“What was that?” I asked, stunned.
“The lantern, Adrian,” Dante reminded me. He stood first and offered to help me up. “We have to find the lantern.”
I nodded and accepted his hand, casting my eyes about in search of our constant, but I struggled to focus. That last shift, when I’d cracked the marble and we’d been tossed into that arena, it had felt different somehow. Wrong. Like we weren’t meant to have been there.
Like it wasn’t a part of this.
“There,” Dante cried.
I snapped out of it; the lantern hung high up in a tree. He gripped the trunk and began to climb. I went around to the other side and hauled myself up it as well. Whatever it was that we needed to do with this lantern, it was probably something we needed to do together.
At the top of the tree, when we’d finally reached the branch the lantern rested on, I’d begun to wonder why the world hadn’t yet shifted. Then Dante snatched the constant—and tossed it to the ground.
“Dante!” I shouted.
The lantern shattered on the grass below, and a ball of fire, five times the size of anything the lantern could have possibly contained, ignited and shot upwards. We raised our arms to cover our eyes against the blaze.
The branch we sat on had gone cold, very cold. I looked down. The bark of the tree was gone. I was holding onto some contraption of metal instead.
Slowly, we slid to the ground. Black tile, shiny but plain. Around us were metal contraptions that looked suspiciously like items we’d seen during the shifts. The helm of a ship, which could double as a farmhouse in a pinch. The tree hadbranches which could retract to form a simple post. Columns and makeshift tunnels littered the room, but in the center sat the rings, glowing with the same dim hue of the lantern. Not blue this time, but white.
We didn’t speak as we stepped forward and placed our arms through the rings.
Once we were branded, Dante gave me an exhausted nod of gratitude for a job well done, then turned to his metal tube to be transported home.
But I hesitated. Rooted in place, I scanned the room for anything that resembled the raised stands of an arena or a man with shining golden hair and piercing blue eyes whose voice had held no trace of a whistle.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Much knowledge can be saved in books. This is why I task my descendants with salvaging and protecting every written word they can. Someday, we will all need them again.”
-Journal of Harlowe, 350 Genesis Age
Istared at the painfully unfamiliar front door and took deep, steadying breaths. I needed to stop being so ridiculous. I was the candidate of the Third Ring, a guest of House Viper. I’d passed seven of the ten Trials. And yet, this felt like the most daunting task I’d faced yet.
“He’s just your brother,” I said aloud, chiding myself. “It’s just Warren.”
And Dahlia.
I closed my eyes, sighed, and knocked on the door.
When it swung open, my mother greeted me with a warm smile.
“Congratulations,” she said.
“Thank you,” I replied, smiling back at her. "Is Warren home?”
Her grin broadened, and she stepped aside. “He’s in the back, working in the garden. I’ll go and get him.”
I nodded and meandered toward the living room while my mother disappeared down the hall. I stepped inside the family room to wait, but I wasn’t the only one there.
Dahlia looked up from where she sat on the couch. She wore a simple gray sweater with a small, dark floral pattern and a pair of faded jeans. On her lap was a pair of my brother’s pants. In her hand, a needle and thread. She was the very picture of the dutiful, domesticated housewife. My heart clenched in my chest.
“Dahlia,” I said, voice cracking.
“Adrian,” she replied, but she looked away from me, back down to her work which she wasn’t very good at. Though I doubted that Warren minded a crooked stitch. “It’s good that you’re here.”
I just nodded and busied myself with looking everywhere else in the room that wasn’t her.
