“But you said I don’t have it within me. So, if I didn’t create the Darkness…”
I hesitated, paling, as I whispered the name I’d gone to such great lengths to avoid since I’d arrived in the City of the Gods.
“Adrian.”
“We haven’t seen an outward blast of pure Darkness since the world we inhabited after our home world,”Kleiospoke slowly, cautiously. “Since the Evil itself.”
My lips parted in shocked disbelief. Adrian. The nobody from the Third Ring, the girl who’d made it farther in the Trials than anyone believed possible, the girl my grandfather had scorned, the girl who’d offered herself to save me from a fate I didn’t want, the girl I’d loved despite every instinct within me screaming not to. She harbored the Darkness, the corruption, the Evil the gods feared. She was everything their entire civilization had been created to defend against, everything I was being trained to hate, to fight.
“Is she still alive?” I spat suddenly.
Kleiofrowned but didn’t say a word. That alone was answer enough.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
“I cannot tell you that,” he replied, sullen.
“But she’s in danger. She—they’re going to kill her. Do they know where she is?”
“Why do you care? Did you not already choose to kill her yourself?”
He may as well have slapped me in the face. I reeled back as though he had, blinking back at him, stunned by the vitriol in his voice, the judgment. It was the only time I’d ever seen even a trace of temper fromKleio.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I tried. A weak excuse and he knew it.
“Deimos doesn’t believe he does either,”Kleioreminded me. “We’re all capable of horrible things when we convince ourselves we have no choice but to do them.”
“Kleio,” I began, my voice shaking. “Do they know where she is?”
“They do,” he said with a nod.
“Then why—”
“She’s still alive because you are, because they cannot determine which of you harbors the corruption. That blast of Darkness in the Ninth Trial could have come from either one of you, you were so close together on that mountaintop. As afraid of the corruption as Deimos is, he won’t risk ridding himself of a valuable warrior to fight against theZver. So until he can know for sure which of you is corrupt, until I finish my examination, you both remain alive. You’re lucky the incompetent Geist who have been running the Office of Verdunn Administration in my absence messed up the blood analysis so bad Deimos no longer trusts the results.”
I stared at him, coming to terms with the true reality of my situation for the first time. I was in danger here, I’d known that before, from the very moment I fell intoPavosand was told as much by the god before me. But I wasn’t the only one in danger. Adrian, wherever she was, was alive and in even moredanger than I was. My guilt should have been lessened. The gut wrenching hurt I’d been feeling ever since I betrayed my partner and sent us careening in opposite directions, to whatever fates awaited us, should have abated.
She was alive. I hadn’t killed her. I hadn’t murdered my partner, the woman I’d loved.
But I’d tried.
I hadn’t known she would live and I’d still made the choice to send her spiraling into the abyss. Maybe it was too late to save her. Maybe I couldn’t. But I couldn’t ignore the chance. How often in life were we given the opportunity to make the same choice again, to do it differently the second time around, to do itright?
“You haven’t told them what you know,” I said quietly.
Kleionodded slowly, gaze boring into me in a way that took on all new meaning.
“Why tell me?” I asked, unable to refrain from the curiosity. “They put you in prison for hundreds of years. They gave you thirty lashings for simply questioning Deimos. This…”
“I know what I’ve done,” he told me. “I know it’s treason and I know what fate awaits me should the council discover it.”
“Then…why?”
“Because I know what it is to live with guilt too, with regret. And I don’t believe anyone deserves to be tricked into fighting a war they don’t truly understand. You know Adrian, Dante. Better than anyone else in the world. Doyouthink she’s evil?”
The question caught me off guard, so much so I could only blink back at him in response. Adrian wasn’t evil. Adrian was on the polar opposite end of the word evil. She loved fierce and fast, risked everything for those she cared about, fought against injustice, craved knowledge and friendship, defended those incapable of defending themselves. She had her own demons, her own struggles, battles waging within her tired and brokenheart, but she was a good person. It was what had drawn me to her in the first place. Hearing her thoughts for those long months before she made any attempt to contain them, I could see it as plain as day. She didn’t have any ulterior motives or secret schemes. She wasn’t playing political games or vying for religious favor. She was her true self, bold and unapologetic, in a way I’d never been strong enough to be myself. And it had left her open to betrayal.Mybetrayal.
“But she harbors the corruption,” I reminded him. “It’s in her blood. She used the Darkness in a way you said hasn’t been seen since you fled your second home world. She’s everything you fear, everything you hate, everything you fight against. Why would you help her?”
