Chapter Fifteen
Dante
“The will of the masses will bend or I will break it.”
– From the Journal of Xander, Son of Zander, Heir of House Viper
Rumors were dangerous in a walled city.
That, at least, I'd learned while living in Sanctuary. It seemed Pavos was hardly any different.
The morning after Saint Alosia’s escape from wherever they'd been hiding her, the entire council emerged from their chambers as one.
Solemn-faced and serious, they made their way slowly around the city, raising their arms until pulsing beams of light flowed out of them and into the walls around us.
The physical borders glowed brighter for hours afterward.
The council assured everyone it was just a precautionary measure taken after the death of one of their own.
In their grief, they sought to ensure no more of their people would fall to the Darkness.
But when they turned, brilliant cloaks dragging behind them in the clumping sand, and made their way back to their palace, the whispers started all the same.
Some were more outrageous than others. Some claimed the walls were actually being reinforced to keep the humans in because some had been slipping out of the city through the cracks in the light, choosing to take their chances against the harsh desert terrain and roaming bands of marauders rather than remain shackled to the Geist. Some claimed a loose Zver had been spotted in the city itself and had murdered half a dozen children before the warriors were able to subdue it.
But, even more interestingly, some claimed someone had snuck into the city.
Possible explanations abounded as to why anyone would dare attempt to do so.
Maybe they were here to utilize some new weapon against us.
Maybe they were here to steal something.
Maybe they were here simply to spy on us.
But, despite how varying the rumors seemed to be, one thing stayed the same.
A cloak had been found. A black one, the color of the Darkness, a color forbidden within the walls of Pavos.
Before, I would have dismissed those rumors as unfounded accusations from a populace recently terrified by the death of one of their gods.
But now that I knew the truth, now that I knew what the Darkness was and who was capable of wielding it, I couldn’t help but think we might not be as safe behind these walls as everyone assumed.
After all, you didn’t wage a centuries-long war against an enemy you had no true reason to fear.
“Ah, Dante, there you are,” Kleio said without looking up as I entered his small cabin and shut the door tightly behind me.
Bent over a table and rifling through his endless papers, the Geist had his back to me.
“I think we should focus on our floating lessons again today. If you can master it, truly, it can be a little like flying. We have some of your kind who have mastered the ability. They all serve very highly and are quite useful when it comes to—”
“I want to see the cloak,” I interrupted him, spitting out what I came here to say.
He paused, finally turning to face me for the first time.
“What cloak?” he asked carefully, eyes narrowing in new appraisal. Knowing Kleio, he was likely calculating an escape.
“I’ve heard the rumors,” I snapped. “Are you going to deny them?”
He watched me for a moment longer before sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.
He expelled all the air in his lungs with the exasperated breath of an overtired father.
I waited. I was used to his displeasure and his disappointment.
In fact, those were the only sentiments I seemed to illicit from paternal figures at all.
“What would be the point of denial?” Kleio spoke slowly. “You’ve already determined it to be true.”
“Is it?”
“It is.”
I'd suspected as much but the easy admission still shocked me enough for every muscle in my body to tense.
I wasn’t used to honesty, having spent my life knowing only what those above me deemed necessary for me to have knowledge of at the time.
Cosmo had made a habit of spinning webs of lies so complex I doubted I would ever find my way through them even if I had remained in Sanctuary and grown to lead the House as he'd desired.
But Kleio had never lied to me, not truly, and especially not since he'd decided to risk his life telling me the truth about the Geist only days ago.
Those actions had seemed to form a sort of truce between us, an acknowledgement that we could tell each other the truth.
Even though I knew Kleio harbored more secrets than I could possibly unearth, having lived hundreds, if not thousands, of years longer than I already, I felt as though I could, if not trust him, at least expect he wouldn't deceive me.
And yet, I doubted. Because I'd been taught to.
Because I knew what could happen when one did not.
“I want to see the cloak,” I repeated, doubling down on my determined stance so he knew how serious I was in my request.
“Why?” he asked simply, chin raised and eyes running over me in evaluation the way they often did when he found my behavior peculiar.
“Why,” I repeated, blinking in surprise that he would even ask. “I need to know, Kleio. If it’s her, if she’s out there—”
“She’s not.”
With that, he moved away from me, turning back to his papers as though he'd found my reason for wanting to see the cloak myself lacking in inspiration.
As though he were disappointed in me for not having said what he wanted me to.
I often got that impression with Kleio, though I never understood exactly what it was he did want from me.
It was like constantly failing a test I hadn't even known I was taking.
“What do you mean she’s not?” I asked. I rounded his table and pressed myself into his space so he was forced to look up at me. “You know where she is, don’t you?”
“I do, but I’m not entirely sure you’re ready to hear it.”
“Kleio,” I breathed and was surprised to hear my own voice crack as I did the most shameful thing I’d ever done. I begged. “Please.”
Kleio frowned but I saw the way his shoulders slumped and knew he wouldn't deny me this small amount of peace.
Cosmo would have.
Even now, I couldn't stop comparing my mentor with my grandfather.
Cosmo would've used this knowledge against me.
Knowing he had something I wanted, he would've used it to get something from me in return.
The way he'd tricked Adrian into agreeing to marry me.
The way he'd tricked my mother into agreeing to train all the grandchildren.
The way he'd tricked so many priests and acolytes and the heads of the other Houses into doing his bidding without even realizing they were.
I didn't know Kleio well, not yet, but he didn't seem to want that.
He didn't keep secrets to use them against you later.
He didn't lie with a smile on his lips just to see if you could tell he wasn't telling the truth.
He didn't play mind games and trick everyone around him just to earn himself a formidable reputation for treachery.
He seemed to know things despite his wishes.
Like secrets and information just kept finding him when he wished they wouldn't. He carried them as a burden more than a gift.
They weren't currency. They were obligations.
The way he was looking at me now, eyes full of a depthless sadness I wanted to turn away from, had me realizing all of that and more.
How horrible it must be to live for hundreds of years and be cursed with the responsibility of educating younger, more hopeful generations about the dark truths of the world.
How awful it must feel to look at someone and realize that, if they knew what you knew, they would be irreparably changed.
He looked at me that way now. So I braced myself and waited.
“In the beginning, the abyss led to the wild land you now see beyond the walls of the city,” he explained.
“Once betrayed, the Fallen fell into the wilderness where they were expected to wander until they died from the elements. It was a way to shame them for their failure to sacrifice that last bit of their humanity to join us, a way to make them suffer for lacking absolute faith in the Geist. But they didn’t die.
They adapted. They survived. And they began to form units that came after us nearly as often as the humans but with the unfortunate added benefit of having the Blessings they were given in their Trials. ”
I stared at him in shock.
“So we have two enemies to fear out in that desert?” I asked, gaping in surprise. With all the training I’d been put through already, no one had mentioned we were fighting this war on two fronts.
“No,” Kleio responded, shaking his head.
“The Fallen haven't been seen for centuries. Once they started taking up arms against us, Deimos and his council responded by holding Sanctuary hostage. They threatened to destroy the city and everyone inside. The Fallen…Sanctuary was their home. Most of them still had family there or descendants at least. So they fell back and Deimos, having learned from his mistake, never freed another Fallen to the wilderness again.”
“But then where—”
“I will not tell you that. I cannot. But she's alive, Dante. And she will be for a very long time.”
I stared at him, coming to terms with what he was saying.
“The tenth Trial,” I said slowly, understanding dawning upon me a moment later. “Immortality. She received the Blessing despite…”
“Being betrayed?” he asked, raising a brow as I flinched. “Yes. All of the Fallen receive all ten Blessings. A fact I’m sure Deimos would prefer to remedy but cannot.”
“He can’t change the Trials? He’s Lord of the Geist. Why—”
“That’s enough questions, Dante,” Kleio said then.
I noticed, for the first time, he sounded weary. I watched closely, brow knitted together in concern, as the god before me lowered himself into a chair and sighed, rubbing his temples as if to prevent a building headache.
“Where have you been, Kleio?” I asked then, tone falling out of habit. “I haven’t seen you for days and you haven’t called for me either.”
“Deimos has decided an issue has arisen within Sanctuary and when an issue arises in Sanctuary, the council calls me,” he told me with a sigh.
“Despite having kept me out of the loop for half a millennia, apparently I remain the leading expert on the Verdunn. Don’t get me started on how irresponsible it is not to have trained another soul in my absence.
How they’ve been managing this long without me, I’ll never—”
“What issue has arisen in Sanctuary?”
He looked up at me and his expression softened in a way that had my heart racing at the possibilities of what might be occurring at home.
“Some days, Dante, your human nature overrides your Geist blood,” Kleio told me, his tone full of sorrow.
“What happened, Kleio?” I asked, my voice firm.
“Nothing that concerns you, boy.”
He stood, patting my shoulder in a way I was sure was meant to be comforting but felt condescending.
“Sanctuary is my home,” I reminded him. “My family—”
“You'll never see them again. You'll never return to that place. Whatever is occurring there will only serve as a distraction for you now. It’s best to leave that part of you in the past, to move on as if it never was.”
“I can’t just forget them.”
“Did you know you wouldn't return from the tenth?”
Kleio watched me with that same academic curiosity that was supremely his but was starting to grate on my nerves.
“I did,” I confessed.
“Then you've made that choice already,” he reminded me, not unkindly. “Trust that I will do what I can for them. That is, after all, my duty. You should focus on yours.”
I frowned but nodded, knowing enough about the Geist before me by now to know Kleio wouldn't budge on the subject.
To him, the matter had been discussed and was finished.
He wouldn't change his opinion and he would tell me no more about what occurred in my home.
So I did my best to set it aside, as he suggested, and focus on the floating instruction he was now endeavoring to impose upon me.
But I couldn't deny the way my mind drifted back to Sanctuary all throughout my lessons and Kleio noticed.
He dismissed me early, claiming he had pressing matters to attend to but, as he turned back to those scattered papers on his desk when I made my way to the door, I knew he was giving me the time I needed to come to terms with all that I'd learned as well.
In truth, I hadn’t thought of Cosmo much since I'd arrived in Pavos other than to make comparisons between his leadership and that of the Geist or to acknowledge how pleased or displeased he would've been by my behavior. And I didn’t think of him now. Instead, I thought of my mother. I thought of Olympia and that cousin of hers whom Adrian had befriended. I thought of Adrian’s family and her friends from the Third Ring that I'd met due to our partnership.
I thought of Bria and my younger cousins and the priests I'd grown up learning a false faith from.
And I couldn't help but wonder what might befall them.
Whether today or tomorrow or the next day, things were happening in Sanctuary, in my home, and I wasn't privy to information regarding it.
I might never know. I could live a thousand years and never know what happened to them.
I stopped suddenly on the street as a a thought occurred to me that I might not be entirely able to live with that fact.
Then again, what choice did I have?