Agree and get everything I wanted?
The name of my father’s assassin. A chance to even the score.
“Civilized?” Dante nodded as he finished my sentence for me. “Yes, my brother is everything a princess like you would ever want in a husband, but he can’t give you whatyou really need, can he? I’ll make you a promise. I’ll bring Enzo’s killer to you and let you end him. Won’t that feel good, taking the life of the person who killed your father?”
Yes, that would feel good.
But all these promises felt dipped in honey, too sweet to be real.
“I’m not marrying you.Ever.”
“Well, too fucking bad because I’m breaking the blood vow tonight.” Dante lifted his hand, and the magic in the air tightened, candles shivering back to life.
“I tried diplomacy, and that failed, no surprise there. This is about honoring old promises. Older than you and me. You should have taken the deal, tesoro. Now you’ll just have to take me, instead.” He turned back to the priest, his anger growing. The kind of barely repressed rage that had me curling my hands into fists and wishing I had one of my knives handy.
“You’re going to marry us. Here. Now.”
“No, this asshole is deluding himself, and you are definitelynotgoing to marry us.”
The priest looked between us, then made a strangled sound. “I cannot, sire.” The poor man’s eyes bulged. “The Don?—”
“Has no power in here,” Dante gestured to the circle around us. “In here,Iam the only master you need to obey.” His hand flexed, and the circle tightened until I could barely breathe, the stench of ozone choking the air. “You feel my magic, don’t you? You’re standing in an invoked circle. Theoldkind. The ones they used before the dynasties even existed. You know what that means.”
Gods, I hoped he fucking explained himself, because I didn’t have a godsdamned clue what he meant.
The priest’s hands shook around his beads. “I… it means… any union sealed here…”
“Can never broken,” Dante finished for him. “So. Say the words. Or die.”
“What do you mean,never broken?” I demanded. “I will not?—”
Dante’s eyes went very dark. “Youwill,” he demanded as a smothering coldness slid over my skin like smoke, sank into the spaces between every panicked breath as he compelled me toobey.
I was trapped in place, the priest’s jaw trembling as he pulled out that knife, Dante grasping my wrist, turning my hand so it was palm up. Held his hand out, right beside mine.
“Finish this, priest.”
Sweat trickled down the priest’s temple. Pale lips moved, his voice hollow and distant. “Emberline of House DiRavello. Dante of House Dominico. You stand here before blood and witness to enter into a sacred union. In this time of…”
“Skip to the end,” Dante growled.
Gabriel shoved at the barrier with both hands as black-suited soldiers streamed in through every doorway.
Marcello’s reinforcements had finally arrived.
Too late for me, though.
Silver flashed in my peripheral, pain streaked across my palm, then my hand was crushed between Dante’s big, battered ones, warm and calloused and slippery with blood. Tight enough, I couldn’t pull free.
“Let bone remember, and blood obey… I join this flesh, by night and day,”—the priest’s halting voice broke as he tried to force the words out—“from first dark breath to last dying star, what is joined tonight may never part.”
Dante’s grip on my hand tightened, his face blurring as awall of darkness slammed into me, like the fist of a god, driving the breath from my lungs.His magic.
What was happening?
Somehow, this was Dante’s magic, and the priest’s, together with the ritual, all three combining into a force so powerful, I lost my ability to think, to breathe, to feel. A force that ripped me apart and pieced me back together, leaving me swaying, my hand gripped in Dante’s big, calloused hand.
Outside our bubble, chaos reigned, the magic muffling the shouting and gunfire, turning orders and screams into garbled, indistinct noise. Nico’s fists thundered against the invisible wall, shock and fury twisting his beautiful face.
