Chapter Eight
“Leave your worldly belongings behind and join, mind, body, and soul, with the Geist. All, from the very tip of the First Ring to the Deck far below, are worthy to serve our gods.”
Iwasn’t a prisoner. At least, as far as I knew. So I didn’t tell anyone when I simply walked through the gates the next morning and stepped out onto the utterly empty streets of the First Ring.
I passed the sprawling red brick manor of House Lynx on my right and the glass-domed, sparkling behemoth of House Avus on my left, and kept walking, leaving the dark obsidian estate of House Viper behind. I made my way toward the east gate and descended to the Second Ring.
Quite a few people gawked at me as I made my descent.
It wasn’t often anyone from the First Ring stooped to the other levels.
But when I drew closer and they recognized me as the imposter I was, they mostly glanced away, disinterested.
Though a few fellow Third Ringers and some Deckers serving the Second Ring grinned as I passed.
I strode straight ahead, right down the next set of stairs as well. None of the guards glanced my way. They weren’t paid to mark who was descending, only who tried to ascend. I nodded to a few familiar faces as I made my way through the bustling Third Ring streets.
The dingy gray apartment building halfway between the eastern and southern gates looked like it should be condemned from the outside.
It didn’t look much better from the inside, either.
I took a deep breath and headed for the wooden door at the bottom, cracked open due to someone having come and gone without the knowledge or the energy to slam it closed properly.
I waved politely to Rosemary Marin, who was trying to herd her stubborn orange tabby back inside her tiny apartment, on my way up to the fourth floor. She gave me a grim nod before closing her door behind her.
Something was amiss at the top of the fourth floor landing.
Light spilled out into the usually dark hallway—and it was coming from the open door of my apartment.
I hurried forward and barreled into my apartment just as the landlord dumped a box of Darius’s personal effects I’d packed to give his parents onto the floor.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ripped the box out of his hands and started gathering everything again.
“Ah, there you are, Miss Bexley,” he grunted. “You know, candidate or not, you still have to pay your rent.”
I shot him a withering glare that had absolutely no effect on the greedy rat.
“And I intend to,” I spat. “Soon.”
“You’re over a week past due.”
“I’ve had a hell of a week.”
“Miss Bexley.”
I looked up at him and sighed.
“Mr. Seaton, please.” I tried not to sound as desperate as we both knew I was. “I just need a few more days. I’m going to pick up some jobs and look for a roommate, I swear. I just need—”
“How much does she owe?”
I froze at the low, deep voice that emanated from the threshold of my apartment.
Gripping the watch that used to belong to Darius’s father before Orson gave it to him so tight, my knuckles turned white, I turned.
Dante stood in the doorway to my pitiful apartment, green eyes flashing and jaw tensed.
“Did you follow me?” I snapped.
“How much?” He asked again, his gaze on my landlord.
“Two hundred,” Mr. Seaton said. I scoffed and rolled my eyes.
“Consider it paid.” Dante strolled into the room. “And get out.”
“Sir, I own this establishment. I don’t know what you think—”
“Do you own that watch?” Dante jerked his chin in my direction. I clutched it tighter in response.
“Well, no but—”
“Then you have no business touching it. Or anything else in this apartment for that matter. I’ll pay the rent. I’ll pay the next three months too. Just get the fuck out.”
Mr. Seaton’s lip curled in anger, but the prospect of a three months advance must have been too great an opportunity to pass up.
So he muttered a string of curses and strode from the apartment, demanding payment by the end of week and threatening to return if he didn’t receive it. He slammed the door behind him.
Dante moved forward in silence. He bent down beside me and began picking up Darius’s things one by one, placing them back into the box. I joined him a moment later, tossing the watch in first and trying not to look too hard at the rest.
“Who was it?” he asked, holding up a pair of gray sweatpants. “Boyfriend?”
“Best friend and roommate.” I tossed Darius’s only tie into the box. “He got Culled last week.”
Dante tensed. “How old was he?”
“Twenty-one.”
He swore and ran a hand through his dark hair.
“Do you…know why?” I asked, once again trying to mask the desperation in my tone. “Does the First Ring know why this Culling was different? Why them?”
“We’d have you believe we do,” he muttered. “But the truth is, my grandfather, my mother, they’re just as stumped as the rest of Sanctuary.”
I stared down into the box, at the watch glinting from where it lay beneath a pile of t-shirts.
“Is this how it’s going to be now?” I asked. “No rules? Just anyone we know could be taken, and we’d have no idea until it was too late?”
“Possibly.”
I looked up at him, surprised. Darius would’ve lied. Even if he thought it was a possibility, he would’ve assured me that it wasn’t, would’ve cracked a joke and changed the subject to make me feel better. Dante didn’t. And for some reason, there was a strange comfort in his blatantness.
Dante lowered the things he’d gathered, Darius’s things, gently into the box below.
As much as I tried to ignore it, I couldn’t help but remember the altercation with Olympia, the anger I’d felt emanating from him and, beneath it, despair, frustration, exhaustion.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
He looked up, his gaze locking onto mine.
“Why do you think they paired us together, the Geist?” he asked, his tone thoughtful.
I shrugged and continued to fold the clothes and place them carefully in the box. “They have a horrific sense of humor?”
He didn’t laugh. Dante just watched me for a moment, those keen green eyes boring into me. “That won’t work with me, you know. The deflection. I can sense your emotions, Adrian. And your thoughts. You can lie to everyone else, but you can’t lie to me.”
I looked up again, then blinked and looked away, clearing my throat.
“Why did you follow me?” I turned away from the box and strolled over to the paintings—Sophie’s—that Mr. Seaton had torn down in his quest to erase my existence from the apartment. I hung them again, fingers lingering over the rough bubbles against the canvas.
Darius used to say they were beautiful, and they were. Sophie would blush at the praise as he’d wrapped an arm around her and declared they were the one bright spot in this otherwise drab apartment. I had to agree.
“Like it or not, we’re linked now,” Dante said as he stood and leaned against the wall to the kitchen, watching me. “You’re my responsibility.”
“Responsibility?” I faced him, arms crossed, and raised a brow. “So I’m no more than a toddler to you?”
“You’re learning to read like one,” he teased, the corner of his lips quirking up in a rare smirk. It was the first sort of smile I’d seen from him since training the day Cosmo told me about Prima’s journal.
I blinked at him, lips opening and closing like a fish out of water, until I remembered to be angry with him. “I can handle myself, thank you very much.”
“Your lack of success in our sparring would suggest otherwise.”
“Well, how am I supposed to beat a man a full head taller than me whose been training his whole life and is so…so…”
“Incredibly strong?” he guessed, and I snorted, my lips spreading into an amused grin before I could stop myself. “Handsome? Debonair?”
“Debonair,” I repeated dramatically. “Absolutely not. But hey, look who has a sense of humor once he’s outside of the First Ring.”
His grin widened.
“Okay, let’s say you have me beat in the muscles arena,” I relented with a sigh. “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to knock you off your feet if I can’t even budge you with a firm shove.”
“It’s about momentum.” Dante straightened from his spot against the wall and stepped forward. “Come at me.”
I raised a brow and gave a pointed glance at the cramped apartment around us, at the very breakable furniture and semi-full boxes. “Not the time or place, Viper.”
He opened his mouth to speak but a knock on the door interrupted him. I strode across the room and threw it open.
“Adrian,” Sophie breathed from the other side.
Relief flooded her chocolate eyes as she tossed her brown hair over her shoulder and strode past me into the apartment.
“You’re back. I just stopped in to get some of your things for you.
I overheard Maurice griping about how you’d gone to live amongst those assholes in the First Ring, that they practically kidnapped you and dragged you up there. I thought—”
She stopped, her lips popping open in a perfect O once her gaze landed on the enormous, First Ring brute standing in the center of my shabby living room, hands in the pockets of his black jeans.
“I thought you were so lucky!” She pivoted so hard, I couldn’t help but snort. Sophie punched me once in the shoulder before tossing an unconvincing grin over her shoulder to Dante. “What I wouldn’t give to live among those—”
“Assholes?” he interrupted, and she chittered nervously in response.
“It’s alright, Sophie,” I told her, looping my arm through hers and leading her into the living room. “He’s my partner, which apparently makes me his liability.”
“I believe I used the word responsibility,” he grunted.
“Same thing.” I shrugged.
“What’s he doing slumming it down here with us lowers?” Sophie asked, narrowing her gaze as she ran a shrewd eye over Dante.
“I believe he said something about wanting to attend one of our legendary ragers.” I tapped my chin with my finger, suppressing my grin.