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The scarabeo gave one last shudder and went still.
“To me!” Alessa shouted at her Fontes, and they found her side. Already, the scarabeo’s power—she couldn’t think of it as a gift—was fading, the precise symmetry of her fighters falling out of rhythm, but as she sent a storm of ice and lightning to fell a swath of scarabeo, the soldiers below fought with renewed purpose, united once more.
They might actually get through Divorando.
She regretted the thought as soon as it came to her. Never tempt the gods. Never.
Fire tore through her. A fire she’d lived through once before.
Nina screamed.
She’d heard that before, too.
Alessa looked down at the front of her slip of a dress, at the sharp limb, thrust into her belly with a scarabeo’s death spasm. The creature curled in on itself.
Blood soaked through the links of her chain mail.
Screams. Clanging blades. Her Fontes and guard burst into motion, fighting to surround her as she stumbled.
Dante couldn’t slow her fall this time. He was already on the ground. A wide gash ran from his chin to one ear, and he was covered in so much blood she couldn’t be sure if they had matching fatal wounds or different ones. Hands clutched at her, trying to break her fall, but she smelled dirt, tasted it. Dante lay a few feet away, a flicker of sunlight across his face.
The army would have to take care of the rest. She wouldn’t be saving them.
Dante’s eyes opened, and his pupils shrank as he focused onher. He lifted his head. Fingers clawing at the dirt, he dragged himself closer, then stopped to cough. He didn’t bother wiping the blood from his chin before he began to drag himself again.
One arm’s length. Another.
His gift might be enough to save him. It wasn’t enough for them both.
So many memories she’d never make. Kisses they’d never share. Sunrises and sunsets they could have watched together.
She focused on him, detaching from the raging battle. She couldn’t help them anymore. She couldn’t even help herself.
The darkness spread inside her, but she held on. Dante was trying to get to her. She had to stay until he did.
What was one more death, or two, on a day when countless had died already?
Everything.
Somehow, he made it to her. Trembling on one elbow, his eyes fixed on hers, and he brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers.
“Gabriele,” he said. “My name is Gabriele.”
She raised her hand to find his. “But I haven’t won.”
He smiled. “You will.” He grabbed her hand, and his jaw clenched over a scream of pain.
“No,” she said, trying to get free of his grip as she realized what he was doing, but Dante wouldn’t let go. Hot tears blurred her vision as life drained from his face.
He was giving his gift to her.
She couldn’t get free, and she couldn’t stop it from flowing to her. Trying to fight it would only waste the gift he gave so freely.
Something twisted in the place where her power originated, the shift from taking a gift to magnifying. She knew it well by now, but she’d only felt it with the Fontes’ power, never withhis.
She sobbed as her pain blinked out, and a new power, greater than anything she’d experienced before, burst free.
Dante was saving her, so she could save them.
