“It’s—it’s a trick,” I replied, still reeling from the impossibility of his declaration. “You’re not who you say you are. You can’t be.”
The mind acts in the strangest way when faced with the presence of a truth that should not exist. It spins possibilities to justify the reality crushing you underneath its inexplicable weight. Tiberius was an imposter, a madman, a manic zealot. Or maybe I wasn’t really here. Maybe I was still falling through that endless void of the tenth Trial. Maybe this was the tenth Trial and I simply hadn’t passed it yet. The gods were certainly capable of illusion, of bending and warping reality to test us. My mind presented each of these options in turn, even as my body rebelled against them. I felt the ground beneath my feet, saw the man before me as an exact replica of his statue, heard the pick axes striking precious metals and minerals to export home. This was real, I was here, and so was he. But that meant the only remaining possibility was that he was right. And I simply couldn’t accept it.
I whirled away from him, my hair swinging over my shoulder as I stormed back through the mine shafts. I passed the jewelers who didn't even glance up from their work and was halfway down the rows of miners pulling common stone from the earth when Tiberius caught up to me. He grabbed my arm and forced me to face him.
“You can’t run from this,” he warned. “You can’t hide from it and you can’t fight it. It’s already a part of you. It’s who you are now. You can deny it. You can lie to yourself for three hundred years but you willlivethose three hundred years. While everyone around you dies, while you don’t age, while people are born and pass on in front of you, you will remain. I know it isn’teasy to hear now. But if you don’t accept this, you’ll suffer for centuries. Trust me. I know.”
There was something else in his gaze now. A sincerity, an ache I hadn’t seen before.It called to something within me that I'd promised myself I would never feel again the moment Dante had shoved me into that pit. Compassion. If I wasn't careful, such a thing could easily develop into trust.
“How old are you?” I breathed.
He hesitated.
“One thousand, four hundred and sixty three,” he replied.
It was too much. Too overwhelming. The breath went out of me as I stared at him in shock. Over a thousand years. After being betrayed, after being shoved down a hole and forgotten, left for dead. After losing everything and everyone he'd ever known. How did someone live with that? How did someone keep going knowing none of it mattered because nothing remained but us?
With a roar of frustration, I spun around and wrenched apick axefrom the hands of the nearest miner before slamming it into the rock behind me. The entire wall of stone shuddered, dust raining from the ceiling as a thick crack spiderwebbed up from the point of impact all the way into the darkness above. Miners cowered, raising their hands above their heads to shield themselves from the falling debris, running away from the massive crack I’d created in the stone, shouting orders to those further down the line who hadn’t seen what had occurred.
I just fought to catch my breath, allowing my arms to slump at my sides. Tiberius stepped forward and took thepick axefrom my hands. I didn't fight him.
“And that's why we don’t allow anyone who's passed the third to work down here,” he muttered. “James.”
A grimy-faced worker rushed forward out of the darkness and took thepick axefrom Tiberius. He scuttled away even as thosearound him returned to work as if nothing had happened. I watched them take up their axes again, plunging them into the rock over and over. A sort of hopelessness came over me that I hadn’t felt since the mark of the Culling had appeared on Darius’ forehead the morning I’d lost him forever.
“What’s the point?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Tiberius turned back to face me.
“What’s the point of doing any of this forever?” I repeated, a bit louder, as I raised my arms to gesture around at the entirety of the Underground itself. “This backbreaking labor in mines and fields. Crafting jewels and gowns that we’ll never wear just so the Upper Ringers can lord them over our friends, our families. Just to bolster the class separation above, just to keep the Vipers in power, to oppress our own people. And to spend an eternity doing so. Even when they die and I don’t know anyone up there anymore. Even when Darius—” my voice cracked and tears began streaming down my face. They left tracks in the thin sheen of grime the mines had already managed to leave upon my cheeks. “I can’t lose him again. But I’m going to, aren’t I? Eventually, I’m going to lose all of them. Every single one of them.”
Tiberius watched me for a moment in silence, giving me the time I needed to come to terms with what I’d been told, with my newfound fate. I didn’t want to cry, not here. Not in front of him or the others. But after everything I'd suffered, everything I'd lived through, learning I would have to bear it forever was just too much. I hadn’t realized until just then what a relief death could be.
“We keep them alive,” Tiberius said after a moment. His usually gruff voice was softer than ever before. “That’s the point. We provide them with food, water, and the means to make shelter. Clothes and supplies. It all comes from us. Without us,they die. Without them, we lose our purpose. That’s the point, Adrian. We keep them alive.”
“Alive,” I repeated, almost laughing at the absurdity of it. “But for what?”
“Even if their lives are full of suffering, of pain, of oppression and starvation, that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth living,” he told me, firmer as he took a step toward me. “You’ll never see them again. Your family, your friends, they’ll never know all that we do for them. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need you. And when they die, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will need you too. So even if it hurts, even if there are days in which the thought of all you’ve lost, all you’ve been and all you’ve suffered is nearly unbearable, you will carry on. Because you have to. Because they need you to. And because it’s the only thing you can do for them now.”
He was speaking from experience. I could tell from the way his lips twitched as he spoke. I could see the conviction in his tone, the tension in every muscle as he stepped toward me. And I knew he was right. Deep down, I knew I would stay. I knew I would do my duty and see to the functioning of the Underground, forever if I had to, and not because I had no other choice. I would do it for them. For Warren, Maurice and Dahlia. For my mother and Sophie and Graham. For Harrison and his stupid friends. For Milo andBriaand even Olympia. I would do it. That was the genius of theGeist’sgrand design. They knew. TheyknewI would not allow my loved ones to suffer because of my loss, because of my pain. They’d counted on it. And they'd been right.
For now.
Chapter Seven
Dante
"Resources dwindle but they don't know and those who do don't care. I have tried to tell mother to ration our goods but I fear our walls will fall before she learns to turn away wine.”
— From The Official Record of House Lynx, As Recorded by Julian, Son of Cadence
Icouldn’t feel the wind the way Kleio could.
The god I grew up learning about could feel a simple flinch from twenty feet away just by the shift in the air. He could scent theZverin its cage hundreds of meters away. He could tell you which cup of tea had a drop more lemon or which juice had a grain more sugar. He could hear the wings of a butterfly flapping in the breeze through his garden. It was an awareness the likes of which I’d never known was possible. It was truly sensing the world around you and not just in its relation to your own flesh. It wasfeelingeverything, everywhere, all at once.
When you accept that you are not the center of the universe, you can experience it, truly, for the first time.
That was what he’d told me on only our third day of training my senses. I’d worked hard day and night since. I trained mybody every morning on the sparring fields withValinand Castor. We worked through strength and flexibility training regimens with the various tools and equipment they had for that purpose. And in the afternoons, I trained my endurance, using my magic for as long and as hard as I could until I was left entirely drained, practically panting from exertion of a wholly different kind. Then I would emerge fromKleio’shome and find my way to the soldier's tavern to lose myself in the oblivion of the alcohol.
