Then everything went black.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“I am victorious because I am worthy but I press on because I fear what may happen if I do not.”
-Journal of Harlowe; 350 Genesis Age
“Adrian, get up,” someone said. Their voice seemed to be coming from somewhere far away and closed off. Like from inside a cave or under water.
Adrian, wake up.
That voice was louder. It rose from within my very mind, pulling my body upward like a marionette, calling me to obey without considering the implications. My limbs were heavy, my chest was sore as if something of immense weight had been pressed upon it for an extended period. I twisted to the side and hissed. A cracked rib. At least one, maybe two or three. I breathed in slowly, filling my bruised lungs with precious oxygen. I opened my eyes and focused, channeling healing energy into everything that ached.
“Adrian, we did it,” the voice was back. It was noticeably ragged, hoarse, as if its owner was struggling to breathe as well.
I turned to find Dante staggering toward me from his own metal tube a few yards away and glanced around. We were back in the tunnel. I didn’t remember crawling into the tubes. I didn’t remember finding the rings. I didn’t remember hardly anything at all.
Dante reached me. He held up my arm and gestured. I blinked once, twice, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness, then froze. Just below the elbow of my right arm was a brand, a new one, still red and irritated. The ninth mark.
“We—” I shook my head as if that action alone could clear away the confusion. “We passed? How did we pass?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.”
I frowned. “But that means…”
Dante nodded.
“We’ve done it,” he said, smiling and exhaling deeply in relief. It was almost like he was breathing for the first time. “It’s done. It’s over. It’s all over. No matter what happens in the tenth Trial, we’ve done it, Adrian. We’re leaving.”
Leaving. He wanted to leave.
I blinked at him, dumbfounded. Of course he did. How had I not seen that before? Dante had grown up under the care of a grandfather who loved conditionally. His entire self-worth had been reduced to his probability of success and, past that, his use for reproducing a new generation of candidates. He’d learned that failure was unacceptable and trying didn’t matter; only winning did. He equated love with obedience and doubt with betrayal. For all his bluster, for all his arrogance, he was just as blind as the rest of them. And worse, willfully so.
I’d spent two Trials now, the third and the ninth, being slowly crushed to death under one thing or another. Whether it was a mountain’s worth of snow or an invisible gravitational force, the pressure alone had been unbearable. Had Dante lived his whole life feeling like that?
I opened my mouth to ask him, but an image flashed in my mind of a woman struck to the ground, beaten senseless by religious zealots and unapologetic tyrants.
I shook my head slowly, backing away from him. Burdened by a traumatic childhood or not, he wasn’t who I thought he was. He was never going to be what I wanted him to be. He’d never intended to change anything, only to abandon everything the moment he was able. And I’d been his ticket out. His foolish, ignorant ticket out.
“Adrian…” he started. His tone shifted. His eyes narrowed in warning. But I knew him too well and anticipated the lunge before it came. I backpedaled, finally turning once I was far enough away and dashed for the exit to the tunnel, only to skid to a stop the moment the blinding light of day struck my retinas.
A massacre awaited me the likes of which I’d never seen in Sanctuary before. At least twenty dead, scattered about the lower deck only yards from the ninth tunnel entrance. Citizens in their dirty work clothes, still clutching their green banners, blood pooling from open gashes in their chests and necks.
Behind them, hanging in the air from hastily constructed nooses, hung the woman and the two men in bright white robes, the ones who’d come to worship us, or rather, what we represented. Their robes were stained crimson, blood dripping onto the stone below them. They’d been put to death for the crime of believing in something different.
Bile burned the back of my throat, but I could not look away. I gazed at them, chest heaving, eyes prickling.
“What—”
I saw them then. A line of priests in robes of varying bright colors and the brilliant white of the acolyte stood arrayed before me, with Cosmo in the center. He was flanked by the leaders of House Avus and House Lynx, both of whom wore solemn frowns. I blinked, eyes darting between them and down the line.
“Congratulations, girl,” Cosmo sneered, nodding in the direction of the ninth ring tattooed around my arm. I struggled to maintain eye contact with him with the bodies of his victims all around me. He may not have ended those lives himself, but his fervent belief in the religious machine which cut them down had allowed it the privilege of doing so. “You’ve passed, I see. And likewise, you’ll do the same with the tenth.”
“You can’t possibly know that disappearance means success,” I snapped. He frowned, clearly displeased. “Just like you can’t possibly know that the Geist are even real or that they give a damn about any of us.”
A few scattered gasps rose up from the gathered ranks.
Cosmo merely shook his head and tsked.
