliver the most baller line of my existence: “And what about me?”