Nico’s lips compressed. “And us from finding the way in.”
Even with my vampiric senses, this place was a void. Maybe there was a dampening spell on the prison. Or because of the sand or the rock, but sounds were dulled, my ears straining and giving me nothing but a distant creak andthe faint, irregular drip of water somewhere deep underground.
The desert stretched out all around us, with only a few low huts and withered bushes jutting up from the flatness beneath the new moon. No, the threat was beneath us, under the surface, and Dante was somewhere down there.
In fact, if I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could almost…
I took a deeper inhale, trying to figure out why my senses were going wild.
“Once we enter, stick close,” Nico counseled, rechecking Gabriel’s wound. “These corridors are meant to be confusing. There are false turns. Dead ends. If we get separated…”
“We won’t,” I cut in. “We’ll stay together.” But my gaze drifted past him to the smudge of deepest black, like a wound in the earth.
The Fossa.
Even from here, I sensed how the air tasted like suffering. The way silence pooled like a river, ready to swallow us whole. A shiver hit me out of nowhere, hair on my arms rising, stomach cramping as I rechecked my weapons, bent to retie my boot laces.
I’d worn these boots since before the explosion, my last possession from my original arsenal besides one measly knife.A good pair of boots, my father had always counseled,could save you in a pinch.
One day.How I wished my mother had spelled things out more plainly.
Why hadn’t I asked more questions? Why were my fucking dreams always so unhelpful?
I drew another deep breath, sifting through layers of rancid odors, hunting out the one thing I desperately needed to find, and then…
There it was, the familiar scent hitting me so sharply, my knees nearly buckled.
Him. Smoke and iron. Leather. The faint spice of cloves that always clung to him, as if his skin was saturated with the rich, sweet spice.
Dante.
My throat tightened, my body tensing as if even my bones recognized how close he was.
The scent was fresh…he was alive.
I stumbled to my feet and started toward that dark hole, drawn toward that scent as if it had hooked into my ribs and was tugging me along, unable to resist.
Nico caught my elbow and dragged me back behind the wall. “Where are you going?” he hissed as Gabriel struggled to rise, grunting in pain. “You’ll get yourself killed.”
“I smell him,” I whispered. “Oh gods, I can smell him.”
Gabriel’s head snapped up. “What?”
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the darkness, couldn’t make my heart stop racing. “Dante. He’s… he’s this way. He’s righthere.” The scent surged again, stronger now, undeniable, pulling me forward.
Nico’s expression sharpened, calculating. “You’re positive? This could be a trap.”
“Yes,” I breathed, my knees shaky all of a sudden as everything I’d hoped for seemed to have come true. Yes, I feared we would be too late, but we were here, and Dante was alive, and this was going to fucking work, even if I had to kill every single guard in this hideous place to free him. “I’m sure it’s him. He’s alive, Gabriel.Alive.”
Gabriel gripped my shoulder, firm, those wild blue eyes meeting mine. Anchoring me to this moment. “Then let’s go get him.”
I grinned up at him, something dark burning inside me,like a fire that was only getting hotter. My fucking uncle sent my husband here to suffer, and I would make everyone here bleed for hurting him. And once we were back in Venice, once Dante was safe, I would make my uncle bleed, too.
Nico motioned us forward. “Stay low and quiet. Keep close to the wall on your left. We keep going until we reach that break in the stone, which is the intake tunnel. That’s where we enter.”
We became three shadows slipping along the outer wall of an encampment that shouldn’t have existed in a world that pretended to be civilized. The rock beneath my boots was uneven, as if it had been carved out by hand, dropping lower, then lower still, like a ramp. We kept going until we reached the break—a jagged slit, lit by two pitifully guttering torches.
Beyond them, there was only black, like a mouth that wanted to swallow us whole.
