Or both.
My blood went cold, my body numb. I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing, because the male behind those bars… wasn’t my brother.
Not the Dante who’d thrown me into the canal when I was six for setting his bed on fire, laughing while I sputtered curses. Not the Dante who’d protected me from my father until the day he’d vanished without a word.
This…thingin the dark was a ruin.
His face was swollen to the point he was unrecognizable, one eye sealed shut. Bruises painted him in layers—old andnew—his skin split in places that hadn’t fully closed. He’d been starved, ribs sticking out in stark relief. Remnants of what used to be pants hung in torn strips.
And beneath that tattered fabric, his leg was…
Gods.
His foot was bent wrong, swollen grotesquely, the ankle turned at an angle that made my stomach lurch. Even through the dark, I saw how he trembled with pain, fighting to hold himself upright out of sheer, spiteful will.
My brother.
I made a sound I didn’t recognize—half gasp, half growl—and slammed my hands onto the bars.
“Dante.” My voice cracked. “Dante, it’s me.”
For one awful second, his unfocused gaze slid past me, as if he couldn’t place me in the world anymore. Then his gaze sharpened.
“Gabriel,” he rasped.
I shoved forward, but Emberline was already there, already peeling back her sleeve, fangs flashing before she sank them into her wrist. Then the wound was pressed against Dante’s mouth, one of her small hands on the back of his head, murmuring so low, I couldn’t catch the words, tenderly stroking the back of his head while he drank.
“Fuck me,” Nico whispered. “We’ll have a hard time getting him out of here with that leg.”
I didn’t say anything. We’d found him. He was alive.
That was all that mattered, I told myself.We’d gotten here in time, Dante was alive, and now all we had to do was get him out of this fucking cell and back to the gate. If I had to drag him there myself through sheer fucking will, then that was what I’d do.
“All we have to do is make it to the gate.” I tightened my grip on my hunting knife and unsnapped the catch on mygun holster. Double-checked my extra ammo. So far, there wasn’t any movement around us, but I didn’t expect that would last much longer.
As if he was reading my mind, Nico murmured, “We’ll have to move fast. If we’re quiet, we won’t attract the attention of the guards.”
Dante pulled away from Emberline’s wrist, reaching through the bars to touch her pale, tear-stained face, a dazed expression on his face. His fingers were cracked, the knuckles split, nails broken. He still wasn’t healing, a testament to how starved he was.
“He took a lot of blood,” Nico observed. “Thank the gods you fed her before we came, but…” His eyes met mine. “We’ll keep an eye on her, then. First thing, let’s get Dante out of that fucking cell.”
“I’m going to kill every last fucking person in this place,” I grunted. “Starting with that Overseer.”
“That bastard’s like a fucking cockroach. The smart play is to get the fuck out of here without running into a single guard,” Nico cautioned. “But first, let’s get that door open.”
Now that reality was sinking in, it was clear we’d miscalculated on several fronts. But the antitoxin was working, my leg was nearly back to one hundred percent, and I still had a few tricks up my sleeve.
“Hey, idiot,” Nico hissed as we both stepped closer. “We’re getting you out.”
Dante’s head tipped back against the wall, hand still clasping Emberline, like he couldn’t let her go. A broken laugh scraped from his throat. “No.”
“Don’t be a fucking martyr.” I checked the bars. Solid as the rock around us. “We came a long way, and I don’t have time for heroic shit.”
“You need to leaveme here.”
Dante’s gaze shifted from me to Nico, and back to Emberline, and even through the bruises and swelling, I saw his expression change. From panic to horror to fury.
“I see that look. I tried talking her out of coming”. I shook my head. “Next time, I’ll let you have the honors. Just so you know, she’s the only reason we found you so fast.” I kept my voice low, giving the cell block another quick scan. Not so empty now, as eyes peered from dark cells, curious prisoners creeping closer to the bars.
