Chapter 27: Virgil - Where Light Cannot Follow

Dante and I step off the boat together, our feet scarcely finding solid ground before Charon pushes off, the vessel sliding back toward the far shore. Toward the bank where Constance stood watching us leave, that knowing smile carved into her face.

This was a terrible idea.

"Dante," I say, "I'm so sorry."

He shrugs, as if he hasn't just surrendered a piece of himself he'll never recover. "You nearly drowned in the bog for my sake. I'd say a single memory is a small price."

"We shouldn't have diverted from our course. We should have followed through to the mountain and⁠—"

"You said you'd show me somewhere." Dante looks at me in such a way that the words dissolve on my tongue. His gaze is open, expectant, entirely without reproach. "I wish to see it. If you'd still allow me."

"Yes. Yes, then."

After all, the price to arrive here has already been paid. I'd never intended for Dante to bear it. I'd hoped Charon would accept some memory of mine. He enjoys senators' arguments and philosophical debates as much as pleasurable recollections. Over the centuries, he's spent considerable time sifting through my memories, attempting to negotiate for various fragments. The death of Caesar, as told to me by those who witnessed it. Conversations with Augustus about the nature of legacy. The taste of Falernian wine at a feast I can no longer recall attending.

But he wanted Musa.

He always wants Musa.

And I don't know what Dante gave him instead. Once a memory is surrendered, it's gone entirely. Not even the shape of its absence remains.

Throughout the negotiation, Constance's voice had been screaming through my mind, her presence a jagged intrusion that made it difficult to focus on Charon's words. At least we'd caught him diminished. It had been some time since he'd last consumed a memory, and his hunger made him eager. Otherwise, he might have haggled with Dante for hours, drawing out the negotiation simply for the pleasure of it. It's the only sport left to him, and he's greedy for every moment.

"This way," I say.

Dante follows as we walk down a path that twists and turns, narrowing until it becomes scarcely more than a trampled section of dead grass. The terrain here is forgotten, a wrinkle in the fabric of this realm, overlooked and unclaimed.

Then we reach the door.

It stands alone, unattached to any structure, its frame weathered but solid. I nod toward it.

Dante frowns. "Is this a loop?"

"No. There's nothing for you to face here, I promise." I meet his eyes. "But I'd have you experience it without explanation, if you'd trust me."

He cocks his head. That gesture again, the one that reminds me of the Dante fresh from university, young and in love and still capable of hope. Then he reaches forward, turns the knob, and we walk in together.

Unlike the loops, which begin in absolute darkness, the transition into my private refuge is gentler. Colors bleed into existence like watercolors pooling on wet paper—deep blues settling into shadows, warm amber gathering where candlelight will bloom.

When we step into the room proper, Dante gasps.

He turns slowly, lifting his face to the vaulted cathedral ceilings, the intricate stone carvings that spiral upward like frozen music. The central ceiling bears a painted scene—Apollo in his chariot, golden reins catching light that doesn't exist, the horses mid-stride across a sky of lapis and gold. Broad windows line the walls, and through them, a perfect night sky glitters with stars so bright and numerous they could never be seen from any modern city. The heavens as they appeared in my youth, before smoke and progress dimmed them.

Dante takes a step forward, and his shoes clack against the tile—bright blue ceramic, hand-painted with geometric patterns that spiral outward like frozen ripples. I borrowed them from the memory of a woman who'd grown up in a sun-drenched courtyard somewhere she called Mexico. She'd been homesick until her final breath, and the tiles had stayed vivid in her mind long after everything else faded.

I've never heard footsteps on them before. Not even my own.

In the center of the room, a natural hot spring steams gently, its surface catching the flicker of flames. Wrapped around the curved walls are bookshelves. They’re impossible, spiraling things that climb toward the ceiling and bend in ways architecture shouldn't allow. They overflow with books and scrolls, codices and clay tablets, manuscripts I've collected from a thousand borrowed memories. Interspersed throughout are hundreds of candles, dripping endless wax onto bronze holders, glowing like small patient suns and casting the entire space in warm, intimate light.

In one corner sits a desk. Upon it rests the tools of my trade—a stylus and wax tablets, parchment and ink, a bronze pen knife for sharpening reeds. Implements I haven't touched in two millennia.

"You found this?" Dante asks, his voice nearly breathless.

"I created it." I smile, but the expression carries its own weight. "I discovered the empty door centuries ago. It's broken, I believe. Perhaps when he expanded this realm, something became distorted. This pocket exists where it shouldn't, across the river, forgotten. I realized I could shape it. Paint it with memories. Fill it with beautiful things I've witnessed in other souls' minds."

It is beautiful. Like a painted box I can open and peer into whenever the weight of eternity grows too heavy. But that's all I can do. Look. Walk through. See everything I can never experience again.

"This is wonderful," Dante says. He's still turning, still taking it in. "Is it—is it real?"

"If you mean can you lift one of the books from the shelf, yes. But I'm afraid the pages are empty. My mind hasn't preserved entire novels. A pity, though I couldn't read them regardless." I gesture toward the steaming water. "You could enter the hot spring, though. Have you ever been in one?"

"Never," he says, studying the gently rippling surface.

"Oh, it's wonderful. Very relaxing. I often visited the volcanic springs at Baiae during my lifetime. This is based loosely on my memories of that place." I pause, feeling suddenly uncertain. Exposed. "If you'd like to try it, I would... I wish to share this with you, Dante. It's all I have to offer."

He looks back at me, and something softens in his expression. "I never thought I'd experience something new in hell."

“I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but hell doesn't exist.”

He rolls his eyes, but his smile is gentle as morning light. "I'll try it, then."

He begins to undress, pulling the sweater over his head, his fingers moving to the button of his trousers. I shift away, offering him privacy, studying instead the painted ceiling I've looked upon a thousand times. Apollo's expression seems different tonight. Less triumphant. More tender.

Behind me, I hear the soft sounds of fabric falling, the splash of water, then a sigh as he sinks into the heat. I can imagine what he feels from my own lingering memories. The shock of warmth, almost too hot at first. The initial tension, then the slow unwinding as heat seeps into joints and muscles, coaxing them loose. The way the body becomes heavy and light at once.

I turn back.

Dante is stretched out in the spring, his bare arms resting along the stone edge, the ends of his dark hair dripping water onto his shoulders. His head leans back against the ledge, throat exposed, eyes closed. His skin glows amber in the candlelight, the soft illumination tracing each curve of muscle along his arms, the rise and fall of his chest where water glistens against the dark hair there.

I consider shifting away again. Discussing matters from a safe distance.

Because no matter how removed I am from my body and its hungers, I cannot help but notice the beauty of him. The grace of his form in the water. The way his low groan of pleasure slides down my spine like a shiver, like something I shouldn't be able to feel but somehow do.

What a fool I am. To imagine such things. To want what I cannot have.

I didn't bring him here for this purpose—to observe him like some voyeur satisfying my own starved longing. It's simply that this is all I have to offer. The singular beautiful thing I can give him in this exhausted realm.

"Do you often bring souls here?" Dante asks, his eyes still closed.

"No. Never."

His eyes open. Dark and deep and fixed on me. "You've never brought anyone here?"

The question breaks whatever spell had held me, and I avert my gaze. "It's not a space I've shared with another. I retreat here sometimes, when I can no longer bear the weight of everything else."

"It's a beautiful space, Virgil."

"Is there a scent?" The question escapes before I can stop it. "I've always wondered if my memories could conjure smell without my being able to sense it."

Dante is quiet for a moment. When I gather the courage to meet his gaze again, there's a frown on his lips, sorrow in his eyes alongside the dancing candlelight.

"It smells of mineral water," he says slowly, carefully, as though selecting each word with intention. "Clean and grounding. The candles carry a honeyed scent, and beneath that, a whisper of smoke, like the softest breath of a fire pit on a cool evening. The books add their own layer. Paper and leather and something older, like dust that's settled for centuries. And there's another smell beneath it all. Maybe it’s the stone itself, warmed by steam." He pauses. "It smells like peace, Virgil. Like somewhere safe."

I take a deep breath, as if I can inhale it too. As if wanting were enough.

"I did not know.” I smile at him, and it feels fragile on my face. "Thank you."

But his frown only deepens. His eyes search my face with an intensity that makes me want to look away.

"You've never been in these springs either, have you?"

I let out a soft sound that might pass for amusement. "It wouldn't do me any good. I can't feel them as you do."

Dante leans forward, lifting his chest from the water, and my traitorous eyes fix on his form—on beads of water gliding down the sculpted planes of his chest, tracing paths I cannot follow.

I force my gaze back up. Dante seems not to have noticed my focus. He's studying me the way one might study the Laocoön upon first encounter, expecting something simpler, and finding instead a complexity that demands longer contemplation.

"You love all of this," he says. I'm not certain if he's asking or simply observing. "The art. The experiences. The food." He cocks his head again, that youthful, curious gesture that makes him look so young, so unburdened. So close to ascension. So close to leaving me. "But you don't get to have any of it."

I move closer to the edge of the pool. At some point, I’ve shifted into Roman sandals, the sight of them pulling me back toward a life I no longer possess. And never shall again.

"Perhaps you understand now why the stories mean so much to me." I chuckle, but it' feels hollow, and Dante doesn't join me. His expression scarcely changes.

"You give so much, Virgil. But what about you?"

"I made my choices."

"So you believe one choice deserves damnation for eternity?" His voice is quiet but relentless. "Yet you tell me you're not sure anyone deserves hell. You believed in a man like me, someone who damned himself through his own repeated choices. You've offered me so much grace."

My mouth hangs open, prepared to respond, to wield words as I've always done. My weapon. My gilded laurel. My tool. My shield. My tomb.

None come.

I can't stop meeting his gaze. Can't find language. I barely manage to shake my head.

Dante runs a damp hand back through his hair, pressing it flat, the dark locks slick and glistening.

"Feed on me," he says.

"What?" I stumble back from the pool, from his words.

"Just a small amount." He places his hands before him, palms up, offering. Or pleading. "I trust you to use restraint. Feed on my pain, or whatever it is demons do. Just enough for you to feel again." His eyes don't waver. "Then you could join me here. Have a moment of sensation. Of pleasure."

I say nothing. Neither does he.

We remain frozen for what feels like eternity. Him—the picture of beauty and masculine grace, gleaming bronze and gold in the candlelight, warmed by steam and flame. An artist would paint a scene such as this.

They'd use atramentum for his hair, adding the smallest touch of umber and white to catch the sheen, but leaving it mostly to shadow. To raven's wings. To ink pooled on parchment. Then his body—they'd need a great deal of paint for that. Brushing golden warmth along his sides, the flush of color in his cheeks, rendered with the sweeping strokes a lover's hands might make. The water next, the way it embraces him, reflects his earnestness and beauty like a mirror that adores what it holds.

But those eyes, the depth of them holding things even I cannot read. The sincerity in them, the longing, the something else I cannot name. They'd save rendering those for last.

For a thousand years, people would stand before that painting. They'd study the books and manuscripts behind him, the Mexican tiles, the cathedral walls, the Roman ceiling. They'd wonder what the scene meant. Where it came from.

But his eyes are what they'd always return to.

What was he thinking in that moment? What would his mind reveal if only we could peel it back, reach into it, hear the thoughts burning behind that expression?

"No," I finally whisper. The word emerges breathless.

Dante swims across the pool, closer to me, his muscled arms coming to rest on the stone lip. Water drips from his shoulders onto the tile.

"Can't you craft your own food here? I can bear a small amount of pain. I'd do this for you, Virgil, so you could enjoy this moment with me." He says my name like an anchor, like he means to pull me in with it. "You could eat again. Steaming bread. Fresh fruit. Whatever you've been missing. Whatever you desire.”

I take a single step forward. My sandaled foot rests one tile away from where he glistens, close enough that if I knelt, if I reached out⁠—

"You think if I could feel right now, it's food I'd be interested in?"

His brows rise. The words have left me. There is no retrieving them.

Shame rushes through me, hot and swelling, though I know it doesn't show on my face. But he's reading my eyes as I've been reading his. So he likely sees it anyway.

He lifts himself partially from the pool, water streaming down his chest in rivulets that catch the light. "You could partake in whatever you wished, Virgil."

I abandon the rhythm of my imagined breaths. I stop moving entirely.

For a second time since meeting this man, I do something again that will shame me forever.

I pause once more.

If I'm anything, I am disciplined. I could feed the smallest amount from him. It would fracture something within him, set his journey back. But he's so close to ascension now. It wouldn't take long for him to recover what he'd lost.

And then I would feel.

The steam of the room pressing against my skin. The tile cool and damp beneath my feet as I stepped toward the pool. I'd breathe in all the scents Dante had described—mineral water, honey, smoke, paper, leather, warm stone. I'd run my hand down the cashmere sweater and finally know its weight, its softness under my palm. I'd pull it over my head. Remove my trousers. Slide into water so warm it would sting, and I'd gasp, overwhelmed by sensation after two thousand years of nothing.

I'd cross the pool to where Dante waited. Reach out a hand and⁠—

I turn and march as far as I can get from the water.

Perhaps Dante was right. Perhaps I am trapped in a loop. Because this feels like the greatest temptation I have ever faced.

"Please." The word comes out broken. Unashamed in its desperation. "Please don't ask this of me. I have vowed to myself to live by the principles of love after I squandered my soul so grievously. I shall never forgive myself if I abandon that principle in this moment."

I look back over my shoulder to where he stands in the pool, watching me.

"Love does not consume, Dante."

He nods slowly, his eyes grown sad, entirely readable. "What is love, then?"

I shift back toward him and only then realize I'm pressed against the writing desk. The altar where I once bled my soul dry, sold my principles for a legacy I thought would save me. But though I may dwell in hell, though I may have damned myself, no one else dictates my actions. No matter what becomes of me, I choose who I am.

"Love is showing up," I say quietly. "Remaining steadfast. Choosing what is right over what is easy. It's choosing responsibility for another for no reason except that you choose to." I pause, feeling the words take shape, words I've carried for centuries without ever speaking aloud. "It's sacrificing. Protecting. Giving whatever helps the other flourish, even when it costs you everything. Even when it ensures your own sorrow." I meet his eyes. "And bearing that sorrow without turning it into harm."

Dante blinks at me.

Then nods, something shifting in his expression.

"I see," he says softly.

The words settle between us, and they land, not just on him, but on me. The weight of what I've described. The shape of it.

It is what he has done for me. Offering his memory to Charon so I wouldn't have to surrender Musa. Walking into darkness at my side when he could have fled toward the light. Refusing to leave me behind.

And it is what I have done for him. Staying when I could have turned back. Guiding him when it required facing my own temptations. Choosing his ascension over my hunger, again and again.

I don't let myself think the word. I don't let it form fully in my mind.

But it's there anyway, burning at the edges, undeniable.

Dante rises from the pool, and I turn away, waiting while he dries himself, while he dresses. The sounds are intimate—the rustle of fabric, the soft pad of his feet on tile. I stare at the painted ceiling and try to remember how to breathe.

"Virgil."

His voice pulls me back.

He's clothed again. His hair is still damp and his expression open in a way that makes my chest ache.

"Can you still create within this space? Could I add something without damaging what you've built?"

I nod. "Yes."

"I'd like to show you one thing before we leave, then."