Chapter 5 #2
“Are you the only one here?” he asked, his voice like a whip. I fought the urge to flinch.
“Yes” I answered, watching him approach the rings as I had.
He leaned to the side and walked a slow circle around them. “What are these?”
“I don’t know,” I replied with a shrug. "Were you talking to yourself out there?”
I nodded in the direction of the wall he’d come through.
He glanced up, first at the wall, then at me, and shook his head.
“No,” he said. Then he sighed as if this whole thing were more of an inconvenience than the life-altering event it truly was. “But you heard me anyway. Didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“I heard you too,” he confessed, and my lips parted in surprise.
“What did I say?”
“The same things I did, I imagine. ‘This isn’t the right way.’ ‘I’m not supposed to exit yet.’ ‘It can’t possibly be this easy.’ It appears we’ve been hearing each other think.”
My jaw dropped open entirely.
“Makes sense,” he muttered, more to himself than anything as he turned back around to examine the rings again. “Explains how my mom always knew everything my dad was going to do before he did it.”
“What do you mean?”
He frowned at me, eyes flicking over me once again in a second examination that seemed to be performed with much more annoyance. His impatience with me was beginning to grate on my nerves. My jaw ticked and I gestured for him to answer.
“What ring are you?” he asked, gaze narrowing.
“Fuck you,” I spat.
His full lips spread into a predatory grin as those green eyes shimmered with amusement.
“Deck?” he asked.
I bristled.
“Third,” I said through gritted teeth. “Are you going to answer my question or just keep talking down to me like the asshole Upper you are?”
He grinned again.
“The mind speak,” he clarified. “It’s how we’re paired, you and I.”
“But that’s not—you mean, we’re partners now?” I sputtered, eyes widening at the thought. “I don’t even know you.”
He shook his head and waved me off as if my concerns were foolish and invalid. “Doesn’t matter. You know me now. We’ve been linked.”
“Linked? But I—this doesn’t—how do you know?”
“Have you heard any other voices in your head?”
Of course I hadn’t. Well, none besides my own. I pursed my lips and shook my head.
He turned away from the rings and approached me. His green gaze narrowed even further the closer he got and I had the distinct impression he was used to people shying away from it. That alone had me straightening my shoulders and raising my chin to meet the challenge.
“I’m Dante.” His tone remained curt, though there was a slight hint of welcome in it. Not friendly, just polite. As if he knew an introduction was necessary but despised the time wasted in giving one.
“Adrian,” I replied.
As we stood there, sizing one another up in the strangest pissing contest I’d ever been a part of, I felt it again.
The pulling sensation. He must have felt it too, because he glanced down at his stomach before looking back up at me.
A metallic clang echoed around us. We both startled, then glanced over to the rings, which were glowing even brighter than before.
Approach. It was another voice; a new one. Not Dante’s, not mine. It was low and thrummed with something both melodic and powerful, like nothing I’d ever heard before.
Dante stared at the rings, frowning.
“You heard that too, right?” I queried, turning to face him again. He nodded. I sighed, shoulders slumping. “I guess we… approach.”
After another nod, we stepped toward the rings together. They pulsed as we neared, glowing a bright blue and fading again along with the rhythm of our hearts. We stood before them, watching them gleam and slowly swirl in the air.
“What do we—” I was interrupted by my left arm lifting of its own accord, as if someone above me had tied a string around my wrist and was pulling it up, puppeteering. Dante’s arm drifted upward too. He met my gaze, his expression guarded, but I saw the fear hiding behind his eyes.
I felt it.
That invisible force lifted our hands to the opening of the rings and plunged our arms inside almost up to our armpits.
I looked at Dante, wide-eyed and panicked as the rings clamped tight around our forearms—and burned.
I hissed and yanked my arm free. A hot red band had been seared into my skin and was already darkening. Dante sported the same mark. We’d been branded.
“It’s done,” he said but there was no joy in his tone, not a hint of celebration, just a simple, indifferent acknowledgement.
Cold steel walls rose up all around us, encasing us in a larger version of the tube we’d stepped inside at the beginning of the Trial.
I had only a moment to wonder where it had come from before we were hurtling through space again.
I pressed my back against one side as Dante pressed himself against the opposite, gaze flicking wildly before we were swallowed by darkness.
I tucked my arms against my body and closed my eyes, jaw clenched to keep from being sick.
Our feet hit the ground with a clang that vibrated up through my legs. I threw my hands out to the sides to steady myself. The door of the tube hissed open, and I had to shield my eyes from the setting sun of the world beyond.
People cheered, but they sounded far away and muffled, as if I were underwater.
Dante stepped forward without hesitation, holding his head high to walk into the crowd. I watched him, frozen in place until his unwavering and insistent voice filled my head.
Come on.
Linked, he’d said. That was what had happened to us in that strange labyrinth of invisible doors and burning rings.
I understood so many things at once, but just as many new questions replaced the ones answered.
Though I knew one thing for certain, one thing for now, and that was all that mattered in the moment.
We’d passed the first Trial.