The floor dips, forming shallow pools where water gathers in black mirrors that shiver under the sweep of my flashlight.
“Jesus Christ,” Dante mutters, trying to laugh, but dust lodges in his lungs. He doubles over in a sharp cough.
“You okay?” I ask once he catches his breath. I lift the light higher, sweeping over the stone, the bones, the silent witnesses lining the walls.
“Don’t worry about me,” he says softly. “Just don’t breathe too deep. The air here’s full of old death.”
We press on. The ceiling above us is scarred with soot—centuries of torches dragged along the same path, leaving long, black streaks like fossilized smoke. Pillars rise ahead, shaped less like architecture and more like the roots of a buried world. Small alcoves veer off into cramped side tunnels, dead ends that smell of damp rags and time calcified into stone.
“How long has it been since anyone walked down here?” I whisper. “This place feels dead in a way that’s… permanent.”
They could have cleared it out, modernized it, or destroyed it entirely. But they didn’t. This, apparently, is history worth preserving. Every skull, every femur, every crumbling tablet holds a memory that can’t be archived—more trophy than grave.
“This would be a perfect place to kill somebody,” Dante says lightly.
I snap the flashlight toward him, the beam slicing across his face, right into his eyes. “Not funny.”
He smirks, turning his face slightly to escape the brightness. “What? You scared, little shadow?”
The nickname runs through me like a heated wire, sending a pleasant shiver down my spine. “I’m never scared,” I reply.
It’s not a lie. Not entirely. I like fear—the flash of the hunt, the thrill of being chased, or watching someone realize I’m the one chasing them. Just like when Dante stalked me from a distance: always out of sight, but never out of reach.
I like the fear he makes me feel—the kind that carries a promise of something dangerously intoxicating, painfully addictive, and unbearably beautiful.
“This place…” I whisper, the words slipping out before I can stop them. “I think it reminds me of the town I was born in.”
Dante steps closer, his presence a steadying weight in the dark. “Does that make you uncomfortable?” he asks softly.
“A bit,” I admit. “It’s just as crumpled and depressing as that place.”
The memories strike like a rush of freezing water, bringing a sensation of sorrow and misery, and spreading that familiar tightness that squeezes my lungs. Dante and I have been talking about our pasts so much lately, pulling the rot out piece by piece, and now the aftertaste of hopelessness sits on my tongue.
It helps to speak it aloud in a way that isn’t only rage, but it still leaves my skin crawling.
His arm slides around me, firm and warm, coiling with quiet certainty.
“I can only process that place when I’m with you,” I grind out, suddenly defensive. “It’s been years, and I’m so fucking weak for still needing something to hold on to.”
“Do you think holding onto me makes you weak?”
“Maybe?” I ask after a short pause. “Probably.”
“No, little shadow. I hold your pain the way you hold mine. Do you think that makes me weak? Trusting you? Giving you pieces of myself I’ve never shown anyone?”
It takes me a few seconds to find my voice. “No.”
Dante leans in, the heat of his breath skittering across my cheek, wrapping me in him even as the cold stone presses around us. “There’s a price that comes with that, Estella,” he murmurs. “And I need to tell you something.”
A pressure builds—the one I’ve grown familiar with—the weight in the air right before I learn something new about him, something carved from his past and shaped like a scar.
“Do you remember what I told you about the relationship I had? My first and only girlfriend?” he asks.
My jaw tightens, my lips twitching with the sharp bloom of anger. “Yes,” I say, teeth clenched. “Why?”
He takes a slow inhale, concern flickering across his dark eyes. His tongue skims his lower lip, nervous, as if the words might bite back.
“She had a stepbrother,” he says finally. “He abused her. Constantly. He lashed out, beat her, tore her down in every way a person can be broken. She lived in silence, and she’d scream at me when I tried to stop him—when I broke his ribs, his fingers, anything I could reach. She kept saying it wouldn’t help.”
