Chapter 29: Virgil - Where Light Cannot Follow

Following Constance, we no longer need to take side paths or roundabout methods. The ashen landscape softens as we walk. The smoldering crags give way to gentler slopes, the sulfurous air thins until it lightens to something almost pleasant. We leave behind the sacred place where Dante had given me such an extraordinary gift, his home, rendered within my sanctuary. A piece of him I can return to when he is gone, could anchor and keep if I choose.

And we walk directly into the fate I've spent all these precious hours and days and years avoiding.

Because if Satan wants a conversation with Dante, I know the purpose. It's not what Dante fears; it’s not merely to torment me. That would only be an additional benefit.

No, it's because he's seen enough pieces of Dante—through Constance, through Malrec, through the impressions left in his loops—to know that Dante is desirable for his own ends. A soul this strong, this capable, this newly cracked open and rebuilding itself? Such a thing has value beyond measure to one who collects power the way others collect art.

Dante appears entirely calm, though that means nothing. He and I are creatures cut from similar cloth. We long ago learned to swallow vulnerability and pain, to keep those sacred things hidden from anyone who would exploit them. I wish I possessed Constance's lack of moral compunction at this moment so I could reach into his mind and sense his intent.

Perhaps it's better I cannot. I'm struggling against rising panic as we approach the soaring garden gates—wrought iron twined with living ivy that has no business thriving in this realm. Dread floods through me like water through a breached hull. I'd rather Dante not feel it. Rather he not know that I'm holding onto him the way drowning men hold onto wreckage, and I don’t want him to realize how quickly we’re sinking.

Even Dante's flawlessly practiced mask slips for just a moment when we step through the gates and into the garden.

It's not the garden of ancient lore any longer. Not some half-wild beast filled with fairies and magic-infused serpents and fruit imbued with the kind of power that killed gods.

It's refined now. Beautiful in a way that nothing I've ever seen has been.

On a rising hill in the distance, massive olive trees rustle in a gentle breeze, their silver-green leaves catching light that shouldn't exist here. Birds sing sweetly, their music tangling with the burble of a stream winding over rocks that shimmer with opalescent color. Sweeping willows and ancient oaks drape over the water, creating cool retreats from the golden sunshine dancing against a sky of impossible, cloudless blue.

On the other side of the path, hedges twice our height bloom in wild profusion—roses climbing through jasmine, wisteria cascading over arched trellises, beds of lavender and sage that feel stolen from another world. It's the marriage of an English country estate and a Persian paradise garden, every element cultivated to suggest both effortless beauty and absolute control.

Constance walks ahead of us with easy familiarity, her heels finding the flagstone path without hesitation. She belongs here. That realization settles into me like a stone. I don’t know how I led her so poorly, nor how she ended up trapped by the very net I struggled to free her from.

Dante quickly masters his expression, swallowing down surprise into cool indifference once more. But his eyes watch everything, brushing against all the symbols of a language he once spoke fluently: wealth without limit, power without apology, authority over even natural elements. Resources so vast that endless indulgences—a garden requiring an army to maintain—make perfect sense.

We have stepped back into his world.

A pit grows in my stomach, though I don't show it. If I could touch him, I would brush a finger against his thumb. Ground him. Remind him I'm here. That he knows himself now.

"Beautiful gardens, aren't they, Dante?" I ask, emphasizing his name, pressing into the power of it.

He turns to me and smiles, a sincere, soft thing he never would have offered when he first arrived here.

"I rather think I preferred your realm, Virgil," he says, using my name the same way. A rope. A tether.

For a moment, we simply look into each other's eyes, and every doubt swirling through me washes away. This man isn't the same one I met at the beginning, marching endless empty roads, easily swayed by deals made over polished tables.

He's someone new. Fragile in that newness, perhaps, but strengthening with each moment.

He nods at me, assurance in the gesture. I don't know what comfort he's offering, but I accept it.

We turn a corner and approach the estate.

It's a thing of staggering beauty, even I cannot deny it. He's taken the greatest architecture from every era and woven them into something that should be impossible. Sumerian cone mosaics frame the entrance. Gothic flying buttresses support walls inlaid with Byzantine gold leaf. Renaissance colonnades give way to Moorish arches, which open onto Baroque balconies.

Half palace, half basilica, wholly breathtaking. It looks too fragile to exist, yet grounded as though it rooted here ten thousand years ago and will endure for ten thousand more.

Dante gives nothing in his expression, but those bright, clever eyes sweep the facade with calculation and a flicker of surprise.

Perhaps he expected hellfire. Three-headed dogs. A swampy river filled with grasping dead. A great black throne and theatrical pronouncements of doom.

Not this. Not beauty wielded as a weapon.

Servants in crisp livery open the front doors, and we step inside to polished marble floors veined with gold, soaring ceilings decorated with understated ivory plasterwork—acanthus leaves and geometric patterns that draw the eye upward without overwhelming it. Crystal chandeliers hang from chains so delicate they seem to float.

Constance's heels clack against the marble. Dante's shoes make a softer sound, muffled leather against stone.

I make no impression at all.

"Virgil." Constance stops and turns. "He'll see you separately first."

"No." Dante steps in front of me, his body rigid, fists curled at his sides. "That wasn't part of the arrangement."

Constance smiles slowly, her eyes tracing up Dante's form in a way that makes me wish I could shield him. I should have briefed him better. Should have spoken of these things instead of hoping we would never end up here, within these whitewashed walls that hide so much rot.

"Dante," I whisper, trying desperately not to let my attachment show through too clearly. From the gleam in Constance's eyes, I fear my efforts are both pointless and poorly executed. "It's fine."

He looks back at me, brow furrowed.

But I mean what I say. Satan isn't one for exhibition. For drama. He won't rip us apart, won't glut and boast and preen as some of his demons do. As he once did. He learned from that long ago.

He's smarter now.

Dante hesitates another moment, then nods. He'll trust me in this.

How I wish that faith were more deserved. My choices have led him here from the very beginning. I drew into his mindscape when I should have kept my distance. I stayed with him when I should have released him. Opened my heart and soul letting him drift into them indelibly.

Irrevocably.

Constance leads Dante toward the dining room. I watch him go, his back straight, his stride measured, every line of him armored against whatever comes next.

Leaving me alone in the grand foyer.

I know where to go.

I walk toward a hallway and follow it to its end, then pass through the open door.

The office is stately, filled with bookshelves that climb to the ceiling, their spines a careful arrangement of ancient texts and modern philosophy. Large, curtained windows overlook a pond where a graceful marble statue stands at the center—a god frozen in eternal youth, a vessel in his hands, and water arcing from it in crystalline streams. Afternoon light falls in buttery sweeps across the wooden floors, illuminating the delicate furniture, the intricate Persian rugs, the Venetian glass globe on its brass stand, and the ancient mortal artworks hung upon the walls. Many are pieces I recognize from memories of souls who wept for their loss.

A chair behind the desk turns, and the man sitting in it smiles at me.

"Virgil. How good it is to see you."

I clench my teeth.

It isn't Satan in his favored form before me.

It's Satan wearing Musa's skin.

He always captures the appearance perfectly. Musa was no classical beauty—middle-aged when I knew him, past the careless handsomeness of youth. Dark hair threaded with silver, cut short as physicians wore it. A broad face rather than a fine one, marked by a strong, serviceable nose broken once and healed imperfectly. Lines gathered around the mouth from years of concentration, of calming the frightened, setting bones, and delivering hard truths with care.

But Satan always gets the gestures wrong. The expressions.

For it was those that made Musa indescribably beautiful to me in the short time I had the gift of treasuring his company. His devotion. Satan renders his eyes too dark, too calculating. His smile too sharp. His posture too perfected.

Musa was anything but perfect. He laughed loud and hard. Ate with gusto. Wept with feeling. His smile was crooked, his hands scarred from years of work, and the way he listened, it was like whoever sat before him was entirely worthy of his complete attention.

Satan has certainly never mastered that.

No more than he’s learned to tame that wicked smile he's currently stretching across my long-dead love's face.

But Musa isn't here. He has never walked these gilded halls. Never traversed the miseries of hell. Never witnessed the thousand ways a soul can break.

He has always been beautifully free.

And I’ve never before truly realized that when Satan used his skin to torment me.

It is a gift, this realization. One I suspect that somehow, Dante has given me. Just as he gifted me the preservation of Musa's precious few memories. Just as he gifted me his home, his vulnerabilities, his protection.

Something shakes loose in me. Something I believe I've held tight for a very, very long time.

For the first time in centuries, maybe longer, a weight lifts from my shoulders. I stand straighter as I greet the man wearing a mask that never belonged to Musa.

"My Lord." I cross my hand over my chest and give a deep nod. "Salvē."

There's a long, unusual pause. He stares at me, the expression so different from Musa's that he doesn't appear like my lost partner at all anymore.

Satan frowns and shifts his appearance.

This time, he chooses his favored form of recent decades.

He's indeterminate of age—old enough to carry authority, young enough to still enjoy wielding it. His face is handsome in a way that edges toward forgettable: symmetrical, composed, unremarkable at a distance and compelling up close. His hair is dark, worn neatly, his beard precisely groomed. He wears a tailored coat in dark velvet, cut in a style that could belong to several centuries at once.

"Virgil," he finally speaks, his voice a measured, cultivated baritone, warm and restrained in equal measure. "It took me some time to find you."

"I suppose I've been evasive. I regret any imposition."

He fixes me with an unwavering gaze. "I'd offer you tea, or something stronger, but..." He temples his fingers together and shrugs, the gesture almost sympathetic.

I don't honor the barb with a response.

For a moment, something shifts in his expression. The performance flickers. Beneath the urbane host, beneath the ancient god playing at civilization, I glimpse something I haven't seen in centuries.

"It grows tedious, you know." His voice is quieter now. Almost conversational. "Eternity. The endless parade of broken souls and hungry demons. None of them think, Virgil. None of them create. They only consume, crave, and beg. Even the best of those I’ve chosen grow dull.”

Something flickers behind his eyes, not regret, exactly, but its shadow. “I had equals once. I made certain I wouldn’t have that problem again. A wise move on my part, but at times I long for a mind capable of matching my own.” He tilts his head, studying me. "You were a poet once. You understand what it is to need an audience worthy of the work."

I say nothing.

"We could have been allies. We still could be." The words carry no threat. That's what makes them unsettling. "I've never asked you to feed. Never demanded you become what the others are. I simply... enjoy your presence. Your resistance, even. It's the closest thing to genuine conversation this realm offers."

The loneliness beneath the words is vast. Ancient. For one breath, I almost feel it.

"Friendship requires shared values, my Lord," I say simply.

I believe him, as much as he believes himself. He chose me because he found me compelling, a mind that might keep pace with his, a voice that might amuse. I've simply had the unfortunate habit of clinging to principles he long ago discarded. Poor friends we've made, though we've been companions of this realm longer than most civilizations have stood.

His mask slides back into place, smooth as water closing over a stone. "Well then," he says. "If your position hasn't changed, I have a request I'd make of you."

"Yes, my Lord."

He reaches for a crystal decanter on his desk, removes the stopper with a soft clink. "I do not wish for you to speak with our Mr. Dante during dinner." Before I can respond, he raises a hand, nails perfectly polished, trimmed, smoothed, and oiled. "You see, I've come to understand there’s an attachment between you two. And those words of yours, they do tend to be rather... persuasive, do they not?"

He smiles as though we actually are companions. As though he's both jesting with me and complimenting me in turn, in the way some men do when they cannot look a friend in the eye and simply say I care for you.

But we are not friends, despite his desires. And he is doing neither of those things.

I've been toyed with by him for so long that I can already see the threads he's weaving, but no way out of the web.

"You value fairness, my Lord," I say carefully. "Why should you fear one contrary voice if you wish for an honest verdict?"

He chuckles, pours amber liquid into a crystal glass, and takes a slow swallow. He closes his eyes, sighs slightly at the pleasure of it, then replaces the glass on the desk with a soft clink.

"He is biased already, having heard your voice for—how long would you say he's been in this realm, Virgil?"

He says my name with teeth, and I wait a moment before responding, acknowledging that I understand a tug on my leash when I feel one.

"Perhaps a dozen years."

"A dozen years, and he's already ready for the mountain. A wonder." He runs his thumb along the crystal etchings of his glass. "You still impress me at times, Virgil. Even after all our years together."

I want to say it wasn't me that moved him so quickly through his loops, the bogs, the Forest, the realm. It was him.

But I also understand that is precisely the trap I'm being ushered into.

"I aim to serve," I say flatly.

Satan lifts dangerous eyes to meet mine. "I've heard that this particular soul has... let us say, captured your attention in a manner no other has." He pauses, lets the silence stretch. "Why then do you continue helping him leave?"

I shrug, affecting boredom, though he doesn't accept that performance. Never has.

"It is what I do. Guide. It gives me some manner of passing my hours."

His eyes harden to black diamonds. He's offered me countless opportunities over the centuries—enticements to cure my boredom, attractions to snare me, webs to enmesh. I've refused every single one.

"But this one," he presses. "This soul, in particular, has captured you?"

"I suppose he's sparked an interest."

Satan's smile slides into place, the kind that gets men elected, that promises worlds they never intend to deliver.

“I imagine his mind must be fascinating, then. So why don't we keep him?"

"He doesn't wish to stay," I say simply.

"If that remains the case after my offer, then he is free to go. You know I'm no brute, Virgil." Tug. His voice is measured but my name in his mouth pulls tight against whatever tether binds me to him. "In that vein, I'm here to warn you. Speak during this dinner, and I will remove your voice." He pauses for emphasis. "And perhaps I may forget to return it when this is all over. I do have a great deal on my mind.” He regards me with calculated interest. "Are we understood?"

I freeze.

How many millions of times have I thought that I am nothing but words?

If he takes that from me...

I swallow, struggling to produce the very thing he threatens to steal.

"Yes, my Lord."

My answer emerges calm. Certain.

He chuckles, believing he's found my weakness.

Or so he thinks.

For if it comes to Dante's salvation, I will sacrifice whatever I must to grant him that. My voice certainly included. I've already given up so much more than sound. What is silence compared to watching him get swallowed by hell? Ensnared in my same mistakes?

"Then let's go to dinner," Satan says, standing smoothly from his chair. "I think formal attire suits the occasion tonight. Would you agree?"

"I always appreciate an opportunity to dress well."

He smiles at this, a genuine flicker of amusement, which somehow makes it worse.

Then he leads the way out of the office, and I follow in his wake, voiceless already in every way that matters.