Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Adrian
“Even if they should come to us and offer a reprieve, it will do us no good to accept. These people have never suffered a day in their life. They have no idea what a reprieve looks like.”
– A Statement Made by Rhett Anderson, a Member of the Resistance; Overheard and Recorded in a Private Journal belonging to Third Ringer Skylar Segal
Iwas drifting through shadows. Curls of black smoke wrapped around my body and carried me through the night sky.
Stars I hadn’t seen since I’d left Sanctuary twinkled above me.
I reached for them and grasped one in my hand, glimmering silver and burning hot in my palm.
I closed my fingers around it and held on.
I could hear a voice but from a distance.
It wasn’t familiar. It was low, drawling, and undeniably male.
There was something about it, a smooth velvet undertone that eased my aching soul, that chased away the cold, cruel darkness of my heart.
I reached for it but couldn't find it. Frustrated, I plunged through the night, searching for that voice. I could reach the stars, could fly across the sky, but I couldn't find that male. No matter how far I went, across worlds and vast expanses of sand and snow, lush green grasses that licked up my calves, rough wheat that scraped my palms, mountains that soared up to meet me. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. And yet, he was everywhere.
Come back, he whispered against my subconscious.
But I didn’t know how. I didn’t know where to go back to. I couldn’t find him, couldn’t tell where he was. Phantom fingers brushed against the back of my hand and I turned to find a pinprick of light in the endless darkness.
Come back to us.
I reached for the light and it seemed to burn a little brighter. I turned away from it, blinking away the pain in my eyes.
We’re here. Come to us.
Steeling myself, I turned back to face the light and reached out again.
I stepped forward, shadows falling from my body like a living cloak of dark smoke as I strode through the darkness.
They caressed me as they fell away as if to say so long, for now.
I let them brush against my fingertips, wrap around my throat before dissipating.
Feeling them go felt like leaving a part of myself behind but somehow I knew I needed to in order to get back.
Though I couldn’t remember what I was going back to.
I came awake with a gasp, sitting straight up and breathing hard in the dry heat around me.
I glanced wildly around to find myself within a canvas construction of material and poles that formed a shelter of some sort.
I was on a cot made of the same wood and canvas and below me was coarse, dry sand.
Like the desert I'd seen in my dream, I realized, staring down at it in awe.
“Thank the gods,” someone spoke.
I jumped at the voice only to find Zya rushing forward from the flap in the canvas she'd pulled back which was now billowing in the breeze, revealing an expanse of endless sand under a clear blue sky and burning orange sun beyond.
I stared at the vast wasteland as she ran forward to settle onto my cot next to me and shoved a bowl into my hands.
“Eat this. You’ve been out so long we started to worry you’d starve to death before you woke up.”
“I—” I started, blinking against the bright sun streaming in from outside. I was slowly coming out of my dream and back to the world of reality. Realization struck me so hard I was on my feet in an instant. “Darius! Where—”
“He’s fine,” Zya assured me, reaching up to place a hand on my arm and pulling me gently back down to the cot. “Gryfon healed him. He’s with Roxy and the others now.”
“Gryfon?” I asked.
“He’s the one who pulled us out of the tunnel. He’s—well, I’ll take you to him when you’ve eaten.”
“I’ll go to him now.”
I made to stand but Zya’s fingernails dug into my arm causing me to hiss and look down at her hand, wide-eyed.
“You aren’t going anywhere until you eat, Adrian,” she told me. In her tone I heard the same firmness my mother used to use against me.
I had no choice but to settle back onto the cot and take the bowl from her hands.
She watched me for a moment as I ate, neither of us saying a word despite the endless questions swirling in my brain, the haze of my vivid dream still making my mind too foggy to properly understand what had happened.
Or perhaps that was the hunger, I realized, as my stomach filled with the broth and my mind seemed to clear a bit more.
“How did you do that, Adrian?” Zya whispered once my soup was down to the dregs and I was slurping from the bowl itself.
I looked up at her, blinking uncertainly.
“Shadows came out of you,” she said, her eyes wide.
“Darkness. Like actual darkness. It was like what comes out of the twelfth at the Culling. It wasn’t just the dark, like the tunnels, like the Underground without its lights.
It was…tangible, thick, smothering. I’ve never felt anything like it. Not since…”
I cleared my throat to stop her before she began to compare whatever had occurred to me with something as evil as the Culling.
“I made it to Sanctuary,” I told her, staring down at my empty bowl as I finally recalled what had occurred just before the cave in. “I made it all the way to the twelfth. I saw the Culling from within Sanctuary. I saw…Zya something is wrong in Sanctuary.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, brow furrowing as she leaned forward, concern etched plainly in her expression.
“Some of the Culled banded together and refused to go through the arch. Cosmo was there and the priests. They killed a boy, beheaded him right there on the cobblestones in front of the arch, a brother of one of the Culled. As an example, they said, a threat to force the Culled to go through the arch. They wouldn’t let their families say goodbye.
They left that boy’s mother weeping in the street. ”
My voice broke as horror lined Zya’s face and she shook her head.
“That isn’t how it’s done,” she said, stunned. “They don’t force the Culled. They don’t bring violence to their precious ceremonies. The Culling is sacred to them. They wouldn’t do that. They can’t.”
“They did,” I told her. “And when I was in Sanctuary, during my last Trials before my Fall, there were these zealots, these people who were worshiping Dante and I as saints. The High Houses slaughtered them all and anyone who was caught up in the melee as well. And then, after the ninth, the entire gathered priesthood forced me into the tenth. They showed up in force, threatening violence if I should refuse to go directly to my fate. I thought it was just in response to my defiance. I thought the threat was only to me. But they’re killing innocents, Zya. And no one is stopping them.”
Zya stared at me for a moment before standing.
She wrung her hands together as she paced the length of the space within the tent.
I watched as she walked, feet disturbing the sand beneath them, leaving tracks in a ground that seemed so much softer than the stone I'd always trod upon before.
I had an urge to bend over and examine the strange substance but it passed in an instant.
We had bigger issues to contend with for now.
An examination of this strange new place would have to wait.
But we were out. Out of Sanctuary and out of the Underground.
Out in a way neither of us had ever known was possible before.
I hadn't even known there was an out but, as I blinked up against the sunlight streaming in through the crack in the canvas flaps, I realized there was a whole world out there, a whole new domain I'd never known existed.
“Were the minor houses there?” Zya asked after a moment, drawing my attention back to her.
I considered her question before shaking my head.
“Not that I saw,” I told her.
“Good,” she replied, shoulders relaxing slightly as she nodded. “Then not everyone stands with Cosmo. He has the priests, that’s a lot of gathered power, but if none of the minor houses showed up, he’s lacking the support of the entire Second Ring and undoubtedly the Lowers.”
“House Avus stood against him.”
“Good. That’s even better. Perhaps the strife will be relegated to the First Ring. Maybe they’ll fight it out amongst themselves. Maybe the Second Ring will aid House Avus if there's a chance of going against Cosmo. And who knows where Lynx stands.”
“But maybe countless innocents will die in the struggle. How many of the Lower Ringers will die before the Uppers finish fighting it out amongst themselves?”
Zya turned to me, deflating a bit as a look of pity crossed her face.
“The Lowers always suffer the most when the Houses clash,” she conceded. “It isn’t right but it’s the way it’s always been. It’s politics. I’m with you, Adrian, but I don’t know what we can do about it from here.”
“We can go back,” I said, standing.
Come back. I shuddered at the memory of the voice from my dreams, wondering if this was what it had meant, wondering if Sanctuary was somehow calling to me in the way Dante used to be able to call to me.
“Adrian,” Zya said gently but then more forcefully when I tried to push my way past her. “Adrian, wait.”
She couldn’t stop me. I phased right through her and strode out into the desert.
The moment I re-materialized, I felt the burning of the sun against my skin, felt the dry, cruel heat of the desert around us.
My heels kicked up sand with every step, my legs shaking with uncertainty in the unfamiliar terrain, but I pressed on.
Until I realized I had no idea where I was going.
I looked for the tunnel from which we'd been pulled, sure there would be signs of stones moved aside, some hole in the ground which had housed the Underground, a massive city above it that would be Sanctuary.