“Let’s just get out of here,” I told him, voice breaking. “I’ll tell you everything but please. Let’s just unlock that door and go.”
He nodded and rose, coughing. His hand went to his forehead and came away bloody. Dante hesitated only a moment, then cleared his throat and marched forward on shaking legs.
This time, when we plunged our arms inside those rings and accepted the brand burned into our skin, I felt nothing but a stab of guilt and sorrow as I realized I never would have been able to save Dante’s life if I hadn’t seen him saving Cyrus’s.
Chapter Seventeen
“Our choices define who we are above all else. And yet, if the Geist are all-knowing, if they are divinity incarnate, do they not already know what decisions we will make? And if they know the course of our lives before we have lived them, did we ever truly have a choice at all?”
-Musings of Thinker Zotikos before he was killed during the Great Purification, 782 Age of Sanctum
Itold Dante, after our ordeal in the fourth Trial, that I would never swim again. He offered me a wry smile and said that swimming was an excellent form of exercise. I grumbled something coarse and rude but, in truth, the activity was a lot more fun now that Dante and I had been granted the ability to breathe underwater.
Today, though, I’d taken a break from our unrelenting training regimen. Because today was an important day, a momentous occasion, a cause for joy the likes of which I hadn’t often had the opportunity for in my life. Today was moving day.
I stood outside of the enormous house on the western edge of the Second Ring which my family had been granted following mysuccess in the fourth Trial. It was old, a relic of a time long past when the last ancestor of some ancient line had died childless and alone. It had been abandoned for years but well maintained by the servants and staff from the lower rings that filtered through here through the years, so it was nearly immaculate regardless.
An iron gate lined the grounds which I hadn’t yet gained the courage to slip inside of, afraid that, the moment I unlatched the gate, it would all simply fade away into the void and reveal itself to be some cruel joke by the rich and powerful. Though even they couldn’t disobey the rules imposed by the Geist.
I was distracted from my silent reverie, staring at the gargantuan stone facade, by a giggle. I looked up to find a younger girl, likely a teenager, grinning at me over the hedge between her house and my new home. Her smile broadened when we made eye contact. She tucked a strand of her strawberry blonde hair behind her ear and turned her freckled face away sheepishly. I smiled back at her, wondering if I should introduce myself, but approaching footsteps snagged my attention.
My brothers walked down the street, arms loaded with torn boxes of personal belongings and family memorabilia. My mother trailed after Warren, chiding him for how much he shook the box in his hands which apparently held her best dishes. Behind the three of them marched a long line of grinning, chattering Third Ringers. Their clothes were dusty, and they wore the garb of their various trades, aprons around waists and pin cushions tied to wrists, but they were all smiling, lively, happy.
The Second Ringers passing by on their morning walks stopped to sneer and gawk, wrinkling their noses at the display, but my family hardly noticed, and none of the others paid them any mind either.
“Adrian,” my mother squealed when she was close enough to see where I stood by the gate. She rushed forward, arms outstretched, and wrapped me in an enveloping embrace, squeezing tighter than necessary.
I peered over her shoulder to the hedge where the girl had been, but she was gone.
“We’re so proud of you,” my mother exclaimed. “So very proud! I can hardly believe this is real, us moving like this. It’s going to be strange, you know. It’s going to take some work to make it feel like home but well—”
She faltered. She’d stopped talking long enough to turn and take in the house that would become her home. Her jaw slackened as her eyes widened.
“Isthisours?”
Pleased to actually be able to answer one of her questions, I nodded.
But she shook her head, stepping away.
“No,” she muttered. “Oh no. Adrian, dear, this is too much.”
“I didn’t pick it, mom.” I grasped her shoulder to steady her. “It’s what they had available. It’s been a while, you know, since they’ve had to make these arrangements.”
She nodded, almost absentmindedly, before she began ordering Warren and Maurice around. “Warren, take that box directly to the kitchen. Don’t dawdle. Maurice, we’ll see where we want to put that—”
“Hi.” Someone whispered from behind me. I whirled around. It was the girl from before with the strawberry hair. She grinned at me again, her brown eyes wide. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“I’m not—” I cleared my throat. “You didn’t.”
Her smile broadened.
“You’re even prettier than they said,” she whispered dreamily.
I smiled in return and reached for the lilies planted just outside the gate. I plucked one and tucked it behind her ear.
“Beauty isn’t rare,” I told her, smoothing her hair over the stem of the flower. “But courage is.”
“Come inside, you dolt!” Warren shouted from the house. He grinned at me like a mad man from the doorway. I turned back to the girl, gave her a wink, and strode through the gate, up the steps, and into my family’s new home.
