49
EMBERLINE
Iwoke in absolute quiet.
A choking silence pressed in around the walls of the castle, the entire island holding its breath. Beyond these walls, even the rhythm of waves against the shore was reduced, as if all of Venice knew the Don was on the verge of slipping away.
But Marcello dying didn’t wake me.
Instinct told me someone was lurking outside my door.
Gabriel and Nico assured me that every Dominico servant and soldier had been duly vetted and was trustworthy. The island was secure.
Yet the back of my neck prickled in warning,
I lay there on the sumptuous bed, tucked between silken sheets, staring at the vaulted ceiling overhead, the beams darkened by time. The candles I’d lit before falling asleep were still burning, and my damp clothing was in a messy pile on the floor.
I was in the guest section, far away from the Don’s room, away from the healers and the bustling servants and the smell of death. Gabriel had assured me this would be the best place to get some rest, and it was… until now.
I squinted through the curtains at the moon, trying to determine how much time had passed since I’d closed my eyes—minutes or hours—but the moon was nowhere in sight.
Exhaustion settled deep into my bones, the rising cost of too many sleepless nights, and the constant, gnawing pressure of trying to hold together a constantly fraying plan. I had only meant to rest an hour, anyhow, and spent most of that time drifting in and out of an uneasy half-sleep.
Not deep enough to pull me into the Underworld, which was both a curse and a blessing.
What would I have found there? My parents?
Or Death, waiting to reclaim me?
Footsteps moved in the hallway beyond the door—two pair, steady, controlled.Dominico guards.They patrolled the uninhabited part of the castle once an hour. Gabriel had split his available soldiers between the island’s perimeter and fortifying the castle itself, and while he would never admit it aloud, I sensed the strain in the air.
He was spread thin.
The room came into sharper focus—the opulent mirrors and gilt paintings, the glass candelabras, the gleam of old money that clung to everything. I pushed myself up, every aching muscle protesting the movement, and froze.
Dante was hunched in the shadows, crammed into a ridiculously tiny chair, his broad frame outlined by the faint light filtering in from outside. He was lost in thought, his posture rigid, shoulders tensed beneath clothing stained to its limits. Gabriel’s finely tailored clothes stretched precariously across his brother’s immense chest and thick arms, the collar and sleeves exposing dark, broken tattoos that had been edged with flames not so long ago.
“How long was I asleep?”
His head snapped up, eyes landing on me before his face closed off, as if he was afraid of the questions I still had. Questions I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to.
“Only about an hour. Go back to sleep. You need more rest,” he said after a moment, his voice soft, almost tender.
“So do you,” I countered, pushing myself upright, the sheets sliding off, revealing my thin cotton bra and bare shoulders. “Where is everyone?”
“Gabriel’s with the Don. Nico’s making another round of the island.”
And he was here. Watching over me.My heart filled with warmth, that fuzzy, breathless sensation I’d missed feeling when he wasn’t around.
His eyes sharpened, fangs dropping below his top lip as he focused on me with the intensity of a predator. A very hungry one.
“See something you like?” I lay back on the pillow and stretched my arms up over my head.
“I see the female I love,” he husked around his fangs. “The one who should be fast asleep,notmaking her husband promises she can’t keep.”
“Who says I can’t keep my promises?” I rubbed my thighs together, my pussy already soaking from having Dante close, from the memory of how he’d stood like a statue carved of pure flames, beautiful and bold and enduring.
And there was no telling when we’d get another chance at a bed, a quiet room,andthe two of us together alone.
