He blinked at me. “What?”
“Did you know? Did you know that we don’t come back after the tenth Trial, that no one ever comes back if they’re successful?”
Dante’s shoulders fell, his anger deflated.
“Is that what this is about?” he asked, almost irritated.
“You knew,” I shouted, pointing my finger. I jabbed him hard in the chest. “You knew this whole time, and you knew I didn’t?”
“Adrian, please—“
“You’re unbelievable! Your whole family is just—this is unreal. It’s true what they say about you. The Deckers, the Third Ringers, they all say it. The Major Houses are crazy, they’re certifiably insane. They’d sell their own children if it meant pleasing their absent gods. And now this?”
“I thought you knew! You’ve been studying all the old stories with Bria, spending countless hours sifting through all those books with Milo. How was I supposed to know you’d entered the most famous competition in Sanctuary without understanding how it ended?”
“You know me. You know I never would’ve come this far if it meant abandoning everyone I’ve ever loved in the end.”
“Everyone?”
The question hung between us. I blinked at him, caught off guard by his asking it. He was still seething, that ever present rage simmering just beneath the surface, but there was something else in his expression now. Hurt. It cut me like a knife.
“Dante,” I said his name in a whisper. “A girl like me isn’t supposed to make it this far. I’m not even supposed to still be in this. I got my family the advancement they needed, the highest advancement they can attain. Why would I fight to make it to the tenth just to be ripped away from them? No. No, thank you. I’m done, Dante. I’m finished.”
I turned on my heel and strode back toward the house.
“They’ll Cull you.”
I froze. There wasn’t a trace of anger in his voice, not anymore. In fact, there hadn’t been any emotion in his tone, like it was no more than a cold, hard fact.
I turned back to him. “Excuse me?”
“They’ll Cull you,” he repeated, voice lower this time. “Haven’t you ever wondered why hardly anyone is walking around Sanctuary with super strength or the ability to breathe underwater? Not even enhanced eyesight or a great sense of smell? People have made it that far, at least, in the last few decades.”
“…I don’t…what?”
“It’s because they get Culled. Nearly every single one of them. Haven’t you—” His voice broke and he looked away from me. The way the moonlight caught his face as he turned made me think, for a moment, that tears were gathering in his eyes. “You’ve never asked me what happened to my father.”
I blinked. He was right. I hadn’t. I’d assumed it had been none of my business. As in everything with Dante, we were always there for one another but never delved any deeper into the relationship than we had to. I’d thought it had been out ofa mutual understanding, that he’d known that some things were simply too painful for me to talk about, and I was expected to do the same for him. But apparently, he’d been avoiding those difficult discussions in an effort to keep me at arm’s length, to avoid getting to know me so well that I became less of an asset to him and more of a liability. He’d failed. I could tell by the look in his eyes, by the way he held me at night. Dante of House Viper had let himself care for me.
“They Culled him,” Dante said, though he couldn’t bear to look at me. “He made it to the fifth Trial, still connected to my mom, so they Culled him. The connection was severed the moment he entered that swirling dark mass. She hasn’t been able to communicate with him since. I don’t know why she wasn’t Culled too. She says she’s still here to be punished. That she did something the Geist are punishing her for. I don’t know. I just—
“It’s too late, Adrian. Don’t you see that? It’s too late for us. We quit now and one of us gets Culled. It might be you. It might be me. It might even be both of us. But be honest. Could you live with yourself either way?”
It was my turn to look away. I hated the points he was making, I hated how much sense they made, and I hated that I hadn’t noticed the pattern on my own.
“So we go on to the tenth, and both of us disappear?” I asked. “Is that any better?”
“It has to be. Doesn’t it?” Dante blinked away the unshed tears. “The Culling is a mark of failure for people unworthy of the Trials. But making it to the tenth…whatever comes after that has to be better. We wouldn’t fight through the Trials toward a victory that brings us nothing but pain and suffering. It makes no sense.”
“You have no idea,” I exclaimed, throwing my arms up in exasperation. “You know even less about the tenth Trial than youdo about the Culling or any of the others. You have no idea what will happen to us.”
“It’s the Trials or the Culling, Adrian.” He shook his head. “It’s been that way since the moment we took our Oaths and found each other in that cold maze. I think we should take our chances with victory.”
“But…” My own voice cracked at the momentous decision before us.
He placed his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes.
“We don’t know,” I forced out, my voice humiliatingly small.
