Building the Tension | ✔ | 18+

Chapter 34 - Trials and Tribulations

Author's Notes: Mature content in the second to last section. 

I apologize in advance for the buzz kill at the end.

-=o0/&\0o=-

The morning of the trials, Dimitri met me outside of my dorm. It was already early evening (human time), but it was late enough into the summer that the sun was still blazing down.

"Comrade, what are you doing here?" I asked him.

"I thought you could use some motivation before the trials," he told me, "And there's a betting pool for whether you'd make it on time. If you had taken any longer, I was going to come upstairs and get you."

Not showing up on time was an automatic disqualification and meant failing the trials.

"Is there still time to get in on that?" I asked, "What are the odds? I could still back out and make some sweet bank on this."

"Not a chance, Roza - I put down fifty dollars that you'd show up. Actually, your father is here and he is the one who organized the pool."

"Figures he'd go into the bookie business along with all of the other stuff he does. Maybe cutting his losses by planning to make a little pocket change when I didn't live up to his expectations."

"I'm starting to believe that somewhere deep down, he has a sense of honor. He came here today to support you and watch you succeed, Roza. He really seems to believe in you. He put down a hundred dollars that you would show. And I think he knows how badly you want to be there to do this."

"I do want to. I want to be Lissa's guardian."

"Besides," he said, pitching his voice low, "I know how badly we both want you to get to a ranking that's high enough so that we wouldn't have to hide our relationship over the summer. If you're okay with it, I was thinking maybe we could even put in a request to live in shared quarters while we're both at Court."

I told him with a grin, "Comrade, you're motivating me already."

"With your skill and the things you've already faced, Roza, I feel like the trials are almost just a formality for you. If I weren't involved in setting up the trials, I'd feel like this was a waste of everyone's time to have you actually go through with this."

"Involved in setting up the trials? So you can tell me what to expect today?" I asked him, giving him my man-eater smile.

"No," he told me, very tight-lipped, "The trials are designed to test your skill in every situation you might encounter. We just happen to know that you might encounter some situations that other people will not."

"Meaning Adrian." I'd tried not to think of Adrian the past few weeks, despite training even harder for the sole purpose of defeating him. Though I still hadn't seen most of them, the letters from Adrian continued to come in the mail each day. Dimitri, Alberta, and other members of the St. Vladimir's staff had continued to intercept all of the letters that he had sent to those of us on campus. Alberta knew that I was aware of them, but told me that she'd hold onto them in the meantime and asked me not to worry about them until after graduation.

"Getting through your final trials is hard enough on its own," she had said, "No reason to put even more pressure on you by seeing, in detail, the fresh hell that's waiting for you when you finish." Preferring to be prepared for whatever I face, I can't say that I whole-heartedly agree with that, but I understood why she had done it and appreciated that it helped me keep my focus. I didn't need the distraction.

"Yes, meaning Adrian," he replied, "And other things. You're going to be the primary protector of a princess who represents her entire royal line, as well as its future. You have to be the best. Being the best will keep you alive. Both of you."