Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
“Our choices define who we are above all else. And yet, if the Geist are all-knowing, if they are divinity incarnate, do they not already know what decisions we will make? And if they know the course of our lives before we have lived them, did we ever truly have a choice at all?”
Itold Dante, after our ordeal in the fourth Trial, that I would never swim again.
He offered me a wry smile and said that swimming was an excellent form of exercise.
I grumbled something coarse and rude but, in truth, the activity was a lot more fun now that Dante and I had been granted the ability to breathe underwater.
Today, though, I’d taken a break from our unrelenting training regimen. Because today was an important day, a momentous occasion, a cause for joy the likes of which I hadn’t often had the opportunity for in my life. Today was moving day.
I stood outside of the enormous house on the western edge of the Second Ring which my family had been granted following my success in the fourth Trial.
It was old, a relic of a time long past when the last ancestor of some ancient line had died childless and alone.
It had been abandoned for years but well maintained by the servants and staff from the lower rings that filtered through here through the years, so it was nearly immaculate regardless.
An iron gate lined the grounds which I hadn’t yet gained the courage to slip inside of, afraid that, the moment I unlatched the gate, it would all simply fade away into the void and reveal itself to be some cruel joke by the rich and powerful.
Though even they couldn’t disobey the rules imposed by the Geist.
I was distracted from my silent reverie, staring at the gargantuan stone facade, by a giggle.
I looked up to find a younger girl, likely a teenager, grinning at me over the hedge between her house and my new home.
Her smile broadened when we made eye contact.
She tucked a strand of her strawberry blonde hair behind her ear and turned her freckled face away sheepishly.
I smiled back at her, wondering if I should introduce myself, but approaching footsteps snagged my attention.
My brothers walked down the street, arms loaded with torn boxes of personal belongings and family memorabilia.
My mother trailed after Warren, chiding him for how much he shook the box in his hands which apparently held her best dishes.
Behind the three of them marched a long line of grinning, chattering Third Ringers.
Their clothes were dusty, and they wore the garb of their various trades, aprons around waists and pin cushions tied to wrists, but they were all smiling, lively, happy.
The Second Ringers passing by on their morning walks stopped to sneer and gawk, wrinkling their noses at the display, but my family hardly noticed, and none of the others paid them any mind either.
“Adrian,” my mother squealed when she was close enough to see where I stood by the gate. She rushed forward, arms outstretched, and wrapped me in an enveloping embrace, squeezing tighter than necessary.
I peered over her shoulder to the hedge where the girl had been, but she was gone.
“We’re so proud of you,” my mother exclaimed. “So very proud! I can hardly believe this is real, us moving like this. It’s going to be strange, you know. It’s going to take some work to make it feel like home but well—”
She faltered. She’d stopped talking long enough to turn and take in the house that would become her home. Her jaw slackened as her eyes widened.
“Is this ours?”
Pleased to actually be able to answer one of her questions, I nodded.
But she shook her head, stepping away.
“No,” she muttered. “Oh no. Adrian, dear, this is too much.”
“I didn’t pick it, mom.” I grasped her shoulder to steady her. “It’s what they had available. It’s been a while, you know, since they’ve had to make these arrangements.”
She nodded, almost absentmindedly, before she began ordering Warren and Maurice around. “Warren, take that box directly to the kitchen. Don’t dawdle. Maurice, we’ll see where we want to put that—”
“Hi.” Someone whispered from behind me. I whirled around. It was the girl from before with the strawberry hair. She grinned at me again, her brown eyes wide. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“I’m not—” I cleared my throat. “You didn’t.”
Her smile broadened.
“You’re even prettier than they said,” she whispered dreamily.
I smiled in return and reached for the lilies planted just outside the gate. I plucked one and tucked it behind her ear.
“Beauty isn’t rare,” I told her, smoothing her hair over the stem of the flower. “But courage is.”
“Come inside, you dolt!” Warren shouted from the house. He grinned at me like a mad man from the doorway. I turned back to the girl, gave her a wink, and strode through the gate, up the steps, and into my family’s new home.
I stepped into a foyer twice the size of our kitchen back in the Third Ring.
My jaw dropped as my eyes followed the mosaic tile floor to the base of the elegantly carved wooden stairs which rose in a spiral to a massive landing overlooking the entryway.
The ceilings must have been twenty feet high. I blinked, astonished.
This was the foyer of my family’s house. It wasn’t the expected opulence of the First Ring or the extravagance of the Minor Houses. But it was better than all of those combined. Because this was ours. This belonged to us.
“My celebrity little sister,” Warren teased, clapping me hard on the back. “You’ve got a fan club wherever you go now, huh?”
“We’re Second Ring now,” I said, more so I could believe it than to remind him. “All of us.”
“On the outside, maybe,” Maurice mumbled as he passed.
“And not you,” Warren added, raising a brow. “Since you insist upon staying in that shitty apartment of yours in the Third Ring.”
“Harrison needs me,” I replied with a shrug. Warren nodded with a smile, but it was tense. My middle brother knew me better than anyone, and he knew exactly what I wasn’t saying. I would never get rid of that apartment, not if I didn’t have to.
It was the only thing I had left of him.
“By the Geist!” Our mother screeched from down the hall.
We glanced at each other once before bolting toward her voice.
With the Trials and the daily life of the Third Ring, my brothers and I had grown to expect danger lurking around every corner, seeping into our lives from every angle.
So it was no surprise that we all came crashing into the kitchen, following our mother’s distress.
But our wild, darting eyes only found her on a step stool, reaching up into one of the higher cabinets and examining a fine porcelain plate with wide eyes.
“I suppose they’ve stocked it all for us,” she said wistfully, glancing down at the remnants of our old tableware.
All our shoulders fell as we realized there was no danger.
In fact, by the looks of the immaculately decorated kitchen with cabinets fully stocked with plates, glassware, and all manner of utensils and a pantry and refrigerator that—to Maurice’s surprise as he opened them—were packed full as well, it almost felt comfortable, like there would never be danger again.
As my brothers settled into pulling various snacks from the cabinets and staring down at the packaging which they’d never seen before, I rejoined my mother who stood in the center of the kitchen, staring at all of the cabinets.
“Incredible,” she whispered.
“Mom?” I moved in front of her to ensure she saw me there. “I know it’s going to take some getting used to. But I’m happy that I can grant you all of this, because you deserve it. There’s no better mother in all of Sanctuary.”
Her eyes shone with tears, but she smiled up at me.
“I always knew you would be special,” she whispered. “They know it too, now.”
She gestured her head toward the window. I looked through it. A couple of Second Ringers peered in at us from the street, but once I spotted them they made a show of walking on, glancing every which way but at us, as if they’d never been looking in the first place.
“I saw the girl outside too,” she said, quietly. “How are you getting used to things, Adrian?”
“It’s strange,” I confessed. “In truth, I hadn’t noticed until today. I’ve hardly left the First Ring since Cosmo brought me there, only going down to the Third from time to time to check in on the apartment. Up there, no one stares, no one approaches me. I’m not all that special. But here…”
“You’re special everywhere, Adrian.” My mother grasped my hands in her own.
“You always have been. They’re finally seeing it now because of the Trials, but I’ve always known.
And now…you’ve passed the fourth Trial. No one has done that since that boy’s mother, and even she didn’t do it before her twenty-third birthday. ”
Myrine, Dante’s mother, that’s who she spoke of. She’d failed the fifth and was the only one to even get that far in centuries. And I was two years younger than she’d been when she’d passed the fourth. Dante had just turned twenty-two. I would soon.
It was incredible how far we’d made it in such a short time, if I was being honest, but it was also fragile, and I feared, deep down, that the success we’d experienced was short-lived at best. We could fail any moment, and people would lose interest. But at least now, no matter what happened next, my family was secure.
I’d elevated our position in a way that could never be taken from us.
“By the way,” my mother turned to wash the dishes she’d brought with her in the new sink, “speaking of birthdays, I’m planning on throwing you a party. Both to celebrate your turning twenty-two and your success in the Trials. I want you to let that doddering old fool know you’ll be attending.”
I smiled. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t need—”
The doorbell echoed off the cavernous walls of the house. We all froze.