Page 159

This time, tears came easily, but the tears that brought him to the Cittadella in the first place and kept him there the next couldn’t bring him back.

The dank cold reached for her bones, but couldn’t chill her, because she was somewhere else. Somewhere warm, with hot sand beneath her toes, and a calloused hand in hers.

Gently, she closed his eyes. He could have been sleeping, if one slept on bare stone.

If one slept in clothing soaked with blood.

She ran her fingers over his, so cold and stiff.

Alone in the silent temple, she kneeled before the man she loved. No jeweled coffin or bed of velvet. No funeral or choir. The same in death as he’d gone through most of life—alone and forgotten.

But never by her.

Hands trembling, she cupped her palms as though in prayer, bowing her head to let the tears fall, unchecked.

Outside, people needed their savior, people injured and dying who deserved to be thanked and blessed, but she couldn’t bear to leave him alone with nothing to prove he’d been loved and cherished in life.

A gift.

She spread her fingers across his chest, her heart beating hard enough for them both.

She shouldn’t even hope.

It was impossible.

But like she’d done for Hugo the last time she kneeled on the altar, she searched the hollows inside her.

Nothing at first.

Then, a flicker.

An echo of Dante’s gift, the fragment she’d stolen—no, the part he’d given her—when he’d died.

Slowly, carefully, she drew the power deeper, closer to the part of her the gods had blessed.

She gathered Dante’s gift.

And she gave it back.

Fifty-Four

Piccola favilla gran fiamma seconda.

A little spark kindles a great fire.

Relief.

The pain, the noise, the light—it all ceased. The battle vanished, and Dante felt nothing.

Not because his body went numb, but because he… wasn’t.

He had no heart, so his pulse didn’t pound. Heknewfear, recognized the mental prickle of warning, but not in any way he’d felt before. He had no eyes, so damned if he knew how he could see a glow in the darkness. But there it was. Everywhere. A warm, rosy light concentrated in one spot, expanding to meet him.

Something about the light was trying to calm him, and itwasn’tworking.

After twenty years expecting death around every damn corner, tempting the gods time and time again, daring them to justdo it already,he was finally dead. And he was pissed.

He’d chosen to become Alessa’s guard. To climb that uglypeak. To heal her with his gift, knowing it would kill him. And he’d do it again.