Chapter Thirty #2
Dante went on and on. I simply sat down on one of the steps near the top, rested my elbows on my knees, and watched the pool of vipers beneath us grow steadily larger. Hissing filled the room, eventually drowning out Dante’s panicked rambling.
Perhaps I was tired. Maybe eight Trials was too much for a girl from the Third Ring.
Maybe the unfairness of the treatment of my people, which had become more than I could ignore just the previous evening, was finally getting to me.
Maybe this betrothal had done more substantial damage to my mental health, to my feeling of independence and autonomy than I thought.
Maybe Bria was right, and I simply wasn’t in the right headspace for this today.
Whatever it was, I felt reasonably confident that I wouldn’t be making it out of that nest of vipers.
And it felt like a fitting end. After all, this whole thing had started with my being tossed into a nest of them. It may as well end that way, too.
I chuckled as I leaned back on the staircase, propping myself up on my elbows and waiting for my end.
“What are you doing?” Dante snapped, horrified, from his place above me.
“Nothing,” I answered him. A strange kind of bliss wavered through me from saying the words aloud, a relief from the enormous weight on my shoulders I hadn’t known I was carrying. “I’m doing nothing, Dante.”
“What? Why?”
“Because there’s nothing we can do. You said it yourself.”
“Adrian, there’s a way out. There has to be. There are two more Trials. Other people have done it.”
I snorted. “Not for over a thousand years.”
He muttered a curse and resumed his frantic search for a solution. I just closed my eyes.
The pool of snakes below was higher now. They covered the first step. Just a few more minutes and they’d be at my feet. I wasn’t sure what would happen when they bit me. I wasn’t sure it mattered anymore.
But then I felt it. A light tingling on my sides, growing inward toward my spine.
Then my fingertips and spreading through my arms. I felt lighter, almost weightless.
I opened my eyes. Had I fallen into a dream?
My feet were no longer on the stairs. In fact, no part of me was touching the staircase anymore.
I hovered just a few inches above and rose higher still.
“Dante!” That small effort dropped me right back onto the stairs. “Oomph.”
“What?” he snapped, turning back to me.
“Watch,” I told him and I closed my eyes again.
The feeling was returned, biting at my sides and the edges of my body before being invited in. Once it spread to my core, I opened my eyes.
Dante staring at me, stunned. “How are you doing that?”
“I don’t know. I’m just—” I dropped back down again. Interesting.
“Adrian?”
Relax, I told him through our link. It seemed speaking took too much focus off the levitation trick, so it was our only way to communicate.
And sure enough, after a few seconds, I started to hover into the air again.
I grinned at Dante. You have to clear your mind, close your eyes, do nothing, say nothing. Don’t even move.
Adrian, there are hundreds of vipers crawling toward us, and you want me to do nothing?
Trust me.
My unspoken words hung in the air between us.
It was another test, I could see that now.
Staying calm under pressure, trusting your partner with your life, relinquishing control when the situation was out of your control.
It was about one of those things, maybe even all of them, I wasn’t sure.
But what I was sure of was that this would be the hardest Trial for Dante yet.
Adrian, this can’t be it. This wouldn’t be a whole Trial about doing nothing. That would be—
Then how else am I doing this?
He looked back up at me—and he had to look up because I floated two feet above his head, my whole body relaxed.
He opened his mouth to protest but another whoosh indicated a fresh round of vipers, and he roared in frustration.
Jaw clenched and brows furrowed, Dante closed his eyes but he was anything but calm.
You have to relax, Dante, I told him, trying to take on a comforting, gentle tone. Truly relax. Don’t focus on what you’re trying to do. Don’t try to do anything. Just relax. Drop your shoulders, unclench your jaw, relax your face. Just breathe. Breathe, and don’t think.
I could practically hear the gears whirring in his mind, cycling through a range of emotions. Frustration, denial, desperation. The longer he stood there, still firmly rooted to the ground, the more I started to suspect that this would be our last Trial.
Let go, Dante. Just let it all go.
I was nearly ten feet above him when his shoulders finally drooped and his feet left the top of the stairs. I grinned as he rose. He floated about five feet before he opened his eyes. Dante gasped, which dropped him back down two feet.
It’s okay, I reached out. It’s okay, Dante. Just keep breathing. Keep your eyes closed if you have to. Don’t think about it. Don’t worry about it.
I don’t understand. I don’t understand why we would have a Trial where the whole point was to just do nothing. It doesn’t feel right. It can’t be right.
You don’t understand it because you’ve never been out of control.
He opened his eyes and looked up into mine. I saw the question there.
Every aspect of your life, from how you spend your time to what you want to eat and when, you’ve had control over.
Maybe others controlled you too. Your mom making you train or your grandfather trying to decide your fate.
But you were the most privileged of our society, the most talented, gifted, the beloved.
You could have anything you wanted within reason and without question.
You never had to deal with the prospect of something being beyond your control.
You never had to go hungry or work for what you had.
I did. I had to learn, early on, that my life wasn’t always going to be what I wanted it to be.
That sometimes, certain circumstances are outside of my control.
And when they are, when that happens, you just have to let go.
His gaze softened.
This Trial isn’t about nothing, Dante. It’s about letting go. Something you’ve never had to do before.
He fell deep in thought, but I didn’t mind. It had the desired effect of keeping his mind occupied long enough for us to rise another twenty feet. Then twenty-five. Thirty.
Dante didn’t move again. He seemed to understand—now—that to keep rising, he needed to maintain a sort of weightlessness and any shifting of his body would call that weightlessness into question, which, at this height, could be catastrophic regardless of the growing pool of vipers.
But he still wasn’t relaxing. Every muscle in his body was tensed to stay in position.
He’d turned his focus, instead of a lack thereof, onto keeping completely still.
It wasn’t the intention of the Trial, I was sure, but it seemed to be working, so I didn’t call it into question.
I didn’t want to risk him dropping because he thought too hard about something I said.
We floated slowly to the very top where we placed our arms into the rings and had our brand burned into us. Our tubes came to meet us this time, and we strolled easily inside, spinning away back to Sanctuary and the crowd which awaited the news of another successful Trial.
“Thank you,” Dante said quietly in the dark tunnel as we walked out. “I never would have thought of that. Do nothing, give up control, to get out.”
I nodded but hesitated at the opening of the tunnel.
I could hear the crowd beyond, roaring excitedly as they awaited the results of our eighth Trial.
I looked down at the ring on my finger before turning back to face the dark tunnel behind us and taking a deep breath.
Dante took my hand. I glanced down at our entwined fingers, then looked up into his eyes.
He didn’t say a word. Those piercing green eyes met mine, and I felt everything he intended held within them. Comfort, security, understanding.
I’ll be there for you, Adrian, in whatever capacity you want me to be.
I remembered the words he’d spoken to me after we made our deal with his grandfather, after our betrothal was agreed to and I began wearing this ring on my finger.
He was trying. Truly trying. And though I knew our holding hands would signify something to the people awaiting beyond the tunnel that I wasn’t sure I was ready to begin displaying, I would try too.
For him. For whatever this was between us.
I pasted a victorious smile on my face and stepped into the light, my partner and fiancé at my side.
As the audience awaiting us cheered our victory, and Dante raised our held hands to the sky, I couldn’t stop thinking about what we’d just been through, about the eighth Trial itself.
That it was about relinquishing control, accepting one’s fate, doing nothing to have everything.
It was true, I was sure it was. And yet, that hadn’t been quite how I’d gotten to the conclusion.
A shiver went through me when I remembered why I’d truly laid down on those steps in the Trial and how ready I’d been to die.