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 themost 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 worshippingus.”
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 youmean 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 fulfillhisdreams, 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?”
His tone suggested I might just be the dumbest person in Sanctuary.
“Ah yes, the Geist,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “How could I have forgotten? The center of our lives. The ones who gave us the pit of snakes and the wall of knives. Such merciful gods!”
“Adrian, stop it,” he hissed.
