“A bathhouse,” he said, and I looked over to where he stood, running a finger over the ancient depiction of the Geist named Deimos. “Like from the stories.”
His bright green eyes were shining, his lips parted in awe. I’d seen that look on Bria’s face before, when she spoke of the Geist. It was piety, it was zealot, it was unquestioning faith. It was a look Dante didn’t hold often but now, confronted with the evidence of some of those ancient tales, I supposed he couldn’t help himself.
I turned against it.
“Why are we here?” I asked, and his gaze snapped back to me as if remembering where we were and what we were supposed to be doing.
We stepped further into the chamber, toward the pool casting an eerie glow onto the surrounding statues, making theirexpressions appear evil, almost greedy, rather than placid. Were we supposed to just jump in? And for what purpose?
I stared into the depths of the pool. I couldn’t see the bottom.
“There.” Dante pointed behind us, to the far right side of the cavern. Carved into the rock was a door. It was made of brilliant, shimmering gold around the edges and clear crystal in the center. Behind it were the rings, glimmering faintly and hovering at shoulder height, as always.
We approached, but when Dante tried to open the door, it didn’t budge. He looked down at the handle—at the keyhole right below it.
We glanced back at the pool. So that was what we were swimming for.
“I’ll go,” Dante said, already peeling off his shirt and striding toward the pool. His broad, muscled back rippled in the light of the cavern as he bent to pull off his pants too, revealing the special swimming shorts Myrine must have left in his room this morning the same way she had with the skintight one-piece beneath my clothes. “I’m the stronger swimmer.”
I nodded. He wasn’t going to get any argument on that front.
“You stay up here and look around the statues. Maybe it’s not down there at all.”
I nodded again, but we both knew it was. It had to be. Why else would Cyrus had more or less drowned when he and Dahlia had attempted this Trial?
Dante bent his knees and dove forward into the pool.
I walked along the walls, checking every nook and cranny of the statues, their hands, their eyes, their mouths, but I kept an eye on the pool at my back, feeling more and more nervous with every second that passed that Dante didn’t resurface. We’d trained to hold our breaths for even longer in preparation for this Trial, but we had to be ready for anything.
Finally, thankfully, he emerged, gulping down air and swimming to the side. I rushed over to help pull him onto the stone floor as he shook his head. Droplets of cold water flew out of his slick dark hair as he raised his eyes to meet mine.
“It’s there,” he told me, dripping all over the already wet rocks. “At the very bottom. It’s in some kind of box. I tried to open it, but we have to hold three parts open while unlocking the top, so it requires both of us. And it’s bolted down, so we can’t bring it up with us, either.”
I nodded, already pulling off my own shirt.
“Adrian,” he gasped, still trying to catch his breath and shaking his head. I tossed my shirt aside, and his gaze snapped back to the water. “It’s deep. Really deep. I almost couldn’t do it myself.”
I frowned. If Dante, who had been training for the Trials his whole life, had struggled, I hardly had any chance.
Unless…
I finished undressing, tossing my pants on top of my discarded shirt, and turned. Clad only in the special emerald green swimming suit hugging my body from tight long sleeves down to a tapered arrow between my legs, I walked toward the nearest wall.
There was a statue there of a beautiful female Geist called Callidora, if the inscription was to be believed. I grabbed her by her flowing hair—and ripped her entire stone head from her body, courtesy of the superior strength the third Trial had granted me. I carried the heavy head back to where Dante sat recovering on the steps.
“I’ll hold onto this when I drop,” I explained. “That way, I’ll only have to swim back up.”
He turned his gaze to me and frowned. But then he nodded and stood back up without protest. Dante walked to his side and grabbed the nearest statue there. With one yank, he ripped itshead from the wall just as I’d done. A Geist named Kleio. He returned to stand beside me.
We readied ourselves, and, with one final nod, plunged into the watery depths together.
The heavy stone dragged me swiftly to the bottom. I let go just before my feet touched the course ground, and the head rolled smoothly away from me. Dante dropped lightly in front of me and pushed his own stone away too. He gestured with a nod and swam off in that direction. I followed.
Soon enough, we hovered above a small box glowing in the murky water. It was crafted with the same transparent crystal as the door in the cavern, and a small golden key gleamed inside, waiting.
Dante placed his hands on two sides of the box and instructed me to do the same via our mental connection. He pulled one lever, I pulled two, and the top snapped open, presenting the key, which had to be twisted out. Dante used his free hand, and the box broke apart, its pieces falling onto the sand as the key floated up toward us. Dante snatched it from the water and grinned at me, victorious. I smiled back and raised a finger to signal him to return to the surface.
That’s when I felt it.
