Page 39 of Devoted

The one that could have also been sorrow.

“I can’t answer that question… but there’s one vampire who can.” I winced. “We need to wake Emilia up from stasis.”

Dante slanted me a look. “That’s even more impossible than freeing Rocco.”

“Something tells me she knows more about the Basin than anyone else.” I couldn’t stop watching the shadows around Nico, the way they ebbed and flowed, as if they were alive. “Which means she would know how to destroy it.”

“There’s one small problem,” Dante muttered.

“You mean besides breaking through her wards, fighting our way through hundreds of priests with deadly magic and getting inside the temple?” Gabriel asked sarcastically.

“I don’t know how to break anyone out of stasis.” Dante lifted his brow. “Do you?”

Gabriel exhaled heavily. “Nope. That’s way beyond my pay grade.”

“I can.” All three of us turned to where Nico sat still as a statue, the beach darker than a storm around him. A storm that was formed from a thousand gasping hands and screaming mouths that broke through the surface, then disappeared.

“I can wake her up safely. The process is not complicated, but the spell is delicate and takes time, so we’ll need a way to get inside the temple without alerting anyone, especially those priests. They answer to Vincenzo now.”

“Why?”

Nico remained focused on the horizon. “Because I can’t give you the information you want on the Drax, but I can do this.”

“That’s not an answer,” Gabriel snapped.

“Well, it’s the only one you’re fucking getting, so drop it.”

Something about the exchange set every instinct I possessed on edge. Gabriel wasn’t just upset, he sounded betrayed. I looked over to find Nico staring at me, something like sorrow lining his beautiful face.

This couldn’t wait.

We were on the brink of a war and now was not the time for us to splinter apart.

“Can you give us a moment?” I asked, my gaze still locked with Nico’s, as if neither of us was able to look away.

Something told me that he was drowning—those shadows were an abyss waiting to swallow him up, and he could either tumble inside and be lost forever, or I could pull him back onto solid ground.

And I was not about to let him fall.

“Don’t be long, tesoro,” Dante warned, giving Nico a hard glare before heading back to the villa. Gabriel paused, shook his head, then followed, cursing beneath his breath.

Leaving me alone with Nico and about a million questions.

14

EMBERLINE

“Okay, they’re out of earshot. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Gabriel’s pissed I told him you and Luca took the boat and escaped. He blames me for abandoning you and rightly so. I’m fucking furious with myself for how I handled everything.”

I put my hands on my hips. “There’s more going on here.”

“Go back to the villa, Emberline.” Nico sighed, his shoulders slumping as he turned back towards the ocean. He sounded calm. No, not calm.

Like he’d completely given up.

I stepped toward him, cold-as-ice shadows brushing my bare toes, swallowing down my fear as I plunged in, frozen air wrapping around my ankles and calves, like hands trying to pull me down into the Underworld.