Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
“It’s that mass, that swirling darkness. It reminds me of something but I can’t quite put my finger on it. It seems… familiar in a way. And it calls to me. It calls to all of us. But those who go into it never return again.”
The Deck was more crowded than I’d ever seen it.
Someone had graciously cleared a pathway from the First Ring down to the Deck and to the ninth tunnel.
If they hadn’t, I wasn’t convinced Dante and I would’ve been able to squeeze through the crowd enough to reach our next Trial.
As it was, the crowd had hardly allowed each other enough room to move.
Acolytes and priests were interspersed throughout, their eyes firmly on the gathered Third Ringers and Deckers rather than on Dante and me.
Something about that bothered me, but I was too distracted to question it.
“Adrian!“ someone screamed my name. A boy, I thought, but before I could spot him in the crowd, another called to me from closer, then another farther away.
“Ignore them,” Dante warned under his breath.
I bristled at his tone but kept walking.
Gone was the boy who’d kissed my hand in the backyard last night.
Gone was the man who’d declared his love for me and promised me forever, in whatever capacity it might come.
In his place was the partner who’d shown up at my doorstep this morning and announced there was no point in waiting any longer for the next Trial.
Hoping a lack of preparation might mean we’d lose, I’d agreed and slipped into the Trial uniform he’d brought with him from the estate before following him into the fray.
The crowd was pushing in closer now, and we seemed to be walking faster. I had the strangest feeling in my gut, like something was wrong.
“What—”
“Saint Adrian!” an overzealous woman cried, making a show of bowing low to the ground as we passed. “Saint Dante!”
I froze. The woman was clad in all white, a color typically reserved for the acolytes and their holy order. As she bowed, a few others stepped through the crowd to bow beside her, all of them wearing white, all of them crying out for Dante and I, calling us Saints.
I almost bit my tongue when someone shoved me hard from behind, and I stumbled forward.
“Move,” Cosmo growled from behind me, a hint of urgency in his tone.
But I couldn’t understand why. And where was Dante?
As I turned to look for him, a scream pierced the air, and all the people who’d gathered close in an attempt to get a glimpse of us started scattering chaotically in different directions.
I turned in the direction of where the chaos had originated. The woman in white lay face down on the cobblestones, bludgeoned and bleeding. My stomach turned. I lurched forward, instinctively wanting to help, but was pulled away by a firm hand on my shoulder.
Before I was forcibly turned back toward the tunnel, I caught a glimpse of what had occurred.
The white robed worshippers had fled, all but the unconscious woman who’d led them and two younger men who were being brutally beaten by small groups of three or four officers, their black uniforms stark against the morning sun.
Everyone else in the crowd had scattered and stood on the fringes of the Deck, watching in horror or pleading with the abusers to stop.
But the Fellowship either didn’t hear them or didn’t care.
And the acolytes standing behind them only watched on with grim expressions, making no move to stop the brutality.
Come on, Adrian.
In my shock, I’d forgotten to mentally shield myself from Dante. I cursed and put that barrier back into place. Had he sensed my horror and unease? Why hadn’t I sensed his? I turned to find him waiting for me, just up ahead at the entrance to the tunnel. I blinked. When had we come so far?
“What the hell was that?” I spat when I reached him.
“Come on, Adrian,” he repeated, out loud this time. “We need to go.”
He reached for me, but I pulled away.
“Not until you tell me what just happened.”
Dante sighed, a deep exhale full of sorrow and exhaustion. Then he looked up at something behind us and nodded.
Someone again shoved me forward, hard. It was an officer, the same as those beating the innocents on the Deck.
Why he was doing this? The officers of Sanctuary had lately begun to treat me as something like a deity myself.
They would never dare put their hands on me.
Unless, of course, someone was instructing them to.
Someone with even more power than I.
I looked behind the officer as he shoved me again. Cosmo followed close behind, his eyes narrowed and jaw clenched in the most dangerous expression I’d seen on the patriarch of House Viper’s face so far.
I understood.
Whatever was happening out there, whatever was going on back on the Deck, he’d known about it. Or, at least, he’d expected the possibility of it. He’d stationed those guards there himself, had probably even given them the order to use force.
“You’re just going to stand there and let other people fight your battles for you again?” I cried out to him, angry and—admittedly—afraid. “Not strong enough to get your own hands dirty, are you?”
We’d reached the metal tubes. Dante gave me one last look of warning before stepping silently into his.
I pushed back against the officers, lunging toward Cosmo, baring my teeth in my hatred.
But they pushed me backward, and I stumbled a few steps, my back against the door to the tube.
The tell-tale whoosh of it opening behind me rang in my ears, but I braced my hands on either side of the threshold, glaring at them.
With one hand, Cosmo parted the guards in front of him and took two steps forward so we were face to face. I raised my chin, jutting out my clenched jaw.
He simply pressed a hand to my chest and shoved me firmly into the metal tube.
The door slammed shut, and I was hurtling away toward the next Trial. Furious, I pounded on the metal and shouted at them, though I knew none of them could hear me, could even see me, anymore.
We landed on the side of a snowy mountain. I hardly noticed the terrain as I stumbled out of my tube, which appeared to have crash-landed, and cast my eyes about for Dante. I stormed over to him, prepared to demand answers.
“Before you shout at me,” he began, dusting the snow from his legs where he’d fallen, “you need to understand what happened.”
As much as I wanted to scream at him, I held my tongue and waited for what he had to say.
“After I left your house last night, I returned home to find the Tribunal gathered in the foyer of our estate. The Fellowship had raided an illegal gathering in the Third Ring of men and women worshipping us.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“It’s been happening for weeks now. They call themselves the Keepers.
They claim a new heroic age of champions is upon us and Sanctuary should bow to the ‘new gods’, as they call us.
They claim the Geist are dead and now Saints defeat their games to take their place.
My grandfather spread the word last night that we’d be doing our ninth Trial today.
He was hoping it would draw them out so they could be arrested.
Maybe the Fellowship got a little out of hand with their response.
They’ve been working long hours trying to find these zealots.
Violence was bound to erupt eventually.”
“They killed them, Dante,” I said, voice firm as the anger returned to me. I couldn’t get the image of red blood against white cloth out of my mind, of that woman beaten and murdered before all of Sanctuary.
My partner’s lip curled but, when he spoke, it wasn’t about the woman.
“My grandfather no longer trusts you, if he ever did,” he said.
“He thought you might skip out on the Trial today. He wanted to kidnap you, drug you, and shove you into that tube so you woke up out here. But I managed to convince him that whether he trusts you or not, I need you to trust me. Otherwise, we’d fail. ”
“Am I supposed to thank you?” I snapped.
“Adrian, you need to understand that I’ve never done anything I’ve done to hurt you or to take advantage of you.
In fact, I’ve protected you on more occasions than you even know.
Believe me when I say that my grandfather is a brutal man, and you mean nothing to him.
He’s ready and willing to dispose of you as it benefits him.
So far, it doesn’t. But that’s in large part thanks to me.
So no, you don’t have to thank me. But you’re welcome anyway. ”
Having said his piece, Dante determined the conversation to be over and turned to begin his ascent up the mountain. Not that we even knew that was what we were supposed to be doing. I guessed that even that wasn’t worth discussing, in his opinion.
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked, my voice raising to nearly a shout as I scrambled after him, tripping over myself in the deep snow.
“I never wanted this. I never needed this. You’ve been training for this your whole life.
The only thing I’ve been training for is living in poverty.
Surviving on the scraps your people leave behind, preparing for a life of hunger and servitude, rationing our hygienic rituals and trying to find belief in gods who’ve spurned us.
Your grandfather took me from my home to fulfill his dreams, Dante.
Not yours, and not mine. He had no right. ”
“I think you’ll find that Cosmo of House Viper has a right to just about anything he wishes.”
“Including bludgeoning an innocent old woman?”
“She was a heretic. A doubter. An unbeliever. An enemy of the faith.”
“The faith. Do you hear yourself right now? Where is this piety coming from?”
Dante sighed loudly and turned to face me. “Do you mean to tell me that after over a year of training with Bria, you still don’t grasp just how seriously the major houses take their religion?”