He turned, holding his hand out to me. I linked my fingers through his and we walked to the door, all six of us spilling into the corridor beyond.
“Wait.” Cyrus moved after us, filling up the doorway, his eyes on me. “I have no interest in breaking up your group. There’s something about this stubborn loyalty you all have for each other that I respect, even though the rest of it makes me want to shove one of Death’s knives into my eyeball. I’m sorry I overreacted. Even so, you need to be punished for what you did. If I don’t punish you, it will only draw the attention of the other gods. That is not something you want. You will report back to me at first light without Abil’s sons. Am I understood?”
I didn’t wait for the Abcurses to start another fight, I just nodded quickly and drew Coen away, knowing that the others would follow.
“We need to find Emmy,” I muttered, as soon as we were out of hearing range.
“Ten disks she’s waiting in your room,” Rome grunted.
“Twenty disks she’s around the corner,” Aros countered.
“Thirty she’s—” Siret started, but he was cut off as we rounded the corner and a flurry of blond hair attacked my face, arms wrenching me away from Coen.
“Stop. Doing. Things. That. Give. Me. Chest-pains,” Emmy ordered, each word punctuated by a too-painful squeeze.
I thought she was hugging me, but when she drew back, there was a coat wrapped around my shoulders. Apparently, I had been hugging her and she had only been trying to give me a coat. She must have been squeezing me to let me know that she wanted to be released. For some reason, I found that funny. A giggle slipped past my lips, and Emmy cut herself off mid-chastisement, her eyes narrowing dangerously on my face.
“I’ve decided that we need new sister rules,” she told me, folding her arms over her chest.
“Uh…” Rome shifted nervously behind me. “Should we maybe … go … somewhere else?”
“No,” four other voices all argued, before Aros added: “That’s up to Willa.”
“What rules?” I asked Emmy cautiously, ignoring the boys completely. I knew I had made her angry again, but as my exhaustion levels crept up, I lost my will to defend myself.
“Rule Number One,” she began immediately, also ignoring the others. “All perilous ideas must be cleared with your best friend first. Especially if they involve almost dying.”
“I could probably do that.” I scratched my head. I was getting nervous now. She sounded like she had a lot of rules to get through.
“Number Two.” She was beginning to calm down, but there was a suspicious glint in her eyes. She had expected me to put up a fight. “I was brought here to assist Cyrus, but I will ask to be assigned to you, instead, since you weren’t given a dweller. Technically, you weren’t even given a spot on the Peak, but there’s no reason not to give you a spot …”
“I get the point,” I cut across her before she could launch into a list of reasons I deserved to be where all the best sols were. “But what’s Number Two exactly?”
“We stick together. Like sap on a tree. No more leaving me behind.”
“That one might be a problem,” I admitted, thinking back to the way Yael had taken control of me in the pool. Behind me, a low chuckle sounded.
Emmy rolled her eyes. “I’ve been given quarters with Cyrus, since I’m supposed to be attending him for the next life-cycle. I can sleep there, and you can do all your freaky sex stuff at night time. Deal?”
“Was that one of the rules? I can only do freaky sex stuff at night time? Does that mean you can only do freaky sex stuff at night time as well? Does that mean you’re going to do freaky sex stuff with Cyrus?”
Emmy’s face turned the colour of a ripe berry, and when I saw that red spread down to her hands, I knew that I needed to back away fast. Between Cyrus and Emmy, I was starting to think that I was the least scary person on the mountain. I backed up and she levelled a stare on me that said what the hell are you doing?
“You’re scary,” I answered her look. “Your hands are red.” I pointed to the clenched fists in front of her.
She let out a sigh before flexing her fingers and shaking off the tension in her shoulders. “Cyrus and me … there … never. I will never touch that arrogant god.”
“Famous last words,” Siret added lazily. “Now that you’ve put it out into the universe …”
“Bring. It. On!” Emmy tilted her head up, giving us the most stubborn of her looks. Then she spun around and stormed off. “I’ll see you in the morning, Willa,” she called over her shoulder. “Don’t forget the rules.”
I was seriously hoping that there was absolutely no reason for me to break the rules that night. And that there weren’t any additional rules that she hadn’t gotten around to telling me about.
“I’m going to need some dry clothes and a bed,” I said to the Abcurses. “And sleep. Lots of sleep.”
Looks were exchanged, and I realised that we had reached the dilemma of where to sleep. Since I’d died, we had all been sleeping in our howler pile, and I wondered if they would want to continue that now. Or if we were going to start separating.
The thought of that sent a feeling of unease through me.
“Let’s check out the arrangements,” Coen suggested, breaking through whatever tension held us.
I wasn’t moving one more step in my wet clothes, and Siret must have realised that because he moved close enough to run his hands across my body. The sodden mess disappeared and when I looked down, I was in a robe. Not a god robe though, this style was more like a coat, which crossed over the front and tied with a long cord. It was the colour of cream, softer than clouds, and so warm that my entire body relaxed and I almost fell asleep right there on the spot.
Yael didn’t bother changing—wet clothes didn’t bother him apparently. Actually, on closer inspection, it looked like they were almost dry. Really? I mean, he did throw off a lot of body heat …
I really had to stop thinking about swimming.
“Yeah, that would be great,” Rome grumbled.
I hurried ahead of them, opening the door that Coen pointed at, stepping into what I hoped was a bedroom. The last thing I wanted to deal with was a quintet of fighting gods. I felt like I had to be extra careful until I managed to keep it even. Right now, things weren’t balanced, and if I didn’t fix that soon, we were going to end up in all-out war.
Ah, the things I have to do for balance.
I focused on the room, realising that it pretty much just contained a bed. The most perfect bed in all of existence, possibly. Huge and decadent, with more pillows than twenty people could use and thick blankets that begged me to crawl under them. Before I could think it through, I was moving, the softness cushioning my knees as I scurried up to the end with the pillows. “Looks like Willa found her bed,” Coen drawled with a laugh.
I would have responded except I was too busy snuggling my way under the covers.
“Does anyone know who was next on the schedule?” I heard Coen ask. Always the responsible one, my Coen. He was falling back on the scheduling that had made our lives easier in the past. Things had changed so much since then, though.
“I think it was Aros’s turn next,” Yael said, crossing his arms. I could feel his eyes on me, and I tried not to think too hard about the swimming incident. Mostly because I was way too tired to swim at the moment, despite my new-found love for it.
“Aros and Coen,” I said sleepily. “We need some balance.”
I thought they were going to argue, but outside of some murmuring and shuffling of bodies, no one said anything. A warm hand brushed my hair back, and I snuggled into it, my eyes already closed.
“We’ll just clean up and be right back, dweller baby,” Coen murmured
“Mmkay,” I mumbled.
Darkness dragged me under, then, and I drifted off to sleep feeling safe, content, and very satisfied.
Eight
“Willa Knight! You were supposed to be up twenty clicks ago!”
The annoying voice was familiar, buzzing through the heavy sleep that was still attempting to hold me under. I was so warm and comfortable, heat pressing in on either side of me. I wiggled a little and tried to open my eyes, only to slam them shut again because it was too bright. A large hand rested against the bare skin just below my ribcage, beneath my sleep shirt. Another hand gripped my thigh, the hold somehow both sleepy and possessive.
“How attached are you to Dweller-Emmy?” Coen rumbled in my ear.
I pulled one of the pillows out from behind my head and blindly threw it in the general direction of Emmy’s voice. “I’m considering answering that unfavourably.”
The blankets over us started to shift, as though a bossy hand had grabbed them in preparation for something horrible. “I will rip them right off,” a bossy voice warned—undoubtedly the accompaniment to the hand. “I don’t even care how naked the three of you are under there.”
Before I could stop myself, my hands went out to either side to feel along Coen and Aros’s bodies. Disappointment hit me when I realised that both of them were wearing underwear, and the low chuckles that sounded in response to my thoughts had my body clenching.
“One,” Emmy started. “Two … I’m going to rip it off. Thre—”
“Wait!” I shouted, finally managing to peel my eyes open. I pulled myself up, squinting at my best friend. She looked the same as always, her clothing conservative, modest, and muted. Everything was the same, dull dweller black; I couldn’t even tell where her shirt ended and her pants began. Her hair was pulled up into a perfect braid. Not a thing out of place, except for the slight look of panic on her face.
“You’re supposed to meet Cyrus at dawn, Willa.”
Oh, right. The thing that I had to do as punishment so that Staviti didn’t hop down to Minatsol and smite us all. Coen and Aros were sitting now as well, the blankets pooling around their laps, leaving all of that bronze, muscled skin bare. I looked between both of them, my mouth and throat going dry.
“Unless you want an audience,” Emmy brought my attention back to her, “I’d suggest getting your butt out of bed, getting dressed, and getting to Cyrus. Don’t make him increase your punishment. He’s not one you should mess with.”
“When did you become a Cyrus expert?” I asked, managing to get out of bed with a little help from Coen.
Emmy shot me a withering stare as I attempted to wrangle my sleep shirt back into place. “Ugh, please don’t say it like that. I’m not an expert, but gods are arrogant and demanding … he just happens to be the worst of the lot.”
Coen and Aros shot me those half-smiles that did nothing but make me want to crawl back into bed between them.
“We can get you out of the Cyrus thing,” Coen told me. “Just say the word.”
I shook my head immediately. “I’m not causing any more trouble for you five—I know it wouldn’t be as simple as that. I don’t trust Cyrus. He has his own agenda, but he’s not going to hurt me.”
“He stabbed you,” Emmy reminded me dryly. “Only you would think that he was still okay after that.”
A sudden crashing sound to my right had us all whipping our gaze around to the wall as it started to crack apart, sprinklings of dust fluttering down to the floor.
“What in the worlds was that?” I squeaked, pulling my fists up, ready for a fight.
“This is not the time for a distraction,” Emmy complained.
“Sorry,” Coen smirked. “Willa, maybe you should ask the distraction to come back another time?” Since he was making a joke out of the fact that something was about to come crashing through the wall, I assumed it wasn’t a threat after all, and lowered my fists a little.
“I’ll try,” I replied, glancing at Emmy out of the corner of my eye to see just how far I would be allowed to push her before she exploded. “But I’m not sure how the collapsing wall is going to respond to our scheduling conflict.”
Coen and Aros were laughing, but Emmy was reaching for me—either to strangle me or to drag me out of the room, I wasn’t sure—when the wall suddenly collapsed inwards and a giant form passed through the rubble, forcing more of the wall to break off and tumble to the ground.
“Morning,” Rome muttered, passing through the destruction and strolling nonchalantly past us to the other wall, raising his fists.
“Um …” I struggled to form a coherent thought.
Emmy’s mouth dropped open and she turned to watch him. He smashed his fists into the wall, forcing it to collapse inwards. He had to do it in several places to get the whole wall down, and then he was passing through that one, as well.
“You know I have a door, right?” I heard Yael’s sardonic voice from within.
“You know what,” Emmy was shaking her head, reaching for me again, “I don’t even want to know. We don’t have time. Let’s go.”
“Meet you guys back here!” I yelled out, as she pulled me to the door. “Don’t crush anything I wouldn’t crush!”
Emmy almost pulled my arm out of its socket as she forced me down several stone hallways and out to the edge of the mountain. We hurried down several sets of natural stone steps curved to the shape of the mountain, and then through another hallway—this one several levels below the sol bedrooms. Finally, we reached a doorway. It was huge and circular, set into a hollow in the rock. She knocked once, and it swung open a moment later.
Cyrus was sitting at his desk, but his hand was raised, as though he had used some kind of Neutral power to open the door.
He glanced up from the scroll he had been writing on, a frown taking over his face. “Sit down,” he ordered, motioning to a chair in front of his desk.
I started to walk over to it, but before I had even taken my second step, the chair itself was moving. It slid backwards and then past me before reversing directions and swooping forward to catch me. I found myself seated right where he had indicated, my eyes wide.
He made another hand motion and the door slammed closed.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped at Emmy, who had moved to stand beside my chair.
“I’m Willa’s serving dweller,” she explained.
“Says who?” his eyebrows shot up. “You do realise that I’m the person in charge of this, don’t you, bug?”
“Bug?” I broke into their conversation, forcing Cyrus to falter in the intense stare-off he had going with Emmy.
“She’s an insect,” he told me, his lip curling up in disgust. “Annoying. She’s always there, always buzzing. She’s a bug.”
“You can’t talk about her like that,” I shot back, but apparently Emmy didn’t need me to defend her. She was already stepping up to Cyrus’s desk, her fists clenched again.
“And you are a … a … addicted to wine!” she shouted, apparently having trouble deciding on what she wanted to accuse him of.
“I feel like that was a poor choice of retorts,” I told her helpfully. She turned to glare at me.
“That’s ridiculous,” Cyrus sounded like he was laughing, but he was managing to keep the expression of amusement from his face by some miracle.
We both turned to him just in time to witness him pulling a small wine-skin from beneath his desk. He was in the process of raising it to his lips, the laughter finally creeping into his eyes, when he paused, realising what he was doing. He scowled, taking a quick swig before stashing it away again.
“I’m drinking because I’m bored,” he snarled at us. “And I’m bored because I’m babysitting insects.”
“Don’t want to be rude or anything,” I rushed out before the two of them could get into an all-out fighting match, with fists and magic and weird sexual chemistry. “But can we move on to the punishment portion of the meeting? I have to get back to the Abcurses before Rome tunnels right through the side of the mountain.”
“What?” Cyrus asked, apparently ignoring the practical part of my request and jumping straight to the unimportant part about Rome.
“The punishment,” I reminded him. “
That’s why I’m here. Last night I made an accidental little fire and you seemed to be in a bad mood about it so you said I had to come here—”
“No, Willa.” He sighed dramatically. “Obviously I know why you’re here. I was asking about Rome tunnelling—ugh, you know what, never mind. Yes, let’s get on with the punishment.” He leaned back in his chair before continuing. “I’m going to need you to periodically return to Topia without getting caught, in order to carry out a few things that I am no longer able to do, since I’m stuck in this gods-forsaken hellhole. Understood?”
“Nope, not really,” I admitted easily. “That doesn’t so much sound like a punishment as it does you using me to do illegal things in Topia while you sit here at your desk, drinking and writing scrolls.”
“I wasn’t writing scrolls.” His lips curled in disgust again. He shoved the paper toward me. It had one word scrawled across it in cursive writing.
Bored.
I snorted. “Right.”
“And I can’t do illegal things,” he added, ignoring my sarcasm. “I’m the one who punishes others for doing illegal things. I’m above the rules. I am the rules.”
“But I’m not.” I stood from the chair, planting my hands on my hips. “So when I go to carry out your rule-breaky tasks, I might get caught. When I’m caught, I can’t be like ‘I’m above the rules. I am the rules’,” I mimicked, putting on a deep, moody baritone. “They’ll laugh me right into the imprisonment realm.”
“The what?” Emmy spoke up, her voice holding that little hint of mania that I had grown accustomed to hearing.
“Tell you later,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth, before returning my attention back to Cyrus.
“It’s my decision,” he said dismissively, his gaze flicking to Emmy for a moment. “And that’s final. Now leave me alone, I have important things to do.”
Emmy and I both stared at the single word on the parchment, before raising our eyes to his face.
“Get. Out!” he shouted.
“That’s a great idea,” I said as I jumped to my feet and started shuffling back toward the door. “You should take your own advice. Get out, get some air. You’re going mountain crazy; it’s a thing, trust me—I was trapped in a cave, once. See, I wandered off from a school group and ended up having an unfortunate meeting with a mountain cat, so I ran into a nearby cave to get away from it … or her … or him. It didn’t exactly expose its underside to me, so I’m not sure on the gender, but you don’t look like you care about that particular detail.”
Strength Page 11
