Page 100 of A Fate Everlasting

“You broke the Arcana Deck.” Dorian gave a shaky smile. “My father was right. Your blood undid the binding. It should’ve cost your life.” He stroked behind my ear, the tender flesh where the mark still burned.

The words slammed into me.I was alive.The deck was broken. I’d done it. But I was still here, somehow still breathing. “Alive,” I repeated. “Not…graduated?”

“No,” Dorian shook his head, studying me closely. “Your heart beats naturally. There’s no ring around your iris. Your mark is contained.”

“Lucky,” I breathed.

“Lucky,” Dorian agreed. “Everyone is safe. Back in the dorms. Well, almost.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “I didn’t care about the damn Deck. I just wanted you to come back.”

I should have felt relief, but it didn’t reach me. My ears were ringing too loud, my mind abuzz. The Archangels were free. I’d done it. My blood on the cards had been enough. I had died, and made it back.The students wouldn’t be forced to take the Rift.

It should’ve felt like victory, but it didn’t. The darkness hadn’t left, it had just changed shape. I could feel it. The Rift might not have taken me, but ithadtaken something.

Dorian pulled me into his chest again, butthis time my eyeline dragged past the fallen chandeliers and the dying candlelight and straight to the only other figure in the room.

He stood a few feet away, still as death, his silver eyes fixed on me. There was no relief in them, no amusement or flicker of triumph.Dante.

I unwound myself from Dorian, rising, my movements clumsy and disjointed like I was still learning how to exist. My vision swam like I was trying to see through a pair of muddy glasses. I hardly noticed how Dorian reached for me, his grip winding around my wrist. My focus was locked somewhere else.

It was all coming back to me now. Dante. He hadsavedme, or the Thread had. I still wasn’t sure where the lines of our connection ended and began. Between us, there was silence where there should have been rage, a yawning stillness. It was like a candle snuffed out, a great void where something vast and terrible had once stood. Though embers prickled underfoot, ether warm, the air was freezing.

Dante’s jaw tightened as he took a step forward, eyes gleaming. I had always found them unreadable. But now, as he looked at me, I understood.

“You shouldn’t have survived that,” he said roughly, like all of the regret had been scrubbed from the words before they reached his lips. Instead, there was only hatred. He’d used our connection to save me, to mark me. He didn’t know that my blood, mydeathwould unbind the Archangels.

I swallowed, my throat raw. He wanted me to know that Iowedhim. “I know.”

There was a long silence. He glanced over me, assessing. I felt Dorian shift beside me, but I couldn’t tear myself from Dante. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed between us, something irreversible.

At last, I asked the only question that mattered. “Where arethey now?” The words scraped up my throat. “The High King. Verrine. The Archangels. What happened, exactly?”

Dante stilled, his hesitation so slight I almost missed it. “Where is he?” He echoed the question as if only for the enjoyment of hearing it bounce against the walls of the devastated chapel. “That’s all you have to say for yourself?”

“I—” I started, my head beginning to pound.

“I warned you.” Dante’s voice cracked. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just set in motion, Arabella? What your little trick hasdone?”

Of course I did. I knew exactly what I’d done, and I’d do it again. The silence of that chapel, the fear in Ruby’s eyes, the hundred or so lives just waiting to die, or be erased, hadn’t left me. They never would.

The air between us was charged as my heart thudded. “Everyone in that room was going to die! I did what I had to.”

Dante drew closer and I worried he might hit me. Instead, he wrung his fists at his side. I had nothing to apologize for. He’d pretended to tell me the whole truth, but he’d left out all of the most important details. “My father left,” Dante said at last. “The moment the deck broke. He didn’t waste time.”

“The High Kingfled,” Dorian interjected, voice laced with something bitter. The words struck deep, sinking past flesh and into something far more fragile.

“He wanted me to deliver a message,” Dante said. The look on his face looked like nonchalance at first glance, but I knew better. He studied me, eyes dark as the storm churning beyond the chapel walls. “Youreallymessed things up for him, you know. And for me. That won’t do.”

My stomach dropped in understanding. I scanned the room, panicked as I turned back to Dorian. “Everyone’s back at the dorms, right? Safe?”

“Well…” Dorian started, the words trailing off.

“That’s the thing.” Dante descended the steps, the tonic the chalice had spilled squelching beneath his boots. “He has your father, Arabella, at his court in Elsewhere. And Ruby. Bargaining chips, I suppose.”

“Bargaining chips?” I asked. My pulse thundered in my ears. I had no idea what to do, no idea how to get them back.

“Your debts are still unpaid, but you’re marked now. You have a year to graduate and join us in Elsewhere.” Dante’s voice dipped, something grim settling behind his words. “Before he kills them both. Before he kills every soul who bypassed the Rift today. Your soul is still indebted to us.”

The floor beneath me might as well have cracked open. My knees locked, my chest turning to ice.My father wasn’t dead?The thought was unbearable, not because he was alive, but because he’d sufferedalonein Elsewhere while I’d mourned him.

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