“I thought I lost you,” he admitted. “I’ve gotten very good at not feeling anything, but tonight…” A deep shudder went through him. “Tonight, I can’t stop myself from feeling everything. From the moment I saw you facing off with my sire, I wanted you by my side. I knew we were meant to fight this battletogether.”
I closed my eyes at the raw yearning in his voice.
“And then, somewhere along the line, you became everything I was fightingfor. My little war with my sire… became meaningless in the face of what I feel for you.”
“You saved me tonight,” I said quietly. Dante thought he’d failed me, somehow. “Maybe Emilia’s magic had something to do with my resurrection, but… I was standing on the threshold of the Underworld, and I realized… I couldn’t leave. Not without you. No matter how loudly Death called, you called to me louder.”
His arms tightened. “Thank you for staying,” he said after a moment, his rasping voice rougher than ever. “Because I would have gone in after you. Followed you to whatever darkness waited and dragged you back into the light. I’ll never let you go now, Emberline.Never.That’s not a sweet promise of love, that’s a fuckingoath.”
I rested my palm against his chest, feeling the steady thump beneath my fingers.
“I don’t want sweet promises,” I told him. “All I want is you. And the truth. And for you not to go to the palazzo in the morning because that is a very foolish plan.”
He huffed a breath that was almost a laugh. “Saints, you’re bossy.”
“Well, that’s what you get for marrying a princess.”
“A DiRavello princess who keeps dying on me,” he muttered, turning me to face him, a faint gleam of amusement in his blue eyes.
“Stop exaggerating. That was only the one time.”
He shifted, urging me to his throat. “And it had better never happen again.” But his teasing tone couldn’t hide the worry in his voice, so I leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to the spot where his pulse beat the strongest. His breath stuttered.
“I’m alive… because of you.” I ran my nose down his strong throat, drowning in him, hunger carving out an empty, aching place in my stomach. “You are the only reason I came back, Dante.”
I couldn’t tell him what I’d seen when I’d died.
Couldn’t hardly explain to myself the dizzying pull of that shadowy realm, the way I’d ached to cross through that opening into darkness and leave the real world behind.
“Stop talking.” My husband’s chest rumbled, hunger turning into a need, not an urge. “I want to feel your fangs in me, wife. I want your lips on my skin. I want to know you’re taken care of. And right now, this is enough.” His arms tightened.
“Feed,”he urged, tilting his head, baring his throat in an offering.
Mine.That was my only thought as the scent of him wrapped around me, dark and intoxicating. When my lips skated up his vein, he pulled me closer, one hand splayed at my back, the other cradling my hair as if I were something precious.
He tasted like salt and spent magic, like every promise he’d just made. My fangs sinking in, warm blood flooded my mouth in a heated rush. I let his quiet praise wash over me while my strength returned, one sip at a time, while themale who had saved my life glued me back together, piece by broken piece.
I meant to force him into a promise to stay, to not go after Giovanni, but as soon as his blood hit my system, darkness swept in right behind, and much like the water, once it closed over my head, I was lost.
57
EMBERLINE
Mist curled around my ankles, black as coal, two halves of a tattered veil fluttering, revealing a dark vista that wordlessly beckoned.Take that final step.
How I wanted to. My entire soul yearned to cross that threshold.
Enzo waited on the other side, with his kind eyes and that gentle half-smile on his face, the same one Luca had recently taken to sporting whenever he found something amusing.
My sire opened up his arms, a safe harbor in time of trouble, whenever the world became overwhelming. He even had on his favorite blue sweater, worn out over the years, with holes in both elbows. The one mother gave him the birthday before we were born.
“My sweetbambina.” He opened up his arms. “Come. Come and let us be together once more, let me tell you all the secrets I had to keep when I was alive.”
And I was tempted. So, so tempted to hear his voice again.
Then his expression changed, that beloved smile replaced by blood slipping down his face, a hole appearing in the sweater where his big, generous heart had once beaten so strongly.
Behind him, a diminutive female in a flowingdress emerged from the shifting darkness, long dark hair barely hiding the life-ending gash across her throat, espresso-colored eyes flashing with the same temper I seemed to have trouble keeping in check.
