Strength

by Jane Washington

  I meant that. With every fibre of my being.

  “I’m offended,” said an amused voice off to the side of where I stood with the Abcurses.

  I pulled my gaze from Emmy long enough to find Abil, relaxing against what remained of a half-destroyed wall. “And here I thought you enjoyed my company, daughter-in-law.”

  I blinked at him, some of my fire dying off as I tried to figure out what he was doing there, and what he was talking about.

  “You just threatened to kill all Original Gods,” Siret informed me.

  “We all say things when we’re angry,” I muttered, turning back to Staviti.

  He was still holding Emmy’s prone figure in the air before him. “All Original Gods except Abil and Adeline,” I added, the fire flaring to life around me again. I took another step forward. “Let. Emmy. Go.”

  When it came to my family, I no longer feared death. For them, I could be brave.

  Staviti’s eyes flicked across to Abil. And then to the five Abcurses around me. Then they returned to me. “Trickery … can it make fire like this?” he snarled. Losing control for the first time. “Are you really nothing more than an insignificant being who happens to have some very powerful friends? You need to understand that a debt must be paid. I will take the debt owed me and then return to Topia. Do not rest easy, however. I will be back, and I will finish what we started here this sun-cycle … in a more opportune setting.”

  All I heard was take the debt owed.

  I leapt forward, letting my powers free, urging them to wrap around his legs. I could burn a god, I already knew that. I was too late, though. Before my fire could touch him, Staviti had turned his hand, and with a crack, Emmy’s neck twisted at an unnatural angle, her face falling still.

  A scream ripped from me, followed by another as I continued to charge. I saw nothing but the Creator. I would kill him if it was the last thing I ever did. He doused the flames that had leapt out ahead of me, but he would not be able to douse me. The power was within, and I would push it all out until he was no more. Just as I dove at him, however, a strong and unnatural wind blew me to the side. I crashed to the ground with a hard thump, extinguishing the flames almost immediately, as I had nearly landed on Emmy’s body. Rolling over, I wrapped myself around my sister, holding her close. A flash of white drew my attention, and I realised that it was Cyrus.

  Sweet gods on the mountain. He was glowing. His entire figure bore such a white light around it that I almost couldn’t stare directly. He attacked Staviti, energy flinging from him and slamming into the Creator, knocking him down. He didn’t stop there, his feet hovering from the ground as he glided forward, his face devoid of any emotion except wrath.

  He gripped Staviti around the throat, hauling him up and holding him in the air in front of him.

  “You have broken the balance,” Cyrus said, his voice deep and echoing. “You will pay for your crimes.”

  His head swung toward me, and I was suddenly locked in the gaze of a pair of blinding white eyes. “Emmy?” I heard the question in that one word.

  I shook my head, pulling her closer to me.

  Cyrus roared then, a low guttural sound that sent goosebumps across my skin. Staviti must have realised that he had made a mistake; Emmy wasn’t just important to me. He launched into action, knocking Cyrus back a few feet with some kind of invisible force that was strong enough to send the other’s body several inches into the packed dirt. This gave Staviti enough room to gather a storm around him, wind and rain popping into existence from nowhere, battering everyone on the mountain.

  Cyrus pulled himself up again and pushed through it, sending blasts of white light at Staviti, who countered these attacks with jagged bolts of deadly lightning, fissuring the Neutral power into harmless droplets of rain. Their fight continued on, back and forth, while the rest of us held on for our lives.

  “Give Emmy to me,” Siret’s low voice pleaded. I realised that I was surrounded by my Abcurses; I had no idea how long they’d been there, my focus had been entirely on Emmy, and then on Cyrus.

  “No!” I shook my head, pulling her limp body even closer. “No. I can’t let her go. I won’t let her go.”

  A scream ripped from me as I sobbed. My breathing was so fast that I was about to hyperventilate, but I just couldn’t accept that she was gone. I had seen her neck snap. I had seen the light fade from her eyes, and I still couldn’t accept it. Rain slapped at my bare skin, stinging with its assault, but it was nothing compared to the pain inside my chest.

  She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive.

  I chanted this in my head, over and over, each chant bringing another sob. Hands touched me, but no one tried to steal her away. They just gave me their energy. Their love.

  It wasn’t enough.

  My power swirled with the same force as the storm outside. Live, Emmy. Live.

  “Please,” I sobbed out loud.

  I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to her chest, my arms wrapped tightly around her as we lay together. My head started to swirl, the same way my energy did inside my body, and within a few clicks I grew light-headed, dark spots flashing over my vision.

  “What the fuck is she doing here?” Coen’s question should have been concerning to me, but I was struggling to focus on anything other than the dizzying sensation in my head.

  “Pica never leaves Topia.” This time, it was Aros speaking. “Fuck. She might be here to help Staviti.”

  I missed parts of the conversation as my precarious hold on consciousness started to slip.

  “… Hates him,” someone else was saying. “There’s no way she’s here to help. She’s here because of Rau.”

  “Pica …” I recognised Staviti’s voice, but the tone confused me. I was barely managing to regain consciousness, and I lost whatever else he said, though he seemed to be shocked. A woman replied, and then he was angry. Betrayed. Blackness pressed in on either side of me and I wondered then if maybe I was dying of a broken heart. Everything hurt and my energy was slipping from my body.

  “Willa!” Aros’s shout barely even registered. “No, you can’t …”

  The darkness sucked the last of my breath from me, and then everything was still.

  Eighteen

  I wasn’t sure if I died again that sun-cycle, but when I finally regained consciousness, I sure as hell wished that I had. Pain was everywhere. There wasn’t a single part of my body that didn’t hurt. I groaned as I tried to open my eyes.

  “Willa.” That whisper of my name was from Yael. I’d know his voice anywhere. He brushed a hand lightly over me and I flinched. The pain was just so intense, it was almost unbearable.

  I felt the rim of a cup being pressed against my lips and then liquid on my tongue, at the back of my throat, soothing and cool. “Drink it please, you need to rest some more.”

  That voice was definitely not one of my guys, unless one of them had gotten decidedly feminine in the last few rotations—or however long I’d been out for. Whatever was in the liquid, it worked almost immediately, and whatever hold I’d had on reality faded away again.

  The next time I woke, the pain was almost at a manageable level, so I pushed through the fuzziness in my head and forced my eyes open. The first thing I saw was an arm: bare, bronze, and well-muscled. It was not my arm, but it was an arm that was very close to my heart. Literally and figuratively.

  I wiggled up in the bed, pausing when I realised that I was in bed with five sleeping gods. All of my gods. They were sprawled around me, keeping me at the centre of them all.

  Coen’s arm was the large one I’d first seen. Yael’s was close to his.

  I started to cry. Tears flooded my eyes and trailed down my cheeks as I sat there and watched the gods. It wasn’t until a calloused thumb wiped away one of my tears that I realised they weren’t really sleeping anymore. No one said a word as they pulled themselves up, surrounding me, pressing in closer. I ended up with Siret behind me, Yael to my right, Coen to my left, and Aros a
nd Rome in front. I was the centre, the Abcurses a circle of heat around me.

  “Where is Emmy?” I acknowledged the most pressing pain in my heart. Tears ran unchecked down my cheeks, wiped away by a different Abcurse each time, their hands pressing to my face as they touched me.

  Before anyone could answer me, a tall, thin woman walked into the room. It only took one glance to assure me that it was a god. She was stunning, her hair extra-long and perfect, her eyes sparkling with beauty, her cheeks so damn rosy. Unnatural. Her beauty was unnatural.

  There was no wariness in the boys, but there was something familiar about her that I couldn’t place.

  “Pica,” Aros said.

  Oh, Pica. Wait a freaking click … Pica? Like, the one god Staviti was in love with? The literal Goddess of Love? Her name was ringing some sort of bell for me … was she at the Peak? Had someone said that?

  For the first time, I noticed my surroundings. We weren’t in our rooms. I was in a huge bed—clearly, because it fit five massive gods with ease—but the room beyond that was unfamiliar. There was a lot of pink, however. Bright pinks, pale pinks, even a nice purple-pink floral design near the door.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Where are we?”

  Rome cleared his throat, laughter in his words when he said, “This is Pica’s home. She … invited us to stay with her for the next little while.”

  Pica hurried forward then until she was standing right at the end of the bed. “I’ve waited a long time to meet you, Willa.”

  I just blinked, waiting for my brain to figure out what she meant. “You’ve waited to meet me?”

  She nodded, her eyes wide and bright. “Oh, yes, I think of you as the daughter Staviti stole from me.”

  Say what now?

  “Uh, I’m really confused,” I finally admitted. “What happened on the Peak? Where is Staviti? How are we not all dead?”

  The moment I said dead, the mental image of Emmy sprang to mind. Those lifeless eyes would haunt me forever. My tears were still flowing. I couldn’t seem to shut them off.

  “Someone tell her already,” Rome finally bit out. “If I have to see her cry like this for one click longer, Pica will be building herself a new kidnapping room.”

  Kidnapping room? I thought she’d invited us.

  “It was sort of a ‘impossible to refuse invitation,’” Yael admitted, reading my thoughts.

  “Emmy is alive, dweller-baby,” Coen announced, distracting me from that disturbing statement. He lifted a hand and gently wrapped it around my face. “You saved her life. You …” He cleared his throat, sharing a look with the others before he finished. “You turned her into a god.”

  My world stilled. Even the breath that had been rattling in my lungs stopped. I just stared at him.

  “She’s in shock,” someone murmured. “Get the dweller-Emmy so she can see for herself.”

  I don’t know who left, or what happened, because I was still frozen in place.

  It wasn’t until familiar blond hair appeared in my vision—along with familiar blue eyes, and a familiar smile—that the icy hold on me cracked.

  “Emmy,” I sobbed, caving forward on myself, arms wrapping across my chest like I could hold my heart inside from where it was trying to burst out.

  She pushed through the Abcurses before basically crawling into my lap. She enclosed me in her arms, and I sank against her. “How is this possible?” I cried against her neck. “I saw you die.”

  “You saved me, Willa.” Her voice was low, serious. “You shared your energy with me. You brought me back to life.”

  “And almost goddamned killed herself in the process,” Siret muttered from nearby.

  “Emmy is a god,” Pica trilled. Damn woman was so chirpy; she was making it really hard for me to cry in peace. “We don’t know what she’s a god of, yet, but we’re all expecting big things.”

  I pulled back, then, to get a closer look at Emmy. “But, you look the same?” I questioned. “Shouldn’t you look different?”

  Emmy shook her head, and the most breath-taking of smiles spread across her face. “You look the same. Becoming a god doesn’t change your outside, but I promise, I have never felt so strong in my life.”

  “Cyrus?” I had no idea why he was the first name that came to mind, then, but the last thing I remembered was him being all bright and fighting Staviti.

  My spine straightened. “He’s okay, right? Staviti didn’t kill him?”

  Emmy’s cheeks went a little pink. “He’s fine. The moment Pica and Adeline showed up, Staviti must have realised he was overpowered, and he took off.”

  That was great news, but … he wouldn’t have given up so easily. Jakan had been very clear in his message. Staviti was on the path to destroying all of the gods. All of them except his precious Originals. Only…

  “Why did you help us?” This question I directed to the Goddess of Love, who was busy flitting around the room, rearranging the four billion accessories that were on every spare inch of space. “Staviti loves you, and you turned against him.”

  She spun toward me, holding an ornate crystal lamp. “I LOVE lamps,” she said with enthusiasm, before smiling down at it fondly. “Don’t you love lamps?”

  I flicked a side-eyed glance at Coen, who just shook his head. Okay then, crazy-pants it was.

  “Lamps are … great, sure. I really enjoy their … light.”

  “I know!” she shot back instantly. “I love light. It’s so warm. I just love it.”

  “She loves everything, right?” Emmy said, her voice low, edged with laughter.

  “Every-fucking-thing,” Yael said, low and derisively.

  “Ask her the question again, Willa,” Coen encouraged. “She gets easily side-tracked.”

  Right. “Why did you help us, Pica?”

  The lamp was gently placed down and she gracefully crossed to be closer to the bed. “Because he killed my son, many centuries ago. I loved my son more than any of my other loves. More than I love the stars and moon and the air and breeze and the lamp—”

  “We get it,” Aros cut her off, his voice rougher than usual.

  “Your child is one of those in the imprisonment realm?” I asked her, my voice trembling as I thought back to those blank-faced children.

  Some of the dreaminess left Pica’s face then, and she focused on me properly. “Yes, Judas, my one and only baby. Mine and Rau’s. For this, Staviti will be punished. He will suffer. I’ve been waiting for the moment another who could challenge him would come along. I knew the moment Rau found you that you were the one. I waited for you to ascend when you died, but you never did.” Her full lips pressed into a pout, and she blinked dramatically like she was going to cry. “I’ve had this room set up for you for so many moon-cycles.”

  She spun in a circle, her face lighting up again. “Do you like it?”

  “Am I allowed to … not like it?” I asked, thinking back to the still-unresolved mystery of how Pica had kidnapped us.

  “No!” She replied, smiling—though I was pretty sure she really meant the ‘no’. “You’re only allowed to love it!”

  She stood there, her hands held out to me, her smile wide and disarming. Holy shit, she was the most frightening of all the gods.

  “Alright,” I acquiesced. “I like it. So much. It’s … so pink.”

  “Pink is just so lovely!” she exclaimed.

  “You scare me,” I muttered back, causing Emmy to choke on a laugh.

  “What was that?” Pica asked, leaning forward a little, the smile still stuck in place.

  “I said you have lovely hair,” I amended.

  “And yours is just divine,” she shot back, pawing all over me, her hands wrapping in my hair. “It’s so yummy I could eat it! Num num num!” She mimed chomping down on my hair and then drew back, laughing.

  I stared at her. Wide-eyed. Horrified.

  “Num num num,” I repeated, in a daze. When I had recovered, I tried to speak again. “So ... it’s really n
ice in here and everything, but ... how long do we have to stay?” I asked, trying to be delicate about a situation I had no understanding of.

  “Apparently, this is where you live now,” Rome muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  “Oh, silly Willy!” Pica spun around, opening the door for me. “You can leave anytime you want!”

  “How long has she been calling me Willy for?” I whispered to Emmy.

  “For as long as you’ve been here,” Emmy whispered back.

  I extracted myself from the bed and stood, my head swaying for a moment as I tried to gain my balance.

  “And how long have I been here?” I asked this question a little louder, directing it to everyone.

  “Fourteen sun-cycles,” Coen replied. “Pica took you after Staviti left the Peak. She told us she knew how to heal you, but she grabbed you and jumped through the same pocket as Staviti, closing it behind her.”

  “I did do that,” Pica confirmed, smiling jovially. “It was time to bring you home, Willy.”

  “Right.” I fixed Coen with a stare, widening my eyes a little. He cringed in response, and then answered my unspoken question.

  “It didn’t take us long to find you. This was the first place we checked: Pica’s platform. She was having a tea party with you, right out in the open. Invited us to have a cup.”

  “A tea party?” My brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t remember that.”

  “Oh yes!” Pica clapped her hands together beneath her chin, donning a whimsical expression. “It was so lovely.”

  “You were unconscious,” Yael supplied.

  “Oh.” I was officially terrified of Pica.

  I made my way to the door and carefully edged past her, walking into the hall. Her residence was made of marble, as with most of the god-homes, but there was so much pink fabric hanging everywhere that it was a little hard to recognise our space as one of the typical marble houses that I had grown used to in Topia. Nonetheless, it wasn’t too hard to navigate my way out the pink nightmare. I opened the main door and stepped out into a small garden, surprised enough that I paused to look around. Soil had been piled into marble garden boxes, fruit and vegetable plants overgrowing from the sides. Everything looked so ... well-loved. I shuddered, hurrying out of the garden.