Strength

by Jane Washington

  When the Abcurses entered the room, eyes swung in their direction, and I tried to continue my very causal walking, even though I sort of wanted to hide with the sols.

  “She doesn’t belong here, she’s a dirt-dweller,” an aqua-robed male snapped as we passed close to him. “This is for Betas and sols only, and she sure doesn’t look like she’s serving.”

  Rome’s hand shot out, wrapping around the other’s throat, hoisting him up into the air. “I won’t catch you saying those words ever again.” His words were low and controlled. He could have been discussing the weather … while killing a god. “If you have a problem with that, I can make the ascension of a new Aviary Beta happen right now.”

  The Aviary Beta looked like he wanted to talk, but unfortunately the crushing of his throat was preventing words from emerging. Stepping forward, I placed my hand on Rome’s biceps. “I think he’s got the point,” I murmured.

  Rome’s eyes shot down to mine—they were dark and stormy. He was not happy, and that meant bad things for anyone who pissed him off. I lifted one eyebrow to show him I wasn’t scared. Much.

  With the slightest curling of his lips, he opened his fingers and let the god fall to the ground. The Aviary Beta gasped over and over, hands clutching his throat as he struggled on the floor. This was ignored by the Abcurses, who continued to lead me through the crowd, heading toward the front of the room. I glanced back once to see aqua robes still curled up on the floor, and I hoped Rome hadn’t done too much permanent damage.

  There was a stage near the front of the large room—it didn’t seem to hold much else and was freakily reminding me of the platform we’d gone to the last sun-cycle for Staviti’s meeting. At the moment the stage was empty—just a wide, clean, white-marble surface.

  Very shiny and clean, which made me think …

  My eyes darted across to the side, toward the shadowy wall, and sure enough there were half a dozen dwellers standing at attention. Waiting and watching for their next duty. I scanned their faces, and halfway along the line of males and females my heart stopped beating, just for a click. As it kicked back into rhythm, I started to run.

  Muttered curses followed me, but I didn’t care, continuing to push my way through gods and sols alike. Nothing was going to stop me right then, not even the wrath of a god. Or my Abcurses.

  “Emmy,” I cried, throwing myself at her. Warm brown eyes met mine, and I teared up a little. “I have missed you so much,” I murmured, my head buried in her shoulder.

  So much had happened. I died for the love of the gods. But being here with Emmy, in that moment, was almost like we were back home in our sector. Just two trouble makers—okay, one trouble maker—and a simple life.

  “Missed you too, Will.” She was choked up. “I haven’t even had to save one life since you’ve been gone.”

  I pulled back so that I could shoot her a grin. “Well, I’m back now, so you better brush up on your healer skills.”

  Being back with Emmy—and hearing myself say the word ‘healer’—triggered a memory for me. “Have you heard anything about Evie? How are her burns?” It wasn’t like I had forgotten that my ‘fire’ power had burned a dweller almost to death. I hadn’t forgotten it at all, just like the wraiths in the caves. It was on my list of things I needed to deal with or do something about. But there were only so many places I could be, especially while hiding from Staviti. I was really hoping Emmy was going to tell me that Evie was almost fully recovered. Just a few little burn marks remaining. Maybe a scab or two … no oozing sores, though. That sounded like too much.

  “She’s …” Emmy hesitated, and my heart sank. “She’s doing the best that she can. The burns were extensive and the healers don’t believe that the fire was normal in nature. They’re a bit stumped on how to heal her.”

  Nope, the fire was not normal at all. It was from my stupid powers. I needed to help her, I had to figure out a way. Maybe the Abcurses would know what to do. I was distracted then as Emmy’s eyes went very wide; she looked up over my head. Swinging around I found a wall of muscled gods surrounding us.

  “Hey, Abcurses,” Emmy said, recovering from her shock quickly. “For a click there I thought Willa was here on her own. Guess I should have known better.”

  She didn’t sound resentful, exactly, but there was a slight undertone there. When her gaze came back to meet mine, I raised one eyebrow.

  I thought she was going to shrug my questioning look off, but then she let out a long sigh. “I’m just not sure how many more ‘god’ situations I can handle. I sometimes wish my best friend could just be Willa again. On occasion. Not Willa and her gods.”

  Willa and her gods. I liked the sound of that, though it hurt my heart to hear the sadness in Emmy’s tone. I understood: we’d been a team for a long time, and now the dynamics had changed. The new members on my team were certainly not the sort she expected … or wanted. It was complicated. Emmy had only ever wanted a normal life, to be the best dweller she could be. To serve the gods and make the rest of us look like lazy morons.

  I’d gone and screwed that up by dragging her into this.

  “I’m sorry.” I hugged her quickly again. “But at least I can be away from them now, no need for the stone anymore. So … there’s that. We can have some family time, just the two of us.”

  Emmy was the one now with the raised eyebrow and confused expression. “You can be away from them now? What happened?”

  Right … I had forgotten that she didn’t know I was dead. My eyes quickly darted across the Abcurses, hoping that one of them would jump in and tell her what had happened. Emmy was not going to take it well—of that I had no doubt. My pleading expression was met with a range of grins, some lazy, others smirking, but not one of them looked like they were going to save me from Emmy.

  I couldn’t really blame them. My best friend was scary. Even for powerful gods.

  Five

  Just as I took a deep breath, preparing myself for what was to come, a god walked across the stage, stopping in the centre and staring out across the masses. His robes were almost the exact colour of the walls behind him, which should have caused him to blend in.

  Only Cyrus would never blend in, no matter what he wore.

  “What the hell is Cyrus doing here?” Emmy asked. “He’s the worst of you all, always in my business, touching my things.”

  I knew better than anyone how much she hated it when you moved her stuff around. Or lost it. Or traded it to the tavern owner in the hopes that he’d kick your mum out of his establishment for two nights.

  “Staviti told him that this was his to oversee,” Aros explained. “He wasn’t exactly happy about the order.”

  “ATTENTION!” the Neutral god bellowed, making me jump almost out of my skin. I brought my hands to my ears and glared toward the stage.

  It seemed as though half of the other gathered bodies had displayed a similar reaction to me, because one of the dwellers was being helped from the floor, and Cyrus was wearing the smallest hint of a smirk.

  “You’re all here because you were chosen,” he announced, a sharpness to his tone that hinted at impatience. He was still projecting his voice far too loudly. “And I’m here because I’m clearly being punished for something. As you were told when you received the invitation to attend Champions Peak, each sol here is decidedly the most powerful of their particular ability, and they are being given an opportunity to train with a god sharing that same ability. WHAT THIS MEANS—” his voice broke out into a shout again because some of the sols had started excitedly murmuring. “What this means,” he repeated impatiently, clearing his throat, “is that each sol will be working with a god. Every sun-cycle. For the remainder of this life cycle. At the end of the life cycle, every single sol at Champions Peak will be sacrificed to the will of the gods—those who have proven themselves worthy will ascend to Topia. Those remaining …” he glanced around as the unease began to stir through the gathered bodies again. “Well, they’ll just be dead.”
>
  Someone started freaking out then, and I glanced over the heads to what seemed to be a small crowd pushing in on a female. She was flailing about, as though trying to escape, and she kept shouting something about not wanting to die. Cyrus audibly sighed, the sound carrying over the platform through whatever means he had been using to amplify his voice. He raised his hand, an exasperated look on his face that was clear even from where I was standing. The crowd suddenly sprang away from the girl and she lifted into the air. Her freak-out got even worse then. She started screaming—not in a pained way, but in an I’m floating and I don’t know why kind of way—until Cyrus flicked his hand to the side and her body jerked rapidly over the heads of the other sols, flying right off the side of the platform as though she’d been a bug crawling on his robes.

  I blinked in horror at the spot where she had disappeared, hearing the sound of her screams getting further and further away until they suddenly stopped. Cut-off. Because Cyrus had thrown her off the gods-dammed mountain.

  “And you can consider that an early sacrifice. She could have been a god, but instead, she’s going to wash away, unclaimed, a useless waste just because she couldn’t keep her shit together.” His voice boomed over the platform again, setting my teeth on edge. “My name is Cyrus, and I’ll be running this Academy. Don’t annoy me. Don’t get in my way, and don’t throw any tantrums unless you want your blood to paint the rocks at the base of this mountain. Any questions?”

  “Maybe you should tell them where they will be sleeping,” a dry voice answered, projected as strongly as Cyrus’s voice had been. I wondered if all gods had that ability, or just the bossy ones.

  The speaker was a woman, red hair cascading over one shoulder, braided along the other side. She was wearing shimmery silver robes and her mouth was hooked up into an amused grin.

  “Right.” Cyrus was downright scowling now. “You’ll be sleeping in special rooms set into the sides of the mountain. You will have a single dweller assigned to your needs for the life-cycle—they will be kept in your lodgings unless you push them out. Be warned, however, that if you kill your dweller, it will not be replaced. Any other questions?”

  He enunciated that last part almost as a dare, and I was pretty sure that nobody was brave enough to ask any more questions, until the silver-robed woman spoke up again.

  “Maybe you should tell them how to get there,” she suggested, crossing her arms over her chest, her smile growing. She clearly wanted to die.

  Cyrus seemed to agree. His eyes narrowed on her for a click, like he was committing her face to memory, and then he turned to the sols—who were now all too frightened to move, speak, or breathe.

  “Figure it out for yourselves,” he snapped. “As soon as the sun rises, your training will begin. You will return to this platform to meet with your trainer—it is up to them to punish you if you are late, and believe me, they will. This is as much a waste of their time as it is mine.” And with those words, he turned and stalked away.

  “Come on,” Emmy muttered, her temper clearly rising, if her tight grip on my arm was any indication. “I already know where they’re putting everyone, they had us set up the bed-mats earlier.”

  I didn’t argue, and surprisingly, neither did the Abcurses. We followed her as she led us from the platform; we were the first to leave the marble hall—the other sols were too busy freaking out. Thankfully, the exit was on the opposite side to where the screaming girl had been tossed off. We passed down several sets of stone staircases that had been built into the mountain, curving around the outside and leading to different platforms and structures built into the rock. Eventually, we came to a much larger opening, almost like a cave, though I could see light at the other end. It was a gigantic tunnel through the heart of the mountain, with lanterns swinging from the rock ceiling. There was a wooden sign also swinging from the ceiling, chains dropping it down so that it hung above the entrance to the tunnel.

  The Falling Caves, it read.

  “Please, gods, no,” I muttered, looking from the sign to Emmy’s grim face, and back again.

  “Figures,” Rome grunted. “He wants to make the sols stronger, not pamper them.”

  “I think I should just go tell everyone I’m not a sol,” I decided, spinning on one foot.

  “Not so fast,” Aros chuckled, catching me before I could escape, his arm wrapping around my waist and pulling me back. “You’re really going to tell Cyrus that you’re not a sol? The god who killed you?”

  “Wait …” Emmy’s voice was hoarse, barely above a breath. “Wait …” now she seemed to be struggling to breathe at all. “What?”

  “Oh, right,” I started casually. No more avoiding this conversation. “I’m dead. Cyrus killed me.” Still a bastard. Just ask the girl who sailed off a cliff.

  Emmy staggered back, her hands reaching out to press against the nearest wall. “I don’t … understand.”

  That made two of us.

  With a sigh, I took a step closer to her. Just in case she collapsed. I owed her for the last million or so times she’d caught me. “It’s a long story, and right now I don’t think we have time to go into all the details. Let’s just say that Rau was trying to make me into his Beta, and Cyrus was trying to stop that from happening, and the only way he could think to do that was to stab me and let me die in his arms. Then he smuggled me into Topia—to the Abcurses.”

  Yael made that angry noise which usually meant that someone was about to get Persuaded to do something really bad. Emmy didn’t look away from me, her eyes wide and glassy. Shock had a hold of her.

  “Are you a god now?” she whispered. In a fraction of a click she had run through all the logical explanations and reached the only possible conclusion. Except we had no idea if that was the only conclusion.

  Reaching out, I wrapped my hand around her forearm, giving it a little squeeze. “We don’t know. Usually to become a god, Staviti would have to anoint me or something, but that didn’t happen. So right now, I’m other, and we’re working to figure out what that is, while trying to escape Rau and Staviti’s attention.”

  I’d never seen her so pale, and considering everything I’d put her through over the life-cycles, I considered this a personal achievement.

  She shook her head, tears sprinkling her eyelashes. “All of these life-cycles I’ve been trying to keep you alive. You were in so many scrapes, so many accidents that should have been your last, but you always pulled through.”

  She straightened then, anger flashing across her face. Her right index finger jabbed in the direction of the Abcurses, who were waiting behind me. “You five!” Her voice and finger shook. “You were all supposed to keep her safe. I trusted each of you. I let Willa go into your world, into your care—into the care of five gods—and somehow she still managed to get LITERALLY MURDERED!”

  I waited for one of them to defend themselves, to explain that it wasn’t their fault. We had all trusted Cyrus, and I had been the one to go off without them—one of those stupid things that I often did. I waited, but no one spoke. They just stood there, their expressions shuttered, their eyes blazing while Emmy ripped them a new one.

  Holy father of the gods. They were still blaming themselves for what had happened to me.

  “Stop!” My word had some bite, and while it pained me to talk to Emmy with anger, I would not let the Abcurses take the fall for this. “This is not their fault,” I told her before I turned to look at them.

  “This. Is. Not. Your. Fault,” I repeated with more force. Five sets of eyes held mine. I looked between all of them, wordlessly reiterating my point. When some of the tension relaxed from their broad shoulders, I took a deep breath and faced Emmy again.

  Working some calm into my voice, I said, “I was cursed long before I met them. My life has never been one of safety or longevity. I think we all knew that. The reality is that it’s probably because of the Abcurses that I am standing here right now. They saved me, more than once. I’m soul-bound to them—we’re li
nked in a way that goes beyond life and death. It’s forever.”

  This fact no longer had my insides squirming. I wanted them forever. I took a step back, until I was pressing into one of them. I couldn’t turn to see who it was, but multiple arms wrapped around me as we pressed closer. “I would choose the same path over and over again, Emmy. I love you so much, you are my sister and that will never change. But the Abcurses are part of my very soul, and I choose this life with them.”

  My feet left the ground then as one of them picked me up, and in a dizzyingly quick movement, we were out of the tunnel, moving too fast for me to track our path as we ended up in a dark, cold room. Emmy wasn’t with us: it was just me and my five guys. I blinked stupidly up at them, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

  “Is Rau here?” I murmured, my eyes darting around as I tried to make sense of what was going on. “Why did you leave Emmy behind? We have to go back for her.”

  It was difficult to see everything properly, with the only light streaming in from the stone hallway. Aros captured my hand, threading his fingers through mine.

  “Rau isn’t here. Emmy is fine, Persuasion asked her to go back up to the main building.”

  “So what was with the rapid race through the tunnels?” I asked, still confused. The expressions on their perfect faces were not helping me figure it out.

  Aros was still holding my hand. Siret stepped in on the other side and took my other hand. The low level of energy that had always been between me and the guys thrummed to life, like I’d just touched a live wire and the current was spreading through my body. I was starting to feel very hot again, and I said the first thing that came to mind. “We should go swimming!”

  Rome and Yael chuckled, and then all I could think about was the way they had touched me that night. The sensations of being with them like that.