Persuasion (Curse of the Gods Book 2)

by Jane Washington

  When Aros began to laugh as well, his low, deep chuckles washing over me, I lost my train of thought as some very inappropriate emotions filled me. Things like longing and need and lust. Holy crap. The laughter had to stop or I was going to jump him, and then their pact would be broken, and then there would be more fist fights. Karyn would get what she was hoping for by default.

  This visual of Siret’s bloody and bruised face was enough to have my laughter dying off and my tone becoming sombre. “She touched you, her hand was in your pants for just a fraction of a click. I charged over and threw whatever was in that jar in her face, and she took off. She was laughing though, and then cursing. It was weird.”

  Aros lifted the container to read the label. “It’s helix. The sols use it in the arena. It’s spread over the sacred sand to allow the blood to absorb and not leave a residue.” Oh … that’s how they did that. “It can be painful and ticklish to the skin though,” he continued. “Especially if you get a direct undiluted dose.”

  I snorted. “She got that. She’s just lucky I didn’t have a knife on me. She was going to be the second person I stabbed by accident on purpose.”

  Aros was up then, dumping the glass in the trash bucket. He was back in moments, fully dressed and ready to go. “You need to put some clothes on, Rocks. It’s time to find the others.”

  I stood slowly, blinking as I tried to think of the appropriate thing to say. “Are you okay, Three? I mean … she was touching you while you slept.”

  Something unusual swept through his eyes and the colour melted into a wash of smoky gold. “She wouldn’t have gotten far. I was already half-awake when she entered the room … I guess, at first, I thought it was you.”

  My mouth was literally hanging open as I stared at him with eyes so wide that I could feel my eyebrows up near my hair line.

  “You were letting her go because you thought it was me.” My tone sounded a little dead. I was probably too far into shock to display any actual emotion.

  His expression got very hard to read as he too shut down his emotions. “I was waiting to see what you would do, but I would have stopped you before any pact was broken.”

  I growled low. It rumbled up through my chest. I had totally been spending too much time with Emmy. “You idiots should be able to tell that those girls aren’t me. We need some way to make sure. Like a code word. Or a secret handshake. Or … I don’t know. But we need something.”

  Aros scooped me up then, depositing me down near his clothing. “Find something to wear, we can talk on the way.”

  “Don’t ignore me!”

  He let out a sigh. “We don’t need any secret code or handshake. I already have Karyn’s energy locked down now, she’ll never be able to fake it with us again. Which is probably why she sent her friend to do the job.”

  Oh. Oh. Well, I guess that made sense. “So now you’ll know Fakey The Second too?”

  Aros nodded. “Yep, now I’ll know her too. We just need to make sure she doesn’t get to my brothers before we get a chance to fill them in.”

  “How come you don’t know my energy then? Shouldn’t you be able to tell just from knowing my energy?”

  That weird look was back on his face again, and I thought for sure that I would have to hurt him for some answers, but he surprised me by saying, “Your energy is impossible to read now. It changes all the time. Which is why these sols with the gift for illusion are getting away with this all the time.”

  Uh … say what now? “Why would my energy change? That’s not normal, right?”

  Aros shook his golden head. “No, it’s not. Yours has been doing it ever since Rau hit you with his curse. It’s like everything about you now is completely random. Including your energy.”

  Well, great! Thanks a lot Rau, I hope you die from a disease which causes your brains to melt out through your ears. As I continued to plan the Chaos god’s death in my head, Aros was ushering me toward his clothing. I scrambled through his stuff, until finally I found a soft white shirt, which I slipped over my head. It fell to my knees, like a plain white dress.

  “Let’s go!” I demanded. “Take me to the others.”

  I was already moving, heading for the door. Aros fell into step beside me, his body decked out in all black, including ass-kicking boots, just like the pair that Fakey had been wearing, except bigger and obviously meant for males. He looked hot and lethal. I looked homeless.

  “I need to get some more clothes,” I muttered as he led me through the hall. “Pants and boots.”

  I felt his fingers brushing over my neck before his hand settled on my shoulder. He pulled me closer to him and I relaxed into his warmth. Into the strange sense of completeness that I felt whenever they touched me. “We can get you whatever you want, dweller. You just have to ask.”

  Hell yeah! Sounded like I had my own personal wish-granters. I was going to try it out the very next sun-cycle. I’d start by asking each of them for one thing, just to see which one was the easiest to get stuff from. This could be a fun new game, and I needed a fun new game since my latest ‘walk around the academy in my underwear’ game had been such a disaster.

  Aros laughed again, and I realised that I’d made him laugh multiple times since crashing his party with Fakey The Second. I liked that. Too much.

  “So where are we going?” I asked, to distract myself from his laughter. “Are the boys in … Topia?” I lowered my voice then, not that anyone was around. It was late in the night now, and only a few lanterns were lit to keep it from being pitch black.

  “No, they’re near the temple.”

  That seemed weird. “Why would they go to the temple? Are they praying to themselves or something?” I chuckled at my own joke, but this time Aros only shook his head at me.

  He was silent as we left the building and strode across the lush grassed area of the academy, moving between the Sacred Sand arena and the common outdoor area. Lots of buildings towered around us in the dark, and I realised I knew very little about what else was in Blesswood. Probably there was nothing that interesting out there, but a small part of me decided that one sun-cycle I’d explore everything. I’d uncover the secrets of the academy, the secrets of the gods.

  Aros reached out a hand and wrapped it around my shoulder, pulling me back into him, the burnt sweetness of his scent tantalising me. I hadn’t even realised that I’d moved away until then.

  “Follow me and stay quiet,” he whispered. “I think the guys will just be in the shadows around the area, but I’m not completely sure.”

  Almost nothing he said made sense to me, but I knew better than to question him. I recognised the look on his face. He was all business; assuming the role of Point. No time for Willa-isms. We moved closer to the shadowy buildings, heading straight for the temple—one of the buildings that I did recognise. Mostly because it was unforgettable.

  The temple was a massive structure built of stone and white marble, with eleven intricately carved pillars interspaced across the front of it. Atop each of those pillars was a pretty accurately carved image of the Original Gods. Well, accurate to the few Original Gods that I had seen.

  Staviti’s statue was the largest: standing proud in the centre. He was robed in the same cascading material as the other gods, but the statues didn’t show his colour. None of the other ten statues fanning out on either side of him held any colour either.

  Staviti’s statue was extremely fierce—certainly fiercer than I had expected, for a man known mostly as the Creator. He was always spoken about with reverence—unless the Abcurses were talking about him—and it seemed to be the general consensus of the sol teachers at Blesswood that Staviti was kind, loving, forgiving, and everything else that was good and nice and sparkly in the world. He probably had great hair, too, but that was a little hard to tell from where I stood. I considered him for a moment more as we approached, taking in the firm line of his nose, and the furrow between his brows. It felt as though his eyes, deep-set and serious, were staring straight i
nto mine.

  Which was beyond weird.

  Aros threw them all a sneer as we crossed beneath, giving me no time to survey the other statues—other than one last cursory glance toward Abil and Rau. I thought we were going to enter the temple, but he veered off to the right and led me down the side of the building. Something about this location was familiar to me, but it didn’t click until Aros opened up a set of double wooden doors hidden along the side of the temple and gestured for me to descend with him.

  The dweller meeting!

  It was in the common area between the stock rooms underneath the temple. Aros had led us to a secret side entrance of the temple, and now we were making our way down the rickety stairs.

  About halfway down I stumbled forward, slamming my arm into the railing. With a huff, Aros snatched me up and threw me over his shoulder for the rest of the descent. I couldn’t see anything from my current position, but there were noises growing clearer. By the time we hit level ground, I was back on my feet and the noise became quite distinct.

  Voices. Lots of voices.

  Aros reached out and laced our fingers together, something that he had done multiple times, and like always, it twisted everything inside of me. Like the joining of our hands was so much more than just that. It was the joining of souls and energy and life.

  Or maybe I was losing it. Making up fake connections. Probably this was just courtesy of my soul being held hostage by his. Still … it always felt like something more.

  It was dark and dusty so far below the ground, and we would be lucky to make it through without me sneezing and alerting the gathering to our presence. Aros seemed to know where he was going though, leading me through a few dark tunnels before ducking his head to cross under some low-lying beams.

  Light was visible to my right: just the flickering of red and orange against stone walls. They must have had lanterns lit.

  “Been going on too long!” These words were the loudest so far, and they practically vibrated through the walls.

  I thought the female tone sounded familiar; there were only so many ladies who could reach that particular decibel. It wasn’t Emmy, but it was someone I had met before, that much I knew. Lots of conversation ensued after this, but we were still too far away to make out most of it. I heard ‘gods’ and ‘sols’ mentioned multiple times, so it was pretty clear what was on their minds.

  A dark shadow popped up in front of us and I let out a shriek. Luckily, Aros must have anticipated my reaction, because his hand was already wrapped around my mouth, and my yell was lost against his skin. As soon as I recognised Coen’s shadow, I relaxed, and Aros released me. Coen enclosed me in his arms before shuffling me across the floor. It took mere clicks for him to deposit me behind a huge piece of furniture. He settled in at my side.

  The light was bright here, and I realised that if I peered through the shelves that towered in front of us, I could see the dweller gathering.

  Holy crap. There were a lot of them there. At least fifty or so. That was a much larger number than I had expected. I turned wide, horrified eyes on Coen, whispering, “What the hell have I started?”

  His face was hard, his gaze locked on the group. “Chaos, Dweller-baby, this is what the beginnings of chaos looks like.”

  Damn Rau. Looked like he was about to get exactly what he wanted.

  Seven

  “We only have three clicks before the next Minateur rotation passes through the temple,” a girl announced—the same girl as before, except her voice was ringing with crystal-clear clarity now. “We need to decide on a course of action.”

  “The Abcurse girl isn’t going to help us!” another voice shot out from the crowd. “You said you invited her, and she isn’t here!”

  “I didn’t invite her,” the girl replied, drawing my eyes to the corner of the room. She was standing on a table, looking down at everyone.

  It was the girl who had been kicked out of class earlier. Her bushy hair was extra bushy—probably from the humidity of being stuffed into the room with so many other bodies. Her huge, azure eyes were focussed. Determined. Stubborn. I had seen her around a few times, and it was the first time I had seen her looking anything but vulnerable and innocent. Had she been faking, all those times? Or was she faking now?

  “I invited her, Evie.” Another familiar voice drew my eyes back to the crowd. “I really thought she would come, too. I guess the Abcurse brothers wouldn’t let her.”

  I tried to find her face as the noise of the crowd swelled—a wave of disgruntled murmuring passing through the room and settling with a sickening feeling low in my stomach. I couldn’t make her out, but I was distracted from my search by a boy who was standing not too far away from my hidden position.

  “It’s disgusting, the way they treat her,” he announced, his tone hard with disapproval. “Even for the best sols in Blesswood, this is still too far. They pass her around like she’s their personal toy, and I’ve heard that she even sleeps in their dorms. A different one each night. She probably doesn’t even know that sexual service isn’t one of our duties. They snatched her up as soon as she got here and now none of us can speak to her; she’s always with one of them. They’re making it impossible for us to reach out. Elowin should never have allowed this to—”

  “Elowin is still absent,” Evie interrupted. It was pretty clear now that she was the one in charge. It didn’t fit with her image, though. She needed ass-kicking boots like all the other important people at the academy. She also needed a hairbrush. “And the dweller-relations committee is in chaos right now,” she continued. “Elowin’s first assistant, Heath, is trying to smooth things over while she’s gone, but I don’t think he’s prepared. I don’t think she told anyone that she was leaving.”

  “Elowin assigned her to the Abcurse brothers,” the boy shot back, not even faltering for a click. “And don’t tell me it was because her name was Will Knight on the signup sheet like the others are saying. Elowin knew what she was doing. She was tired of those sols terrorising every single dweller that she assigned to them, and she thought she’d try something different. She knew exactly what would happen if she gave them a pretty young girl to wait on their every need. I mean seriously—”

  “Oh come on,” another girl spoke up, sounding amused. “You make those brothers sound like sexual predators. I don’t think there’s a single female in Blesswood—dweller or otherwise—who wouldn’t be tempted by an Abcurse brother. If Elowin’s plan was to distract them with sex, she would have offered to clean their rooms herself.”

  The girl broke off when a ripple of laughter spread through the gathered dwellers. I felt myself tensing up, but I wasn’t sure why.

  Oh who the hell was I kidding? They weren’t allowed to talk about how hot my Abcurses were. It was bad enough that the stupid god-siblings had made a pact to be nothing more than friends with me, but if I wasn’t allowed to flirt with them, then other women weren’t even allowed to notice that they were the most attractive things in Minatsol. That was probably an irrational expectation, but I was sticking with it.

  “It’s not like that,” a familiar voice declared, after the laughter had died off. I tensed up even more, and Coen’s arm snaked out around my waist from behind, anchoring me half to his side and half against his front. I hadn’t even realised that I had taken a step forward—not that I’d fit through the gap between cupboards anyway.

  What was Emmy doing at the secret dweller meeting?

  “Stupid question,” Coen muttered, his low words whispered right into my ear. “She’s a dweller.”

  The other dwellers fell silent, and I followed the direction of their turned heads, completely ignoring Coen’s jab at my intelligence. It was almost as if they had been waiting for Emmy to speak, because now the room itself seemed to be sucking in a preparatory breath.

  “What’s it like, then, Emmanuelle?” Evie asked. “You would know. She’s your sister. You’re the only one who can get close to her.”

  “They’re fri
ends.” Emmy wasn’t sounding outwardly concerned by the pressure of so much attention, but she was fantastic at putting on the perfect public face, and I knew her well enough to hear the subtle tone beneath her spoken words.

  Resentment.

  If it had been any other girl—any other sister or any other friend—I would have started to doubt our relationship. I would have assumed that the resentment was for me, because I was causing her trouble, but I had a pretty good feeling that Emmy was angry at the other dwellers for making assumptions. It was exactly the kind of do-gooder thing that she’d be angry at.

  “That’s it?” someone pressed, and I finally caught sight of Emmy’s face.

  She was standing against the wall, looking like she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to be there or not. Atti was beside her. I wondered if he spent all of his time following her around now.

  “What were you expecting?” Emmy turned her head up in the smallest of tilts—the posture she always used when I asked her dumb questions. I really enjoyed seeing her use it on someone other than me, for once. “Do you really think they brainwashed a recruit to allow herself to get special treatment?” She broke off on a sardonic laugh, and even though I knew that her sarcasm had been meant to sting the other dwellers in the room, I couldn’t help but feel a little of the sting myself.

  “No dweller would actually want that kind of attention,” the boy replied, his sarcasm deepening to match Emmy’s. “Five troublesome sols—who, by the way, have a reputation for torturing dwellers—all focussing their attention on one single dweller? A dweller who isn’t allowed to see any of us or speak to any of us? Yeah, that doesn’t look like a choice to me. That looks suspicious as fu—”

  “Let’s try and stay on topic,” Evie interrupted him, raising her small hands as a wave of murmuring spread through the room again.

  Some of the dwellers seemed to be in agreement with him, while others were arguing along with Emmy. There were a few that didn’t share an opinion at all. They just looked nervous.