Neutral: A Curse of the Gods Novella (Book 4.5)
Page 10
“Hell no,” Rome grunted, as the others shook their heads.
“They could be hostile.” Siret seemed to agree with his brother, his brow furrowing. “That’s why they left the rest of the herd and exiled themselves.”
“Willa,” I said sternly, forcing her eyes back to mine. “This is not your fault, and you don’t have to put yourself in danger to fix it.”
“It might give us an advantage over Staviti, if there’s going to be a battle,” she explained, appealing to all of us. Beside her, Leden made a humming sound of approval. “I doubt that he even cares about the servers malfunctioning. He probably sent them straight to the banishment cave. If we can figure out what’s happening to the magic of Topia, we can use that knowledge against him.”
I could feel my brows shooting up in surprise, but I tried to quickly wipe the emotion from my face. Everyone was quiet for a click, mulling over what she had said, but then Aros finally spoke.
“She’s right—we do need to figure out what’s going wrong with the magic of Topia, and it will arm us well in a battle against Staviti. But if we don’t get her back to Pica within the next rotation, that woman is going to take the crazy up a notch and we need her on our side—and reasonably stable. She’s our best weapon right now.”
“We’ll go,” I quickly offered, before I could think too hard about it.
“We will?” Cyrus’s question rumbled through me, since he had pulled me so tightly against his body.
I felt my lips twitching at the undertone of amusement in his question. Coen snorted out a laugh.
“Fine.” I shrugged casually. “I’ll go myself.”
“No, we will go,” he snapped out. “We had a deal, bug. Your safety is now my concern.”
“What’s the deal?” Willa asked casually, ever-considerate of sensitive topics and situations.
“I think it’s a private deal,” Coen muttered quietly, his tone laced with humour.
“What private deal?” she asked, even louder.
The panteras around us started to shift about—some in amusement, some in annoyance. They were on edge, clearly. Willa’s sudden tonal shift probably wasn’t helping things. She seemed to realise the same thing, because she lowered her voice to a loud whisper.
“Are you making private deals with my sister?” she accused Cyrus. “Without making an honest woman out of her and offering for her hand?”
I knew that she was joking, but Cyrus didn’t seem to. His arm dropped, his hands landing on my shoulders again and spinning me around, his head ducking down a little to fix me with a puzzled expression.
“You’re not an honest woman?” he asked.
I tried to hold in my amusement, but a male laugh behind me had Cyrus’s confusion deepening.
“It’s a dweller custom,” Willa explained patiently. Wow, she was convincing. “A dweller woman can’t lay with a man out of wedlock. If she does, she becomes a dishonest woman.”
Cyrus frowned at me. “When does this dishonesty start?”
Willa let out a shout of triumph as I rolled my eyes.
“I knew you two had slept together!” she shouted, causing the panteras to stir again.
Cyrus was switching his attention from her to me, his alarm growing. “We need to get wedlocked,” he said firmly. “Who here can wedlock us?”
“Anyone can do it.” Willa shrugged casually, moving into my line of sight. “You just need a few rings and you need to repeat some words and make a few promises.”
“What kind of promises?” Cyrus asked, as I started to wonder if the joke had maybe gone a little too far. “I haven’t brushed up on dweller customs in a long time.”
“That you will belong to each other completely and forever,” Willa explained, a smile of mischief beginning to light up her face. “That you will love and protect each other.”
Cyrus waved his hand dismissively. “We have already made such promises.”
I blanched as Willa turned an astonished stare on me.
“No we haven’t!” I squeaked.
“Yes we have,” Cyrus countered. “Have you forgotten? I can take you back to my home and remind you.”
Willa started laughing, until she realised that the Abcurses had all gathered around her, frowns on their faces.
“What?” she asked them, spinning around. “Oh hell no. It was a joke, guys!”
“Why didn’t you tell us about the dweller wedlocking rule?” Yael asked, his green eyes narrowed almost dangerously. “Willa-toy, you belong to us. We should be wedlocked in the dweller way.”
“We are not having this conversation right now!” She tossed her hands up in the air, walked to my side and grabbed my arm before marching me toward the opening of the cave.
“Well that backfired,” I noted casually.
“Shut up,” she tossed back. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you slept with Neutral.”
“Will! It only just happened.” I groaned, lowering my voice as the others approached behind us. “Are you really upset?”
“No, not really,” she sulked, kicking her foot against the ground. “I just don’t want him to steal you away from me.”
“He won’t,” I promised.
“He might,” Cyrus countered, stepping up beside me.
He sounded serious. Willa scowled at him, but I focused my gaze ahead, trying to ignore the sudden pounding of my heart inside my chest.
Twelve
Cyrus
Two rotations later, we were gathered once again in Willa’s cleverly-designed jail cell, or ‘bedroom’ as Pica insisted on calling it. Willa was sitting on the very end of the bed, Rome and Yael either side of her, the others stationing themselves around the room at seemingly deliberate vantage-points. Each of them had a clear view of both Willa and the door.
Not that I blamed them.
Emmy was securely tucked under my arm, and I was on high-alert. She had initially tried to wiggle away from me, growing skittish from the looks that Willa kept throwing at her. Each time she tried to escape, I released her shoulder and rested my hand against the back of her neck. It calmed her every single time, like magic. I had no idea why, just as I had no idea why I loved the fact so much, but I wasn’t going to look a gift-pantera in the mouth.
So my girl liked when I touched her neck? I wasn’t going to start complaining, just as long as she didn’t allow anyone else to touch her this way. After the first few escape attempts, she gave up. Now she was cuddled up into my side, her hands tucked up against her body as her head rested lightly against my chest.
I had a feeling she was exhausted, and I hardly blamed her. The last few sun-cycles that we had endured were enough to exhaust even me. And she had died and returned as a god in that time. I wanted to drag her home and put her to bed, but we had to discuss our situation first.
“I have received word from the others,” Pica announced, breezing her way back into the room, her robes fanning out and fluttering about with the briskness of her movements.
She frowned at Yael and Rome—who left no room for her to sit beside Willa—before she pulled up a chair and sat down with a flourish, crossing her legs and fussing with her robe.
“Will they come?” Coen asked from his position up against a dresser, his shoulders resting back against the wall.
“Of course!” Pica responded the same way as she had the first time we had asked that question, a rotation ago. We had thought that she was just being overtly-optimistic then, so we were all a little surprised to hear the same answer again.
“Really?” Siret quirked a brow. “Everyone you sent messages to agreed to stand with us in a war against Staviti?”
Pica fluttered her fingers, trying to brush away his statement. “They agreed to come to a party. We’ll ask them at the party.”
Willa groaned, and I heard the short puff of frustration that escaped Emmy, though she managed to keep her cool.
“When is the party?” I asked, mulling over the idea.
It wasn’t a
bad one, as far as Pica’s ideas went. If we asked the gods in person, I would be able to see their faces when they answered. I would know if they were lying or not. Knowing our enemies was almost more important than knowing our friends.
“Seven sun-cycles from now,” Pica answered jovially. “Not enough time for preparations, to be sure!”
“Why is she happy about that?” Emmy muttered, only loud enough for me to hear.
I slipped my hand up along the line of her delicate shoulders, my fingers pushing beneath her hair and spanning out over the back of her neck. She relaxed instantly, the tension draining out of her.
Fuck. I loved that.
“What is there to prepare?” Willa asked.
Pica clapped her hands together, apparently delighted at being asked to explain something. “We must find and secure a location,” she explained. “And then we will need to ward it against attacks. While our guests might not all know the reason for this gathering, Staviti will certainly know. We might end up trapped there—so we must prepare appropriate provisions, shelters, and escape routes if possible. Oh, and the most important thing of all! We must prepare you!”
“Me?” Willa released the word on a strangled sound, apparently still trying to wrap her head around the gravity of everything Pica had just told her in the happiest and most excited of voices.
“If the gods are to turn on Staviti, they need to know that Staviti’s equal is also standing with them, or else they will be too afraid.”
“I’m not Staviti’s equal,” she blurted.
The Abcurses looked like they were about to jump in and insist that she was, so I quickly spoke. “You might not be, but they don’t need to know that. The more powerful you look and seem, the more likely it will be that they will stand with you. If you show weakness or accidentally set yourself on fire … you might as well say goodnight to this little rebellion, because it won’t ever see the light of day.”
“Great pep talk,” Willa muttered dryly, her eyes rolling up to the ceiling, before she seemed to gather herself, turning her attention back to Pica. “I’ll do whatever you think I need to. I’ll be ready.”
“Good,” I said quickly, before Pica could do any number of the things that she was likely about to do, like squeal or start clapping her hands again. “Then we can start preparations in the next sun-cycle, and we should also prepare Emmanuelle because …” I trailed off, a surge of protectiveness falling over me.
My words died, my fingers tightening their hold on the back of Emmy’s neck. She startled, glancing up at me, but I avoided her eyes. I couldn’t allow Pica to know what Emmy really was. I couldn’t let any of the gods know what Emmy really was. It didn’t matter that she would prove to be Willa’s greatest asset in winning people over to our side. The only thing that mattered was that Staviti would want her dead—and she was an easier target than Willa.
Everyone was staring at me, waiting for me to finish. I tried again, but the words still wouldn’t come. I simply couldn’t put her in that kind of danger.
“Tired,” I finally finished. “She’s tired. So I should take her back to sleep.”
“Fertility,” the little traitor quickly pushed the word out before I could yank her through a pocket and give her something better to do with her mouth. “That’s my gift … fertility. Life …” I could tell that she was looking at Willa, who had tears in her eyes.
Something passed between the two girls, causing the tears in Willa’s eyes to spill over, though she didn’t actually appear to be upset. I was assuming that this was just another extension of all the crying she did when she woke up and thought that Emmy was dead. Emmy had reminded her.
“I guess that makes sense, in a way,” Willa said, swiping at her cheeks. “I wanted to give you life. I wanted you to live. I kept thinking it over and over. If I was going to somehow turn you into a god of anything, it makes sense that it would be the one thing I was thinking when all of this happened. I wanted you to be filled with life again.”
“You won’t repeat this to anyone,” I warned Pica, who had gone eerily silent, her wide eyes fixed on Emmy.
“They will want to know …” Pica said unsurely, the warmth and happiness sucked from her tone. There was a glimpse of something real beneath—something soaked in pain and loss. It was hardly surprising, since Pica had always wanted her child back. Eternity was a long time to live without your greatest desire.
“This is my decision.” I allowed power to leak into my voice and infect the room.
The others all took notice, and Pica finally tore her gaze away from Emmy to meet my eyes. I knew that I was glowing, and Pica knew what that meant. I was exercising my authority over her, warning her away from this line that I would not allow her to cross. Emmy was mine: I had made her a promise, and I would protect her. Pica ducked her head down in a silent acknowledgement before turning on her heel and leaving the room. There was silence after that; no one was prepared to break the heavy tension my power left behind, like a coating that couldn’t be removed. Emmy was the only one brave enough.
“We won’t let Staviti win,” she declared, stepping forward. “He’s been controlling both worlds for too long. It’s time to take the power back. We can do this.”
Willa was up and throwing her arms around Emmy before I could blink. “You’re right, Em,” she said, sounding teary again. “And do you know why we’re going to win?” She paused, like she was waiting for someone to answer. When no one did, she continued on. “Because we have something Staviti never will. A true family that will stick together and fight for each other. Until the very end. We will never give up,” she declared.
For the first time since Emmy had died, since I faced Staviti on that cliff top, the tight ball of tension in my chest loosened … because Willa was right. Despite all of the odds, I was now part of a family.
Emmy was mine. Willa was her sister. The Abcurses were bonded to Willa.
This was my damn family.
I was no longer alone, and in that moment, I knew that there was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them all safe.
Staviti had chosen the wrong family to mess with. His sun-cycles were now numbered.
Acknowledgments
By Jane and Jaymin
As much as we love Willa and the Abcurses, there are a few people that we might just love even more: our amazing readers.
You all deserved this story just as much as Emmy and Cyrus deserved it.
Thank you for being a part of the Curse of the Gods journey with us. We hope you loved Neutral just as much as we did.
Also By Jane Washington
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