“So, you know who I am, then.” I narrowed my eyes at him, lifted my chin, and gave him my coldest glare. “My uncle pays you a lot of money.”
“Money means nothing here. Pain, however… pain is the only currency I deal in.” He tilted his head, watching me without blinking. “You will be first up in the morning. It was supposed to be your husband, but I think I like this plan better.”
For one heartbeat, I didn’t understand. Then I did, andthe world narrowed to a single brutal image—an arena. Blood. Carnage.
A savage spectacle to drive my husband to the brink.
“I won’t fight. I’m not here to entertain you,” I breathed.
“Then you will die.” He shrugged, as if my fate was irrelevant. “You came here to save him.” His voice sharpened. “Now you will bleed for him. And watching you bleed will accomplish what I was never able to do for fifty years.”
“And what was that?” I asked, already knowing the answer, already knowing why he was doing this.
“Break the famous Lone Wolf, of course. It is one thing to endure your own suffering, but to see the ones you love suffer…” He shook his head. “That is the purest form of torment there is. Until morning, then.”
A hand shoved me from behind.
I stumbled over the threshold and went down hard on my knees, palms slapping filthy stone, nearly crushing my nose as the door slammed behind me, the sound reverberating through the walls like a bell as they disappeared.
Trapped.
Fuck.Fuck, this wasn’t supposed to be how this ended.
“Dante,” I said louder, the sound tearing at my throat. “Gabriel.Nico?”
Nothing but silence answered.
I crawled to the back wall and hugged my knees to my chest. I had two—exactly two—tricks up my sleeve, and neither of them would get us out of here. No, for that, we’d need a fucking miracle.
From somewhere deep in the dark, a laugh echoed.
Low. Ragged. Cruel.
Another joined it.
Then another.
I pressed my forehead to my knees and swallowed downthe sobs threatening to tear free. Every little scrape and bruise was flaring up, and by morning, I’d be stiff from sitting on this cold, hard floor.
And yet, from somewhere far away, through the filthy air, I still smelled Dante—faint but real. Close enough to remind me that I’d chosen this fate.
And delivered us both to hell.
20
DANTE
At dawn, they yanked me out of my cell like an animal.
Fear had cannibalized the last of my logic hours ago, and now I was nothing but a tangled knot of panic and panting desperation.
Chains bit into my wrists, iron on raw skin, my half-healed leg twisting as they dragged me down the corridor. Feeding from Emberline had saved my life, but… by nightfall, I would be dead. The Overseer—that sadistic bastard—would make her watch, and then, when I was bleeding out into the sand…
I closed my eyes, incapable of comprehending what would come next for her.
For my brother and Nico… the only people I loved in the world would all be gone, victims of their own foolish nobility.
When we got close to the upper level, the Fossa’s heat hit me in a wave—dust, blood, old sweat baked into stone—and my stomach rolled hard enough I thought I might puke up the last of her blood in my stomach.
