Chapter 14 THE QUEEN’S MOTHER.
Venessa’s POV.
Dante had come to see me off. He stood behind me while I followed the guard through the tunnel.
The tunnel was cold.
I didn't look back. I couldn't.
If I saw Dante’s face one more time, I might crumble.
He had drugged me. He had lied to me. He had treated me like a problem.
I walked deeper into the dark. The smell of sand filled my nose.
This was the way out.
That eas what he thought.
"Venessa!"
The voice called through the tunnel.
My heart stopped. I knew that voice.
I didn't stop. I ran.
He doesn’t get to call me like that after hurting me so many times.
"Venessa, stop! That is an order!"
I reached a small cavern where the moonlight spilled through a crack in the ceiling and turned around, my chest heaving.
Dante was breathing heavily as he stopped before me.
He wasn't the cold King who had walked out of my bedroom. His hair was a mess. His shirt was torn at the collar. And his eyes—those beautiful, piercing blue eyes were wide and wild.
He didn't look like a monster. He looked like a man who had just realized he was losing his world.
"Get away from me," I spat, holding the black dagger out in front of me.
He didn't look at the dagger. He only looked at me.
"I can't let you go" he panted. The black veins on his neck were gone. For the first time in weeks, he looked... clear.
"You already let me go, Dante! You sent me away! You told me to find another man!" I screamed, my voice breaking. "Well, here I am. I’m going. Isn't this what you wanted?"
Dante took a step forward. "I was lying! I was trying to save you from the part of me that is rotting!"
"I don't care about the rot!" I shouted. "I care about the man who held me in the library! I care about the mate who promised we were in this together!"
Dante flinched as if I had hit him and reached out, his hand shaking.
"I remember," he whispered.
"What?"
"I remember everything," he said, his voice cracking. "The drug... it didn't just sedate you. When our blood touched on your wrist, it did something to me. It broke the wall. I remember the way you taste. I remember the way your heart sounds when you’re nervous. I remember that I love you more than I love my own life."
I lowered the dagger, my eyes filling with tears.
"Then why? Why are you still trying to push me away?"
"Because the First King is still here!" Dante tapped his temple, his expression tortured. "He’s watching. He’s waiting. Every time I touch you, I give him a map to your soul. I can’t let him have you, Venessa. I can’t."
He walked toward me, slowly. I didn't back away this time.
He stopped right in front of me.
He didn't touch me, but I could feel the heat radiating off him.
"Go back to the palace," he pleaded. "Please. Just for a little while. Give me time to kill him. Give me time to make the North safe for you."
"No," I said, reaching up to touch his cheek.
Dante groaned at the contact, his eyes fluttering shut.
He leaned into my palm, looking like a man who had been wandering in the desert for years and finally found water.
"If I go, you’ll die," I said. "I saw it in your head. You’re planning a suicide mission, aren't you? You think if you die, the curse dies with you."
Dante didn't deny it. He just opened his eyes, and they were full of a dark, possessive hunger.
"It’s the only way to be sure you’re safe."
"I don't want to be safe!" I snarled, grabbing the front of his shirt. "I want to be yours! Even if it’s only for one more day!"
Dante’s self-control snapped.
He wrapped his arms around my waist and crushed me against him.
He kissed me with a desperation that stole the air from my lungs.
But as he kissed me, the tunnel began to shake.
A cold, black wind ripped through the cavern.
The moonlight from the ceiling was suddenly blotted out by a cloud of shadow.
Dante pulled away, his eyes turning back to that terrifying, empty black.
"He’s here," Dante gasped, his body jerking as if he were being pulled by strings.
From the shadows behind me, a figure stepped out.
It wasn't Silas. It wasn't a guard.
It was a woman. She was beautiful, with long silver hair and eyes that looked exactly like mine.
"Hello, daughter," she said.
My heart froze.
My mother was supposed to be dead.
"She has the Key, Dante," my mother said, a wicked smile on her face. "Now, give me the Lock."
Before I could move, my mother raised her hand. A bolt of black lightning hit Dante square in the chest.
He let out a scream that sounded like a dying wolf and fell into the darkness.
"Dante!" I screamed.
I turned to attack my mother, but she was already gone. And the tunnel behind me started to collapse.
I was alone. Dante was gone. And the woman who gave me life had just taken the love of my life.