Neutral: A Curse of the Gods Novella (Book 4.5)

by Washington, Jane

  Neutral

  A Curse of the Gods Novella (Book 4.5)

  Jane Washington

  Jaymin Eve

  Contents

  Glossary

  1. Emmy

  2. Cyrus

  3. Emmy

  4. Cyrus

  5. Emmy

  6. Cyrus

  7. Emmy

  8. Cyrus

  9. Emmy

  10. Cyrus

  11. Emmy

  12. Cyrus

  Acknowledgments

  Also By Jane Washington

  Also By Jaymin Eve

  Connect With Jane Washington

  Connect With Jaymin Eve

  Copyright 2018 © Jane Washington and Jaymin Eve.

  All rights reserved.

  The authors have provided this ebook for your personal use only. It may not be re-sold or made publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  Washington, Jane

  Eve, Jaymin

  Neutral

  www.janewashington.com

  www.jaymineve.com

  Edited by David Thomas and Josephine Banks

  www.josephinebanksofficial.com/editing

  For the shippers.

  Glossary

  click – minute

  rotation – hour

  sun-cycle – day

  moon-cycle – month

  life-cycle – year

  One

  Emmy

  Dying was easier than I expected, but being brought back to life? That was hard. Death had come in a flash of pain, blinding in its intensity. It completely overwhelmed me, and then it was over ...

  Until it wasn’t.

  I felt Willa calling me back. Her voice was pleading with me but I was safe and comfortable in death and I didn’t want to return to all that pain. In typical Willa fashion, she didn’t give me a choice. She dragged me back through the darkness, healing me along the way. I could feel my body mending, becoming stronger as power tingled through me. There was chaos around me, sounds battering against my ears and heat blasting across my cheeks. Soon, the unidentifiable sounds were merging into voices and I was slipping back into unconsciousness—although it was a living unconsciousness this time.

  I drifted in this state for some time as everything settled into a buzzing darkness, and while I probably could have woken myself up and opened my eyes, a part of me wasn't ready. I liked to live my life in an orderly fashion. I liked knowing exactly what to expect from every single sun-cycle—except for Willa, of course … she was the only disruption I accepted. There was nothing orderly about dying, and being dragged back from death was even more chaotic. I wasn’t sure what I would see when I opened my eyes, or even where I would be. I half expected to have been dropped in some in-between state—a world reserved for dwellers who haven’t had the pleasure of dying completely.

  Eventually, I couldn't hide any longer.

  My lashes fluttered, light seeping in through the edges. Pain no longer touched any part of me, and by the time my eyes were fully open, I could feel strength coursing through me. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed I had been laying on, I glanced around the room in confusion. Everything was white. I groaned, my head falling into my hands as crystal-clear memories suddenly rushed back to me. As I pondered the impossibility of what had happened, the door opened and someone walked into the room.

  Or … something walked into the room.

  “You are awake, Sacred One.” It was Donald’s voice.

  I let my head fall back into my hands but then paused, her greeting finally penetrating my reeling mind. I glanced around the room. Willa wasn't with me, so who was Donald calling a ‘Sacred One?’ And where the hell was my sister? I knew she was the one who had saved me, but she wasn’t there anymore. I was completely alone, apart from Donald.

  “Where is the Sacred One?” I finally asked.

  Donald pointed at me. I moved out of the way of her finger. Her finger moved with me. I groaned again.

  “You definitely malfunctioned, didn’t you? Where’s Willa?”

  “Sacred Willa the Great and Only is sleeping,” Donald answered.

  If it were possible for a person to sit on a bed and blink sarcastically at a Topian server, that was what I was doing.

  “Where is the Great and Only sleeping?” I asked dryly.

  “In her new bedroom,” Donald answered helpfully.

  “Can you take me there?” I asked.

  Donald shook her head. “I cannot, Sacred One.”

  “Why not?” I pushed to my feet, suddenly filled with exasperation. My emotions felt a little more erratic than usual.

  “Sacred Willa is being guarded and is not allowed visitors,” Donald informed me, sounding downright cheerful.

  “Who is guarding her?” I asked, glancing down at myself.

  I had only just noticed that I was wearing deep green robes, the colour almost inching toward blue. It wasn’t a colour I even recognised; it seemed to morph from blue to green as I moved my arm, shifting the robe around. Weird.

  “Sacred Coen the Mighty and Painful, Sacred Rome the Great and Strong, Sacred Aros the Beautiful and Sexy, Sacred Yael who is better than the others, and Sacred Siret who told me all their proper titles.”

  I couldn’t help a snort. “Right. Can you maybe go and ask them again? Because when they said that they were guarding her, they didn’t mean from me.”

  “As you wish, Sacred One.” Donald made a short, snappy bow, and then she disappeared.

  “Sacred One?” I asked again, just as confused as the first time ... but she was already gone.

  Too agitated to sit still any longer, I started to wander around the unfamiliar room, touching random books and objects until Donald returned, popping back into existence at the entrance to the room. The sudden appearance didn't startle me like it normally would have. It was almost as though I had sensed her coming—a tiny vibration through the air, disrupting the otherwise silent and still space. I’d never been able to do that before.

  “Where am I?” I asked her, before she could say anything else.

  “You are in the bedroom, Sacred One.”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?”

  “You are a god. A Sacred One.”

  I froze, almost believing it for a moment, because I knew that I had died, and now I was wearing robes ... but it was still impossible. I finally shook my head. Donald was malfunctioning again, that was all.

  “Who’s bedroom?” I asked her, waving my hand around at the space.

  “This is the secret dwelling of the Sacred Neutral.”

  “The Sacred Asshole ...” I mused, narrowing my eyes.

  “The Sacred Neutral,” Donald corrected me.

  “The Sacred Asshole,” I re-corrected her. “You’ve been saying it wrong this whole time.”

  She gasped, a small mechanical-sounding noise. “I’m so sorry! I will go and apologise to him immediately!”

  She rushed out of the room and I followed her, through a sprawling white living room, down a short white hallway, through a tall white door and straight into a—you guessed it—completely white bathing room. Cyrus was standing beneath a narrow rainfall of water directed from several little spurts in the ceiling. The whole space was filling up with steam; only half a white stone wall with several glass vials and selections of soaps lined along the top blocked my view of a very naked Neutral God.

  “What the fuck?” Cyrus yelled, leaning forward and planting his hands on the half-stone wall. “How many times do I have to tell you not to barge i
nto the bathing room whenever you need to apologise for something, Donald?”

  He flicked his eyes to me as she cowered back a few steps, and I tried to force my eyes to stay focused on his face. I then had to force my eyes to narrow angrily.

  “Don’t talk to her like that.” I pointed a finger at him.

  “I’m so sorry, Sacred Asshole!” Donald was doing her little bow thing again.

  I quickly pulled her upright. Cyrus sighed, his gaze still locked on me, apparently forgetting all about Donald.

  “You’re awake,” he noted, his voice several degrees calmer, the tone deepening a little with some kind of message that I wasn’t receiving.

  I swallowed. “You should … ah … I’ll just wait outside.”

  I quickly turned on my heel, his chuckle floating out after me as I dragged Donald back into the other room and slammed the door behind me.

  “Where’s Willa?” I demanded, as soon as we were back in the living room. “They said I could see her, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, Sacred One. Willa is on Sacred Pica’s platform.”

  “Where is that?”

  Donald pointed a finger … apparently in the direction of Pica’s platform. I sighed, rubbing at my temples. I was going to have to wait for Cyrus. For some reason I expected him to stay in the bathing room for a long time. To make me wait on his ‘sacred’ presence. He was arrogant in that way: acting as though both of the worlds revolved around him. All gods were the same … except for the Abcurses. Their world revolved around Willa—conveniently embodying the only redeeming quality in any god I'd met to date.

  “How are you feeling?”

  The low voice startled me. The first thing to actually startle me since I woke up. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have heard him approach, but I had been too busy in my own thoughts. Turning, I found Cyrus a few feet away, wrapped in a towel. Sprinkles of water peppered right across his chest, leading down the muscled ridges of his torso to the angled lines dipping below his towel. Holy crap, the Sacred Asshole was …

  Average, I lied to myself.

  I forced my eyes up to his face, drawing on the discipline that had gotten me through my life as a dweller. I wouldn’t allow myself to cave to this bastard. Sure, we had kissed and it had shaken me to my core, but that was before. Before I died. I was a changed dweller, now. I was already in well over my head, and Cyrus was a distraction that I didn’t need.

  “I’m fine,” I said shortly. “I want to see Willa. Take me to her.”

  Cyrus didn’t seem to have the same aversion to looking at me as I did to looking at him. His eyes raked along my body, drinking in my features as though I were the most interesting thing to ever interrupt his bathing time.

  “Nice robes,” he finally commented, ignoring my demand. “I’ve never seen any that colour before.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling somewhat exposed, even though I was literally covered from throat to feet. I finally understood what Willa had been talking about though: the robes were extremely comfortable. The material was silky and light, brushing across my body. Wait … was I wearing underwear?

  There was no way I could have a Willa moment in front of the Asshole of Topia. I needed to assess that situation as soon as it was safe to do so.

  “I’m going to give you to the count of three,” I said slowly, without inflection. “Take. Me. To. Willa. If you do not take me to Willa by the time I hit three, I will—”

  My words were cut off by his lips. He had moved so fast that I didn’t even see it coming—or maybe I didn’t want to see it, since I was trying very hard not to look at him closely. All breath whooshed out of me as our bodies crashed together: his so strong and hard, and mine completely disloyal as it moulded against him. On instinct, I went onto my tiptoes, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling myself closer.

  The only other kiss to ever rock me was Atti’s, and while I had enjoyed kissing Atti very much … kissing Cyrus was different.

  It was soul destroying.

  A part of me would always mourn Atti. He was my perfect match in so many ways. We had been comfortable. We had fit together. I tried to remember that comfortable, familiar feeling as Cyrus kissed me into oblivion, but it was slipping away from me faster that I could grasp it.

  “I’m so fucking angry at you,” he murmured against my lips.

  I pulled back, shaking my head as I planted a hand against his chest, as though that would keep him from kissing me again.

  “You’re mad at me? I’m so shocked. What did I do this time?” My sarcastic drawl had his forehead creasing, his eyes turning even stormier.

  He jerked me a little harder against him, and my body ached—in the best kind of way. “You put yourself in a position to be used by Staviti. To be hurt. To be killed. You brought attention to yourself. You made the gods aware of you.”

  I growled then, struggling to free myself. “I did none of those things. I have always been the perfect dweller. The Abcurses brought Willa into this world, and where she goes, I go. So this is all on the gods. This is their fault!”

  I placed both of my hands on his chest now and shoved with all of my might. “Now take me to my sister or I will make your eternal life a living hell.”

  He made a noise that had every hair on my arms standing on end. Cyrus could be scary when he Neutraled out. He stepped away from me and as he spun to head toward his bedroom, it sounded like he said you already are. But I must have misheard him. I wasn’t in his life enough to make it a living hell. Well, except for being a dead person in his bed for a little while and walking in on his bathing time.

  When he was gone, I realised that Donald was still in the room. She was standing in the corner, staring at the floor. I’d completely forgotten about her as Cyrus stole all of my attention. He had a way of doing that. As I stepped closer to her, I pushed down the small pang in my chest. The practical side of me knew that this was no longer Willa’s mum … or my adoptive mother, but it was hard to believe that when she was just standing there with her wild blond hair and vacant expression. She looked just the same as she always had. She’d been a mess of a dweller in real life, and now she was a mess of a server. Willa had told me about the cart transporting dweller bodies past the seventh ring, where they were made into Topian servers. She had also mentioned hearing something about there being requirements to become a server. It would make sense, seeing how Donald acted now. If the dwellers had boasted undesirable characteristics in their previous life, they were probably disqualified from becoming servers. It didn’t surprise me that Staviti had forgotten all about Donald after creating her and sending her back to Willa. She had been a message, a threat.

  Don’t mess with me.

  She was never supposed to be an actual server.

  “Donald, why did you say that I’m a god?” I asked her gently.

  I had no idea why I bothered. She was definitely malfunctioning again, and yet … I couldn’t just let it go. She had suggested it; I needed to know why. Even when she malfunctioned, there was still a reason behind the things she did and said.

  “You are a god now, Sacred One. Sacred Willa used her sacred gifts, and now you are a Sacred One.”

  “It’s … that isn’t possible,” I argued, even though a tiny spark in the back of my mind spluttered with hope. I wanted to believe her. “Dwellers don’t become gods. This is a fact. I know my facts, Donald. I can tell you all about facts.”

  Cyrus’s low chuckle had me spinning around. A relieved sigh left me when I found him fully dressed in his signature white robes. “You do have a remarkable grasp on a seemingly endless supply of mostly useless dweller facts, Emmanuelle … but in this instance, Donald is correct. You are a god now. And dwellers do become gods. Your sister is one of them, or have you forgotten already?”

  I let out a growl. “You better be kidding me. I refuse to be a god. I am not one of you evil, selfish bastards.”

  Cyrus strode closer and it took everything inside of me n
ot to back away from him. Whenever he got too close, my brain fried, and I needed to stay in control.

  “You’re a god, bug. I didn’t dress you in those robes. They formed around your body as you healed. You were brought back from death and transformed into something else, but I don’t know what you were transformed into because these robes are unlike any colour I’ve ever seen.”

  “What?” I gasped out, combing through everything he had just said for any hidden clues or evidence that we might have missed.

  I wanted to believe him and I didn’t want to believe him in equal measures. I had been happy as a dweller, happy to fight for a better place in the world as a dweller … but I couldn’t deny that something fundamental had changed inside me. Something was drastically different. If Donald and Neutral were right, and I was a god …

  What sort of god was I?

  Two

  Cyrus

  I wasn’t going to stand around and argue about whether she was a god or not. Not when I knew that I was right.

  “I’ll prove it,” I told Emmy, holding up a finger.

  She looked at my finger as though she was trying to figure out how to forcibly detach it. I turned and strode out of the room, not waiting for a response. My weapons closet was tucked behind a false door, hidden within a crevice of the cave. It was there that I went, as Emmy waited in the other room. I knew that the only reason she hadn’t stalked after me was because she was too angry or confused to move.

  For some reason, I enjoyed her heightened emotions, the way she stiffened up—right from the feet to the neck. It made me want to pick her up and shock the movement back into her body, to heat her blood and press her in places just to see her give in to the pressure of my touch ... but that wouldn’t help to prove my point.