Her pulse jumped. "It's what they needed to hear."
"It's also true." His thumb traced the inside of her wrist, right above the bandage. "You understand something I never learned. How to make people want to follow."
"Dante—"
"I've commanded armies through fear for centuries." His shadows wound around her waist, pulling her closer. "Watching you do it through faith is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen."
His mouth hovered an inch from hers. She could feel his breath, warm against her lips.
"Terrifying," she managed. "That's romantic."
"It is." His eyes held hers. "You have no idea what you've become."
Then he stepped back.
His shadows released her slowly, trailing across her hips like a promise.
"Ninety minutes." His voice had dropped low enough to make her knees unreliable. "Then after we win this war..."
He didn't finish. Didn't need to.
She pushed off the wall on legs that weren't entirely steady. "Try to keep up, Reaper."
His smile was the most dangerous thing she'd seen all night.
She walked back into the chaos, skin still burning where his shadows had touched her.
LXXIII.
DANTE
Athousand freed souls stood in his courtyard.
Dante let that number sink in. A thousand who'd looked at a mortal woman and decided to follow her into war. Who'd watched the Reaper stand silent at the edge of his own rally and chosen to believe anyway.
Brynn had done that. Given them something he never could.
She stood beside him now, the circlet gleaming against her dark hair as the transport circle's light faded behind them. Ward-symbols etched into the black metal hummed with residual power. He could feel it where his shadows brushed her skin. Her magic and his, tangling together like they couldn't help themselves.
The mobilization was already underway.
His death-knights had moved. Weapons were distributed in orderly lines, armor checked and reinforced. Shadow-guards coordinated with ward-keepers, movements precise as clockwork—twenty-five hundred of his own warriors who'd served him since before mortal memory, who knew his commands before he gave them.
Combined with Nightfall's thousand, that made thirty-five hundred souls under his direct command.
Thirty-five hundred souls he was about to lead into a battle—some of them wouldn't survive.
Aldric approached, armor scarred from years of service. "Palace forces ready. Nightfall integration underway. They'll be battle-ready within the hour."
"Casualty projections?"
Aldric's form flickered. The only sign of emotion in a warrior who'd died facing impossible odds and chose to keep fighting anyway. "Forty percent if we're fortunate. Sixty if Caelum commits his full force."
Forty percent.
Fourteen hundred souls. Ceasing to exist. Because he'd asked them to fight.
The number lodged somewhere behind his ribs and refused to move.
