—The Rite of the Acolyte, 1,280 Age of Sanctum
“Again.”
I suppressed a groan and got to my feet, shooting a glare at the tall, lithe, golden-skinned woman standing a few meters away who glared back at me as if she longed for nothing more than to beat me senseless. A feat which her son was performing marvelously at. I turned back to Dante, every muscle screaming in agony, and raised my fists once more.
Straighten your back,he commanded, his lectures from within my mind matching his mother’s from without.Don’t hunch.
I swung partly out of frustration and partly out of an inability to concentrate whenever he was in my head. He ducked and kicked out a foot to sweep my legs. I dropped like a rock, cheek pressed against the dirt for the hundredth time today. I wouldspend the evening picking fine gravel fragments from my elbows and kneecaps, just as I’d done every night for the past week.
“That’s enough,” Myrine sighed.
Dante’s posture relaxed, the strain in his taut muscles loosening until he stood at ease, hands clasped in front of him, chin up and jaw clenched in quiet obedience. It was so unlike the man I’d met during the first Trial that, despite spending every waking hour together since I’d arrived, I hadn’t gotten used to it. Myrine gave him a curt nod, and he relaxed his posture. Dante stepped forward and held out a hand to help me up. I shot him a glare and pushed up onto my feet alone.
He just shook his head.
Stubborn,he reprimanded.
Asshole,I spat back.
The corners of his lips quirked upward, and his green eyes shone in the morning light.
“Practicing will mean nothing if you can’t maintain your focus, Adrian,” Myrine said, her tone one of annoyed resignation, as always.
“I’m trying,” I hissed. I shot another glare in Dante’s direction and added nonverbally,It would be easier if someone left my mind alone.
“No matter.” His mother waved her hand in dismissal. “I believe Cosmo has something he intends to show you, Adrian. He is waiting for you in his study.”
I frowned, my attention snapping back to her. After a slight bow of my head, I left Myrine and Dante standing in the yard and climbed the stone steps to the back entrance of the enormous ancestral estate of House Viper.
Try not to callhiman asshole,Dante said, intruding into my mind once more.My grandfather doesn’t respond well to insults.
Want to take a bet on which one of us will insult the other first?
Dante didn’t reply but sent me a feeling of irritation instead. I couldn’t suppress my grin as I crossed the threshold.
Servants passing by paused in their duties to bow. My cheeks heated at the attention. One week as an invited guest, and I hadn’t gotten used to the way they treated me. I couldn’t imagine I ever would. I didn’t want to.
The only entertainment I’d found in the last seven days living amongst the highest rung of society was in training, goading Dante into annoyance and outright disrespecting Cosmo whenever possible. But it wouldn’t last. Eventually, the patriarch of this illustrious house would tire of my impertinence and find a way to make my life even harder than it was. Dante would tire of my sulking, or I would tire of his arrogance and the fragile, sardonic banter we’d built between us would fracture and fall away, leaving only the hatred and disgust. Myrine would give up on training a servant girl from the Third Ring. And we would fail. Maybe the second, maybe the third. It didn’t matter.
But until then, I had to live with them and do as I was told.Remember why you’re here, I told myself. I had to utilize their resources to train for these Trials, to be as successful as I could in honor of the only request Darius had ever made of me.
The First Ringers were doing this to please the Geist, but the only thing I wanted from those absent gods was my best friend back. And that was something they would never give.
I made my way through the labyrinthine halls which I’d already gotten lost in half a dozen times, up a set of stairs, then another, until I found the door to Cosmo’s study propped slightly open. The warm glow of candlelight illuminated the room beyond. I reached up and knocked against the hard mahogany, but the force of it pushed the door open anyway. I stood in the threshold, unsure if I should enter before beingaddressed. But a moment later, Cosmo looked up from his desk and raised a hand, gesturing for me to join him. So I did.
“How is your training going?” he asked, though he was hardly paying any attention to me at all. He was captivated with a letter which lay open on his desk written in some elaborate scrawl I couldn’t have read even if I’d wanted to.
“Your grandson kicks my ass every chance he gets.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” He removed his reading glasses and folded them before looking up at me. “He has a temper, and you are undisciplined.”
I frowned at the insult before realizing he hadn’t meant it as one. To him, it was a simple statement of fact.
He stood from his desk and turned around to face the bookshelf behind it. He reached up toward the top shelves, the sleeves of his cloak sliding down his arm but only to the elbow. I saw no bars there, not yet, but that wasn’t surprising. He would have had to complete at least five Trials for the marks to reach that far down. But ever since I’d discovered Myrine had completed four Trials before failing, more than anyone from their house had in centuries, I’d been curious about Cosmo. Unfortunately, he was never without his cloaks with the long, flowing sleeves.
“Ah, here it is.” He pulled a book from the shelf and faced me again. Cosmo placed it gently upon his desk, and I leaned forward to look at it.
It was, easily, the oldest book I had ever seen, not that I had seen many books before. The pages were curled and hardened from too many years of use, too much exposure to damaging elements. The cover was leather, peeling at the edges and coated in dust.
