Alla fine del gioco, re e pedone finiscono nella stessa scatola.
When the game is over, the king and the pawn go in the same box.
The dying scarabeo twitched violently, legs curling in like a dead spider.
Alessa lunged, her bare hand closing over one smooth claw.
She retched as an oily power flowed into her, but she didn’t let go until it reached the core of her gift.
Like falling out of bed mid-dream, something inside her came awake with a lurch.
“Regroup,” she ordered, but the word wasn’t merely spoken aloud. It was an order, a mental compelling, a dozen thoughts condensed into one, like a brain signaling a body to stand.
The army—her army—snapped to attention, thousands of warriors tuned as one. Through her eyes, through each other’s eyes, they saw the fight from every angle, countless minds woven together into one.
The scarabeo gave one last shudder and went still.
“To me!” Alessa shouted at her Fontes, and they found her side. Already, the scarabeo’s power—she couldn’t think of it as a gift—was fading, the precise symmetry of her fighters falling out of rhythm, but as she sent a storm of ice and lightning to fell a swath of scarabeo, the soldiers below fought with renewed purpose, united once more.
They might actually get through Divorando.
She regretted the thought as soon as it came to her. Never tempt the gods. Never.
Fire tore through her. A fire she’d lived through once before.
Nina screamed.
She’d heard that before, too.
Alessa looked down at the front of her slip of a dress, at the sharp limb, thrust into her belly with a scarabeo’s death spasm. The creature curled in on itself.
Blood soaked through the links of her chain mail.
Screams. Clanging blades. Her Fontes and guard burst into motion, fighting to surround her as she stumbled.
Dante couldn’t slow her fall this time. He was already on the ground. A wide gash ran from his chin to one ear, and he was covered in so much blood she couldn’t be sure if they had matching fatal wounds or different ones. Hands clutched at her, trying to break her fall, but she smelled dirt, tasted it. Dante lay a few feet away, a flicker of sunlight across his face.
The army would have to take care of the rest. She wouldn’t be saving them.
Dante’s eyes opened, and his pupils shrank as he focused on her. He lifted his head. Fingers clawing at the dirt, he dragged himself closer, then stopped to cough. He didn’t bother wiping the blood from his chin before he began to drag himself again.
One arm’s length. Another.
His gift might be enough to save him. It wasn’t enough for them both.
So many memories she’d never make. Kisses they’d never share. Sunrises and sunsets they could have watched together.
She focused on him, detaching from the raging battle. She couldn’t help them anymore. She couldn’t even help herself.
The darkness spread inside her, but she held on. Dante was trying to get to her. She had to stay until he did.
What was one more death, or two, on a day when countless had died already?
Everything.
Somehow, he made it to her. Trembling on one elbow, his eyes fixed on hers, and he brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers.
“Gabriele,” he said. “My name is Gabriele.”
She raised her hand to find his. “But I haven’t won.”
He smiled. “You will.” He grabbed her hand, and his jaw clenched over a scream of pain.
“No,” she said, trying to get free of his grip as she realized what he was doing, but Dante wouldn’t let go. Hot tears blurred her vision as life drained from his face.
He was giving his gift to her.
She couldn’t get free, and she couldn’t stop it from flowing to her. Trying to fight it would only waste the gift he gave so freely.
Something twisted in the place where her power originated, the shift from taking a gift to magnifying. She knew it well by now, but she’d only felt it with the Fontes’ power, never with his.
She sobbed as her pain blinked out, and a new power, greater than anything she’d experienced before, burst free.
Dante was saving her, so she could save them.
The world vanished in a flash, followed by such a complete absence of sound she thought her eardrums had burst.
A dome of light expanded, obliterating scarabeo as it engulfed them, but leaving people untouched. The ghiotte’s power of healing and self-protection bloomed outward and banished the darkness.
Alessa stared up, through the ring of Fontes and guards, their weapons raised against foes who were vanishing into nothingness.
Where light met dark, both blinked out, and the bubble began to look like lace.
“Do you see it?” she whispered to him. “Do you see what you did?”
Enduring light, shone through a divine window, burned the demons to ashes.
Dante’s gift had saved them all.
“Dante?” She looked back at him, took his face between her hands.
His eyes were open, but he couldn’t see.
He’d never see anything again.