Chapter Eleven #2
I closed my eyes and took another breath that rattled through my ribcage before stepping back outside.
It was time. Far past time, if I were being honest. I had been holding onto these things, selfishly, as a way to keep some part of Darius alive for myself.
But it was wrong. These things belonged to his parents, to his sister, to a family that had lost far more than I had.
Even if they hadn’t made any attempt to claim them.
I carried the box all the way across the Third Ring to Darius’s old neighborhood. I knocked on the door and waited, shifting uncomfortably on my feet, hoping—pitifully—that they weren’t home, that I wouldn’t have to face them again.
No such luck.
“Adrian,” Orson said my name with surprise as he opened his front door, blinking at me. A question formed on his lips, but then he glanced down at the box in my arms. His shoulders slumped as he moved aside. “Come in.”
I forced my feet to carry me into the home, forced my eyes to remain on the hallway ahead of me, taking one step at a time as I trudged into their open living room.
“I thought you might want his things.” I internally cringed at how awkward I sounded. “It felt like you should have them.”
“Thank you.” Orson took the box from me. He gazed down at its contents for only a second before setting it aside.
“How’s Dahlia?” I asked before I could help myself.
Orson’s deep frown would have been answer enough, but he said even more.
“I’ve hardly seen her,” he confessed. “She spends all her time at his side. She won’t come home, and when I try to take her something to eat, she refuses. Your brother is there a lot, Warren. Sometimes he’s able to get her to eat something. He’s the only one who seems to be able to.”
I nodded slowly. Warren was still staying with her. That was good. “I wanted to stay but—”
“The Trials come first,” Orson finished, not knowing that wasn’t at all what I was going to say. He waved a hand dismissively as if that were a perfectly acceptable excuse, but I caught the frown on his lips.
“No. They don’t.”
“I heard you passed the second.”
“I—well, yes. But that’s not—”
“It’s over for Dahlia and Cyrus, Adrian.” Orson's eyes glazed over, his tone heavy with something like despair. “Sanctuary needs hope. Maybe you and Dante can give it to them.”
There was so much I wanted to say to that.
That I never wanted to be the one who gave anyone hope.
That I only ever wanted to do this with Darius at my side.
That I only took the Oath in the first place because it was the only promise I’d ever made his son.
That this whole godsforsaken city could burn to the ground for all I cared, because that was what it deserved for the way it took everything good, everything right in the world, and destroyed it.
But I only nodded and clenched my jaw tight so that I wouldn’t say any of those things.
It seemed he had nothing left to say either. So I muttered my goodbyes and made my way to the door, letting myself out the way I had hundreds of times before.
Lunch was over. I should have headed back to the Mitte for afternoon weight training, but the very idea of spending another day working myself to the bone for these Trials, for the games that the Geist were playing with our lives, filled me with a disgust so poignant, I couldn’t stomach it.
I made my way to another set of apartments further down the street. It was past time for another bit of business as well, one I’d been avoiding more than I cared to admit.
The building was flat, all the apartments on one level, where as mine and Darius’s was tall, built up to accommodate the growing population of the Third Ring.
I entered the building easily enough, passing through the dingy lobby with peeling wallpaper and taking the first hall on the right.
I passed four apartments before I knocked on the fifth door.
“Adrian,” Graham said, surprised, when he opened the door.
“Do you know anyone in need of a roommate?”
“Me!”
I looked behind Graham. Harrison sat behind a set of recycled metal he’d fashioned into a drum set, drumsticks poised over them. He shot me a lopsided grin.
“I’m pretty sure Graham and Sophie would appreciate if I moved off of their couch sometime in the near future,” he said. “And I’d like to stop hearing them—”
“Harris,” Graham snapped, eyes wide.
I pulled Darius’s key from my front pocket and tossed it to Harrison. His hand snapped up in time to catch it, and he stared down at it for a moment before looking back up, a brow raised.
“For real?”
“If it were anyone else, I might reconsider. Have your shit in by the end of the week.” I turned to Graham. “Don’t let Sophie say I never did her any favors.”
With a tired smile, I strolled away from the apartment, Harrison’s excited whooping echoing behind me. It was almost enough to make me smile properly, but then I remembered whose room he’d be taking, and my fists clenched at my sides.
But like with the box, it was time. I couldn’t keep relying on Dante’s generosity to pay the rent. And if something were to happen to me like what happened to Cyrus, at least this way I could be sure the place Darius used to call home would be in the hands of someone I trusted.
I returned to the First Ring emotionally and physically exhausted, wanting nothing more than to curl up in bed with one of Bria’s assigned tomes and fall asleep reading about the heroes of a forgotten age. But Dante waited for me at the top of the eastern gate, arms crossed and jaw ticking.
“What?” I asked with a sigh.
“You missed training.”
“I’ll survive.”
“Will you?” he growled.
He reached out, catching me by the sleeve, and forced me to stop, to face him. I glared down at the point of contact, but he didn’t heed the warning in my eyes.
“You need to take this seriously, Adrian! I don’t want to drag you out of one of those tunnels like Dahlia did Cyrus.”
He may as well have slapped me across the face.
I reeled back and wrenched myself out of his grip.
“How dare you,” I snarled.
“Hit me then. You’ve been angry with me for months. So do it. Hit me and get it over with.”
He held his hands out as if to give me a free punch. I considered it. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to scream at him until my throat was raw and I couldn’t see through tears and blinding fury. But I hesitated, Warren’s words from after the first Trial replaying in my mind.
Don’t lose him, Adrian. Saints, do everything you can to never lose him.
It wasn’t Dante’s fault. None of this was his fault. He hadn’t asked to be paired with me. He’d had no role in Darius’ Culling. He’d done his best to help Cyrus.
My shoulders slumped, the fight going out of me in an instant.
“I’m sorry, Adrian,” Dante whispered, his features softening as he released my arm.
“About your friend. About his sister. About that Second Ringer. It’s wrong, what happened to him, what it’s doing to her.
All of it. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right.
So be mad if you have to. Curse the gods all you want.
I’ve never been all that pious myself, so I won’t stop you.
But don’t be pissed at me, okay? You can’t be pissed at me. ”
I closed my eyes and nodded. I was angry. But I was so tired of being angry.
“If we’re going to get through this, you and I, if we’re going to survive, we have to do that together,” he continued. “Can you do this, Adrian? Just tell me if you can do this.”
I raised my head slightly, my amber eyes meeting his keen green ones. “I can do this.”
His jaw clenched but he nodded. Dante stepped aside so that I could walk past him to the front door of House Viper.
After that, a peace seemed to settle between Dante and I.
I did my best to control my anger or, at least, to direct it into my training.
I tried to use it as constructively as I could and, at the same time, tried to avoid emotional triggers that would distract me from our preparation for the Trials.
But then a week later, Cosmo surprised us with an announcement at dinner.
“You will attempt the third Trial tomorrow,” he said while tucking a cloth napkin into his collar and picking up his fork and knife.
Mine and Dante’s gazes snapped to him.
“According to both Myrine and Bria, you are sufficiently prepared. There’s no sense in dawdling any longer.”
Dante simply nodded and turned his attention back to his meal.
“How far did you make it?”
Forks clanged against plates around the table. Two of Dante’s cousins stared at me, openmouthed.
“Excuse me?” Cosmo raised a brow as he turned to look at me where I sat, farther down and across from Dante.
Adrian, don’t, he warned.
“I was just curious,” I told Cosmo instead. “It’s well known that Myrine made it farther than anyone in this family has for generations, and she only passed the fourth Trial. So I wondered. How far did you make it?”
Myrine closed her eyes and dropped her head toward her lap. Dante’s subconscious hammered into mine, but I ignored him. Bria blinked between her grandfather and me, opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it and closed it again.
Cosmo leaned back in his chair. He folded his hands across his midsection and narrowed his gaze.
“I am the patriarch of this family,” he reminded me. His tone indicated a warning.
But I ignored that too.
“Unquestionably,” I replied, nodding. That wasn’t what I had asked.
“I have the love of my family, the respect of the community. I am a leader of an ancient house. I come from a historic lineage.”
“All true. And yet…” I gestured at his long sleeves which hid the proof of his failures.
His jaw clenched.
“I failed the second,” he finally confessed.
There was an intake of breath from the larger group.
I nodded slowly.
“I only mention it,” I began, carefully, “because I was wondering when you were going to be so inclined as to allow Dante and I to decide for ourselves when we are ready for the next Trial.”