The air leaking from that opening reeked.
Not just of fresh blood and decay. Of something far worse. Of a waiting evil that had every one of my instincts screaming…run.
Crouched down, I stared past the torches into the darkness, and beneath the stench, Dante’s familiar scent threaded out in a faint but insistent stream. Like a siren’s song, calling me to the waters to drown.
Or like bait in a trap, waiting to snap shut around us.
Because along with his scent was the coppery smell of his blood. Alotof his blood.
He was injured. Badly. My fingers flexed around the hilt of my blade.
“How far away is the prison section?” I asked Nico in a hushed voice.
“At the very center of the Fossa. If memory serves, andwe don’t make any wrong turns, ten minutes.” He paused. “There will be more guards. We kill them quick before they raise the alarm. No quarter, no hesitating,principessa.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t,” I whispered, then the darkness swallowed me whole, the world vanishing as if someone had blindfolded me. Even my enhanced sight was useless here—no moonlight, no torches. Just pure, suffocating black.
I reached out until I touched the wall to my right.
“Grab my shoulder and stay with me.” My whisper sounded impossibly loud in the inky blackness, but Gabriel’s fingers curled around my shoulder and squeezed. Just once, then I took one tentative step, and then another.
The wall was rough, still warm, the floor sloping down in an endless incline, the corridor magnifying every sound we made—breaths, footfalls, the faint shift of clothing—until even the blink of an eye felt too loud.
I made myself focus on Dante’s scent, not the growing amount of his blood I kept smelling.
But the deeper we went, the more the air thickened. Grew heavier with rot and waste and old sweat. I’d never smelled anything so foul and gagged, unable to stop myself, burying my nose into the crook of my arm.
Nico’s voice came from behind me. “You’ll get used to it.”
“We’re not staying long enough to get used to it,” I snapped, not losing contact with the wall to keep my bearings. “We’re getting Dante out and back to the gate, then once we’re in Venice, we’re burning everything down.”
Gabriel made a sound that started as a laugh but ended in a grunt of pain. “That’s the spirit.”
We descended, turning once, twice, three times, Dante’s scent growing stronger with every turn.
Gabriel was moving better, the smell of the poison waning, his grip on my shoulder firm and reassuring.
My right palm was rubbed raw from dragging along the stone, my fingernails worn ragged, the air growing colder. Not just the underground coolness of the sleeping desert. This was different. This was magic.
“Stop,” Nico murmured.
We froze.
Down here, the silence came alive—the slow drip of water, a sound like… breathing. The hush of the night wind, picking a path through these endless tunnels, followed by the scrape of something hard against sanded stone.
“We’re almost there.” Nico’s voice was quiet.Worried. “The Fossa is filled with prisoners. Hundreds on some days. There should be torches, so stay clear of the bars, stick to the center of the corridor. Some of these prisoners deserve to be here.”
“No one deserves to be here,” I muttered.
We rounded the next corner, and the stench hit like a punch to the face.
This wasn’t just waste. This was centuries of spilled blood—old and layered, sunk into the very stone. It was infection. It was human fear that had been breathed out so many times, it had become part of the atmosphere. It was horror and hopelessness.
It was?—
Pain. I was smelling the prisoners’ pain, somehow amplified by this horrible place.
I’d heard of spells like this, ancient ones, forbidden now, used to torture and cause pain, spells to amplify the worst of our emotions, twist them into weapons.
