Chapter Four #2
“I don’t really want to talk about—”
“Kane pilfered some extra wine bottles from the folks in lux goods,” someone announced, loudly, as they entered. “So I thought we could—”
I turned to see a woman with wild, curly dark hair bouncing around her heart shaped face.
Her lips, which formed a perfect o at the sight of Darius and I on the couch, were painted a deep burgundy and her eyes were lined with kohl to match.
Her leggings were ripped to shreds in a way that felt almost on purpose, revealing uncontested inches of her smooth olive skin.
“You have a supervisor in your room,” she said, freezing in the doorway even as her spare set of keys, complete with a glittery pink butterfly key chain, dangled against the door.
With a sudden jerky movement, she slid the bottle of wine she'd been carrying behind her back in an effort to conceal what I supposed was likely a banned substance. Not that I’d had much time to review the manual or anything.
But her reaction had told me as much as I needed to know about what the rules regarding alcohol were around here.
I turned away, sliding my sleeves over the bars on my arm to obscure them, though I wasn’t quite sure why I did.
All I knew was that I didn’t want to be different.
Not with Darius and not with his new friends, either.
“No,” Darius said, standing and holding out his hands in a placating gesture toward his guest. “Adrian isn’t—”
“Adrian?” the woman gasped. Her wide, chocolate eyes swiveled from him to me. “The Adrian? Shut up!”
She punched Darius hard in the shoulder as he approached before setting the bottle of wine on the counter and striding over to me on the couch.
“Ow,” Darius said, half-heartedly, rubbing his arm as he reached out to shut the door behind her.
The woman practically bounced onto the couch beside me as she sat.
“Darius has told me all about Sanctuary,” she gushed, leaning forward and placing one manicured hand on my knee as she spoke. “I was absolutely obsessed. That’s why I’ve heard so much about you. You and Graham, Sophie, Harrison, all of you.”
“You’re not from Sanctuary?” I asked, hesitantly.
She shook her head, curls bouncing everywhere as she did.
“No. I was born down here,” she told me. “My whole family has been for generations. Not many of us are from topside anymore. That’s why they take so few in the Culling. We keep them pretty well stocked on our own.”
I nodded slowly.
“I bet you’re so happy to see her, Dar!” she exclaimed as he sat on the coffee table in front of us.
She leaned forward and kissed him, leaving his lips a tad darker when she pulled away, and I couldn’t help the way my own parted in surprise. Unfortunately, she noticed.
“You didn’t tell her?” the woman asked, looking between Darius and I.
“I didn’t have time,” he confessed, rubbing the back of his neck the way I knew he always did when he was uncomfortable. “We just got here.”
“Ah, well, Darius and I are together which I hope is okay. I mean, I know you two weren’t ever a thing but you were super close so I just hope it isn’t weird.”
“Oh, no,” I told her, quickly and uncomfortably. “It’s not weird at all. I guess I just…hadn’t expected you to already have built a whole life down here.”
I said the last part to Darius who was still rubbing his neck as he gave me a lopsided grin.
“It’s been over a year, Adrian,” he reminded me, voice soft.
“I know,” I whispered back.
The woman looked between us for a moment before breaking out into a broader grin.
“Right,” she said, happily. “Well, I’m—”
“Roxy, I presume?” I asked, raising a brow.
She laughed at that.
“And you, of course, need no introduction,” she replied with a grin. “But I know you didn’t come down in the Culling so how—”
She stopped mid sentence, eyes going wide. Then she lunged forward, grabbing my sleeve and pushing it up past my elbows. She let out a gasp, jaw dropping at the bars she found branded into my skin.
“You’re one of the Fallen,” she whispered, almost in reverence, wide eyes traveling up to meet mine. “That’s why they made you a supervisor. You’re…a Betrayed.”
I pulled my arm away from her, pushing the sleeve back down to cover the brands. I saw Darius watching me, curiosity clear in his expression, but I ignored him.
“I’m no different from you,” I muttered, cheeks blazing so fiercely I had to turn away.
I could tell Roxy was about to argue the point by the way her lips popped open again but Darius cut her off.
“How’s everyone up top?” he asked, steering the conversation away from my brands. He knew me well enough to know when not to push.
I glanced at Roxy who seemed just as eager to hear my answer as he was.
Perhaps it was wrong. She seemed to be a nice enough girl.
Boisterous and loud and blunt but nice. And Darius obviously trusted her enough to let her get so close to him which was a rare feat for my friend.
But I'd just been pushed down a hole by a man who I thought I could trust, a man I was engaged to, a man I'd actually begun to fall in love with, and fallen into a place in which I'd learned that everything I’d been told my entire life was a lie. So trust wasn’t exactly something that was coming easily to me at the moment.
Seeming to sense my unease, Roxy muttered something about getting us some drinks and stood from the couch, heading for the kitchen.
“A lot has changed, Darius,” I told him. My voice sounded more exhausted than I meant for it to.
He frowned.
“My parents?” he asked.
“Not good,” I confessed. “Your mom…she sort of shut down when you got Culled. She doesn’t work anymore. She barely leaves the house. Your dad does but he’s quiet too. My mom goes over to help from time to time. She tries to get Dionne to speak, but—”
“And Dahlia?”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat.
“She’s married now,” I told him. My heart broke at the grin that split his lips.
“Just married?” he asked, smiling. “I thought her and Cyrus would have popped out a kid by now.”
“Cyrus is dead.”
There was probably a more tactful way of saying it.
I could've broken the news more gently to him, found a way to soften the blow, but that wasn’t how it had always been between Darius and I.
We told each other the truth even when it hurt.
And this was going to hurt. I could already tell from the look in his eyes, the way the light diminished in them slightly at the revelation.
“Then who…” he started.
“Warren,” I answered before he had to ask the question.
From there, I explained everything that had happened with his sister while I was in Sanctuary.
From Cyrus’ drowning, to his coma, to his murder.
I found I could speak freely of the reasons why Dahlia had taken her partner’s life.
Apparently, the Oath no longer applied after the Trials were completed.
I told him about the stripping of titles, the Tribunal, the wedding, all of it.
Though I left out the deal I'd made with Cosmo to get the tribunal to back off and allow my brother to marry Dahlia.
In fact, I avoided all mention of Dante altogether.
That would come later. This was about Darius, not me, and certainly not Dante.
When I finished, Darius’ face was impassive. He didn't show a trace of emotion as he reached for the glass of wine Roxy was offering and took a large gulp before turning back to me. Something about that was far more unsettling.
“What else?” he asked, determined.
“Things have changed in Sanctuary,” I told him.
“Things I don’t completely understand. Right before I came here, there was a massacre on the Deck.
The First Ringers killed all these innocent people simply for believing in something different.
I don’t know why they thought they posed such a threat.
I tried to help them. I tried…but they forced me back into the tunnel, to the tenth Trial and after that, well, here I am. ”
“Here you are,” Roxy said with a sad nod, holding a glass out to me.
I stared at it for a moment before taking it and downing the whole thing in one go. She was already pouring me another glass before I took a breath.
“Who was he?” Darius asked, his tone somber and dark.
So I told him. I told them both about Dante, pushing past the sour taste in my mouth every time I said his name.
From beginning to end, I told them about the day we were paired, all of our training, the way I'd fallen in love with him.
I didn't tell them of the more intimate moments. I kept those for myself, tainted though they now were. I left out the bit about the betrothal. It didn’t seem to matter now anyway.
By the time I got to the tenth Trial, the bottle of wine was empty and their shock had mostly worn off.
“So you got pushed,” Darius said about that final moment, smiling sadly as he did. “Good for you. Means you’re the better person.”
He held up his glass in a bitter mock toast before downing the dregs of his remaining wine. I stared into the bottom of my glass as the room fell silent around me, looking at the little burgundy stains on the rim.
“Do you know where he went?” I asked, my voice so quiet it was barely a whisper. Roxy even leaned forward to hear me better. “Dante?”
I hated myself for asking, hated myself for even wanting to know. He'd thrown me away. After having the audacity to claim he loved me, he'd sent me spiraling into that hole without knowing where it ended, without knowing what it would do to me. For all he knew, he’d killed me.
Darius' eyes met mine and he frowned with apparent disappointment before shaking his head.
“No one knows where the partners go,” he informed me.
I nodded, feeling foolish, and clenched my fist so hard the glass in my hand shattered.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered but Roxy was already running for a towel. She grabbed one from the kitchen before she returned and sat beside me, pulling remnants of the glass from my hand and patting at the blood they'd drawn.
“It’s okay,” she said gently. “It’s fine. We’ll get another.”
We.
My jaw clenched as my gaze darted up to the one full bed in the corner.
“I should go,” I said, standing so suddenly I nearly upset the shattered glass in Roxy’s hands.
She jumped back at the last second, pulling the towel away so the pieces wouldn't fall to the floor, but I was already moving toward the door, blood dripping down to my fingertips.
“Adrian,” Darius started, rising from his spot on the coffee table.
“I should find my own apartment,” I spat before he could say any more, whirling around to face him with a smile that came out more as a grimace, “and figure out what sort of assignments Tiberius has for me. It was good to see you again, Darius. And Roxy, nice to meet you but I should really—”
The door opened behind me before I could reach it myself.
“You left your keys in the door, Rox,” a masculine voice said as the door opened wider to reveal two men standing in the threshold. “Were you in such a hurry to—”
His words broke off in the same moment his eyes met mine. His casual smile faltered, dark eyes flicking from me to Roxy and back.
“Hello,” he said simply.
“Hi,” I replied.
He was a large man. Not quite as big as Tiberius but tall and toned. The man beside him was a bit shorter and much thinner. He pushed a wiry pair of spectacles up the bridge of his nose in a way that reminded me entirely too much of Milo.
“Kane,” Roxy said, stepping out from behind the couch. “This is Adrian. Adrian, this is my brother, Kane. And behind him is our friend, Hugh. Kane got the wine.”
“Which I see you’ve already devoured,” Hugh muttered, skirting around us on his way to the couch.
“Adrian,” Kane repeated, brow furrowing. “Darius’ Adrian?”
I bristled at the insinuation that I was somebody’s property as Kane’s gaze shot down to the brands peeking out from beneath my sleeves and widened. I pushed them down and stepped past him.
“Nice to meet you all,” I said.
Then I was out into the hall, door closed behind me, before anyone could stop me.
I stepped briskly down the long hall of residential quarters, passing the lifts and striding toward the work quarters beyond, my mind whirring with everything I'd learned in that cramped but homey apartment.
Darius had a girlfriend. Darius drank illegal wine. Darius had changed.
But then again…so had I.