I had a sudden thought. I patted myself down. My heart skipped with excitement as I pulled out my phone with shaking hands and turned it on.
My stomach dropped at the small text in top left corner: No service. Of course there was no service down here. How far underground was I? Twenty feet? And surrounded by earth and rock.
I'm a fire magus, I thought. I can get out of here, can't I? Heat the bars up and kick them out, or send a fireball through the stone wall. Outrage roiled under the surface and I fought to keep it at bay so I could think.
When I spotted a pillow on the wooden platform, I was immediately intrigued. It seemed such an odd thing for a dungeon. I picked it up, feeling that it was damp but white and clean. I sniffed it. There was a faint scent. Lavender? My lips twisted at the irony of this single item of luxury in such a place. How nice of him to want my head to be comfortable.
I tossed the pillow back on the bed and went to the door. Stepping into the hollow, I grabbed the handle and pulled. The door had a narrow slash of a window with bars across it, and a slot with a little sliding door covering it. Must have been for food. I peered through the bars but could barely make out anything in the gloom. I yelled Dante's name again. Sparks flew from my lips, and pain flecked my bottom lip.
The only answer was dripping water.
I began to pace. Anger made my heart pound and heat flush through me at rhythmic intervals. I tried to swallow, but my throat and mouth were dry. I needed a drink. The heat increased a notch. My eyes wandered to other things drawn on the walls and went to take a closer look. Names and words written on the walls and in some cases scraped into them. The words were in Latin, or Vulgar, I couldn't tell the difference.
I went back to the door and yelled Dante's name repeatedly. My voice rasped and whistled, a little weaker, a little drier each time.
I gasped when I heard footsteps. "Finally," I said, trying to keep the anger out of my voice and failing. "You've taken this way too far."
His face appeared in the window. "Hello Saxony, have you cooled off?"
"Have you?" I shot back.
He tilted his head side to side as if to say, 'So, so.'
"Dante, what are you doing? Let me go."
"Of course. On two conditions," he said. "One - and by far the most desirable of the two options, is that you agree to stay with me. Join my family, remain by my side as my Inferno. Help me recruit, work for and with me. Help me earn my father's business and I can make you happy, I can give you everything you want."
"What do you know about what I want?"
"Girls are not complicated," he said, as though explaining something to a child. "They want compliments, to be treated like a princess, given gifts, be told they're beautiful, and to live a life of luxury and love. They need adoration, and a man to lean on."
I sputtered a sarcastic laugh but stopped abruptly when a burning pain sliced through my chest. "What's behind door number two?"
He shook his head and made a tsk sound. "You won't like it. Door number two isn't fun, not for you."
I waited. My skin crawled with the feet of a million fire-ants as I watched his face.
"Door number two means we wait until you dehydrate. When you're close to death, you'll pass the fire to me in exchange for a drink of water. You might live. You might not. It's sad if you choose this path." He put a tanned hand to his chest, oozing false sympathy. "But I can promise you I would take great care of the fire."
"You're a madman. Let me out of here and I won't destroy this cell and everything above it. You know you can't keep me in here." My voice was full of false bravado. I was not at all convinced that I was powerful enough to break out before I burned myself to death.
"I can, actually. This door is nearly a foot thick, these bars are tempered steel. You might be able to make them glow, you might even be able to warp them if you're really strong. But long before that happens, the fire inside you will roast you from the inside. The more you use it, the faster you'll cook. You've already been without water for a couple of hours…likely more, no?”
My heart pulsed hotly, every beat rushing in my ears. "You can't make me give you the fire, Dante. If I'm going to die anyway, why would I willingly put such power into the hands of a sociopath like you? Not even if you continue to threaten Fed would I give it to you."
"I would never hurt my own cousin, Saxony," he said, giving me a look full of pity. "Family is everything to me. To Fed, too, that's why she was willing to help me out."
"You lie," I hissed.
"Do I?"
"So?" I ground out through a locked jaw. "That's even more reason why I'll never give you the fire. I'd rather die."
"You will give it to me. The pain of the burning will be more than enough to convince you. But just in case I've underestimated you, I have two men landing in Gallipoli. A word from me and one of your little boys can disappear. It wouldn't be the first time."
The molten lava erupted and hot teeth bit into every nerve. My eyes grew so hot I thought I could hear them sizzle. "You wouldn't." I wheezed.
He laughed. "I would. Those men are there. You underestimate me because you're such a good little girl."
I had nothing left. No cards to play. My mind galloped desperately for something I could use, anything.
Dante lives and dies by his father's approval.
"Does your father know what you're doing, you evil little snake?" I watched his face for a tell. My vision blurred and refocused as my eyes pulsed with heat.
He paused, just for a fraction of a second. What did that mean?
"My father taught me what I'm doing, Saxony. He's the master at getting what he wants," He stood, and his face disappeared from view.
The hesitation was the only thing that made me think that what he'd said about his father was just bravado. His face appeared again as he bent over, his head almost upside down.
"And how would you keep me here in Italy if I agreed to join your little crew of miscreants and crooks? I could just be lying to get you to let me out," I said.
He shrugged. "The same way I can make you give me your fire, I can make sure you never leave my side. But join my family and you won't want to leave anyway, I can promise you that. Life with me, you'd love it." He winked. "Don't make me rid the world of a beautiful treasure such as you," he said, his voice soft, like he was speaking to a lover.
I glared at him, feeling the red glow intensifying. I blinked and palmed my eyes, wincing at the sharp pain.
"Hurts, doesn't it?" Dante said. "I'll let you think things over. Pain is very persuasive." His face disappeared and the sound of his footsteps died away.
Thirty-Four
At first, the heat increased only incrementally. Then I began to feel like I had a bad fever. My head pounded and I felt dizzy, and all of my joints ached. If I didn't move, the pain was significantly less. So I lay on the bed. The scent of lavender from the pillow covered the smell of old pee as my head warmed the fabric.
I thought about Fed, the only other person who knew I was down here. I wondered what she was doing. Was she trying to escape Dante? Was she laughing with him at the stupid girl they'd managed to lock into a cell? Was Dante telling the truth about her?
I pushed away the hope that Fed would act on my behalf. She'd already shown she wasn't hero material. If I had any chance of getting out of here, I was better to try sooner rather than later, because the pain was only going to get worse.