Chapter 22: Dante - Where Light Cannot Follow

I keep my hands tucked in my pockets, my eyes downcast, my form pressed into the shadows as I navigate my way across the ridge.

I understand, logically, that Virgil is a demon himself. He isn't in danger walking down into that valley to speak with four of his kind standing around a fire.

But something coils tight in my chest as I watch him go.

The demons around the fire laugh too brightly, shriek, and tease one another with performative abandon. They remind me of freshmen at their first fraternity party—three drinks past their limit and entirely unaware of how obvious their loss of control appears to anyone watching. Sloppy. Unguarded.

I force my feet forward. Virgil said he'd continue on with me if I followed his rules. Rules are a framework I comprehend. And I need Virgil to walk with me. I need Virgil free from this place. So I move through the darkness, step by careful step, until I reach the ragged tree he'd described. It’s a gnarled thing, half-collapsed against the ground, its trunk split and weeping some dark substance. Rotted fruit litters the brown-dead grass at its base, filling the air with the cloying sweetness of decay.

I glance back toward the fire. Virgil stands among them now, hands tucked behind his back, his posture composed, his attention fixed on the demon who violated me. Even from this distance, I can read the tension in Virgil’s shoulders, the careful blankness of his expression. But he was right. He’s captured their attention entirely.

"Mr. Dante." A voice purrs my name from the darkness. Rich and unhurried.

I flinch and turn toward the sound. A woman stands beneath the tree, half-hidden in shadow. Dark curls fall in waves past her shoulders. Her makeup is immaculate—sharp winged liner, and lips painted the color of arterial blood. She withdraws a slim silver cigarette case from the pocket of her coat, extracts a cigarette with manicured fingers, and lights it with a practiced flick. The flame briefly illuminates her face before she inhales, then turns toward the dim orange glow from the valley below.

I have to fight to keep my expression neutral.

It's Constance. But not the Constance I met before—not the drowned and desperate creature with matted hair and wild eyes. This Constance wears a double-breasted blazer beneath a camel cashmere coat, tailored trousers with a precise break at the ankle, and heels with red-lacquered soles. She looks like she just stepped out of a corner office on the forty-seventh floor, someone who signs termination letters before lunch and doesn’t think about them after.

She takes another drag and smiles at me in a way that’s bold, unhurried, utterly in command. It's like watching someone remove a mask, except I'm beginning to suspect the drowned woman was the performance, and this is the closest thing to her true face I'll ever see.

"Constance." I resist the urge to look back, to check if Virgil is moving this way yet.

Her smile sharpens with pleasure. "Forgive my appearance at our initial meeting, Mr. Dante." She gives her wrist an elegant flick, ash drifting to the cracked soil at her feet. "I find it necessary to remind Virgil of our acquaintanceship from time to time. Keep him humble."

"Strange," I say, keeping my voice slow, unbothered. I'm buying time. Virgil should arrive any moment. "He's seemed the humblest of anyone I've met here so far."

She chuckles, smoke curling from her nostrils. Above us, the sky pulses with that sickly orange glow, and somewhere in the distance, something shrieks—whether in pain or pleasure, I can't tell.

"Well," she says, "I suppose this isn't a realm renowned for its humility." She taps ash from her cigarette and regards me with frank appraisal. "I have a matter I wish to discuss with you. Take a walk with me?"

I roll my shoulders. "I'm afraid I've walked a great deal since arriving here. I'd prefer to rest."

She smirks, running her tongue along the underside of her teeth. The gesture is slow, deliberate; it reminds me of a snake scenting the air. She takes one last drag on the cigarette, drops it to the ground, and crushes it beneath her heel with the kind of finality that suggests she's extinguished more than tobacco in her time.

"It's your choice, of course." Her voice remains pleasant, conversational. "But I'm afraid if we remain here, I may find myself announcing our presence to our friends below." Her dark eyes flick their direction, glittering with something between hunger and amusement. "Have you yet had the pleasure of being cornered by a pack of newly glutted demons, Mr. Dante? They become rather... insatiable after a fresh feeding. Undiscerning in their appetites."

I use her glance toward the group as an excuse to look back myself. Virgil still stands among them, not a step closer than when this conversation began. His golden curls catch the firelight. He is the golden sun of this damned reality.

I watch him a moment longer than I should. He hasn’t moved toward the ridge yet.

I turn back to Constance. One slim eyebrow arches in question, waiting.

"You'd call demons on yourself?"

"Demons fear me now, Mr. Dante." She says this without bravado, the way one might mention the weather. "This is precisely what I wish to discuss with you."

I can spot a bluff from across a boardroom table. I've built a career on reading the micro-expressions that betray a weak hand—the slight dilation of pupils, the almost imperceptible tightening around the mouth, the way hands find reasons to move.

She's not bluffing.

She would call those demons down on me without a flicker of hesitation. There isn't a trace of fear on her—no widened eyes, no quickened breath, no tension in her jaw. She stands perfectly still, perfectly composed, entirely certain of her position.

The memory of Malrec's tongue on my jaw, his fingers around my throat, the pain—physical and psychological—surges through me unbidden. I fail to suppress a shiver.

"Vow to me, then," I say quickly, hoping my assumptions about the rules of this place prove correct. Hoping the architecture Virgil described holds firm. "Vow to me on your name that you will walk me only a short distance, that you intend me no harm, and that you'll allow me to return to Virgil freely when our conversation concludes."

At this, her smile softens into something almost genuine. Almost warm.

"You're a clever one." She tilts her head, studying me with renewed interest. "I like that about you. I can see why he's so interested.”

She licks her crimson lips, then speaks with careful precision: "I vow on my name that I will walk you only a short distance, that I intend you no harm, and that I will allow you to return to Virgil freely when our conversation concludes."

Each stipulation is repeated word-for-word. Exactly as I stated them.

It leaves me wondering if the vow means nothing at all, if she's found some loophole I haven't anticipated, some technicality that renders my careful conditions worthless. But there's nothing more to be done. Virgil still hasn't arrived, and I imagine that watching demons shatter me would only break him further.

He said his failures were already fracturing him. I refuse to be the final fissure.

"Very well." I gesture toward the path, indicating she should lead.

She smiles—victorious, knowing, and begins to walk. I follow, casting one last glance toward the firelight where Virgil stands among monsters, unaware that I'm walking into the dark with one of them.

"Is there some reason," I ask coolly, "this conversation needed to happen on a walk?"

"Yes." I recognize the feeling that prickles along my spine, the same instinct that fires when you realize the person across the negotiating table has already decided how this ends, and it isn't in your favor. "I needed distance from Virgil. He has a way of coloring things with his opinions. All I want is to present you with an offer."

"An offer?"

The path narrows between two dead oaks, their branches tangled overhead. She passes through without hesitation. I follow, stepping over roots that clutch at the cracked earth like grasping hands.

Constance stops at a clearing, if it can be called that. A circle of dead grass surrounded by stones worn smooth by time or something else entirely. She turns and levels me with a gaze sharp enough to cut glass.

"An offer from the Lord of this realm." She lets the title hang in the air between us. "To stay in hell. Permanently. As one of his chosen."

I nearly laugh. I don't, but it's close.

I have no idea what this woman did in life, but I would wager everything I once owned that it wasn't negotiations. One always leads with the benefit. You discover the client’s need first, what I might have once called weakness, though I'm less certain of that word now.

And this woman, for all her confident posture and polished appearance, bleeds her need like a wound she doesn't realize is open.

She wants to be indispensable. Chosen. Important. But she doesn't believe it of herself, not truly. No one secure in their position postures the way she has. Security is quiet. Hers is deafening.

Which means she's vulnerable. She needs this deal to close.

That changes everything.

"Why would I want to stay in hell?" I ask, letting genuine curiosity color the question. Let her think I'm considering it.

"Why would you want to dissolve into nothingness when you could remain here and rule?" She spreads her hands, gesturing at the blighted landscape around us as though it were a kingdom worth inheriting. "Ascension isn't salvation, Mr. Dante. It's annihilation. Everything you are—erased. Absorbed into something you'll never understand because you won't exist anymore to understand it."

I smile at her. It's the smile I've used across a thousand conference tables—pleasant, patient, and utterly in control.

"I've never been particularly good at sharing authority. Perhaps oblivion suits me better."

Her jaw clenches, just slightly. She recovers quickly, but I've seen it. The flash of frustration. The desperation beneath.

"You navigate this realm with unusual ease," she presses. "Have you considered that you might be suited to it? That you belong here?"

"I've had a good guide. Perhaps that explains my resilience.”

The words land harder than I intend. Her composure cracks, just for a moment, but enough.

"If he's anything like he used to be, he does no guiding at all." Her voice turns harsh, edges sharpening. "He watches. He waits. He lets you make your own choices and calls it freedom. Everything you've accomplished here, Mr. Dante, you've accomplished yourself. It has nothing to do with him."

"Everything you wanted in life," she continues, smoothing her voice back to silk, "you could have here. But magnified. Perfected. You've only seen the miserable corners of this realm—the bogs, the loops, the drowning souls. But there are territories where you could be a god. Entire dominions you could shape to your will."

I glance around the clearing at the withered bushes, the sulfurous sky, the distant orange pulse of ashy fire on the horizon. "If that's so, why are you here? Playing messenger in a wasteland?"

Something flickers across her face. She clacks her heel against a stone at her feet, and it crumbles to dust.

"I've had to earn my way to my position." She looks up again, and there's something raw beneath the polish now. "But some gather his attention immediately. They don't have to claw their way into his good graces. They simply... arrive. And he wants them."

I file that away. She's been here for some time, then. Worked for whatever status she's accumulated. And she resents those who might skip the climb she had to make.

Useful information.

But I'm done with this conversation. Virgil will have reached the tree by now. He'll have discovered I'm not there. I can picture the panic he's trying to hide, the way his hands might tremble at his sides. Hands that can't touch anything, can't help anyone, can't pull me back from whatever edge I've wandered toward.

"What is it you actually want from me?" I ask, letting impatience sharpen my tone.

"For you to have a conversation with him." She says it simply, as though she's proposing lunch. "That's all. Hear what he has to offer. Then make your decision."

I remember Virgil's reaction every time Satan’s name surfaced, the way he shrank into himself, the way his voice dropped to something barely audible. His specific warning, delivered with more gravity than anything else he'd told me: never make deals with the Devil. I have to assume any bargains through his emissaries would receive the same counsel.

"This offer holds no interest for me."

"Oh, but it should." Her eyes narrow, running down me like she's reassessing my value, and I recognize the look. It's the same one I've given a hundred opponents when I've found the leverage I needed. "You see, should you slip away without this conversation, I believe our leader would take his disappointment out on your guide. Virgil has been a thorn in his side for centuries. It wouldn't take much provocation for him to decide the thorn needs removing."

I swallow. It takes me a moment to find my voice.

"Then I'll have the conversation before my journey ends." The words taste like ash, but I keep my expression neutral. "For now, I return to my journey.”

Her lips press thin—disappointment, frustration—but then the expression transforms into something almost amused. "Very well, Mr. Dante. Then make me a vow." She tilts her head, calculating. "On Virgil's name. Vow that you'll have that conversation before you reach ascension."

So I was right about the mechanics of vows here. The confirmation offers little comfort as I weigh my options.

I believe her. That she has some connection to Satan, that he wants something from me. But I don't believe for a moment that he intends to grant me a realm of my own. I've been a man in positions of authority. I know how such men think. They don't share power; they delegate it strategically, and only when the arrangement benefits them more than it costs.

Whatever he wants from me, generosity isn't the motive.

But can I walk away? Can I risk what she might do to Virgil if I refuse?

"I—"

"Do not agree to anything she asks.”

Virgil's voice cuts through the clearing. I sense him before I see him, that particular quality of presence he carries, warm and uncertain all at once. He steps up beside me, and something in my chest loosens.

He's the only one here who admits his limitations. His doubts. Everyone else in this realm wears their confidence like armor. Virgil wears his uncertainty like an offering.

"Virgil." Constance's smile turns sharp. “How nice to see you once more.”

I turn toward him, relief flooding through me faster than I’d like to admit. “Your conversation ran long.”

“I apologize.” His eyes sweep over me, searching for damage, then flick to Constance. Whatever he finds in her expression makes his jaw tighten almost imperceptibly. “It was a matter of some delicacy. I came as quickly as I could.”

Constance says nothing. She simply watches us, the way Virgil positions himself slightly in front of me, the way my shoulders loosen at his arrival, the way we orient toward each other like compass needles finding north.

I see her cataloging it. Filing it away. She smiles, slow and knowing, and I understand that she's already calculating how to use what she's just learned.

Virgil ignores her entirely. "We should be going."

I shrug and attempt to appear unaffected. I hope my mask holds better than my confidence in it. “It would seem I've run out of time."

"A pity." She withdraws her cigarette case again, the silver catching what little light exists here. She doesn't light one—just holds it, turning it over in her fingers like a talisman. "Just remember, Mr. Dante, when you've caught a god's attention, you don't outrun it. You only delay the meeting."

"I'll keep that in mind." I hold her gaze a moment longer than necessary.

"Until we meet again, Mr. Dante." She inclines her head, a mockery of courtesy. "Virgil."

She turns and walks into the fog, her silhouette swallowed by the murk within moments. The click of her heels against stone fades to silence.

I stand there, watching the space where she disappeared.

"Dante." Virgil's voice is quiet. Careful. "What did she say to you?"

I turn to him, to his golden curls and ancient eyes, to the worry he's trying so hard to hide.

"Nothing I believed," I say. "Come on. We should keep moving."

It's not the whole truth. But it's not a lie either.

And right now, with the fog closing in around us and the memory of Constance's warning echoing in my skull, it's the best I can offer.