There was something so honest in his words, a vulnerability he’d never shown me before. He’d hinted at it, the fact that he wasn’t as much of a willing participant in this theocratic house of cards that I assumed a First Ring heir would be. He’d told me he wasn’t devout, that he didn’t care if I cursed the gods, had never shown any level of piety that was even close to his grandfather’s or cousin’s. Dante had given me every opportunity to see how different he was from the rest of them, and yet, I hadn’t.
Until this moment, until I listened to him belittle everything his ancestors had worked for, until he claimed he would rather never have a family at all than to subject them to the will andwhims of these gods, I hadn’t believed he couldbedifferent. But now, I saw it.
I took a breath.
“We will,” I vowed, my voice low as I peered out at the whole of Sanctuary far below us.
He snorted again.
This time, I was the one who bumped his shoulder.
“I mean it.”
He raised a brow.
“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.” I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t bear to. I just stared down at the servant he’d been watching, returning from the chute and attending to his duties at the estate, as I spoke softly. “I used to think you all had it so easy up here. And you do, comparatively, but everything with your grandfather and Olympia, all of the pressure from your mother, it—I just…Sanctuary sucks.”
He snorted again.
“Sanctuary sucks,” he repeated in agreement.
We simply smiled at each other and settled in atop the pinnacle of the First Ring to watch the sunset away from Cosmo, Myrine, Olympia, and all the other privileged ones who expected things from us we weren’t ready to give.
Chapter Fifteen
“We are all precious to the Geist but none are more precious than those who attempt to join them.”
-Theory of the Trials; 952 Age of Sanctum
Four months later, I wondered if I would grow gills at any moment.
Dante and I were spending more time in the pool than out. The pads of my fingers were constantly pruned. Just like the strength Trial, it seemed to be unspoken knowledge that the fourth Trial had something to do with swimming. Every time I thought too much about what it might be, I remembered Dahlia dragging Cyrus’s limp form out of the fourth tunnel, soaking wet, and I quickly moved my thoughts along to something else.
I’d become a veritable fish these past months and had begun outpacing the younger kids in the pool. Nearly five months couldn’t possibly measure up to Dante’s lifetime of swim training, but I was confident enough that I no longer waited for my partner to join me if I arrived at the Mitte first for our training.
He was impressed, though he would never say so, and I was proud at my ability to pick up such a foreign skill so quickly.
We hadn’t spoken of what had almost happened between us that night at Cosmo’s party. His grandfather’s vulgar announcement had given us both a lot to think about regarding our mutual attraction. We were both stubborn enough to avoid caving to our baser urges simply to spite the Viper patriarch, but that left a lot of pent up frustration we each had apparently determined to work out in training. Needless to say, my ass hit the dirt more times than I could count during those four months.
We still saw Olympia on a nearly constant basis. She and her partner had passed the third Trial during the months we’d been training for our fourth, so they too were in the pool nearly every waking hour of the day. We were the only two pairs remaining at this level of the Trials. Everyone else had failed the second or the third or hadn’t tried either yet. For the most part, she avoided me, and I avoided her, though we shot each other glares from time to time when our partners weren’t looking.
The way she watched after Dante when she thought I couldn’t see her, eyes wide and jaw slack like a lost puppy who’d been kicked by its master but just wouldn’t take the hint, irritated me.
Olympia’s partner, Luca, was nice enough. He was the reigning champion of the Mitte’s insanely complex obstacle course. I assumed Milo had told him about me after Cosmo’s party because he seemed to go out of his way to be friendly any time he saw me at training, despite the glares he earned from his partner for doing so.
Milo himself had become somewhat of a fixture around House Viper as well. While I’d moved on with Bria from classes with the children to private tutoring in reading comprehension, Milo came to teach me the stories and the histories that weren’t strictly religious. He brought ancient historical texts from the libraries of House Avus and guided me through passage afterpassage, always making me promise not to tell anyone that he’d borrowed the books before he left for the evening.
Bria worshipped the Geist. She taught me songs and passages from their Sacred Texts and promised blessings to follow studies. Milo had no such compulsion. He was religious to an extent, but he was also dubious. He questioned the nature of the Geist, the truth of the heroes, the plight of our kind. He asked me what I thought the Culling was, a question that I’d always privately wondered but only dared to voice aloud on that day I’d exploded at some innocent Second Ringers and Cyrus had to drag me away. Thinking of Cyrus and Darius had made me so despondent, Milo had ceased to mention the annual disappearances and stuck to legends and academic study instead.
He didn’t have to teach me. No one had asked him to. But he seemed to feel a personal responsibility to educate anyone he deemed lacking and, I liked to hope we were becoming friends.
It felt strange to be making a friend again. I felt almost guilty, as if I wasn’t honoring Darius’s memory in the way I’d set out to. But I had to remind myself that it would be uncharacteristic of Darius to expect me to remain friendless forever.
When I emerged from the Mitte one day after a particularly invigorating training session, leaving Dante behind as he’d claimed to want more weight training—as he always did now that we’d been gifted the Blessing of superior strength—Milo sat outside, waiting for me. He’d plunked down on a bench nearby, an open book propped up on one leg. Milo grinned when he saw me. He closed his tome and jogged over.
“How was it?” he asked the same way he did every day.
“I’m getting better at holding my breath.”
