EMBERLINE
My knees ached, the pendant pulsing like a second heartbeat between my fingers, the fixed gate still glowing as I waited for my uncle to reappear.
I’d been sitting on this roof for an hour. Waiting.
What the fuck was taking him so long?
Waves lapped at the mossy stone with lazy, indifferent strokes, as if our plans weren’t crumbling to pieces. Like my husband’s life—all our lives—didn’t hang in the balance.
Except… they did.
If Severin and my uncle were trading favors, thenthe Draconi Master had sold us out, and my uncle knew all about our plans to take him and Marcello down. Our revolt was doomed, and Dante would die in the Fossa.
But dawn crept over the tops of the Santa Maria Basilica, and I was running out of time. I waited five… ten more minutes, the morning wind kissing my cheeks, whipping my hair around my face. The bells of the closest church tolled the hour, and I sighed.
All I’d found out was that my uncle went there to ask a favor.
He waspissedwhen Severin refused.
And I had to get home.
I raced along the dew-slicked rooflines, intent on beating the dawn home. Up here, every rooftop had its own uniquepattern, but at ground level, this city was a labyrinth. The safehouse Nico and Gabriel had chosen was buried in a particularly forgettable tangle of narrow, zig-zagging streets—no landmarks, no ornate bridges, just the same tired laundry lines and peeling green shutters as a dozen other blocks.
The perfect place to disappear.
I landed in a crouch on the edge of our roof before dropping down, hanging by my fingertips from the copper gutter. An old, sturdy one, mottled with verdigris, held my weight as I swung my body forward, so I landed silently on the narrow balcony outside my third-floor bedroom.
I reached for the cipher, activated the spell, and dropped the wards, threads of layered protective magic unknitting long enough for me to swing open the window and sneak inside, pausing to take stock.
No lights in the house. No voices. No movement.
Good.That meant Gabriel was still at the Dominico palazzo, playing dutiful son while Nico hunted down leads on my husband. I had time to return the cipher to where I found it, without Gabriel being any the wiser.
My eyes quickly adjusted to the dimness.
A narrow, unmade bed.
A pair of shoes kicked into the closet. A pile of clothes in the corner.
A far cry from my previous life as a pampered mafia princess with a gown for every occasion, raised in the aristocracy, and trained to kill in the shadows. I slipped the cipher off my neck, gripped the warm metal between my fingers, hesitating.
I could get through any vampire’s wards with this.
Rocco’s. Emilia’s. Even Marcello’s, and none of them would ever know.
It seemed a shame to give it back, but… Gabriel had stolen this from his father, and he must have his reasons. Telling myself I wasn’tactuallya thief, I snuck down the steps, intending to slip the thing back where I found it, beneath an open book, on top of a half-scribbled list of potential locations of the Pits.
A list I wanted to take a closer look at.
The narrow kitchen was empty, the table bare except for a half-finished bottle of blood-wine and one empty glass. Nico’s, most likely. The slob had the annoying habit of leaving everything lying around for me to clean up, which meant I didn’t do a thing.
I wasn’t his maid, for fuck’s sake.
The darkened main room beyond was small, lit only by the faint orange glow of banked coals in the hearth.
I froze. I hadn’t lit a fire all day, certainly not before I’d left.
“Have a nice midnight stroll,bella?”
