by Jaymin Eve
I was scooped up against his chest, my legs dangling from the ground as though I was a child. “Do you ever wear clothes, doll?”
I shrugged. “Siret always makes them so tight that it’s much more comfortable this way.”
“Clever Siret.” I heard him murmur, but before I could say anything else, he did his flashing thing and everything went dark.
Ten
I knew where I was the moment my bare feet hit the cold marble, because the arm around my back slipped away and the god who had been holding me lurched back with a thud and a grunt that hinted at possible injury. I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by Siret, Yael, Aros, and Coen. Rome must have been behind me, because I could hear the sound of him trying not to use his crusher ability on Cyrus. It sounded like an excessive amount of heavy breathing.
“Give. Me. One. Good. Reason.” He seemed to be forcing the angry words out through clenched teeth.
“I could give you one good reason.” Cyrus spoke normally, apparently unfazed. “Or Willa could give you several. If you attack me, I might have to tell Staviti about all the other rules you and your brothers have broken, and then you’ll definitely have your powers stripped away.”
“Well?” Yael asked me, his eyes drilling into mine with a scary amount of force. “Do you have several good reasons?”
Aros and Siret were pressing in, moving until their body heat warmed along both of my sides—but they weren’t touching me. They weren’t dragging me into their arms in relief. They were waiting for my reply; waiting to find out whether they needed to attack Cyrus or not. Someone really needed to teach them that attacking every person who wronged them wasn’t the best way to deal with conflict. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in a position to teach them anything, because I seemed to be adopting a similar approach. Hard surfaces wronged me all the time, and I still attacked them at least once every sun-cycle.
“As tempting as it is to have everyone fight over me for a few clicks,” I started sarcastically—interrupted by Siret’s soft snort beside me. “He helped to get me here. And tried to help keep me alive.”
“Harder than it sounds,” Cyrus muttered from behind me.
“Don’t talk like you know her,” Coen snapped, his eyes growing cold and flicking over my shoulder.
“I know she’s a pain in the ass,” Cyrus snapped back, his tone growing impatient. “And now I’ve delivered her safe and sound. Mostly dressed. I would say that I have fulfilled my end of the deal.”
I knew that he had disappeared again because Rome stopped his heavy-breathing exercises and started swearing instead, while Yael and Coen exchanged suspicious glances.
“What deal?” Aros asked me, his arm snaking around my middle.
He pulled me into his chest just as Siret reached over, his hand grabbing onto my other side, forming a cross over my stomach as he started to pull me away from Aros. Yael stepped in closer, and I felt the air brush across the back of my neck. Rome.
They were all starting to close in, but there was only one of me, and the fingers gripping either side of my waist were already starting to dig in stubbornly. I would be a mess of bruises if I managed to survive the mess of a hug that was threatening to happen. I twisted my body to the right, dislodging the hold that Siret had of me, before ducking out of Aros’s arms and quickly skipping off to the side.
“One at a time?” I suggested lamely, holding my hands out as though I could caution them all to stay back with the force of my bare palms. “It took a lot of effort to get here in one piece. I’d like to stay in one piece.”
Coen rolled his eyes up to the sky, and Siret laughed. The others wore blank expressions, though there was a twitch in Rome’s—a twitch that bordered on frustration.
“We separate for a few sun-cycles and she’s already back to being scared of us,” Rome noted, the words grunted out.
I glared at him and stopped backing away, my hands falling back to my sides. His bright green eyes seemed to have lightened, the sunlight slashing over his features. For half a moment, the breath fled my body, and I turned away from him in a bid to get it back. Aros was beside him, so I focussed there, until his golden eyes began to narrow in challenge, and my heart started to beat too fast. I diverted my attention to Siret, who seemed to have forgotten that he was finding me funny, because all the humour had been wiped out of him. His hair was a mess, and he pushed the mess of golden-black strands from his forehead, watching me so intently that my reaction to them grew even worse. My palms started to sweat. I turned to Yael almost desperately, but he had taken on the amusement that Siret had lost: his mouth was turned up at the corners, his eyes darkening as he watched me. It was almost lazy, the knowing in his expression. I could have sworn that he knew about the breath that rattled in the back of my throat, and he liked it that way.
“That’s enough,” Coen said calmly, drawing my eyes to him.
His chest was suddenly right in front of my face, and his hands were at my hips, his fingers tightening around me until I could feel the bite of his grip as he pulled me up and into his body. My feet couldn’t reach the ground anymore, so I wrapped my legs around his waist and quickly circled my arms around his neck. He smelled clean and warm and not at all like he had been kept as a prisoner in the sky for however many sun-cycles they had been up there. I lowered my head onto his shoulder, breathing him in, and I could have sworn that he took a deep breath as well. His hand tangled in my hair, bunching it up to where he had tucked his face into the crook of my neck, and I felt the pull of his breath all through his body. He released it on a soft groan, his other hand tightening where it still gripped my hip, and then I was being pulled away.
The disentanglement of limbs was a confused, hazy process. It almost seemed to happen in slow-motion, with Coen’s eyes opening and connecting with mine just as I was turned and pressed to another body. I knew from the smell that it was Aros, and while it shouldn’t have been so easy to turn my attention from one of them to the other, as soon as he pulled me in, my head was full of him, and only him. His hands were so warm I could feel the burn of him against my skin, making me suddenly painfully aware that I was half-naked, once again. He also seemed to be painfully aware, because he made a sound as soon as I was flush against him, and he captured my hands before I could return his hug. He passed me off to Yael by the wrists, his jaw clenched as he watched me go, and suddenly I was crushed in a fierce, breath-stealing hug.
“I’m so happy you’re safe and back with us again, Willa-toy.” The words were murmured into my shoulder, his arms banded right across my back, almost bending my body into him. “Right where you belong.”
“Share,” Siret demanded.
Yael released me reluctantly, but Rome stepped in before Siret could grab me.
“I’m not fucking going last,” he declared, looping one arm around me and hauling me up into his chest. “Hi Willa. Glad you’re safe.”
“Hi, Two,” I laughed. “Glad you’re safe as well.”
His mouth twitched, but he didn’t entirely lose his grumpy expression, so I brought my hands up to his face and tried to push his mouth into a smile with my two index fingers. He scowled, shook his head to dislodge me, and then he jostled me further up and pressed his mouth firmly to mine. The kiss was short, hard, and hot.
He pulled back too quickly, his eyes flicking between mine, almost surprised, and then he was putting me down and Siret was spinning me around.
“Lucky last,” he said, his hands on my shoulders.
He didn’t pull me in, or squeeze my limbs in possession the way the others had. He just stared at me, waiting. Waiting for what? I reached out, unsure, and touched his chest. Apparently, that was all he needed. His eyes flashed and one of his hands slipped from my shoulder to the back of my head, and he was tugging me in. His other hand moved down my spine, bringing me flush, and I couldn’t help the shiver that ran the length of my body. He must have felt it because he pressed harder against the curve of my spine, forcing me so close that th
e pressure of his chest against mine was actually making it hard to breathe.
“That semanight stone doesn’t mean that we’re letting you out of our sights ever again,” he whispered. “I think you’ve proven that you’re far more dangerous when left alone, than any other situation you could be dragged into by us.”
“We leave her behind so that she can be kept safe from Topia and all the gods here that might find her interesting, and what does she do?” Coen seemed to be talking to his brothers.
“It was a very involved story,” Aros answered. “Something to do with fire.”
“She brought herself here anyway,” Siret added, his words still mumbled against my skin. “Like the stubborn little soldier that she is.”
“As much as I’d love to claim all the credit,” I began, pulling away from Siret reluctantly so that I could address them all, “I was technically being controlled through Cyrus’s hold on the soul-link. He’s even worse at keeping me safe than I am. He thought he’d get me out of Blesswood, and that I’d be safer with Emmy—but that didn’t work out so well. Then he thought he’d set a whole building of sols on fire, just to get rid of the couple of idiots that wanted to hurt me—again, not the best plan, but he tried. Eventually, I just ended up in the outer rings where they turn the dead dwellers into Jeffries. Dru dumped me out there because he thought it would be a fun way for me to die.”
“Of course.” Rome rolled his eyes. “She couldn’t possibly have just been murdered like a normal person.”
I immediately started looking around for something to throw at him. There were a few marbled squares set off to the sides of the platform, cleverly disguised by garden beds and creeping vines. I could spot doors in some places, so I assumed that they were rooms, or even entire residences. There wasn’t a single loose object in sight, unless the stone bench a few feet away counted. It probably didn’t, because I doubted I could pick it up and throw it at Rome.
Or could I? I was some kind of dweller-sol-beta hybrid, and I could do things like create fire and cause nakedness, so why couldn’t I throw a stone bench? I quickly side-stepped and grabbed the edge with one hand, attempting to lift it up.
“What’s she doing?” Rome asked, his brow scrunching up in confusion.
“Gods-dammit,” I wheezed out, managing to get the bench almost half an inch off the ground.
“I think she’s exercising,” Siret answered, completely serious if his expression was anything to go by. “I’ve heard that the dwellers need to do that, otherwise they get ugly.”
“Impossible,” Aros scoffed. “Willa can’t get ugly.”
I accidently dropped the bench, and then had to cover my mouth, because I didn’t know whether to laugh or not.
“What if I lose all my hair?” I asked him. “Will I be ugly then?”
Aros started to shake his head, and Yael stepped forward, anger marking his face. “Of course not!”
The laugh threatened to bubble out of me again, but I managed to hold it back.
“I’m picturing her as a server now,” Coen groused, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes.
“See!” I pointed at Coen. “He thinks I can be ugly.”
“I’m picturing that stupid thing the female servers wear,” Coen clarified. “The image is burned into my brain.”
“Yeah, even he’s not thinking that you can be ugly,” Aros told me.
Hot and cold flashes were racing along my skin and I probably looked like I was exercising my jaw now, with the way my mouth was opening and closing. Coen dropped his hands from his face, and suddenly they were all staring at me. It was too much. Too much tension. The heat inside of me flared, and it was followed by a burn licking across my skin. I had a brief thought that I should walk away for a click and cool off, but just when I thought I could tear myself away from them and take a step back, a flash of orange light caught my attention.
“Argh!” I let out a shriek and started patting at the flames that had sprung up across my chest.
Heat licked gently over my hands, but there was no burning sensation or pain, so I patted harder. Emmy’s fire-safety lecture popped into my head as I patted desperately. Drop and roll, Willa. Drop and roll! It had worked the last time I had set my clothes on fire, but this time there were already several sets of hands reaching for me, and there was no way they were going to let me drop to the ground. I shoved out my hands to keep them away from me—not wanting anyone to get burnt, even though the flames hadn’t seemed to be burning me—and as soon as I did, the fire spluttered out.
One click, I had been on fire, and the next, I was standing there looking completely normal, as we all stared at my chest.
I ran my hands along my body, blinking rapidly as I tried to work out what had just happened. I was surprised that there were no burns or blisters, or blackened stubs where my limbs should have been. There wasn’t even a rash. There wasn’t even a blush.
“This is part of Staviti’s punishment, right?” Rome had one hand against his forehead, before he ran it through his hair. “One far worse than house arrest or losing our gifts.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. A punishment? They were all staring very intently at me, and all of them wore pained expressions.
“I’m fine, you don’t have to stress,” I said, still confused, my hands planted against my bare hips. “Just a little Chaos-fire, they happen regularly.” As my hands slipped further down my body, the feeling of skin finally registered.
I’m not wearing underwear anymore.
I’m naked again.
With a sigh, I dropped my eyes down to find that my underwear had indeed gone up in flames, and I was actually completely bare, without a single burn or even the Chaos-fire left to cover me up. If this was Cyrus’s doing, I was going to kill him through some form of slow and laborious torture.
Time for Plan B. I picked my head up, staring them all dead in the eye and refusing to use my arms to cover myself.
“I totally meant to do that,” I said calmly.
Rome’s punishment remark made sense now, but he better have said that because he couldn’t touch me, and not because he had to look at me naked again. He had his angry face back on and I didn’t like it. I felt like we’d made some real progress recently, but in an instant, we were right back to where we’d started from. Just because I was naked, again? Seriously? Hating the feeling of judgement—or whatever he was doing—I stepped closer, my finger already lifting to point at him. “What’s the problem, Two? I’m sure you’ve seen more than your fair share of—”
I was snatched up off my feet before I could finish, and then he was turning and striding away with me. I struggled against his hold, but it was like struggling against god-made steel bands. There was no give, no way for me to shift his muscles even an inch. “Put me down. I don’t need your … angry pity.”
I hated when people felt sorry for me. When they tried to help the stupid girl who couldn’t even keep her clothes on.
“Strength …” I heard the warning from Coen, though he wasn’t coming after us yet.
Tension slithered across the already tense muscles bunched beneath me as Rome briefly paused. “I’m going to find her some clothes, I’ll be right back.” His words were gruff, and he started to move again.
Since I was still pressed into a broad chest, I couldn’t see anything, but I was done being treated like a doll. Cyrus was right, I had more substance than that.
“Let me down,” I demanded. Further mortification pressed in on me as a hot burn started behind my eyes, a thickness blocking up my throat. “Please.” My voice wavered more than I would have liked, but it alone seemed to halt Rome.
He peered into my eyes, for what felt like an infinite amount of time before he gently set me on my feet. “Trickery,” he called, still not taking his eyes off of me.
Siret was there in an instant and with a graze of his hand across my cheek, Rome left us. I watched him walk away before turning to Siret, who looked a little gr
im, his eyes on my face.
Siret … who could have clothed me several clicks ago. Suddenly, Rome’s behaviour became even more inexplicable.
“How much longer can we go on like this?” I murmured to Siret, as he placed both hands on my shoulders, his gaze scorching me with its intensity. “I’m a beta-sol-dweller-hybrid now, would your powers really still hurt me?”
His groan came from a place low in his throat—a deep, desperate sound—and instead of answering, he just let his powers free. Clothes wrapped across my body, silky and smooth, the material different to anything I’d felt on Minatsol.
I glanced down to find a tiny, blood-red … wrap of some kind. Almost a dress, cut off at mid-thigh and hugging my body. I had soft black boots that fitted firmly to my legs, stopping just below my dress. “You have got to stop dressing me like a night walker,” I drawled. “Men are going to start asking me how many tokens for a session.”
It was the sort of lifestyle I was sure my mom indulged in. She called it survival, but when she spent all the tokens on alcohol, I called it destructive.
“I have a lot of tokens,” Siret deadpanned.
I snorted. “You don’t need them.”
The humour died off his face. “Willa …”
An exaggerated clearing of a throat distracted us all, and I jerked myself back. I hadn’t even realised how close I’d been to Siret, practically pressing myself to his body. Peering around him, I couldn’t see anything because the rest of the Abcurses were already surrounding the throat-clearer.
My boots were surprisingly silent as I padded across the platform, wiggling my way between Yael and Aros. A Jeffrey stood in the centre: female, looking very wide-eyed as we all stared at her. There was a blankness in her wide eyes and she cleared her throat again, the mechanical sound grating across my nerves. Now that I knew how the Jeffreys got here, I couldn’t stop thinking about the guardians.
