Chi nasce lupo non muore agnello.
Those born as wolves cannot die as lambs. / People don’t change.
DAYS BEFORE DIVORANDO: 19
It wasn’t every day a girl received a mortal wound, turned around at death’s threshold, and discovered her only friend in the world also happened to be one of the creatures from her nightmares. It was … a lot.
Ghiotte were evil. It was fact, not opinion. But Dante wasn’t. He couldn’t be.
At first, she thought he wouldn’t answer, hoped he’d scoff, and they’d both marvel at the absurdity of what she’d said.
He jerked a nod instead.
“You’re a ghiotte,” she said again. Her thoughts tangled, impossible to tease apart. She seized the most important thread and tugged. “And you used your gift to heal me.”
“No,” he said. “You used it.”
“But you chose to hold my hands because you thought I could.” Euphoria filled her. “Dante, you saved my life.”
His expression darkened at her breathy wonder. “I’m your bodyguard. That’s literally my job.” He stood and brushed off his pants. It was futile. They were thoroughly soiled with blood and filth and not worth salvaging.
Her mind churned with a tempest of emotion—horror, gratitude, fear, and awe. “Dante, you held my hand, and you didn’t die.”
He looked uncomfortable. “For a minute, I thought I might.”
“But—”
“Don’t get excited. I don’t have any useful powers.” Dante scanned the alley, practically twitching with nerves. “You need to get back to the Cittadella, and I have to get out of here.”
Alessa was prodding her miraculously intact belly.
With an impatient huff, Dante hauled her to her feet.
She swayed drunkenly and held out her bloody hands, one glove on and one off, as though to show him some fascinating treasure.
Dante gave her the long-suffering look of a sober patron at a bar past midnight and tucked her under his arm to hustle her along.
He was alive.
She was alive.
How in Dea’s name were they both alive?
She giggled, loopy from relief—and blood loss, if she was honest—and wrapped her fingers around his waist. Heat curled at the press of his body against her, the shift of firm muscles with every step.
They probably looked like lovers, clinging to each other, in search of a private alley. She giggled again. Except for the blood. She didn’t have much experience for reference, but in books at least, clandestine romantic encounters didn’t usually involve quite so much of that.
Ever the grumpy chaperone, Dante did not steer them into a darkened alley, but half carried her, with an insider’s knowledge of the winding, unnamed streets, until the harbor cave loomed before them.
Inside, Dante maneuvered her down the path. The brisk walk had not cleared her head, but done the opposite, and stars burst in her vision as he leaned her against the wall. Vaguely aware she was sliding down, Alessa couldn’t stop herself. Dante caught her, propping her up with a knee between her legs.
“Oh, dear. You haven’t even bought me dinner,” she said with a snort.
He sighed, all taut muscles and jerky movement as he fished beneath her cloak for the key in her dress pockets.
Pressing her face into Dante’s shirt, she breathed him in. It seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do, but on second thought, probably wasn’t. Hard to blame her, though. Whatever magic had healed her wounds had not replenished the blood she’d lost, and the deficit was taking a toll on her already subpar impulse control.
“Whoops,” she mumbled, lifting her head. “Little dizzy.”
Dante didn’t respond, his eyes darting everywhere as he unlocked the gate, his breath fast and shallow. This wasn’t the boy who’d teased her about racy novels or offered to hug her to save the world. This was the trapped animal she’d seen on her balcony the night she brought him home.
He was frightened of her. Of course. Everyone was. And now that he’d experienced the excruciating pain she caused everyone who got too close, he’d forever be scared of her, too.
“I’m sorry.” She stuffed her hands in her pockets. “I won’t touch you again.”
“Huh?” He blinked, focused on her. “No. It’s not—That’s not—Do I need to carry you?”
“Relax,” she said with what she hoped looked like a confident wave of her hand. “I can walk.” She wasn’t steady, but she kept herself moving forward.
There was something else bothering her. Something she had been angry about or wanted to understand. Her thoughts were sluggish and disjointed, but she seized on it at last as Dante closed the gate behind them. “Who was that man? And why were you arguing with him?”
Dante tensed. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It most certainly does. You met with one of Ivini’s supplicants, who wants me dead, and then you almost killed me. I deserve to know what’s going on.”
He’d also healed her, which somewhat negated her argument, but Dante must have wanted to avoid that subject.
“He’s the guy who took me in after my parents died. Told the mob that a child could be reformed, and he would take care of it. You know, save my immortal soul.” He urged her forward with a hand on her lower back. “I saw him in the crowd the night I met you. It’s been years, so I wasn’t sure if he recognized me, but I figured I should make sure he was keeping his mouth shut, so no one would find out. So much for that plan.” Dante opened the last gate and put the key in her hand. “Lock the gate behind you.”
Why did it sound like goodbye?
“You aren’t coming?”
“I—” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I have to—I can’t—”
The man who fought opponents twice his size without flinching, who stared down angry Fontes, who never shied away from a girl whose hands brought pain and death, was trembling because she knew his secret.
“Dante, I would never tell anyone.”
He let out a ragged breath. “You know what’ll happen if this gets out?”
A ghiotte in the Cittadella. A rat in the kitchen. Angry mobs, torches blazing and pitchforks at the ready. She’d be lucky if they didn’t toss her on the pyre with him.
His eyes flashed. “Pick your damn Fonte, stay in the Cittadella, and forget you ever knew me.”
“At least come in for your things,” she said, her voice soft.
“I’ll buy new things.”
“Please. Let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
It was too much, too fast. He was slipping away, and she hadn’t even processed what had just happened and who he was. She needed a moment, dammit.
“Then my blood will be on your hands again,” she said. “I give myself a seventy percent chance of collapsing on my way up the stairs, tumbling all the way down, breaking half my bones and cracking my skull, and you won’t be there to heal me, so I’ll die for the second time today in a puddle of my own blood. What a tragic end to the day’s story of survival.”
He kept glaring, but there was a hint of something else behind the anger and fear.
It might have been hope.
“Please?” She raised a shaky hand to her face, sagging against the gate. It really wasn’t fair to use his weakness against him, but desperate times demanded desperate measures.
Dante washed his blades in the sink, dried them with clean towels, then washed and dried them again before returning them to their sheaths.
He was pacing when Alessa left to bathe, and he was pacing when she peered around the screen before getting dressed.
He was a ghiotte.
A person considered barely human.
Demon-touched, selfish, and cruel to the core.
She was supposed to fear him. Hate him. It should have changed everything.
But it didn’t.
A ghiotte had taken her hands in that alley, not knowing if he’d survive his desperate gamble to save her. A ghiotte had risked his pride and safety to wrap a ridiculous scarf around his head and hug her when she needed it more than anything in the world.
From the day they’d met, Dante had tried to convince her he was cruel, unkind, and cold, but his actions made his words ring hollow. He was a ghiotte, but he was still Dante. And he hadn’t chosen his fate any more than she had.
She found him trying to scrub her blood from his white linen shirt. At the sound of her footsteps behind him, Dante threw the shirt into the sink and braced his hands on the counter.
“I promise I won’t tell,” she said, with the steady calm of a person soothing a growling dog. “But I have to know something.”
He didn’t turn around.
“The stories say ghiotte are demons disguised as men.” She swallowed. “Is it true? Are you … something else? Underneath?”
“Are you asking if I have horns?”
That was exactly what she was asking, but it seemed best to neither confirm nor deny it.
“No,” he sighed. “No horns. No tail. No claws. This is me.”
The breath whooshed out of her. Not a monster, at least no more than she was. In that instant, she made up her mind.
“No one else has to know.”
Dante looked irritated rather than grateful. “Someone already does. Why do you think I was threatening him? It’s bad enough he knows I’m in the city. All the money in the world won’t keep him quiet if he finds out I’m in the Cittadella. It’s one thing to have your runaway ghiotte wandering free, another to let him sleep on the Finestra’s couch.”
“Then we’ll make sure he doesn’t find out. Dante, please. You can’t go. Not now, when I finally know how much we have in common—”
“Common?” Dante spat out. “What do we have in common?”
“A lot. For one, we both understand what it’s like to be hated and feared. We both have gifts we didn’t ask for.”
“Gift,” he scoffed. “Some gift.”
“You can heal yourself. My gift only kills people.”
His fingers flexed against the porcelain. “Mine has killed plenty.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “That’s why they killed your parents.”
“Yeah. And yours are getting paid extra for birthing the blessed Finestra. Like I said, we have nothing in common. You’re a savior. I’m an abomination. You got a castle, and I got locked in a shed by a man who tried to beat the evil out of me.”
Her stomach roiled.
No, their lives weren’t the same. Not in the obvious ways, but in the hidden, broken, jagged spaces inside them … why couldn’t he see how they were?
“I’m sorry for what happened to you. You didn’t deserve that, and neither did your parents. But…” Alessa clenched her fists, stunned at a possibility. “Maybe your power can help others.”
Dante scoffed. “What? Like being your Fonte? Good luck with that. The only gift you’d get from me is a slower death to watch the world end.”
“No, of course not. But I could practice on you.”
“You mean torture me.”
She flinched. “But not kill you.”
“I’m not invincible. I’ll die if you try hard enough.”
“But you’re closer than anyone else. You keep saying you don’t care about your safety. Is it so different from fighting for money? You could help me save Saverio.”
“What’s Saverio ever done for me?”
“There are children who will die horrible deaths.”
“Children grow up and become cruel like everyone else.”
“I didn’t want this duty either, but at least I’m trying.”
“You’re the savior, not me. I’m the selfish one, remember? This is your problem.”
She wanted to rake her nails down his face, to rip the cold disdain away by force. “Nice try, Dante, but it’s too late. I know you. There’s no way you’re fine with letting thousands of children die when you couldn’t even ignore one kid in trouble.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw you with that beggar girl getting pushed around by one of Ivini’s goons. You stopped him.”
Dante threw his head back. “Don’t make me into some kind of hero because I hate bullies. I am exactly what everyone says I am.”
“I don’t care what the stories say. You’re a good person—”
He threw his hands up. “Stop! You don’t know what kind of person I am. You have no idea what I’ve done, who I’ve hurt.”
“Then tell me. Convince me. Prove you’re evil. I dare you.”
He tore at his hair. “Fine! There was one person who tried to help me after I ran away. Just one. Ever. And I killed her.”