Blood and Roses
977 Words
Dual POV: Amara & Dante
Amara
The night smelled like rain and gunpowder.
I knew something was wrong the moment the music stopped. One second, the ballroom pulsed with laughter and crystal, the next silence, sharp and heavy as the pause before a storm.
Dante's men froze. His gaze flicked toward the windows, and in that instant, the devil I'd married returned calm, cold, lethal.
"Get her upstairs," he said.
But I didn't move. I'd learned to read him, and there was fear in his stillness, a kind of quiet that only came before death.
The first explosion shattered the glass. Screams followed, echoing through marble halls. The chandelier crashed to the floor, scattering light across the chaos. I ran before I could think, skirts tearing, heart thrashing against my ribs.
Gunfire erupted below. The sound of men dying, of empires collapsing. I pressed myself into a doorway, the smell of smoke choking me.
And then I saw him Dante moving through the haze like a shadow given form. He fired without hesitation, every motion precise, brutal, beautiful. For a moment I forgot to breathe.
When he saw me, his expression shattered. "Amara, no!"
The next explosion threw us both to the ground.
Dante
I had known this day would come.
Vargas had been circling for months, the old vulture waiting for a chance to tear apart what I'd built. But I never thought he'd use her to strike.
Blood slicked the floor as I dragged Amara behind the fallen piano. She was trembling, eyes wide, a streak of dust across her cheek like war paint. I pressed a pistol into her hand.
"Safety off. Don't hesitate."
She shook her head. "I'm not leaving you."
"Don't argue," I snapped. But my voice broke halfway through.
She stared at me for a long time, searching for the truth beneath my command. "You think you're going to die tonight."
I didn't answer. There wasn't time for lies.
Glass rained down as another blast tore through the corridor. I pulled her close, shielding her body with mine. Her breath came ragged against my neck.
"You once told me I belonged to you," she whispered. "If that's true, then you belong to me too. And I'm not letting go."
Something inside me cracked. The walls I'd built stone by stone, secret by secret collapsed in her voice.
Amara
We ran. Through smoke, through ruin, through ghosts. The mansion that had once felt like a prison now felt like a heartbeat fading in my hands.
Men shouted in the distance. Bullets cut through the air. I gripped Dante's arm, half-dragged, half-led by him through the servants' corridor toward the gardens.
Outside, the air was thick with ash. The roses were burning. The fire painted his face in gold and crimson, like the devil God had dared to love.
He turned to me suddenly, grabbing my face in his blood-stained hands. His voice was hoarse.
"I should have let you go when I had the chance."
"Then why didn't you?"
"Because," he breathed, "you're the only thing I ever wanted that wasn't bought or stolen."
The words tore through me. I kissed him before he could say another desperate, wild, world-collapsing around. For a heartbeat, there was no gunfire, no cartel, no death only the taste of him and the sound of our hearts refusing to surrender.
Then a scream split the air. One of his men fell near the gate. Dante pushed me aside, stepping into the open.
"Stay down," he ordered.
Dante
I moved on instinct. The rifle felt heavy, my vision blurring from smoke and blood. Vargas's men swarmed the courtyard like shadows.
Every shot I fired was another confession. Every life I took, another apology I couldn't speak.
But the bullet meant for her I saw it.
Time slowed. The flash, the sound, the impossible stillness before pain.
I turned, caught her gaze for one final second, and stepped into its path.
The world went white.
Amara
He fell before I could reach him.
The shot echoed through the night, louder than any explosion. I screamed his name, dropped beside him, pressing my hands to the wound in his chest. Blood soaked through my fingers, hot and endless.
"Stay with me, Dante."
He smiled faintly, teeth red. "I told you… devils don't get happy endings."
Tears blurred my vision. "Then we'll rewrite it."
His hand trembled as it touched my cheek. "Amara, look at me." His voice was a whisper now. "You were never a deal. You were my redemption."
Lightning split the sky, illuminating the wreck of what we'd been.
His eyes fluttered shut. The rain began to fall, washing the blood from his skin, from mine, from the burning roses that surrounded us.
I held him until the sirens came, until the night turned to gray dawn and I could no longer feel his pulse beneath my hands.
When they pulled me away, I left part of myself there, in that garden of ashes.
Dante (fragment)
I heard her voice through the dark—distant, fading. The scent of roses, of rain, of her. I wanted to reach her, to tell her it wasn't over. But the darkness was deep, and my body too heavy.
Somewhere far away, the devil closed his eyes and dreamed of light.
Amara
They said he was gone. That no one could survive a wound like that.
I believed them because I saw him fall. I saw his blood bloom across the earth like a promise broken.
But sometimes, when I dream, I see him standing among the roses alive, unscarred, watching me.
I wake with his name on my lips and the taste of smoke in the air.
The doctors call it grief. I call it memory.
And when the rain comes, I swear I hear him whisper, " Not yet.
- Writer
