by Jaymin Eve
“That’s the only reason you wouldn’t want my eyes harvested?” Rome grunted, a little disbelieving.
I shrugged. “Like I said: they’re staring. Maybe if you were dissembled into little packages or something, they wouldn’t be staring and I’d be able to carry out a full sleuth mission uninterrupted.”
“The other students aren’t staring at me, Willa.” The blunt words were just so Rome.
He never wasted his breath, and he didn’t particularly like to chase me down the tangents I often entertained. For a long time, I had considered myself a burden to him and his brothers, but we’d reached a turning point recently, after he declared that he wanted to keep the soul-link. I was pretty sure that we were friends now.
Large hands wrapped around me as he pulled me close to his chest. “What I actually said was that you are ours. I’ve claimed ownership of you, Willa Knight.”
I wanted to shove against him. Maybe kick him in the shins … but I knew that either option would be both futile and painful. Instead, I started calling him every curse I could think of, which had his huge chest shaking with laughter in no time.
Far more gently than I would have expected, he pushed me back to arm’s length. “We’re yours also, you know that. This isn’t a one-way thing.”
Oh. My. Gods. He had never said anything like that before. That was almost … sweet.
I let out a shriek as he tossed me over his shoulder and took off. “Don’t get used to it. I have a limited supply of that, and I just used up all of it to get you to stop looking at me like you want to stick a fork in my eye.”
“Put me down, you giant pain in my ass!”
So much for stealth-mode. My shrieking alone was enough to draw the eye of every single dweller in the kitchen area we had just entered. Rome ducked his head so that both of us weren’t clobbered by the large rack of cast iron pans hanging from the ceiling, before he continued to deftly manoeuvre through the room. We broke out into a garden outside, and passed through it, into another one.
“I know where your dweller-Emmy is.” His words penetrated through my annoyance, and mild panic.
“It’s Emmanuelle now,” I said, all snooty like.
“I don’t care,” he replied smoothly. Which didn’t surprise me at all.
The Abcurses weren’t big on giving a crap about dwellers or sols. Which made sense, since they were gods.
Without my link to them, I would die. If I died, I would maybe become a Beta god of Chaos, which would give the current main god of Chaos a lot of power—power that he would most likely use to take over Topia, the world of the gods; and Minatsol, the land of mortals.
“It’d just be better all-round if I didn’t die.” I must have muttered the last part out loud without realising it, because Rome ground to a halt and lowered me down to my feet.
“No dying,” he growled.
I was about to quip something back at him, but it died off when I finally noticed where we were.
“This is where Emmanuelle is?” I took a step closer, the freaky eyes of the god-statues most definitely following me.
Rome shrugged, before he pointed across to a sol hurrying toward the Sacred Sands arena. “I’m sure enough that I would bet that guy’s life on it.”
I followed the sol for a beat, before turning back to Rome. “So you have no idea, and you aren’t sure at all.”
He tilted his head to the side and hit me with that smile again. The one which should have been banned anywhere near a Chaos sol, or Chaos dweller … or whatever I was now. The point was, if he didn’t stop looking at me like that, Chaos was going to start happening. That was the only explanation for the tight pressure suddenly assaulting my chest.
Just when I was sure I couldn’t take another moment of it, Rome gently shoved me along the path, and we were walking beneath the statues of the gods outside the temple. Just like the last time, I could feel prickling across the back of my neck, and I had the same sensation of being watched. One of the statues was … paying attention. My first guess would have been Rau, the Chaos god, but he wasn’t the only god who was now paying attention. It could have been Abil, the Trickery god—and the father to my Abcurses—or even Staviti. Sure, Staviti was the great Creator and probably had a really busy life making new flowers and other things, but for some reason I felt like he might have been very interested in all of this new stuff going on between both of the worlds.
Cyrus. His name brushed across my mind, and with a heavy shove, I locked it back down again. The Neutral God … was an enigma, and I didn’t have time for one of those.
Rome led me along the same path we had taken to the secret dweller meeting last time, and we were both silent as we descended the stairs. This time I managed to stay on my feet, which was a bonus. Low voices filtered through to me the moment I landed on the lower level, stepping out into the darkness.
“How did you know she was here?” I murmured, knowing his god-hearing would pick it up.
His voice was as low as mine, his breath brushing across my cheek as he leaned down. “We’ve been keeping an eye on her for you, she’s been seen around the temple a few times.”
My heart warmed at those words, because I knew how much they would have hated ‘lowering’ themselves to spying on a dweller.
He then straightened, and his hand wrapped around mine, lacing our fingers together as he started leading me. Ever since I had been hit with the curse from Rau, my senses had become heightened, and when Aros and Coen had stirred the Chaos into exploding out of me, my senses had improved even more. This meant that I could see where we were going just fine, but there was really no need to tell Rome that. Most probably he held my hand so that he wouldn’t trip and fall over. I was the one doing the guiding, so I needed to keep holding his hand just in case he had any accidents.
Once I had finished reasoning that out in my head, I felt much better about tightening my grip and clinging to his strength.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but judging by the direction of the voices, whoever was down here was back in the same secret meeting place that everyone seemed to use. Rome and I squeezed in behind the shelves that we had used to spy on the previous secret dweller meeting; he was forced to contort himself into a painful-looking shape to fit inside, but he managed it. Standing on my tiptoes, I found a nice little gap to peek through, and if Rome hadn’t managed to slip his free hand over my mouth, the gasp which I released when I saw the scene would have definitely blown our cover.
It was Emmy. And Fred. And Scrawny Dweller Number Two. Plus Slimy Dweller Number Three.
Emmy plus three guys? What the hell was happening? What were the worlds coming to?
Okay, so they weren’t having four-way sex or anything, and I was in no way curious about how she was going to manage sex with three guys at all. I mean, why would I need to know that?
My eyes strayed to Rome and my heart began to perform a complicated pattern of stopping and starting. He was so huge he was like three guys all on his own. Which made sense, since you don’t get to be the god of strength at a hundred pounds soaking wet. Which was definitely all that Scrawny Dweller Number Two was.
He was barely as tall as Emmanuelle—my best friend and sister who needed a serious lesson in how to pick a rebound guy. Or guys. Not one of her companions could hold a candle to Atti, which, come to think about it, was probably the reason she chose them.
Another sliver of my heart broke for her. I’d been losing slivers at a pretty frequent rate as I watched her grieve over the past moon-cycle—or not grieve, which was even worse.
She was shedding pieces of herself in her quest to run from the pain, and I needed all the pieces of Emmy. I needed her to be whole and bossy and smart. We were a team and I would not let her take herself out of the game like this.
“Didn’t think the dweller had it in her.” Rome whispered this in my ear and I found myself pressing closer to him, soaking up his warmth and the way our soul-link purred like a kitten at the contact. �
��Do you know who those three sols are?”
I was immediately paying attention—well, most of me, bar that small part still pressing against Rome. “Who?” I breathed.
“You’ve got the sons of three very powerful sols right there. Their fathers are all competing for the position of Vice Chancellor here at Blesswood, while the current Vice Chancellor takes over the role of Chancellor.”
Sols? Those creepy slimeballs were sols? I should have known. Only a sol would have a name like Fred.
Rome’s words reminded me that our school was in the midst of a change. The fight where Emmy had lost her love was the same fight that had seen the end of the last Chancellor of Blesswood. Afterwards, there had been pure chaos—much to Rau’s delight, I was sure.
In the end, Yael had used his Persuasion to calm the fighting down, but now there was a significant race to bring new leadership to the top academy in Minatsol, which of course meant that every sol with an ounce of power was crawling out of their rat hole, and had entered their name into the race.
They all wanted a chance. They all thought that running Blesswood would increase their own chances of becoming a god when they died. Or grooming future gods and thereby receiving power for their family in that way.
“When do they make the final decision?” My voice got a little loud, and I thought I saw Emmy pause, but then she just went back to quietly chatting with one of the trio. The other two were pressed very close to her. Actually, all four were standing in a tight circle, and too many parts of their bodies were touching. A lot of touching.
Before Rome could answer, I let out a great huff, and pushed my way free from the bookshelves.
This crap with Emmy had gone on long enough.
Two
“And that would be my sister, Willa,” Emmy announced, her voice suddenly raised enough to carry all the way over to me. I froze, but she kept talking. “You three know Willa, I’m assuming?”
“Everyone knows that … girl,” one of the guys replied, glancing over Emmy’s shoulder to lock his eyes on me.
The fact that he was talking about me with even a small amount of disdain meant that Rome hadn’t been able to un-wedge himself enough to follow me—or else he was deliberately not following me, which actually made more sense. If I wasn’t forced to live inside myself and back up my own decisions I probably wouldn’t follow me either.
“Okay, first,” I announced, holding up my hand and raising a finger into the air, “Yes, I am a girl. You don’t need to sound unsure about the fact.” I delivered that to the guy who had spoken, before fixing my eyes to the back of Emmy’s head. She still hadn’t even turned around. I was ignoring the other two guys completely. “And second, how the hell did you know it was me?”
“You’re loud,” the guy replied, speaking for Emmy.
I flicked my eyes back to him, and then summoned my best glare. He was tall, skinny, and wearing wire-framed glasses that appeared too narrow for his eyes. His shoulders were slightly stooped, but he had a look of quiet capability about him. It annoyed me.
“She also has a somewhat distinctive blunder—it’s not quite a walk, but it does seem to propel her forward,” another of the guys added.
I cut my glare to him and found him just as unimpressive as the first. He was the same height, but a little stockier, with shockingly blonde hair and a thoughtful frown. The third guy remained quiet, a little darker in appearance, with sooty hair and dusky skin. I didn’t need to examine him, because I knew exactly who he was. That was Fred, the idiot who apparently wasn’t an idiot at all, because his father had a chance at becoming the next Vice-Chancellor.
And he was a sol.
And Emmy was still brushing arms with him.
“That’s enough,” Emmy said quietly, just as Fred opened his mouth to say something—probably to add an insult to those I had already received. She turned around, then, and I could see that her expression was tired, her shoulders dropping forward. “I guess we’re done here for the sun-cycle. Let’s go, Willa.”
She didn’t wait for any of the guys to say anything, and they didn’t seem inclined to speak of their own accord, so I planted my feet against the ground and resisted when Emmy reached me and attempted to drag me away.
I knew something was going on, and I knew that it was something I wouldn’t approve of. Considering I broke more rules than even the Abcurse brothers—and that was not a feat to be underestimated—I was assuming that Emmy was hiding something very big, and very bad. The only problem was, I had no idea how to force it out of her. She was in a fragile state. I didn’t want to push her away on top of everything else.
“Introduce me to your friends,” I ground out, attempting to sound polite as I continued to stick my feet to the ground.
Emmy was staring too hard at the side of my face, apparently trying to convey some kind of secret message. She really needed to stop trying to do that. I sucked at secret messages.
“Yes,” Fred called out, taking a few steps toward us. “Why don’t you introduce us, Emmanuelle?”
“Emmy,” I quickly snapped, before I could stop myself. “Her name is—”
“Willa,” Emmy cut across me, making my head spin a little bit with all the names being thrown about the room. “As I said before,” I realised that she wasn’t talking to me, when she turned to the others, “this is Willa, my sister.”
“That’s only half an introduction,” Fred replied, clicking his tongue in admonishment.
I fought off the urge to break out of Emmy’s grip and slap him clean across the face.
“Willa …” Emmy continued obediently, taking a calming breath that had me at least partly convinced that she was fighting the same violent urge as me. “Willa … this is Frederique, Bradford, and Morgan. Their fathers will be competing against a panel of high-ranking Minateur guards in a few sun-cycles, in Dvadel.”
“Competing for what?” I asked, my eyes still locked onto Fred.
I knew exactly what they were competing for, but my tone of voice managed to turn it into some sort of scathing remark. I shouldn’t have been pushing them. Of all the sols in Blesswood, these would have been the worst ones to pick a fight with, but they were messing around with my Emmy, and all the secrecy was making my skin crawl.
“Competing over who will get to be in charge of unruly little dweller sluts like you, actually,” Fred replied, a stony smile suddenly etched onto his face.
There was a crash in the storage room that sounded suspiciously like one of the shelves being slammed up against a wall, and I knew that Rome was a moment away from breaking free and having a crusher moment with Fred, so I only smiled in response and hurried toward the exit of the room. I could feel Emmy following behind me, so I didn’t bother looking back.
“I almost wish you’d stayed and let whichever Abcurse is hiding around here somewhere start breaking faces,” Emmy muttered beneath her breath, as soon as we were in the hallway.
“They killed the Chancellor. They had a single rule: if they killed one more person in Minatsol, they’d have their sentence extended—and being the idiots that they are, that’s exactly what they did. So they’re in enough trouble as it is. I don’t want to add to it by upping the body count.”
“Makes sense.”
“So I take it you’re not actually attempting to manoeuvre into sexual positions with those three dicks?” I questioned as casually as I could, while I pulled open the storage door.
Rome was halfway through the wall, shelves bent and pushed aside all around him. He’d basically built himself a twisted, metal cage, and was now stuck in the mess he’d made, breathing through his frustration.
“Manoeuvre into sexual positions?” she asked, cocking her head at Rome. “Is that what you guys do? Because I don’t think this one is very good at the manoeuvring part.”
I blinked, turning away from the image of Rome pulling himself back through the wall and leaping over a fallen shelf to reach the doorway we stood inside of.
“
I can’t believe you just insulted Two while he’s in angry crusher mode. Are you crazy?”
I wasn’t being serious, obviously, because Rome couldn’t have cared less what Emmy had said. His face was red and his breathing was heavy for another reason, and I could tell that he was just about to push past me and take the more direct approach into the secret meeting room, so I quickly stepped right into his path, taking up the whole doorway.
“Willa …” he started to warn, but it was Emmy who cut across him.
“Why don’t we take this somewhere else?” She seemed to be requesting, instead of demanding, which meant that she had at least some sense of self-preservation still inside her. “These halls are about to fill up with dwellers collecting their supplies for the sun-cycle and you probably don’t want the whole academy talking about how you mushed three really important sols into a stone wall during peace-talk time.”
She had a really good point, and Rome seemed to think so too, because he didn’t attempt to walk through me or toss me over his shoulder. He only stared at me, taking deep breaths until the redness subsided from his face.
“We need to leave,” he eventually spat. “Now. Before I change my mind.”
That was enough for me. I quickly grabbed his hand, pulling him back toward the way we had entered the temple. Emmy attempted to trail along behind us, but it was making me too nervous that I would lose track of her, so I forced her to walk in front of us instead. Getting Rome away from the damage he would cause if we left him alone down there was my main priority, but it didn’t mean that I had given up on getting answers out of Emmy. As soon as we were clear of danger, I was going to find out everything that she had been hiding from me, even if I had to use Rome to squeeze it out of her.
What I didn’t count on was the rush of people that collided with us as soon as we passed back into the main halls of the academy. It was finally lunch time, and everyone was heading toward the dining hall. It shouldn’t have surprised me that my new rule-breaker of a sister would use the crowd to slip away from me, but it still shocked me enough that I came to a standstill, people battering at me from each side until Rome planted himself behind me, forming a wall.
