“I know.” I reached out and grasped his hand.
He looked down at the contact, gaze remaining on our joined fingers as he swallowed.
“I don’t want her,” he confessed so quietly, I had to lean forward to hear him.
“Then don’t have her,” I whispered back.
His eyes shot up to mine. There was so much meaning in them, so much unsaid between us, so much we still hadn’t spoken of no matter how many times I’d found myself in his bed, beneath him, entwined with him, these past months. There was something delicate about that part of our relationship, something far more terrifying than deadly Trials or elitist expectations. We were both afraid that if we talked about it, it would become real. And if it was real, it could hurt us.
“I—I don’t know—” I stuttered, my cheeks prickling with heat. His lips quirked up into a mischievous smirk. I sighed, and dropped his hand. “We’ll find a way around it. We could chop your balls off. It would be hard for your grandpa to come sniffing after heirs then.”
Dante chuckled darkly at that, lopsided grin on his lips.
“I thought you liked my balls,” he drawled.
I punched him in the shoulder.
“The Trials have to be more important, right?” I said. "If we can complete all ten, Cosmo will have to let you do whatever you want, right? I mean, you’d basically be gods-chosen at that point.”
Dante frowned, looking away from me, but gave a curt nod in answer a few moments later. I exhaled, relieved that he was willing to put this off for a while longer.
“I suppose that means we have a month to train for the sixth,” I said.
He nodded slowly.
I left him with his thoughts after reaching out to give his hand one final squeeze, then made my way back down the hall toward the room I’d occupied since my arrival at House Viper, trying to ignore the squeezing sensation closing in around my heart.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“In crisis, when forced to choose, we all default to either fight or flight. The best of us knows that there’s a time for both.”
-Journal of Valin, 316 Genesis Age
Myrine had placed an order with a seamstress weeks ago to obtain new outfits for us to wear in our Trials. They were the colors of House Viper, emerald and gold, and created to withstand extreme pressure or tension. They were tight, form fitted. My bottoms were much tighter than Dante’s, fitting me like a second skin and accentuating every curve of my behind so as to leave nothing to the imagination.
Why did they keep insisting on showing off so much of my figure every chance they got? My only consolation was that Dante’s outfit was fitted too, even if not to the same extent. For such a devout family, though, having my every curve on display was a bit unsettling. And it made me question if their goal was to explicitly catch my partner’s attention, to make his decision easier. I hated to admit it might have been working. I’d caught Dante staring at my rear on several occasions already thismorning and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate being able to count his abdominal muscles through his shirt either.
For the first time, we looked like true candidates as we made our way to the sixth tunnel a month after the patriarch’s declaration that Dante would choose a bride. As we descended the final staircase to the southern deck, I understood why Myrine and Cosmo had been making such a big deal lately about our appearance.
A massive crowd awaited us, one which burst into cheers and screams the moment we became visible. They cried out our names, wishing us luck as they wove banners dedicated to us. The colors of House Viper were everywhere, on flags in hands and ribbons in hair, on poorly dyed clothing and painted faces. People chanted the most popular, most well-known prayers, words I’d heard infrequently on the bottom rings throughout my life, only on holy days or seasonal changes. They even screamed for Myrine, shouting out their memory of her own success up to the fourth Trial. Dante glanced my way, just as stunned as I was.
Cosmo, however, wasn’t. He joined us on our journey toward the Trial, he and Myrine both, and while the latter smiled serenely out at the crowd, Cosmo looked smug. He kept his hands folded within his cloak and took in the sight of his own house’s colors adorning every body present.
It was then that I truly understood the power of the Trials for the first time.
Dante took my hand. I looked up. We’d come face to face with the black abyss of the sixth tunnel.
The crowd’s screams hammered against my eardrums, but they seemed to almost fade into the background as Dante looked my way, nodded, and we stepped forward into the void together.
As usual, we were encased in our separate tubes and hurtled along toward our sixth Trial. The familiar anxiety that always came at the beginning of a new test bubbled up again as Iwhirled through the darkness, but I pushed it down, flexing my fingers and stretching my legs as I waited to be deposited into our next ordeal.
A metallic ping echoed out as my feet slammed into the grate below them, leaving a slight indentation where my significant strength cushioned my landing. I rose slowly in the dark, turning toward where I sensed Dante beside me.
A blinding white light blazed to life, illuminating our surroundings. We stood at the end of a long bridge made entirely of shining chrome, only four feet across and falling off into an endless, dark chasm on either side. I looked to my left. Dante stared out at the bridge, his lips parted.
We had been deposited onto a ledge wider than the rest of the bridge, which seemed to flare out on both ends. Nothing greeted us on the other side of the chasm other than a looming gray wall. In the center of the bridge, though, rested something which appeared to be a command center of some sort. It had buttons and knobs and behind it was a wall of thick glass. It appeared to be the only thing that might have anything to do with whatever our task was.
I looked at Dante again. He shrugged and took a step forward.
