Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
“I have never known a love like that which I feel for Valin. I love my sister, I love the Geist, but my future lies with Valin. When we succeed, I know he will be by my side. And if we should fail, we will settle among the rings and have children who will try again in our names.”
Iate the entire first course in silence, trying in vain to ignore the conversation that was taking place directly across from me.
Olympia and Dante had been engaged from the beginning in a lively revisitation of their fondest childhood memories, drawing others near us into their discussion as well.
Twins Stella and Emilia from House Lynx giggled along with them and interjected with their own remembrances of spending their youth alongside the similarly aged members of the major houses.
Kai and Luca, Olympia’s friends, laughed along too.
I just stabbed my fork into my veal a little harder than I intended and glared away.
“You’re still his partner,” someone whispered, and my head snapped to the left. The small, wiry-haired boy beside me had been the one who spoke.
He had freckles all over his pale face and golden glasses that made his eyes look a bit too small.
He had soft, light brown curls that framed his face in a way that seemed more haphazard than intentional and dimples at the corners of his lips whenever he smiled.
He wore the blue of House Avus; Olympia’s house.
“Excuse me?” I asked, stunned.
“She has his past, but you have his future.”
My cheeks burned, and I turned back to my meal.
“I don’t want his future,” I grumbled. “I mean, I’m not jealous. It isn’t like that between us. I just don’t understand what he sees in her.”
“They were born and bred to be partners. In everything.”
I looked back at the boy, and he raised his brows in emphasis. In a haste to get off the subject, I cleared my throat and extended a hand so quickly, I nearly knocked over my champagne glass. “I’m Adrian.”
“I know.” He offered a smile as he extended his own hand to grasp mine. “I’m Milo.”
“Of House Avus.”
“I am. But don’t think I have any sort of in with Olympia. If anything, she hates me even more than you.”
I snorted.
“Then I think we’ll get along just fine, Milo,” I told him, and he grinned. “So where are you at, in the Trials?”
“We just failed the second one.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied, cringing in memory of the Second Trial.
“Don’t be,” he replied easily, waving a hand as though it hardly mattered. “I never expected to make it very far. I was never as athletic as the others. And I didn’t get the partner I expected. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame Isla.”
He cast a harried glance toward a girl farther down the table. She had fiery red hair that contrasted poorly with her deep crimson gown and a gap in her teeth that was even more obvious when she laughed.
“But Cora and I trained our whole lives together,” he continued. “We were supposed to be partners.”
“Like Dante and Olympia.” I glanced over to where they’d just burst into laughter.
Milo nodded. “Yeah, like them.”
I frowned. Had my getting paired with someone far above me somehow become a chain reaction, throwing everyone off the partner they were supposed to be paired with? If so, why? And was it even my fault?
“I’m sorry,” I said again, even though I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Milo replied cheerfully as if he could sense my confusion. “Now that I’m not training for the Trials for the first time in my life, I can finally focus on the things I really care about.”
“Like what?”
“Books.”
I snorted. “Books?”
Milo nodded fervently.
“I love reading,” he said eagerly. “The more outlandish the tale, the more I adore it. I find that there’s always a kernel of truth in even the most ridiculous of them. Valin the Victorious, Prima’s piety and heroism, the legendary beasts of the era before this, the—”
“Stories,” I interrupted.
“Legends,” he corrected, his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.
I cocked my head to the side. This boy was a dreamer. That was a rarity in Sanctuary, even among the privileged First Ringers. I was torn between wanting to shatter the illusion and pull him back to reality and wanting to preserve his innocent hopefulness like one does a bird with a broken wing.
“What sort of legends?” I asked, a brow raised, choosing to indulge him this once.
His entire face brightened and he began.
“There are stories traced down through generations that mention a time when magic ran rampant in Sanctuary, when our people could perform incredible feats of strength and skill, when the extraordinary was commonplace. Tales of blinding lights shooting from palms, objects with a mind of their own, people who flew. There’s even mention of a time when the Geist themselves used to walk among us. ”
“That’s ridiculous.” I waved a hand in dismissal, though I had to admit, I was intrigued. Even if they were just stories.
“Perhaps,” Milo replied with an offhanded shrug. “Most of the stories I’ve read have all come from our House Journal. And Jamin always was the more eccentric of the heroes. Besides, the preservation of our library falls woefully short of Harlowe’s.”
“If the Geist were ever here among us, why did they leave?” It seemed the most preposterous of all and yet, I couldn’t ignore the thought of it. “Where did they go?”
Milo looked around, then leaned in so only I could hear him.
“Supposedly, they didn’t leave. Not entirely.
That’s why we pray to them now. It’s believed they still exist but on a higher plane.
The story goes that they came to live among us but were offended by our violence and vulgarity, so they removed themselves from our world and went to live in another.
But they loved us too much to let go entirely, at least some of them did, so they exist in another sphere, somewhere above this one, watching us where we can’t see them. ”
I stared at him. Did my face betray how skeptical I felt?
“They call it Pavos,” he continued, a proud smile on his lips. “It means City of Peace in the old language.”
“Pavos,” I repeated, feeling the strangeness of the word on my tongue.
Milo’s lips spread into a wide smile, and he chuckled. “I know. Ludicrous.”
I smiled back and opened my mouth to speak, to ask more about Pavos and how he knew so much about the Geist, but was interrupted by a familiar, booming voice.
“Attention everyone.” We all looked up at Cosmo.
He stood at his place at the head of the table, his champagne flute in one hand and a fork in the other, which he used to gently tap against the glass.
Once all eyes were on him, he set the utensil down.
“A toast to my incredible grandson and his formidable partner. May their success in the Trials continue, may they make their ancestors proud in their pursuits, and, gods-willing, may it not be long before we hear the pitter-patter of little candidates’ feet among these halls as my grandson strengthens our lineage with his successful bloodline. ”
My jaw dropped.
No one else seemed surprised.
The crowd fell into lazy applause, drank to the toasts, and turned back to their individual conversations.
My eyes darted around, taking in the scene around me in stunned silence. Children? Cosmo was pressuring Dante to have children already?
The quiet chatter was interrupted by the loud scraping of a chair leg against the tiles.
Dante was on his feet, jaw clenched so tightly, I feared his teeth might shatter.
He threw his napkin onto the table. Its decorative ring clattered loudly against the porcelain plate as he whirled and stormed from the hall.
Everyone stared after him in silence for a moment, then Olympia and I stood at the same time.
“I should see to my partner,” I said slowly, glaring at her in challenge, channeling Myrine in tone and formality. “Please, continue to enjoy your meals.”
Some of the tension seemed to ease at my words, though Milo cleared his throat uncomfortably and loudly moved his place setting about. A few of the girls our age descended into harsh whispers, likely about what had happened, as I left the room.
Dante, I reached out as I headed for the doors. Where are you?
He didn’t answer. But I didn’t need him to.
I found him at the edge of House Viper’s property, right up against the ledge of the First Ring itself, staring over the pinnacle at the Second Ring below and the Third and Deck below that.
“For a spoiled, rich boy,” I started, coming to a stop at the edge with him, the skirts of my dress tangling around my legs and whipping out around me in the breeze, “you don’t seem to know much about proper toast decorum.”
Despite his anger, he snorted. He nudged my shoulder with his but kept his gaze firmly on the citizens of the Second Ring below as they went about their business, unaware of the man watching them from above. His chest was still heaving with some long-buried emotion.
“You want to tell me what that was about?” I nodded in the direction of the estate.
Dante frowned and stared at a servant taking the trash from a lower estate down to the chute, jaw ticking with barely restrained rage. “I'm to be bred like a dog.”
My shoulders fell. I’d understood as much from Cosmo’s words and the hints the entire family had been dropping for the past few months, but I hadn’t wanted that particular suspicion of mine verified.
“Why?” I asked.
“My mother got farther in the Trials than anyone has in two centuries. You and I have already made it past three in hardly any time. The expectations are high. They want to see us succeed. But if I fail, they at least intend for me to continue a bloodline that appears to foster relative success.”
“With who?”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, as if it didn’t bother him, but his jaw kept ticking and even if it hadn’t, I could feel his rage simmering just beneath the surface, threatening to boil over at any moment.
“Ideally, you.” Dante didn’t look at me.
His tone was indifferent, unaffected, but he cleared his throat and shifted on his feet, betraying his true discomfort.
I took a breath, suddenly aware of how close we were standing and how much closer we’d been barely an hour ago.
“It’s common practice for partners in the Trials to become partners in life, to have children who go on to reach at least the levels they did together.
But we don’t know exactly what creates success in the Trials.
This whole rule of being unable to speak of them to one another makes it difficult to acquire knowledge, even over generations. ”
I nodded. That made sense given the importance the major houses placed on partnering their children up young.
He turned so suddenly I jumped. Then his hands were on my shoulders, holding me in place as those green eyes bore into mine.
“What happened earlier, that had nothing to do with any of this,” he told me.
His tone was so serious I found myself nodding even before I’d decided to believe him.
“I swear, Adrian. I can hear you doubting how attracted I am to you. I need you to know that anything that happens between us is real. And it’s my choice.
That’s why I’m being honest about all this now.
So you know, if I make a move, it’s me making it. ”
I held his gaze for a moment and didn’t nod again. Despite how sincere he seemed in the moment, I couldn’t ignore the nagging doubt in the back of my mind.
“He told me to seduce you,” he confessed, and I couldn’t help the laughter that burst out of me. His own lips quirked up into a smirk, amusement dancing in his bright eyes.
“I hate to break it to you,” I replied, still laughing, “but you’re shit at it.”
He laughed then too, a loud burst that had me grinning.
“I told him seducing you would be like trying to seduce one of the ancient serpentine beasts. But he only said that made you a true Viper.”
I snorted.
“I don’t want children,” he said, holding my gaze as his tone became solemn again.
“No matter what he’s planning in there, it doesn’t matter anyway.
Because I don’t want the great-grandchildren he’s decided on.
I don’t want to bring them into a world where their lives are arranged at birth.
I don’t want to watch them run around this ancient estate, drilling with my mother, practicing at the Mitte, like a hamster on a wheel, all while knowing that it probably won’t matter in the end. No one makes it past all ten.”
There was something so honest in his words, a vulnerability he’d never shown me before.
He’d hinted at it, the fact that he wasn’t as much of a willing participant in this theocratic house of cards that I assumed a First Ring heir would be.
He’d told me he wasn’t devout, that he didn’t care if I cursed the gods, had never shown any level of piety that was even close to his grandfather’s or cousin’s.
Dante had given me every opportunity to see how different he was from the rest of them, and yet, I hadn’t.
Until this moment, until I listened to him belittle everything his ancestors had worked for, until he claimed he would rather never have a family at all than to subject them to the will and whims of these gods, I hadn’t believed he could be different. But now, I saw it.
I took a breath.
“We will,” I vowed, my voice low as I peered out at the whole of Sanctuary far below us.
He snorted again.
This time, I was the one who bumped his shoulder.
“I mean it.”
He raised a brow.
“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.
” I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t bear to.
I just stared down at the servant he’d been watching, returning from the chute and attending to his duties at the estate, as I spoke softly.
“I used to think you all had it so easy up here. And you do, comparatively, but everything with your grandfather and Olympia, all of the pressure from your mother, it—I just…Sanctuary sucks.”
He snorted again.
“Sanctuary sucks,” he repeated in agreement.
We simply smiled at each other and settled in atop the pinnacle of the First Ring to watch the sunset away from Cosmo, Myrine, Olympia, and all the other privileged ones who expected things from us we weren’t ready to give.