Page 80 of Where Light Cannot Follow

How I wish that faith were more deserved. My choices have led him here from the very beginning. I drew into his mindscape when I should have kept my distance. I stayed with him when I should have released him. Opened my heart and soul letting him drift into them indelibly.

Irrevocably.

Constance leads Dante toward the dining room. I watch him go, his back straight, his stride measured, every line of him armored against whatever comes next.

Leaving me alone in the grand foyer.

I know where to go.

I walk toward a hallway and follow it to its end, then pass through the open door.

The office is stately, filled with bookshelves that climb to the ceiling, their spines a careful arrangement of ancient texts and modern philosophy. Large, curtained windows overlook a pond where a graceful marble statue stands at the center—a god frozen in eternal youth, a vessel in his hands, and water arcing from it in crystalline streams. Afternoon light falls in buttery sweeps across the wooden floors, illuminating the delicate furniture, the intricate Persian rugs, the Venetian glass globe on its brass stand, and the ancient mortal artworks hung upon the walls. Many are pieces I recognize from memories of souls who wept for their loss.

A chair behind the desk turns, and the man sitting in it smiles at me.

"Virgil. How good it is to see you."

I clench my teeth.

It isn't Satan in his favored form before me.

It's Satan wearing Musa's skin.

He always captures the appearance perfectly. Musa was no classical beauty—middle-aged when I knew him, past the careless handsomeness of youth. Dark hair threaded with silver, cut short as physicians wore it. A broad face rather than a fine one, marked by a strong, serviceable nose broken once and healed imperfectly. Lines gathered around the mouth from years of concentration, of calming the frightened, setting bones, and delivering hard truths with care.

But Satan always gets the gestures wrong. The expressions.

For it was those that made Musa indescribably beautiful to me in the short time I had the gift of treasuring his company. His devotion. Satan renders his eyes too dark, too calculating. His smile too sharp. His posture too perfected.

Musa was anything but perfect. He laughed loud and hard. Ate with gusto. Wept with feeling. His smile was crooked, his hands scarred from years of work, and the way he listened, it was like whoever sat before him was entirely worthy of his complete attention.

Satan has certainly never mastered that.

No more than he’s learned to tame that wicked smile he's currently stretching across my long-dead love's face.

But Musa isn't here. He has never walked these gilded halls. Never traversed the miseries of hell. Never witnessed the thousand ways a soul can break.

He has always been beautifully free.

And I’ve never before truly realized that when Satan used his skin to torment me.

It is a gift, this realization. One I suspect that somehow, Dante has given me. Just as he gifted me the preservation of Musa's precious few memories. Just as he gifted me his home, his vulnerabilities, his protection.

Something shakes loose in me. Something I believe I've held tight for a very, very long time.

For the first time in centuries, maybe longer, a weight lifts from my shoulders. I stand straighter as I greet the man wearing a mask that never belonged to Musa.

"My Lord." I cross my hand over my chest and give a deep nod. "Salvē."

There's a long, unusual pause. He stares at me, the expression so different from Musa's that he doesn't appear like my lost partner at all anymore.

Satan frowns and shifts his appearance.

This time, he chooses his favored form of recent decades.

He's indeterminate of age—old enough to carry authority, young enough to still enjoy wielding it. His face is handsome in a way that edges toward forgettable: symmetrical, composed, unremarkable at a distance and compelling up close. His hair is dark, worn neatly, his beard precisely groomed. He wears a tailored coat in dark velvet, cut in a style that could belong to several centuries at once.

"Virgil," he finally speaks, his voice a measured, cultivated baritone, warm and restrained in equal measure. "It took me some time to find you."