“I’ll carry my brother. Nico, you take Emberline,” I held up my hand as they both started to argue. “We don’t have time for this. Fight with me all you want once we’re back to the safe house, but this,”—I swept my hand across the wide-open walkway, where tourists were strolling,—“is not the place for us to be right now.”
Nico nodded. His eyes scanned the waterfront—guards, cameras, anyone watching too closely. Then he put his arms around Ember, and I took my brother’s arm, praying I had enough strength left for this.
Venice vanished.
And we reappeared inside the safehouse in the space of a breath.
The house felt like a fucking fortress, steeped in wards and Nico’s special brand of magic, secure and hidden away on a back street no one even knew the name of. My computer was still sitting on the kitchen table, and Ember’s half-drunk cup of tea was on the counter. I helped my brother to the next room and settled him onto the couch.
“Home sweet home. Take a minute to get your bearings. Nico will want to look Emberline over first, then he’ll take a look at you. You’ll need a healer, a good one.”
Dante looked past me to where Nico bent over Emberline in the other room, bared his fangs, then dragged a hand down his face. “Sorry, sorry, just…fuck.”
“Yeah. Let’s all give ourselves a minute here.” I looked over my shoulder to where Nico and Ember were talking in low, hushed voices, heads bent close together. “Look, things got intense back there. Nico’s head is fucked up. She lost a lot of blood. You haven’t fed properly in weeks. I’m…”
I was what?Worried about leaving them together alone?
They were husband and wife, for fuck’s sake, and none of my business.
Except now, they were.She was. Fuck.
“I’m good, Gabriel, and I’d never hurt Emberline,” Dante clasped my arm in a bruising grip. “Thank you for watching over her. It’s the only thing that got me through, knowing you were here, taking care of her.” He swallowed, gratitude blazing from his eyes, while I felt like the most worthless brother in the world.
“I made you a promise. We made sure no harm came to her and tried to keep her under control.” My lips quirked. “But you know how she is.”
“Oh, that I do,” he murmured, but he wasn’t looking at me; he was watching her and Nico together, his brows pinched together, a dark, glowering expression building.
And all I could do was sit there, feeling like an asshole, because once the two of them disappeared upstairs together, I planned to go and drink myself blind.
27
EMBERLINE
Icollapsed onto the couch, my legs incapable of holding me up anymore.
Nico knelt in front of me, misery gleaming in his eyes as he studied the cut across my throat, the dried blood down my front. “They drugged me and I couldn’t….” His throat bobbed. “I didn’t know who you were, Emberline. I didn’t knowanything. And all I wanted to do was… I don’t know what to say to make this right.”
He looked away, like he couldn’t bear to see me, and my heart cracked wide open.
I touched his hand. “None of that was your fault,” I said firmly. “It was the draught that made you act like that. Not you.” I slid a finger beneath his chin, forced him to look at me, but he closed his eyes, shutting me out. “I know this for sure. You would never hurt me, Niccolò.” I rubbed a streak of dirt off his cheek, hating that self-loathing in his voice.
Hating what had been done to us.
“Nothing changes between us, Nico.Nothing. Still ride-or-die friends forever, just like before.”
Nico shook his head violently back and forth. “You can’t possibly… that wasmysword at your throat. Mine. And if you hadn’t stopped me… if Gabriel hadn’t gotten there in time, I would have…”
I cupped his face between my hands. “Now you listen to me. You didn’t hurt me. None of this was your fault.”
“But I did hurt you. I could havekilledyou.” He opened his eyes, his gaze haunted, pupils the barest pinpricks in a sea of pale brown.
“Do you know what scared me the most? Thinking I lost you forever. But you came back to me.” I wound my grimy fingers through his, willing him to listen. “You cameback, and that’s all that matters.”
Nico inhaled, shaky, as if he hadn’t taken a full breath since the ring. None of us had. Being here felt surreal, the quiet normalcy, far away from the screams and the violence and the Overseer’s cruelty. Nico finally squeezed my hand and stood, his shoulders still bowed.
“There, you’re forgiven,” Gabriel said as Nico pushed past him through the doorway and took a seat at the kitchen table. “We should debrief. Bring my brother into the loop. Dante, we need to know everything you remember from these past weeks in the Fossa.”
Gabriel’s arms were crossed, his expression schooled into a cool, unreadable mask I had no hope of reading. He’d been near-silent since our escape except for that tense conversation with the idiotic human who thought he could blackmail a vampire.
