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 andtaking 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.
Chapter Thirty-One
“My faith was dead, my hope was gone
But then they called for me.
My mind was troubled, my heart was hard
But my eyes were made to see
A place of truth, a place of love
A place with sovereign beauty
For the Verdunn, for a new home
They call it Sanctuary.”
-Poet Iris of House Chasina, 812 Age of Sanctum
“Still standing, then.”
I jumped. I’d had my nose buried in a book full of words I could hardly read for the past two hours. It gave me an excuse not to talk to anyone, to sit alone with my thoughts in the middle of the day and look like I was doing something worthwhile so Dante wouldn’t drag me away for training or Myrine wouldn’t give me her disappointed, accusatory head shake. But if anyone had been watching, they would have noticed that I hadn’t turned the page in those two hours. So lost in thought was I, that Milo sitting beside me nearly gave me a heart attack.
“Sorry,” he said with a grin.
I sighed and set the book down. “You nearly killed me.”
“Wow, to think a girl who survived eight Trials could be killed by a whisper in a library.” He snorted.
I narrowed my gaze. “What are you doing here? How did you get in here?”
Typically, every major house’s library was reserved for family members and privileged guests only. They guarded their secrets like they guarded their wealth, so Milo, a young man from House Avus, in the Viper family library posed a lot of questions.
“Cosmo gave me permission,” he told me with a shrug. Milo laid out all of the books he must have gathered from the shelves on the table. I stared at them, stunned. Ancient tomes, every one of them.
“And why would he do that?” I asked carefully.
“Maybe because I claimed to have exhausted my own library in my search to assist you and Dante in your next two Trials.” He smirked.
I looked at the book nearest me and held it up with a raised brow. I wasn’t certain howViper & Valin: A Hero’s Tale of Conquestwas going to give us any information on the coming Trials.
