Linked, he’d said. That was what had happened to us in that strange labyrinth of invisible doors and burning rings. I understood so many things at once, but just as many new questions replaced the ones answered. Though I knew one thing for certain, one thing for now, and that was all that mattered in the moment.
We’d passed the first Trial.
Chapter Six
“Train your children in the way of the gods, raise them up to be worthy of Their presence, remind Sanctuary of the Greatness within us, of the might and power of the High Houses. For if we continue to fail in the Trials, we continue to fail the Geist themselves.”
—Spoken in Sermon by High Priest Theron of House Lynx, 1,879 Age of Sanctum
The band on my tricep had solidified, widened, and turned black overnight. I couldn’t stop staring at it in the mirror. I turned sideways, scrutinizing the new superficial addition to my body. I’d seen the brands before, of course. Warren had one; just one. Others had more. Dahlia had three and would soon have four. But it almost didn’t feel real, having one of my own.
“Vanity doesn’t suit you, little sister,” a familiar voice spoke abruptly from the doorway. Warren leaned against the threshold, a taunting grin on his lips.
I sighed and turned away from the mirror. My cheeks burned at the embarrassment of being caught as I lowered my sleeve back over my shoulder.
I’d chosen to stay with my mother after the Trial. I told myself it was the proper thing to do, to inform them all of my success in person, and then it would be foolish to walk all the way back to my apartment so late when there was already a bed always open for me here. But the truth was, I still wasn’t ready to go back. Not yet.
“I can’t get used to it,” I muttered as I sat on the edge of my bed and bent over to pull on my socks.
“The bar?” He nodded toward my brand, just visible beneath the hem of my sleeve. I nodded back. Warren stepped into my room, crossing the small space in a few long strides, and plopped down beside me. “I know what you mean. I couldn’t help staring at it too, at first.”
His face became an unreadable mask of sorrow, the same way it always did when he spoke of the Trials. I’d known why before, but now, having gone through the ordeal myself, being linked with another in the same way he had, I truly understood.
I stared at the floor. We’d never talked about it before. The Oath kept us from speaking of the specifics even now, but it felt unacceptable to move away from the topic this time, to avoid the discussion given my newfound awareness.
“Did she suffer?” I asked, my voice small and quiet in the stillness of the room.
Warren hissed more than inhaled, and I knew he’d closed his eyes without even looking over at him. He didn’t answer, and I didn’t push him to. Feeling every ounce of Dante’s frustration, his fear, his irritation—even his courage—like a dull but ever-present ache in the back of my skull was still fresh in my mind.
I hadn’t felt his emotions since last night during the first Trial, nor had I heard a word from him through our connection, but the link was still there. I couldsensehim on the other side of it as if he wasn’t purposefully pulling on the string that connected us but tugging on it involuntarily, almost imperceptibly, as he wentabout his day. He was an appendage I thought nothing of, a limb I never used, but if he were to be suddenly cut away, I would probably never be the same. It was strange, an odd sensation that I hadn’t gotten used to, and I couldn’t imagine I ever would.
But now that I felt it myself, I could finally understand the loss Warren had suffered.
He’d made it through the first Trial, which meant he’d been linked to his own partner. Anna.
I remembered her vaguely. It’d been years since I’d seen her last, on the eve of their victory. Her Third Ring family came to our home. Anna hugged my mother and introduced her parents, who stood to the side, beaming at their daughter’s success. We hadn’t known them well before, though we’d knownofthem. Anna’s mother had worked in the same seamstress shop as my mother for a time, but our families had never been close. Not until that day.
Warren had watched her laughing with our mother, his eyes bright and his smile permanently affixed to his face. I hadn’t understood it then, this connection. I couldn’t have known what they’d been given. Maurice said it was love. He made fun of Warren for it until he punched Maurice in the stomach so hard, Maurice couldn’t speak. I’d laughed at the taunt, as well as the punch, and thought little of it. If Warren had wanted to fall in love, he’d been well within his right to do so. And I liked Anna.
A month later, when Warren and Anna were poised to begin their second Trial, when the entire community was slapping him on the back and wishing him well, Anna died.
We’d been eating dinner, my whole family. Warren had been unusually quiet that evening. It had seemed as if he were simply lost in thought. We’d all chalked it up to nerves about the second Trial and the anxiety he must have felt the closer it came. Maurice had been telling a story, laughing about something one of the other men in town had told him, when Warren shot to hisfeet. He’d rammed the table with his knee, spilling soup out of his bowl and across the rough hewn wood.
He said one word, one single word, then he was gone.
“No.”
The way he’d said it—I’d never heard a voice so stricken, so full of unrestrained sorrow, so fearful. He’d stormed from the house and into the downpour.
The gales whipped our shutters against the windowpanes all night. I’d taken a bucket into my room to catch the leaks. A small, metal thing my mother had gotten from one of the gardeners before they could throw it out. We’d scattered other buckets around the living room, too. I’d been laying on my bed, arms folded against my stomach, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the sharpping, ping, pingof water dripping into the bucket beside me when the front door slammed closed.
Hurried footsteps crossed the living room floor, and Maurice bellowed, “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Warren sobbed loudly enough to overpower the rain. I’d never heard such a sound before, least of all from my lighthearted, carefree, and optimistic middle brother. It was guttural, as if someone had torn him open and wrenched out his guts.
I should have gone to him. I could have joined my mother where she’d knelt on the floor, crying with him and attempting to mutter words of comfort as Warren smashed one of the dining room chairs. Maurice had pushed him against the wall, restraining him, trying to keep him calm. But I couldn’t. I was frozen, eyes wide as I listened to the commotion below.
I stayed in my room, pressing my face into my pillows and covering myself up with my blanket until I could only hear the rain again.
