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This time she managed to get in bed and stay there, to stare at the ceiling in stunned disbelief.

Dante—dark-eyed, tousled hair, sarcastic, stubborn, beautiful Dante—who’d been sleeping in her room for days, couldhold her handswithout suffering. And if she could touch his hands, she could touch his lips—

Focus, Alessa.

This wasn’t the right time, but after Divorando? The thrill racing through her at the possibility wasn’t going to make sleep any easier to find.

Her eyes were sandy from exhaustion, but each aftershock of excitement jolted her fully awake again, leaving her with too much time to remember the slide of his palms against hers, the gentle strength of his fingers around her wrists, his pulse throbbing against her fingertips.

The most wonderful night of her life. And one of the most heartbreaking.

Finally, she could touch someone without hurting him, but his gift was the only kind that couldn’t save Saverio.

Thirty-One

Un diavolo scaccia l’altro.

One devil drives out another.

DAYS BEFORE DIVORANDO: 17

Dante took his new duty as seriously as he did the rest, and they touched a half dozen times before breakfast. He fastened her necklace for her, passed her a muffin, ruffled her hair. She was getting better at sensing the difference between “purring” touches and those that made him wince. She couldn’t describe it, but therewasa difference, and the painful moments were already becoming infrequent.

With an hour to kill before training began, and because Dante said he was afraid she’d wear a hole in the floor with her pacing if she didn’t find a productive use for her nervous energy, they returned to the library.

“Do you have a reading compulsion? Should I be concerned?” she asked while he arranged his second armful of books on a table. “Why do you read as though books are about to go extinct?”

“Research.”

She eyed the titles, half in the old language. A few historical, others religious, and a handful appeared to be fairy tales. “On what?”

He cast a wary glance over his shoulder. “People like me. I don’t know much besides the stories, and those aren’t all true—horns and all that—but there must be more. And plenty were banished, not killed, so they might still be out there. Somewhere.”

Alessa sank into a chair. Beside him. Because she could do that now without her pulse spiking at his proximity. Well. Without her pulse spiking in a bad way.

It sat like a heavy meal, the thought of ghiotte roaming free. Unfair, maybe—if one ghiotte wasn’t evil, it was reasonable to assume the rest weren’t either—but it was difficult to shake years of conditioning.

Still, she took a book off the pile closest to her and began trying to flip pages. Gloves made it difficult, so with a brief pause to savor the novelty, she took them off and continued.

A thud from the wall between the library and Fonte suite made her jump.

Twenty minutes until she had to torture them again.

Dante was unique, or at least rare, and she might be getting better at reining in the destructive power of her gift with him, but that didn’t mean it would translate to anyone else.

“What are you doing?” Dante asked as she took a lungful of air and held it for a count of three.

“Deep breathing. I can control my power better when I’m calm, so I’m practicing calming strategies.” She exhaled, pushing out the breath until her chest went concave.

“You’re never calm.”

Another deep inhale. “Hence my problem.”

Keeping one hand on his book, Dante extended his other without looking over. “Give it here.”

Her body didn’t seem to understand that it was just forpractice, especially when he grew tired of holding their clasped hands up and lowered them to rest on his knee.

Only Dante’s focus on his task saved Alessa from having to explain why her neck was turning red.