“There are better places for kissing than alleys.”
She laughed, dangerously close to hysteria. “Thanks for the tip. Doubt I’ll need it.”
“If you want to control your power so you can live a normal life and kiss in every alley in the city after Divorando, then grab onto that.” He shivered. “Now, can we please go inside?”
She tried to retort with something witty and sharp, but her teeth chattered too fiercely for her to speak.
“Dammit, I’m claiming bodyguard prerogative. Come on.” Grabbing her wrist, Dante towed her behind him.
The warmth of the kitchen wasn’t enough. Every shudder sent ice rattling to the floor from her wet skirts.
Dante attacked them, swatting at the layer of caked-on ice. “Hate to break it to you, but dying of hypothermia won’t help Saverio.”
She swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. “It might.”
He looked up at her. “You don’t really believe that.”
“Other people do.”
Dante’s gaze fell on the bottle in her hands. “What is that?”
She hesitated. “My mother’s perfume.”
Dante snatched it from her numb fingers, uncorking it to wipe the rim with a finger and raise it to his lips.
“No!” She tried to grab it back.
He hid the bottle behind his back. “What’s in it?”
She clenched her teeth, but her lower lip trembled.
Dante dumped the contents into a potted miniature lemon tree and hurled the empty bottle into the soil. He was gearing up to rail at her, though how it was her fault her brother wanted her to poison herself, she didn’t know. But his expression said he wanted to hurt someone, and she was the only one there to take it.
She managed a weak, “I like that tree,” and burst into tears.
Muttering profanities that somehow sounded sympathetic, he crushed her to his chest, and she clutched at him, desperate for his body heat seeping through their layers of cold, wet clothing. The truth poured out in a torrent—how a thousand mistakes in her life had piled on top of each other, how Adrick had counted them up, tallying the proof that she couldn’t do the one thing she must. How every minor embarrassment and childhood error was now evidence used against her by the person she’d trusted to stand by her no matter what. Ivini had stolen the last member of her family, but it was her failings that made it possible for him to do so.
She could feel Dante’s struggle for control in the taut muscles of his back as he fought the urge to chase Adrick down, but she fisted her hands in his shirt and held on for dear life. If he left her now, she’d crumble into nothing.
“What if he’s right?” she asked. “Maybe I was never meant to do this. Dea had faith in me, but I didn’t deserve it. Everyone’s figured it out but me. You said it yourself. The gods have given up on us—or at least me.”
“Now you start listening to me?” Dante said. “People like Ivini make a living convincing scared people they know the answers, but the loudest people rarely know the most.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
“It doesn’t mean he’s right, either. Come on, let me try.”
Did she even have a choice? Did she ever have a choice?
“You think too much.” He tipped her chin up with a gloved finger. “All talk, huh? Brave enough to suggest it, but not to make a move.”
Her breath caught. “Don’t tempt me.”
“I’m trying to tempt you. You said I can be better, so let me try.”
“And you keep saying you aren’t a hero.” Something fluttered to life in Alessa’s heart—hope, fear, or something else entirely.
“I’m not.” The corner of his mouth kicked up in a smile. “You’re the hero. I’m just asking a girl to hold my hand.”
Chapter Thirty
Come la cosa indugia, piglia vizio.
Wait at your own peril.
DAYS BEFORE DIVORANDO: 18
Alessa muddled her way through training the next day, which went about as well as the sessions before their day off—if one could call a near-death experience and attempted sororicide a “day off”—and she wasn’t the only one who only emerged from a stupor at the sight of a parade of wheeled icebox carts in the courtyard.
Josef had planned the surprise, a fact he took a bit too long explaining as they eyed the alluring treats.
Alessa held back as the others perused the selection from Josef’s family’s gelateria. To be polite. And because her dread about the coming evening, when Dante would take his turn being tormented, was quickly overtaking her hopes that he could help her.