Chapter 15 #2
Felix snorted at my back, and I heard a thump and a hiss that sounded an awful lot like Harrison had tossed a pillow at his irreverent friend. The three of them burst into laughter as I rounded the corner and entered my room. I shut my door behind me and collapsed into bed.
The morning came with a vengeance, bright sunlight streaming in through my windows to awaken me well before I was ready to rise.
I laid in bed for a few moments, blinking up at my ceiling, lost in thought.
Soft snores leaked through the thin wall between my room and the living room, and Harrison’s deep breathing emanated from the room across from mine.
The band had stayed over again. But I didn’t mind.
I knew where I needed to go. I was already determined to do so as I rose and dressed, sending a warning to Dante as I did.
I’m going to miss our run this morning.
Just don’t miss your studies, Dante’s voice came to me a moment later. Bria will have my ass if you miss another session with her.
I snorted and, grinning, slid into my sneakers before quietly making my way out of my room and out of the apartment.
It had been months since I’d last seen Cyrus or Dahlia.
I hadn’t visited nearly as often as I’d intended to.
But I’d assumed Cyrus’s parents wouldn’t allow it, as lost in their own grief as they likely were, and training had been more time consuming than I’d hoped.
But I was making excuses. The truth was, I was afraid to visit Cyrus.
Because what had happened to him had happened in the very Trial that I was preparing for, and I was afraid to face Dahlia after having let her down so many times before.
When I arrived, I found Cyrus in one of the rare moments that Dahlia wasn’t by his side. He looked almost peaceful in the plush, raised bed they had him in, as though he was sleeping. His eyes were closed, and his cheeks were pale, but otherwise, he looked like the Cyrus I’d known before.
I hadn’t realized how long I’d been just standing there, staring at him, until someone stepped up beside me. I didn’t have to look to know that it was Dahlia, but I did anyway.
She looked like a ghost of her former self.
Much frailer than I’d ever seen her, than I would have imagined she would ever let anyone see her.
Her own skin had taken on a pallid color and the bags under her eyes were dark and heavy.
Her eyelids fluttered as she stared at her partner’s prone form, and she swayed slightly as if her legs weren’t sturdy enough to hold her.
If I hadn’t known any better, looking between them, I would have assumed Dahlia to be the sick one.
“I hear him,” she mumbled. Her voice sounded harsh, rough, as if it strained her to use it after so long in silence.
I hoped I was maintaining some sort of control over my expression and didn’t appear as pitying as I felt.
“All the time.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I cast my gaze back to the man laying before us, the golden boy of the Second Ring, the one who was going to carry his family to glory.
The boy that every girl in Sanctuary harbored a secret crush on.
The boy whose laughter was contagious and who you couldn’t help but like even though you were jealous of him.
That boy had become this in a moment. It was more a testament to the danger of the Trials than any myth or legend.
“He wants me to end it.”
I nearly wrenched my neck snapping my eyes back to Dahlia.
“What?” I croaked, stunned.
She simply nodded, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.
“Dahlia,” I breathed, “you can’t.”
“He’s not coming back, Adrian.” Her gaze locked with mine. “He’s in pain.”
I turned back to Cyrus. He didn’t look as though he was in pain.
Truthfully, he looked almost peaceful. He looked as though he was simply enjoying a long nap and would awake at any moment to bestow that glittering smile upon us all once more, welcome us into his ancestral home and go right back to meddling in the lives of those he deemed important to Dahlia and, by extension, to him.
But he wasn’t napping. And he wasn’t going to wake up.
I couldn’t imagine what it was like for her, or for him, to know the fate that awaited them, to know he would never return to Sanctuary, not really.
To know that he was hardly more than a warm body, a corpse that simply hadn’t decided to follow through.
I’d watched Darius disappear into the void.
I’d lost those I cared about and feared the loss of those I loved.
But I hadn’t experienced anything like this living hell.
Still, I knew one thing for certain.
“You’re not a killer,” I told Dahlia, my voice low and shaking.
“Look at him, Adrian,” she whispered, voice breaking as a tear slid down her left cheek. “This isn’t him. He doesn’t want to be…this.”
“Dahlia, they would never understand. And you can’t explain it to them, not with the Oath. They’ll label you a murderer, and you know what happens to murderers in Sanctuary.”
Dahlia frowned. “I can’t just leave him to suffer.”
“It’s a capital crime, Dahlia.” Though nearly every offense was for those of us in the Lower Rings. It was how the Fellowship and the judges of the Tribunal kept us in order down below. Many of us had nothing but our lives, and they weren’t worth risking for thievery on even the worst days.
“I-I can’t—”
Her voice cracked with finality, and she collapsed against me, sobbing into my shoulder. I wrapped an arm around her, holding her steady as she wept, my eyes roving over Cyrus again.
They’d covered him in a blanket of deep purple velvet, the color of House Valin, a silver crest embroidered in the center. Beneath it, he lay as still as statue. They claimed he would never move again.
Eventually, Dahlia’s sobs subsided. She managed to shake off her momentary lapse in strength and raised her chin high as she stood straight beside me.
Silence descended between us and didn’t lift for the rest of my visit.
After some time, I began to feel as if I were intruding. It seemed clear Dahlia and Cyrus were communicating with the exclusion of me, not that Cyrus could speak to me even if he wanted to. So I muttered my goodbyes and left her to her sorrow.
I walked back to House Viper in a daze. The security at the stairwell didn’t give me as much trouble as I thought. My comings and goings had apparently been taken note of after so many months traveling back and forth between the First Ring and the Third.
Hands in my pockets, eyes downcast, my mind drifted far away.
I was deeply disturbed by what Dahlia had confessed.
Cyrus wanted her to end his suffering, to take his life, because he didn’t want to go on the way he was.
That meant that he saw no hope in recovery, and I imagined he would know his chances better than anyone.
I sniffed, wiping a tear from my cheek, and cleared my throat as I entered the estate grounds.
I stopped and stared up at the enormous mansion, and that same despair welled up within me, dousing my senses in something heavy, bitter.
Dahlia didn’t deserve this. Cyrus didn’t deserve this.
These Trials took from us more than they gave.
They turned mother against son—as in Dante’s case—they ruined friendships, they took lives.
And for what? No one passed them, no one won.
Bria had said that candidates in the Trials had the ear of the gods. That the Geist spoke through them and communicated with them to discuss matters of this world. If that was the case, I thought as I pressed on toward the house, I had to win.
There was quite a lot I wished to speak to the Geist about.