She might have thrown herself at the bars in a sobbing mess if Kaleb hadn’t shattered the moment.
“You’re not dead,” Kaleb said cheerfully.
Dante stood slowly, as if it took too much effort to move. “Neither are you.”
Kaleb bent close to the bars and spoke in a stage whisper. “Don’t know if you heard, but she tried her very best.”
Dante’s lip curled in a half smile. “She tried to kill me a few times, too.”
“First torture, then she locks you up?” Kaleb shook his head. “Women.”
Alessa rolled her eyes. “Yes, this is obviously a woman thing.”
She could have kissed Kaleb for making light of the situation, though. Dante couldn’t disguise his misery, his every movement jerky with tension, from the unconscious clench of his fingers to the tic in his jaw. It nearly broke her.
“She told you her theory?” Kaleb asked Dante.
After she finished explaining, Dante said nothing at first, merely stared at the wall. Then, “All of them, huh? You couldn’t have figured that out a few weeks ago?”
They laughed for too long, sitting in the dark, with bars between them and marble tombs all around, amidst the scurrying of rats and insects, a few days away from Armageddon.
Kaleb gave them a sheepish grin. “Well, I’m sure you’d like some privacy, but I don’t think I can make it up the stairs without help.” He turned to Alessa. “And you shouldn’t be here alone.”
Dante tensed.
“Relax,” said Kaleb. “I’m not accusing you of anything. Well, I mean—eh, not my business. Actually, I guess it is my business? But I don’t really want it to be, so anyway, there are appearances to keep up, and it needs to look like she hates you, so I’ll just … turn around for a few minutes.”
It was as close as they’d get to being alone, so Alessa put Kaleb from her mind and pressed her face to the bars. Dante met her there, warm skin framed by cold metal. She worked her hands into the stained fabric of his shirt, pulling him as close as she could.
The only sound was his rasping breath.
“Not much longer,” she whispered. “I’ll never let this happen to you again.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, luce mia.” Dante kissed her forehead through the bars. “And don’t worry about me. I’ve been through worse. Probably will again.”
Her cheeks grew wet with tears. “How did you survive it for all those years?”
Dante made a low, exhausted sound. “You don’t want to hear about that.”
“I want to know everything you’re willing to share with me.” She lifted his hand to trace the lines on his dirt-creased palm, seeking to memorize the feel of every calloused fingertip and taut tendon. Raising it to her mouth, she pressed a kiss to the dark smudge inside his wrist, all that remained of the false tattoo, in silent apology. “You don’t have to tell me anything. Especially now. It’s not the time.”
“I’m in a jail cell. Seems like the perfect time for confessions.” Dante drew her hand through the bars and held it to his rough cheek. “He used to taunt me.”
Alessa swallowed. She’d come to recognize the inflection on the word he when Dante discussed his abuser. He never said the man’s name, and she suspected he never would. Names had power, as Dante knew.
“He liked to remind me that I was the last ghiotte. ‘You’re all alone and you’ll die alone, and when you do, there will be no more.’ Like he knew that would break me.”
“The scarabeo had better eat him slowly.”
Dante huffed a laugh. “He was wrong, though. And I held on to that for three years.”
She resented the involuntary tremor her body conjured at the thought of other ghiotte, prowling the forests of Saverio like she’d always imagined in her nightmares, but a lifetime of tales were hard to forget. “There are others? On Saverio?”
“Not anymore.” Dante’s grip eased, tacit permission for her to pull away, but she didn’t. “By the time I got free and went to find them, they were dead. Burned in their beds. Nothing left of their house but ash and ruins.”
Alessa closed her eyes against the sting of tears.
“I refused to believe it at first. Went to the nearest village, certain they’d be there, and I saw my aunt. She’d barely look at me, told me to get as far away as possible, change my name, and never come back. She’s not ghiotte, so they spared her, but Uncle Matteo and Talia … Gone.”