“I won’t sit here and have my authority questioned by an illiterate peasant.” Cosmo spat on the last word, his eyes boring into mine, baiting me to rise to the challenge. But I’d already won.
His family was horrified, staring between us in abject terror. But they’d heard me. And they’d seen their patriarch lose all semblance of control, had watched as he debased himself by resorting to pathetic name calling. Because I was right. He knew it, and soon, they would too.
The rest of dinner passed in tense silence. I excused myself early and made an attempt to retreat to my room for some solitude. Unfortunately, Dante had other ideas. He followed me straight from the dining room and pushed himself between me and the door before I could open it. He stood directly in front of me with his arms crossed and jaw clenched, my door at his back.
“What were you thinking?” He hissed, narrowing his gaze just as his grandfather had done. His fists dropped to his sides, clenching in barely restrained rage. “How could you speak to him like that, Adrian? Do you know how angry he is? Do you understand the enemy you’ve just made?”
“I have nothing to lose.”
He hesitated, blinked. “What?”
“I never expected advancement for my family. I never anticipated success. And it‘s not like my family can fall lower in society. Our only threat is the Culling at this point. Everything we’ve accomplished in the Trials is already more than I ever dared to dream of.” I pushed past him to open my door and slipinside. As expected, he followed. I glanced over my shoulder. “But he needs this. Desperately. You all do.”
He stared at me, stunned. I saw the hesitation there, the curiosity. Good.
“All Cosmo wants is respect, power. But in order to secure such things, he has to justify your family’s station above all others. Your family cannot simply keep riding the coattails of long-dead ancestors. He needs a success. He needs you. And me. More than we need him. And he knows it.”
“Adrian—“
“Your mother was right.” I closed the distance between us so he understood what I was about to say was important. “And you were too. I told you I could do this.”
He raised his chin, thoughtful.
“We’re partners now, Dante. In the Trials and in everything else. I’m not asking for the same relationship you had with Olympia, whatever that was. I’m not even asking to be your friend. I’m asking for your support. And in turn, you have mine. What I did tonight was my effort at proving that to you.”
“Embarrassing my grandfather in front of my entire family was proving your loyalty?”
“Do you think I haven’t noticed the way you shrink in his presence?”
His jaw tensed and he looked away from me, clenching his fists at his sides. I restrained the urge to sigh. I didn’t want to press, but I had to. He needed to understand.
“You become a different person, Dante. You turn into the child they raised, not the man you could be. You see yourself as nothing more than fodder for the gods. You said it yourself. They don’t expect you to win. They’re already disappointed. They’re already counting you out. But you’re not out.Weare not out. So stand up for yourself, if nothing else, and show them the candidate you already are.”
Something changed in his expression. He was trying his best not to show that I’d gotten to him, but I could see it in his eyes, the ignition of determination, the fight that had gone out of them every time his mother walked into the room or his grandfather called his name.
He thought for a moment, mostly scrutinizing me, then he raised a brow.
“Not bad, Third Ring,” he said coolly.
“I’m with you, Dante.” I held out a hand. “Are you with me?”
“I’m with you, Adrian,” he said with a wicked grin and a firm shake of my outstretched hand. “Don’t fuck this up.”
Chapter Twelve
“The crushing weight of emptiness, the terror of wasted time, these are the horrors which await you in the Third Trial.”
-Hesperus, Hero of House Viper, on the Third Trial; 391 Genesis Age
The metal tube halted, slamming me against its hard sides just as it had done before. I muttered a curse and rubbed my right shoulder, doubting I would ever get used to the sensation of hurtling through the darkness of these impossibly deep tunnels. But even colliding against the cool, curved metal wasn’t as bad as what happened right afterward. The bottom dropped out beneath me and deposited me unceremoniously in the middle of the Third Trial.
I hissed as I rose, massaging the same knee I’d slammed into the first time. The metal tube whizzed away several feet above me. I grumbled a curse and glared at the passing transport before turning to locate my partner.
Dante was already here. This time, for the first time, I could see him right at the beginning.
We were in the center of an enormous chamber. The walls were an ordinary, glossy gray stone. The ceiling was approximately thirty feet high with metal beams that almost looked like pipes and spanned horizontally from one side to the other. Littering the smooth stone floor around us were rocks of varying sizes, some as big as boulders, others mere pebbles, a wasteland of bits and pieces of dense stone. At the heart of the chamber was a platform roughly half the height of the room itself, like a perfectly square tower jutting from the center of the room and rising high above us. On top of it sat a thin pedestal and the familiar glowing rings, hovering and turning slowly in midair. They blazed crimson and, encased in a thick glass box, cast a daunting bloody pall over the room.
“Adrian,” Dante said.
