Chapter 21: Virgil - Where Light Cannot Follow

A feeling has swept up within me. I'm fairly certain it's akin to nausea—an uncomfortable churning in my core—though it's been so long since I've experienced such a thing that I cannot be sure.

What I do know is this: I need Dante safe.

He walks alongside me with the measured, certain steps of a man determined. Despite the torture he just endured, he gives scarcely a sign of pain aside from the occasional flinch at the corner of his eye.

He paid that price because of me.

Watching him suffer, watching Malrec rip suffering from him, touch him without his consent... it has undone something within me. Dante tormented, was like watching a man flayed alive. I have witnessed floggings in my mortal life, seen men broken on wheels and stretched on racks. This was worse. Each cry from his throat landed like a lash against my own back.

I've heard millions of souls cry out like that. But never him. Never Dante.

He shouldn’t have experienced such a thing.

And now the shadows darken despite us pressing forward at a pace that's nearly running. The silence continues. Even in my own mind, it's oddly quiet, a stillness I haven't experienced since Constance discovered she could manipulate our bond, haunt me through it.

"Would you do something for me?" I ask.

Dante's face gives another spasm of pain before it smooths back to his typical, composed mask. "That depends on the terms."

I grit my teeth. Why can't he simply leave? Why can't he make a vow to me—somehow I know he'd keep it if he did—and walk away from here before I have to witness him harmed again? Before he witnesses the same done to me? For if Satan seeks me, it's not to cast dice and share a cup of wine. It's to remind me, as he does every few centuries, exactly who holds my leash.

"You are the most frustrating soul I've ever guided," I say, and there's an edge to my voice I hardly recognize.

This causes Dante to smile. "I aim to be remarkable. Pleased to know I continue."

"It's evident you never fully passed through pride."

He only chuckles at this. "It's evident that you rarely lose your composure. I find it fascinating, I must say."

"Leave." I stop and stare at him, hoping my eyes can accomplish the begging my voice attempts. "Please. Leave this place. Go away from here."

"No." He says it with no heat, no emotion. It's the decision he's made, and he won't retreat from it.

A lonely, leafless tree creaks in some unfelt breeze. Motion. Someone draws near.

"You've witnessed the stakes, Dante," I beg, unashamed now. "You could be lost forever, and I couldn't bear that. I've lost souls before. It is breaking me still."

This seems to give him pause. He tilts his head. "I want you to come with me."

"I want you to live."

This pulls another rueful chuckle from him. "Virgil, you're forgetting a few key details. Starting with the fact that we're both dead."

I want to smile, to join him in this dark jest, but I cannot. "There is death, and then there is death. I am damned, Dante, but you can reach the light."

"I damned myself as well. Not in vow, perhaps, but in my choices." He seems to consider this. "I believe I'm here to undo that damnation—yours as much as mine. It's a sense I have in my gut, and I've always trusted my gut."

It's a pity I'm incapable of touching him, as I'd very much like to seize him by the shoulders and shake him until his teeth rattle. How can he have just endured the torment of a demon and still walk alongside me, still take such foolish risks? This isn't a man who favors uncertainty. He favors sure investments, calculated returns. Now he speaks in fantastical terms about impossible redemptions. I wonder if Malrec damaged him more than it seemed.

"Virgil, enough," Dante says in that voice that brooks no argument. "Whatever surrender you're seeking in me, you won't find it. I've made up my mind, and you made me a vow. You said you wouldn't leave me as long as I wanted you by my side. So which way do we go?"

Something cracks within my chest—a fissure in stone I thought had long since hardened beyond breaking. Hopelessness, yes, but threaded through with something else. Something warmer. No soul has ever cared for my well-being like this. Not in two thousand years. They accept my guidance, offer gratitude, and occasionally shed tears at our parting. But none have ever refused to leave me. None has ever placed themselves between me and harm.

I don't know what to do with such a gift.

Things have changed so rapidly. The Devil searches for me. Constance has gone silent and schemes in her quiet. The darkness thickens surrounding us.

But if he says he won't go without me, I must accept his word. Michael Dante isn't a man who retreats from a position or abandons a commitment once he's made it.

Curse the gods, how have I led him so astray? But if we make it through the swamps and to the other side, if we cross the river, pass unnoticed through Satan's realm—well, then, perhaps we could reach the mountain.

"Very well," I say at last. "But if you stay with me, you remember this is my realm, not yours. You've mastered boardrooms. I've mastered hell. And if I tell you to do something, you do so without question."

"Done."

I blink at him. Here was a man who didn't trust me enough when we met to ask for simple directions, and now he agrees to follow my commands without question. Were I still mortal, I'm certain my head would ache from the contradiction.

I cannot find words. Humorous, that they should fail me now after all these centuries. So instead, I simply continue walking, Dante at my side.

We travel the path in near silence. My own mind is deafeningly quiet, but even Dante's steps are hushed, as if he's willing himself to move softly, remembering that everything about his existence here is purely of his own mental making.

Well. Almost everything.

The swamp slowly gives way as we walk, the sucking mud hardening to cracked earth, the skeletal trees thinning until they disappear entirely. A ridge rises in the distance, dark against the darker sky, and beyond it a faint orange glow pulses like a dying heartbeat.

Voices draw me short. Dante's breath stills. His shoulders drop slightly, deliberately, as though he's decided to cede the weight of navigation.

He's truly letting me lead.

I'm uncertain what to do with that. I'm fairly certain this man hasn't allowed another to lead beyond pure necessity in decades, perhaps in all his adult life. There is some part of me, deeply buried beneath shame, that blooms at him choosing me. How long has it been since another soul looked upon mine and truly saw? So long that this feeling is like nectar I haven't tasted in such an age, I'd forgotten its flavor.

I gesture for Dante to stay, then creep forward, keeping to the shadows and other invisible things of this world—things like me.

Malrec stands with three other demons before a fire taller than all of them, tossing objects into the flames, their teeth reflecting the orange light. There's a franticness to their laughter, a brightness to their voices. They've all recently glutted themselves on feeding and now swim in heightened sensation.

That doesn't make them less dangerous.

Often at this stage, a demon becomes nearly insatiable. Beyond reason.

I step back to Dante and whisper so low I wonder if he can hear me at all. "I'm going to descend there and speak with them. Distract them. You will walk above the ridge, in the shadows. If you hear anything alarming, go still. Find cover. Do not respond, no matter what. Meet me beneath the tree on the far side.”

Dante's eyes scrape over my face, but he only nods.

His acquiescence almost makes me want to scream. Who is this man? How has he transformed so rapidly?

But if we can pass through here... then perhaps...

I walk down the path into the shallow valley below the ridge. The four demons turn to regard me.

Malrec looks up first. "Ah, Virgil. Come to join us for once?"

"Passing through," I say, bored, but I stop before the fire.

The others lean in, roll their hands through the flames, a reminder to me that they can feel its warmth, smell the charcoal scent of whatever flesh they roast on a spit above it. Fat drips and sizzles. Sparks spiral upward.

Serina—a demon who perished somewhere in the Byzantine court, all sharp cheekbones and sharper tongue—smiles and steps closer. "Where's your pet?" A glance at Malrec. "We were all just hearing of him."

"Wandered off again.” I shrug. "You know how souls are."

Malrec takes a long swallow from a tarnished goblet, wine lingering messily on his lips. He licks them slowly, deliberately. "Perhaps I gave him more than he could stomach. Shame. He tasted exquisite."

The others laugh. I keep calm. Remind myself that they crave my reaction. That it vexes them that I don't partake in their indulgences—don't feed, don't taste imagined food, don't glut myself on conjured wine, don't touch, don't indulge.

I shrug and force myself not to look up at the ridge where I hope Dante has nearly crossed.

Malrec clicks his tongue. "It's a pity Constance has already informed His Darkness about your attachment to that one."

"Constance?" I ask, and the word spills from me, shattering my careful disinterest.

At this, Malrec grins. He pulls a haunch of roasted meat from the fire, and without waiting for it to cool, bites into it. Juices glisten down his chin, dripping onto his cloak until fat stains the fabric. He swallows messily.

"You forget—I saw his mind. That man is attached to you, Virgil. Protective, even." He chews thoughtfully. "Possessive, I'd wager. How delicious."

I must adhere to neutrality. To stillness. "Some souls are."

Kael, who wears layered silks that gleam in the orange glow, snatches the meat from Malrec's hand, tearing into it even as Malrec growls at him. Then he nods at me. "Satan wants him, Virgil. Wants the soul you guide. Now that he knows this one matters to you." A pause, heavy with meaning. “Our master passed through here only moments ago."

I'm quiet for a beat too long. My mind wheels like a mill with no grain to grind. Satan wanting me, wishing to spend a few decades tormenting me and worming into my thoughts? That was one matter. But he wants Dante?

Malrec's eyes are dark, filled with hunger. "There's a solution, you know. You know how you could strengthen yourself. Stand a chance, should it come to that. It’s rumored you’re nearly as strong as him when you’re at your full strength.”

"No." There's no hesitation in me on that point. I will never feed on another soul again. "As I said, the soul I guided fled after Malrec sampled him. Likely frightened off."

Serina tosses a bone across the flames, and Malrec ducks it, growling. She only laughs. "I would flee as well if Malrec put his hands on me."

At this, Malrec steps so close to the flames he's nearly within them, and his voice drops to a purr. "If you let me put my hands on you, I can promise you won’t flee. You’d forget why you ever wanted to, though.”

She only scoffs, but Yuki—silent until now, her plum and gold robes incongruous against the hellfire—addresses me. "If you wish to stand any chance against…” Her voice softens. “Him, then you must strengthen yourself, Virgil."

This snares Malrec's attention. "Yes. We could find an unworthy soul. Some monster who spent his life preying on others. It would be a service for you to end such a one. Then you could fight, if need be.” He tosses a dark glance across the flames to Serina. “Or pursue other pleasures."

I shall always hate myself for this: I pause.

If I fed on a soul or two—truly monstrous ones, those who hunted others, exploited the weak, destroyed the innocent—then I could protect Dante. If Satan tried to take him, I could stand between them. If Dante drowned again, I could offer a hand, pull him free. I could touch him.

I fight a shudder.

"I know a few souls," Malrec whispers, velvet-soft, like forbidden pleasure offered in darkness. "I could lead you to worthy ones. Ones who deserve what you'd do to them."

I don't answer immediately. I should. I should refuse without hesitation, as I have a thousand times before when lesser demons have made lesser offers.

But this isn't a lesser offer. This is Dante.

I think of his hand hovering above mine—the ghost of a touch, the ache of almost. I think of what it would feel like to actually grasp his fingers, to feel the warmth of his skin, to pull him from drowning water with my own two hands instead of screaming uselessly from the shore.

I think of standing between him and Satan. Of being something other than a voice. Of being a shield.

The fire crackles. Serina watches me with knowing eyes. Malrec's smile spreads slow as poison.

"There's one not far from here," he continues, sensing my hesitation. "A man who spent his mortal life selling children to those who would use them. He's been rooted in his pain for three centuries and shows no sign of breaking free. No one would mourn his unmaking, Virgil. No one would even notice."

I can almost taste it. That's the cruelest part. I can almost remember what taste is. The ghost of wine on my tongue. The phantom of bread. The memory of Musa's skin beneath my lips.

I could have that again. I could have touch again.

I could touch Dante.

My hands tremble at my sides. When did they start doing that?

But no.

No, because I remember the first and only time I fed. I remember the soul's face as I tore into him, the confusion, the betrayal, the way he looked at me like I was hell embodied. I remember how the pleasure crashed through me, wave after wave, and how afterward I wept on and off for six days straight, unable to stop, drowning in sensation after so long without it.

I remember vowing never again, and meaning it with every shred of what remained of me.

If I did this thing—even to a monster, even to someone who deserved it—I would become a monster myself. And then what would I be to Dante? What kind of guide? What kind of... whatever I might be becoming to him?

I shake my head.

"It's generous of you to concern yourself with one such as I, Malrec, but as I said, the one I guided has fled. I shall remove myself as well, lest I bring his attention upon you all."

"So generous of you, Malrec, to offer help to our dear Virgil.” Serina sneers. “What a gentleman you've become."

He growls again, but this one is laced with something other than malice.

I don't offer farewells as I move past the fire.

"He’s still looking for you," Malrec calls to my back. "And Constance assists him."

I keep walking, but it takes all of my centuries of control to do so. As soon as I'm past their line of sight, I stop and close my eyes.

For a moment, I simply stand there, breathing air I don't need, feeling nothing because I have surrendered the ability to feel.

Then I open my eyes and continue up the ridge to find Dante. But when I reach the tree where we should meet, Dante isn’t there.