Contro l’amore e la morte non vale essere forti.
Against love and death, there is no point fighting.
DAYS BEFORE DIVORANDO: 14
Garlic and wine flavored the air thick enough to taste as Alessa and Dante wove their way down a wide street lined with bistros and bars. Crowds of people laughed and grinned beneath lopsided masks, embracing old friends and new. On one street corner, an opera singer belted an aria, while flamboyant salsa dancers spun nearby, and a mariachi band played an old favorite a block away. The cacophony should have clashed, but somehow it was the perfect blend of jubilant noise. Alessa basked in the ferocious joy and desperate love all around.
Dante strolled by her side in the same clothes he’d been in the first time she saw him—tawny, worn-in trousers and a slightly frayed white shirt—and she’d tried to match him as best she could, in a simple, rose-colored skirt, leather-soled slippers, and an ivory blouse with flowing sleeves. A pair of men in robes passed them without a glance for the young couple in masks. There was no reason for anyone to suspect she was the stiff, buttoned-up Finestra who wore glittering finery at lavish galas.
Dante snagged a piece of chiacchiere from a passing tray, shouting his thanks to the bearer, who was already pressing his treats upon the next lucky recipient. Breaking it in half, Dante held it out so Alessa could take a bite.
Even before the tang of lemon zest and mandarinetto touched her tongue, her mouth watered. Her lips brushed his fingertips, tempting her to linger, but a puff of powdered sugar tickled her nose, and she pulled back to sneeze.
Adjusting her mask, she beckoned him to follow her to a picked-over chocolate stand across the street where three half-melted lumps were on their way to becoming puddles. She took them all.
“Silk isn’t cheap.” Dante pulled one of her gloves off and transferred the chocolates into her empty palm. “Which one’s mine?”
She popped one in her mouth. “Who said any are for you?”
With a mask over half his face, she could hardly be blamed that her gaze kept slipping to his mouth.
Dante pulled her back before she ran into a loudly intoxicated man, grasping her wrist to steady her—or so she thought—but instead, lips met her palm with a heat she felt in her toes. Then again, and both chocolates were gone. He grinned like the Wolf he used to be.
A pair of dancers clipped her before she could scold him for his thievery, and the impact sent her into his arms.
Eyes met, breath caught, she leaned in, ready to dance, to kiss, to—
Dante set her at arm’s length. “You okay?”
No, because you threw away a chance to kiss me and you’re leaving tomorrow so I can marry someone else, she wailed inside her head.
Aloud, she went with, “You’re a horrible tease,” and sucked a smudge of chocolate off one finger with a pout.
“Who’s teasing now?” At the heat in his gaze, Alessa understood the word smolder for the first time.
She peeked up at him through her lashes. “Ask nicely, and I’m all yours.”
He coughed on nothing.
“It is you!” a loud voice slurred.
Dante shoved the tall boy careening toward them—not to hurt him, just to stop him—but he took a minute to regain his balance anyway.
“Sorry.” Kaleb’s white teeth flashed beneath his jade mask. “Didn’t suspect—aspect—” He stopped. “Expect! Didn’t expect to see you here, but I won’t tell anyone. Do I look heroic?” He draped a strip of scarlet fabric over his shoulders and struck a pose. “Just needed the right outfit.” He bit off the consonants in his attempt to enunciate clearly, and the effect of his slurred speech paired with the ridiculous pose sent Alessa into a fit of giggles.
“Absolutely,” she said. “I am in awe.” She wanted to shoo him away, to forget that this was the boy she’d be marrying in the morning, not the one on her arm, but Kaleb looked so sheepish as he dropped the pose that she didn’t have the heart to hint for him to leave.
“Doubtful,” he said. “I’ve been a real tool, but I’ll do better.”
Dante turned away, pretending to be absorbed in the festivities.
“It’s never too late to become who you want to be, Kaleb,” Alessa said. “I should know.”
“Maybe you can teach me,” he said. “Partners, right?”
“Right.”
“Way more fun out here, though.” Kaleb’s hand swept through the air, and Dante caught a statuette he knocked over.
“Enjoy yourself tonight, Kaleb,” Alessa said. “But try to sober up before the morning. I’d like you to remember it later. And drink some water.”
Kaleb gave her a wobbly salute and yanked her into a loose, awkward hug, his head cocked at an angle so their faces didn’t touch.
“Your friends have left you behind,” Dante said, prying Kaleb off and guiding him with a firm hand on his shoulder. “How about you catch up with them, eh?”
Kaleb loped off, and Dante and Alessa continued down the street alone, pausing to watch dancers twirl and dip, tossing coins into a mandolin player’s case, and laughing at a puppet show where a miniature Finestra pounded a stuffed scarabeo to death while a crowd cheered.
“If only it were that easy,” she whispered.
“Maybe it will be.”
“I hope so,” she said, trying to soak in the sight of every joyful face.
The streets were so densely packed they could hardly move through the riotous mass of Saverians. Polished city residents passed drinks to roughnecks from the docks, and wide-eyed villagers rubbed elbows with rowdy sailors, listening raptly to stories told by settlers returned from the continent, easily identified by their out-of-style, homespun clothes and universal air of bravado. It took a special kind of person to voluntarily leave Saverio’s comforts for the battered continent. Alessa slowed as she passed a small crowd crying tears of mirth as a woman in a sleeveless tunic, her skin burnished by long days under the sun, shouted a tale that ended with an imitation of her partner falling into an ancient canal in the ruins after too many ghost stories.
Dante chuckled, but Alessa’s laughter faded quickly. The longer the battle, the more of these people would die. Soldiers, the Marked, and their children who were too young to enter the Fortezza without them. The colorful, vibrant streets would soon become a battlefield, and she was their last line of defense.
“This way,” Dante said.
Twining his fingers with hers, he towed her along as he cut a path through the revelers. Her view was nothing but backs and chests, and in the center of it all, Dante’s sure grip and confident stride, parting the crowd with his broad shoulders and effortless air of command. They broke free from the mass of humanity when he led her into an alley so narrow he had to release her hand.
She couldn’t resist.
As she stopped, Dante turned back, and she made a show of examining the alley and wiggling her eyebrow.
“I promise,” he said with a laugh. “There are better places than alleys.”
Soon, the ocean rolled out before them, so glorious in the dying sunset that she could hardly believe anything cruel and ugly could exist in the same world.
They weren’t the only Carnevale-goers who’d had the same idea, and she averted her eyes from the scattered couples dotting the sand, an ache growing in her chest.
The shape of him, the way he moved, stirred a hundred wants she wasn’t allowed to have, and she knew, no matter what happened in the morning or on the day of Divorando, that she’d never forget the rasp in his voice when he was tired, the way his eyes crinkled when he was trying not to laugh, or his ridiculous proverbs for every occasion.
Was there any use in dreaming of a life beyond the battle, where Dea’s Finestra and Crollo’s ghiotte found a happily ever after?
The rocks became pebbles, pebbles became sand, and Dante waited as she slipped off her shoes, toes sinking into the slowly fading warmth of the sand. The ocean shushed them while the city sang above as she stretched her legs to match his stride, shoes dangling from her fingertips like earrings.
They slowed in unison, walking closer, until the backs of their hands brushed with every step.
Almost touching, but not quite, they stopped to stare out at the sea. It fractured in the center, the jagged outline of a distant shore breaking the horizon, one peak higher than the rest. There, at that very moment, demons were making their inexorable way to the surface.
“It’s hard to believe something so beautiful can be so deadly, isn’t it?” she asked.
She turned and found him watching her instead of the ocean.
“Yes,” he said softly. “Hard to believe.”
She held onto his gaze. No teasing tip of the head or challenging stare. No jokes. Just a girl waiting for a boy to kiss her.
And he did.
The ocean sighed with them, as though it, too, had been waiting. Dante brushed his lips against hers, lightly, questioning. As though she was just a girl and he just a boy, and the world wasn’t about to end, and she wasn’t marrying someone else in the morning.
Heat simmered, but it waited patiently, because this moment wasn’t for heat, but warmth. Not for haste, but a slow sweetness. An introduction of sorts. She knew him, and he knew her, but they didn’t know each other like this.
When he rested his forehead against hers, neither spoke. The soft thud of her heart and the brush of his thumb over her palm said everything words couldn’t.
I’m sorry.
I’ll miss you.
I hope.
I want.
“Take me home,” she said. “I want to fall asleep with you one last time.”
He dropped a lingering kiss on her lips before taking her hand.
One last night.
Her room had never seemed so small or her bed so large. Alessa gnawed on her lip while Dante kicked off his shoes, then frowned at the floor, shoeless but otherwise fully dressed.
Wonderful. Neither of them knew what to do next. Well, she assumed Dante knew something about what was to come, but the immediate next step seemed to stump them both.
Dante rubbed the back of his neck. “When you said you wanted to sleep…”
“I didn’t mean sleep,” Alessa said quickly. “I mean, sleep, too, but—”
He stepped closer and ran the pad of one thumb across her cheekbone. “You are very pink right now.”
“You’re not supposed to notice.” She pushed onto her toes, but still couldn’t reach him. “Do you have to be so tall? How am I supposed to kiss you?”
“Climb?” He bent with a laugh to kiss her.
“Do you still feel it?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious.
Dante cocked his head. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“My … my gift. What does it feel like now, when I’m not trying to use it on you?”
“Let’s see.” He tipped her chin, and his lips found hers, slowly, as though he could stretch a night into a lifetime. She responded, instantly, and his hands found her waist. His kisses deepened, until he kissed her with the urgency of a man who hoped tomorrow would never come. He pulled back, breathless. “What was the question?”
“Hmm?” She blinked, dazed.
He bit his lip, looking quite pleased with his effect on her. “I still feel that … purr … or whatever you want to call it. But I think I like it.”
“You think?”
He answered with another kiss. Unequivocally.
She could have spent a lifetime savoring the slide of his lips, the dance of his tongue, the breath they passed between them as though it was the only air left in the world, and they would both die without it. She wanted to take her time exploring every fascinating part of him, but her hands were impatient, and once they found the strip of bare skin between his pants and shirt, her palms slid beneath. His abdomen was all firm ridges and taut muscles, but his lips were full and soft.
His fingers cupped her bottom, pulling her into him, and she melted, softness yielding to the hard planes of his body. When his hand cupped her breast, she forgot how to breathe. Refusing to let go of each other for the time it would take to walk to the couch, they tumbled onto it in a tangle of arms and legs instead.
She looked down at him through the fall of her curls, kissing the scruff of his chin, his lips, his neck, reveling in the husky rasp to his breath. After the third time he caught her halfway through falling off, Dante rolled with her, catching their fall. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, so he hauled her up with him as he stood, laughing into her neck as he carried her to the bed.
“I know they say these skirts were designed for Saverio’s stairs,” Dante murmured, trailing kisses across her belly. “But I have to believe someone was thinking of this.”
He nuzzled her through fabric, his breath warming the bare skin of her thigh, and the world faded away into velvet darkness and yearning, her hands tangling in his hair as she begged Dea silently to let it last an eternity, then not so silently.
But Dante the lover, like Dante the fighter, was determined to find her every weakness, and he did, until she arched against him and the breath shuddered out of her.
She was limp, spent, soft and drowsy, as he found his way beside her and pulled her to him, kissing her forehead, her eyelids, her neck—anything he could reach. She snuggled close, whispering against his neck.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She was. As sure as she’d ever been about anything. Pushing up to kneeling, she pulled her blouse over her head. The moon gilded her body until it didn’t look like hers at all, and Dante was stunned into immobility. Her skirt was more difficult, but that seemed to snap him out of his reverent trance. He unhooked it with a flick of his wrist, threw it on the floor, and she was naked and only a little self-conscious as he gazed at her.
Up to her, then. A smile played on her lips as she nudged him to lift his arms and she fought to remove his shirt. It hit the floor and she squinted, fumbling with the buttons of his pants. Her hand slipped inside but she jerked it back out at his strangled sound. “No,” he said with a ragged laugh. “Good pain.”
Like unwrapping a long-awaited present, she took her time undressing him, daring him to be self-conscious, but he wasn’t. His confidence was warranted. The sculpted muscles she’d admired when he was a stranger were even more captivating up close, now that he was anything but.
Even as her thoughts dissolved, Alessa decided Dea had surely spent extra time and effort crafting Dante, because she couldn’t find a single flaw. Although, if he had one, it wouldn’t be a flaw to her. Still, every line and plane, ridge of bone and lean muscle, was more perfect than the last. To her eyes, to her hands.
Dante let her explore until it seemed he couldn’t take it any longer. Then, moving with a feline grace, he rolled her beneath him.
Somehow, every second of her life seemed to have led to the moment he settled himself above her. In the short time she’d known him, she’d learned to stand on her own, to take up space, and love herself, but she still had so much to learn, starting with what it meant to be one with another, even temporarily. She made a soft sound at the first bite of pain, and he stopped, soothing her with slow kisses until she begged him to continue. He moaned, and her breath hitched. Her eyes flew open. “Did I hurt you?”
“That’s—” He stopped to breathe. “That’s my question.”
It didn’t seem appropriate to laugh, but his eyes were smiling, so maybe it wasn’t so strange to laugh in a moment like that, or maybe it was, but she didn’t care—before she could decide, his hips flexed, and she forgot all about laughing.
She could feel the strain of his control, but his lips were soft and coaxing, and bit by bit, she relaxed. And then there was no more pain, or only brief flashes, but the tiny hurts were banished almost immediately by his shared gift. “I can’t—”
She silenced him with a kiss, wordlessly urging him on. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—reach the peak again, but it didn’t matter. She wanted to watch him, to memorize his expression.
When he relaxed, so boneless and heavy she thought he might be asleep, she ran her fingernails up and down his back, rubbing her smooth cheek against his rough one.
She’d given him that. For once, her body—her touch—had shared pleasure, not pain. Power had been a bad thing for so long, something she needed to suppress, control, and fear. But this … this was power, too. The power to give, to connect, to convey the thoughts and feelings she had no words for.
For five years, she’d been told she was a window to the divine, and for the first time, watching Dante’s face, she’d believed it.
His muscles bunched as he gathered himself to move away. She whimpered a protest and clutched him to her.
Lifting his head, he kissed her nose. “I’ll crush you.”
“I’ll die happy.”
Rolling to the side, he pulled her with him and laid her head on his chest. “You can’t die tonight. You have to save the world.”
The moment was too precious to darken with doubts and fears, so she wiggled deeper into his arms as he murmured soft sweetness against her forehead in the old language. Some things didn’t require translation.
She woke to utter darkness and a cool draft instead of Dante’s warmth. Reaching, her fingertips found his back. He was sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Come back to me,” she whispered.
The clouds had rolled in while she slept, so their second time was only touch, taste, and sounds. Kisses leaving trails of heat and murmured words that weren’t really words but feelings shaped into sighs mingling between parted lips.