“I mean, obviously you’re an inconsolable child who needs babysat every minute of the day. And Adrian…” he looked my way and his gaze eased in a way I hoped Olympia couldn’t see. It wasn’t soft. Nothing about Dante was ever soft. But it wasn’t as sharp around the edges, it wasn’t as angry. As if my presence had somehow become calming for him.
“Do you love her?” Olympia asked.
Dante’s gaze snapped back to her.
“What?” he spat.
“Do you love her?” To her credit, Olympia held her ground. But the way Dante’s jaw tensed as he took a few rigid steps forward would have sent any sane person running. Not that they could outrun him.
“What matters, Olympia,” he began, his voice so low and cold, even I hardly recognized it, “is that I don’t loveyou.”
I hadn’t seen the knife before. Not while she attacked me. Not when I’d had her on the ground. Not even during the party when she’d glared at me from the shadows. But I saw it now; the flash of a blade caught the light. A millisecond before it mattered. But it was enough.
Somehow, it was enough.
Dante cursed. Olympia roared something unintelligible, and the enormous porcelain vase behind me shattered.
I looked down at my chest but saw nothing there. Literally. No knife, but also no torso. I held out my hands just as my fingertips began to reappear, then visibility spread from them into the rest of my body, bringing me back into the physical world.
Dante gaped at me, stunned. Olympia was on the ground, crying into her hands.
Officers spilled into the garden. They pulled her up and away from us. Cosmo bellowed nearby, demanding to know what had happened while partygoers gasped and whispered as they looked on. But I only saw Dante as he took a step toward me, grinning from ear to ear.
“You did it,” he whispered in awe. “The seventh blessing. You did it. You…shifted.”
Shifted. It seemed an apt term for what I’d done, considering the test which had granted us with it. I’d phased out of reality, dodging the knife Olympia had hurled at me. It had passedstraight through where I’d been standing. Dante laughing hysterically at my side, but I couldn’t join his mirth. If I hadn’t shifted, I’d probably be dead.
“Where are you taking her?” I called out to the guards dragging Olympia away. They had stopped to ask Cosmo for instructions.
“Adrian—”
I pushed past Dante and stormed up the path toward my would-be murderer.
“Adrian, let me get a handle on this, alright?” Cosmo attempted to calm me when I reached them.
“She tried to kill me!” I screamed, loud enough for everyone who’d come outside during the commotion to hear. More gasps and whispers arose.
Cosmo tried to calm them too, holding up his hands and smiling.
“It’s fine,” he called out easily. “It’s all under control. Please, go back inside and enjoy the festivities.”
“She tried to kill me,” I said again, stunned that no one else seemed to be concerned by that little detail.
“I said I would handle it, Adrian,” he growled through gritted teeth. Cosmo turned to the guards. “Take her home. In the morning, I’ll pay a visit to Nascha, and we’ll—”
“Home?” I bellowed in disbelief. “You’re sending herhome? You dragged Dahlia straight to the Deck, gathered the tribunal right away. You stripped her of her Ring!”
“Enough, Adrian.”
I stepped forward, right into in Cosmo’s face, jaw clenched and seeing red. “How many murderers roam free up here in the First Ring, Cosmo? Hm?”
His eyes widened. He opened his mouth, but Dante pulled me away from him.
“Calm down, Adrian. Just calm down. Everything’s okay. You’re unhurt. It’s fine. Just please—”
“It’s not fine,” I snapped. Cosmo and the officers stormed away with Olympia in their midst now that my fury was on my partner. “But you wouldn’t understand that, would you? Dahlia killed her friend out of mercy, and she was stripped of everything and everyone she’s ever loved. Your ex-girlfriend just tried to kill me in cold blood because you broke her heart, and all your supposedly judicial grandfather has to say is we’ll talk in the morning? I knew my life meant nothing to them, Dante, but to you?”
I wrenched my arm out of his grip and stepped back.
