Strength

by Jane Washington

  Before I could kiss the heck out of him—because that’s exactly what we both needed in that moment—he spun on the spot and took two steps forward, dropping me onto Leden’s back.

  I opened my mouth and he silenced my words with a single kiss, before pulling back, leaving us both breathless. “Save it for later,” he said. “Later you’re mine.”

  Leden took off before I had a chance to combust, and as the cool breeze washed over me, I sucked in deep breaths, trying to centre myself. Trying to focus. How in the worlds had I gotten so lucky?

  You have brought much into their lives. Leden cut into my thoughts. I have never seen six beings mesh so seamlessly before. A bond to surpass all others.

  “I’m not sure I could live without them,” I admitted to her. “It scares me, and yet … I can’t walk away. I will never walk away.”

  Just keep fighting.

  I had a feeling her words were going to become much more literal in the next few moon-cycles. An intense fear was building low in my gut. I could only stay hidden from Staviti for so long. What would happen when he figured out what I was? How could we possibly fight against the Original God?

  I didn’t know why—or how—but Jakan was the key. The mortal glass had shown him to me for a reason. I needed to learn more about him before it was too late.

  Thirteen

  It wasn’t very hard to convince my mother to come with us—certainly not as hard as it had been to track down the hidden entrance to Cyrus’s lair again. She was still sitting on the bed when we arrived, still staring blankly at the wall. I had asked her if she would like to come with me, but she hadn’t responded. She had stared, waiting, until I realised that in her current state, she probably didn’t have a whole lot of ‘wants’.

  So, I took her—kidnapped her, if you will.

  The panteras hadn’t taken us all the way to Cyrus’s home, because it was too near the banishment cave, so we had to walk back to where they waited. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, and I was too exhausted to ask—though the exhaustion was of a different kind to what I was used to. Before my death, so much hiking and climbing would have made my legs weak and shortened my breath. My ribs would have been aching, my stomach cramping, and my mouth should have been dry. Instead, I was only gasping as though my body recognised the habit of it. There was a hollow sort of ache throughout my body, as though the exhaustion was buried deep inside of me. I knew I needed sleep—there was no doubt about that—but I also knew that I could have easily stretched my energy for another whole sun-cycle.

  “There they are.” Siret pointed ahead, and I ran to catch up with him, peering through the low-hanging branches of the trees that wound alongside the river bank we were following.

  The panteras had stayed behind, waiting for us at the base of the river, downstream from the waterfall beside Cyrus’s home.

  “Why do you think they wouldn’t come with us?” I asked, as I spotted movement ahead. A flash of black fur.

  “It probably has something to do with the banished servers,” Aros replied. “They were originally of Minatsol, and then they were brought here, infused with the magic of this land, and then banished to a cave, most of the magic stripped away. Those souls are lost, stuck between worlds.”

  “Souls?” I paused, almost tripping over an extended tree root. “You think the servers have souls?”

  “Of course they do.” Coen was the one to answer me this time. “You’ve seen what it looks like to take away the full soul of a person—it renders them as good as dead. The servers are still functioning: walking, talking, obeying orders. He has preserved at least part of their soul.”

  I glanced behind at my mother. She didn’t seem to be listening, though she met my eyes when I looked at her.

  “Do you have a soul?” I asked her.

  She lifted her shoulders in a stiff shrug. I waited for more, but nothing else came. I sighed. It was worth a try.

  “Do you know what a soul is?” Siret asked her, surprising me.

  “Yes of course, Sacred One,” was her reply.

  “Really?” I pressed. “Can you point to it?”

  She nodded, and then pointed at her nose.

  “Just to confirm.” I stopped walking and turned fully to face her, the others pausing around me. “Your soul is ... your nose?”

  “Exactly, Sacred One.”

  “She doesn’t know what her soul is,” I told Siret, rolling my eyes and continuing on toward the panteras.

  We must hurry. Leden’s voice filled my mind, and I watched as she pushed through the dense foliage, revealing herself to me. Your time has almost run out.

  We helped my mother onto one of the panteras, and then I climbed onto Leden, holding on tightly as she propelled herself from the ground, her wings beating against the trees as she rose into the sky. She was flying faster than usual, and it was too dark for me to make out much of the scenery, so I buried my face into her soft fur, protecting my cheeks from the sharp sting of the wind and emerging only when she began to slow again, dropping back to the ground. She had taken us back to the Garden of Everlasting, right where we had started.

  “When will I see you again?” I asked her as the Abcurses all muttered their soft gratitude to their respective panteras.

  Soon, Willa Knight. She nudged my face gently with her nose, and my hands reached up instinctively, flattening down over the soft fur between her eyes.

  “Is there anything you can tell me?” I tried one last time. “Anything about what the cave showed me, about Staviti and Jakan, about what I am? Anything?”

  If you cannot see the full picture, what must you do? she asked me, her wings stretching out in preparation for flight.

  “Find the rest of the picture?” I guessed. “Find the missing piece?”

  And what is missing from what you saw? she returned.

  I thought hard, trying to figure out what might have been left out of the scenes, what I might not have picked up on, but my mind kept getting snagged on Jakan—the piece that didn’t make sense.

  Why does Jakan not make sense? Leden seemed to be hinting at something, as the other panteras rose into the sky.

  I realised, then, what she meant. Jakan himself was the missing piece, because he was quite literally missing. I needed to find him, or at least find out more about him. Maybe one of the other gods knew something.

  “Thank you,” I told Leden, as she pushed up from the ground. “Thank you for everything.”

  “We need to hurry,” Rome told me, reaching my side. “Take hold of Donald—this transition might be hard for her.”

  I nodded, moving to my mother’s side and taking her hand. She glanced at me, and then pulled her hand out of mine.

  “My apologies, Sacred One.”

  I blinked at her, confused, and took her hand again. She pulled it away again.

  “My apologies, Sacred One.”

  “What the hell are you apologising for?” I finally asked, attempting to take her hand again. She kept shifting it away.

  “I keep running into you,” she explained.

  “Gods give me strength,” I muttered, before taking her hand again. “I’m touching you, Donald. It’s deliberate. Stop apologising.”

  “Oh.” She blinked. “My apologies, Sacred One. I didn’t realise you were initiating intimate protocol.”

  “Intimate ... what now?” I managed, as she pulled her hand out of my grasp again and started walking away. “Intimate what?” I yelled after her, before turning on the guys. “What the hell is she talking about? What is she doing?”

  Coen coughed. Aros was shaking his head. Siret looked uncomfortable.

  “DONALD!” I screamed, forcing her to stop walking. She turned, waiting. “What are you doing?”

  “Finding a suitable surface on which to perform intimate protocol,” she informed me, before pointing to a patch of grass free of leaves or debris. “Is here sufficient, Sacred One? Shall I take off my covering?”

  “Not unless you
want me to gouge my eyes out,” I warned her, throwing another accusing glare at the guys. I wasn’t sure how, but this was their fault.

  “I do not want that, Sacred One.”

  “Good. Keep your covering on and never say the words ‘intimate protocol’ ever again. You had enough ‘intimate protocol’ in your dweller life, you don’t need any more of it.”

  “As you wish, Sacred One.”

  “I don’t think I can touch her hand again,” I muttered, as we gathered in preparation to go through the pocket.

  “I’ve got her,” Siret announced, reaching out and wrapping his hand around my mother’s arm, right above her elbow. “Let’s go, Donald. Brace yourself—this might hurt.”

  We stepped through the pocket one-by-one and gathered on the other side, waiting for Siret to pass through with Donald. I rushed forward as they appeared, already reaching for her. I had expected screaming, crying, maybe some mechanical gasping, but instead, she was hanging limply from Siret’s grip. I quickly picked up her other arm, supporting her other side. Her head was hanging down. She was a dead weight.

  “What happened?” I asked Siret.

  “I have no idea.” His expression was grim. “We’ve never tried to sneak a server into Minatsol before—this might not have been such a good idea.”

  “Did she die ... again?” My voice was reaching hysterical levels, and I was starting to panic.

  This was my fault. My stupid idea.

  “Let’s just get her back to the Peak,” Rome muttered. “We can take her to a healer—and if that doesn’t work, there will be a sol and Beta of healing skulking around, hiding from everyone else.”

  “I’ve got her,” Siret assured me, swinging my mother up so that he could carry her on his own.

  “Let me.” Rome held his hands out, and Siret passed her over. She looked so small and fragile against Rome’s massive frame—it was odd to witness, since my mother was several inches taller than me. I must have looked tiny in comparison to my guys.

  “You make up for it in temper,” Yael informed me, as we began to walk in the direction of the mountain. It was just visible in the early morning rays of sunlight, but I was still worried that we wouldn’t make it in time for the beginning of that sun-cycle’s training session. I also needed to eat, and possibly sleep. I wasn’t sure how long my new undead stamina would hold.

  We picked up our pace as the thought crossed my mind. The journey back was silent, with my attention constantly being pulled back over my shoulder, checking on my mother’s state. Rome assured me often that she was still breathing, but it worried me that there were no other visible changes. She was limp, unresponsive. I needed to fix her, before something worse happened.

  By the time we reached the base of the mountain, exhaustion was creeping in—a tremor finally beginning to make itself known in my calves and wrists.

  “I’ll take Donald to our rooms and call for a healer,” Rome announced. “Someone give my student something to crush. It’ll keep her occupied until I’m back.”

  “Can it be one of the other students?” Siret quipped.

  “Don’t see why not—” Rome started, at the same time as Coen spoke.

  “Absolutely not.”

  I might have grinned if I hadn’t been so tired. Instead, I could only focus on where I planted my feet. I didn’t want to slip and go sailing off the mountain—that hardly seemed productive, considering all the trouble we’d just gone to. I was wearing the heavy chains around my neck and they would sail off the mountain right along with me, rendering our entire operation futile.

  “Really?” Aros grumbled in reply to my thoughts. “That’s the downside to you falling off a mountain? The fact that we’ll lose the chains?”

  “They’re very valuable chains,” I defended. “And heavy.”

  “They’re heavy because you refuse to let anyone else carry them for more than a click,” Siret pointed out. “They would have been much lighter if you’d let us keep them.”

  “I’ll hand them off when we get to Cyrus—I don’t care so much about him touching them. He’d be a great Neutral of the imprisonment realm.”

  “That’s our girl.” Coen laughed.

  We separated when we reached the section of the mountain housing the god residences, and then separated once more when we reached the dining area. Siret and Yael were going to go ahead and meet the students while I went with Coen and Aros to fetch food for everyone.

  I knew that we were quite a sight as we passed through the tables of stunned sols eating breakfast. There were no gods to be seen, and I suspected that most of them preferred to have their food served in their residences, where they wouldn’t have to mix with the sols any more than necessary, outside of their teaching rotations.

  Our clothing was dishevelled, our hair mussed, and I knew that for my own part, I was toting a look of half-crazed exhaustion. There was dirt beneath my fingernails and pantera hair stuck to my shirt.

  All the other sols looked fresh, fed, and ready to tackle the sun-cycle, though there was something of a harrowed look in their eyes. I didn’t blame them, after witnessing where they were all expected to sleep. I’d feel harrowed too if faced with the prospect of falling through a hole in the wall and tumbling down the side of a mountain in my sleep.

  “We need containers to carry everything in,” I said as we approached the large serving buffet.

  “Our students are supposed to be our servers while we’re here,” Coen informed me. “But we told them we liked to do this sort of shit ourselves.”

  “So you lied?” I grinned at him, and his lips twitched in return.

  “Something like that. There are wooden food containers down in the kitchen. I’ll grab some of those.” He turned without waiting for a response and began to move through the mass of sols—all of whom jumped out of his way to allow him passage.

  When he returned a few clicks later, there were at least five sols trailing him, carrying wooden food containers. He walked down the line of the buffet, pointing out foods and barking orders while they rushed to fill up the containers. I stepped back, leaning into the hard warmth of Aros’s chest. His hand settled on my hip, and we watched and waited until Coen was done.

  “To the training rooms,” Coen grunted out to his group of followers, before striding out of the room.

  The sols were almost tripping over each other in their haste to follow him.

  We trailed after the group at a slower pace, walking as though hypnotised by the aromas that drifted from the containers. I could barely wait until we reached the training rooms, but I was also too tired to catch one of the sols and steal away their container, so I dragged myself after them, squeezing through the group as they all piled into the narrow marble corridor.

  When we reached the rooms designated for the Abcurses and their training, I collapsed in the corner and simply waved my right hand in the air.

  “What do you need, Soldier?”

  “Food,” I mumbled. “Need food.”

  I heard laughter, but after that I had no idea what happened because my eyelids lowered and then everything went dark.

  Sometime later I awoke to low murmurs.

  “The healer has no idea what’s wrong with Donald. Even Lancaster stopped by for a look.”

  At those words, slow swirls of panic began to build low in my gut, but I was still too asleep to completely understand why.

  “Do you think it’s wise?” asked another voice. “Having Lancaster know that one of the servers is in Minatsol? What if he informs Staviti?”

  “He’s afraid of Willa,” said the original voice, laughter in his words. “He’s not going to say anything.”

  My brain finally started working again, and in a rush of understanding I realised it was Rome and Coen talking … about my mum. I gasped as I pulled myself up from the hard surface I’d been sprawled across. As my eyes opened, I registered the muscled chest below my hands. I’d been asleep on an Abcurse. Coen Abcurse to be accurate.

&n
bsp; “Willa, what is it?” Green eyes bore into me as he examined my face. “What happened?”

  “My mum needs me,” I said, voice husky. “You have to take me to her. I healed Yael, somehow, so maybe I can help her as well.”

  Coen turned to Rome, who sat nearby. He just shrugged those huge shoulders of his. “Can’t hurt, right?”

  I pulled myself to stand, mourning the loss of Coen’s heat, but knowing I needed some space to get my mind functioning again. That sleep had really knocked me out. My legs wobbled for a moment before I felt my strength returning to them and I was steady. Clearing my throat, I tried again. “You know I’m going to do this no matter what you say. You might as well give up now.”

  Coen rose to his feet before answering. “I’m just worried. Healing takes a lot of energy. You’re still learning about your powers—their capabilities. I don’t want you to hurt yourself in a quest to … save your mother.”

  I heard the underlying truth of what he was telling me. There was no way to save Donald, she was even more undead than I was. Just a husk of soul trapped in its shell. But … I had to try.

  They must have seen the determination in my features, because no one argued with me again. “I need to deal with my sol,” Rome said with annoyance. “She’s being a real pain in my ass, but if you want me to come with you … I’m there.”

  A quick glance told me that the Strength sol was in the corner of the next open room, smashing her fists into a rock. Her dark hair was tied back severely, accentuating the angry lines of her face. I wasn’t sure if she was carving the stone into something, or just taking out her frustrations, but either way … I didn’t want to be alone with her. Ever.

  She wasn’t the only one who looked pissed. Despite the fact that Siret, Yael, and Aros were with their sols—all of them in their own interconnected rooms, each looking more bored than the one before—the females were still shooting angry glares in my direction.

  They seriously needed to get over this shit.

  “They’re angry because we all watched over you while you slept. We took turns,” Coen told me.