Because we might not get another chance.
“Stop,” I said. “Just stop for a minute, okay?”
He paused and glanced down at me.
“Come down. Please.”
Dante blinked at me once, then dropped back to the ground. He wiped his already bloody fingers on his trousers and raised a brow in question.
“Your mother said the only way to get through this is to trust each other,” I reminded him. “I’m not sure how a wall of pain necessitates trust, but either way, I don’t want to start this with so much left unsaid between us.”
He frowned, his brow wrinkled in confusion as if he truly had no idea what I meant.
“Just, to clear the air, this thing with Olympia—“
Dante sighed. He ran a hand through his hair and stared up at the wall of knives.
“Is this really the best time to get into this?” he ground out.
Probably not. But I’d seen the look on his face when he’d told me she hadn’t passed the fourth Trial. It had affected him. I wasn’t the sort of girl who needed reassurances or lost herself to jealousy, and I still wasn’t even sure what this thing between Dante and Iwas.But Olympia already hated me enough and she didn’t even know what had happened between us. I needed toknow if I had to watch my back and, admittedly, we needed to be on the same page.
“I’m not going to slash the shit out of my hands and feet on that wall of torture unless I know we’re in this together, so yes. I’d say it’s the perfect time.”
Dante frowned again and turned away from me.
“Do you remember when I called you my responsibility?” he asked a moment later.
“How could I forget?”
“Well, I still feel that way about her too. We trained together our whole lives. In the end, it didn’t turn out the way we thought. We aren’t partners, we aren’t linked. But that doesn’t mean everything I shared with her before means nothing. It doesn’t mean I want to see her fail. This meant everything to us, to her. I don’t regret that I’m here and she’s not, but I still feel like I let her down, and I don’t—I can’t let anyone else down. I can’t letyoudown, Adrian.”
His voice had grown in intensity as he spoke. What had begun as an annoyed explanation had turned into a ferocious proclamation. I blinked at him in stunned surprise. This wasn’t, at all, what I’d been expecting. I’d expected to find myself in the midst of a spat between exes, not faced with a man nearly broken by the pressures he put upon himself.
“You aren’t going to let me down, Dante,” I assured him but my voice came out as a mere whisper, and it was clear that he wasn’t sold.
“Can we just do this?” He turned away from me and back to the wall. “Please?”
Without waiting for my reply, he reached up and began to climb again, blood dripping off his fingers as he pried them from blade after blade on his ascent.
I watched him for a moment, jaw dropped in awe at how easily he’d accepted this fate, this torture designed by his so-called gods.
Zealot,I hissed through our link.
He didn’t look back at me, choosing to remain focused on his task.
My stomach tightened at the bloody fingerprints on the dagger he left behind as he reached for a sword’s edge above his head. With a sigh, I took a deep breath and began to climb beside him.
The first inch was agony. The moment I gripped the rusted edges of the first serrated blade, I hissed and pulled back out of instinct. Dante didn’t even glance my way. I took a few breaths and tried again, steeling myself against the fear as I reached for the first blade again.
Searing pain shot through my fingers each time I climbed just a little bit higher. We didn’t speak, too distracted by the pain, too afraid to stumble even a bit and have to do any section of the wall over again. I gritted my teeth and fought my hisses as I pulled myself, inch by excruciating inch, up the razor wall.
We left a trail of blood behind us. It dripped onto the floor, rivulets running off the blades we’d used and onto the ones below. There would be no going back, no starting over. The blades at the bottom were covered in our blood. They would be too slippery to find purchase again. The only way forward was up. Dante seemed to sense that without even glancing down at the aftermath of our climb as I was. At least two feet above me, red lines streaked down his forearms to his shoulders, his ruined fingers a mess of bloody pulp. It was enough to turn my stomach.
I reached up to grab a dagger and missed somewhat, the blade slicing against my palm. I hissed and was blinded by a shot of white light across my vision which swam and whirled. I blinked, and my other grip went slack. Was I blacking out? I couldn’t! Wildly, I swung my free arm back to the wall and the bite ofanother blade buried itself in my palm. I bit down on my lip so hard, it too turned bloody. But at least I wouldn’t fall.
Dante finally glanced down. “Are you alright?”
I only had the strength to nod.
