Siret let me go, only to grab me again as I pitched forward. My feet were trying to move before my mind had caught up to the world in front of me.
It was beauty.It had to be beauty personified in a land because there were no other words to explain what I was seeing. Everything glowed, like the sols, but a million times stronger. As if the gods lived on the sun and somehow they’d turned down the heat, but not the shine. The land spread out far beyond what I could see; it was all sparkling lakes, rolling mountains and everything that the tales of Topia had promised. Everything that the tales of Topia had promisedto the sols that were going to become gods.It was more, too. More than the stories, and the lectures, and the songs. I was now staring at the same things that I had seen when Siret had dragged me through the cave and into paradise.
Floating marble structures, twenty feet in diameter, drifted lazily above our heads. I couldn’t see beyond them to know if anyone was up there, but …who cared?They were just floating there. It was magic, pure and simple. Powers beyond anything I had ever seen, and beauty beyond what I could understand.
“I finally get it.” I must have murmured it out loud, because five sets of gem-like eyes were suddenly focusing on me, five massive bodies surrounding me.
“What do you finally get, Rocks?” Coen stepped into my space again. He wasn’t the only one. I could feel another at my back, but I was too terrified to turn and find out who it was.
Trying to breathe around the panic, I stuttered out, “I get why you sols spend your lives trying to get here. It’s perfect.”
I heard a snort of laughter to my left, and somehow knew that it was Siret. “Don’t let the beauty fool you,” he said. “This world is filled with as many ugly assholes as Minatsol.”
I found myself swivelling to see him better. To read as much as I could from those words. It always felt like the brothers were speaking in riddles. Half-truths. What they said and meant were definitely two different things, but that was hardly surprising from a trickery-gifted sol like Siret.
“How do you know so much about Topia? How are we even here?” I asked, glancing between the five of them. “How did you find the entrance and then … notdiegetting here?” Because that was supposed to be the requirement for entry. You had to die and then hope that a God chose you for immortality. To rule with them here in paradise.
Silence greeted my question.
Somehow, though, they managed to exchange a single glance between the five of them.Crazy.These sols were a full range of crazy and powerful. Not to mention scary and gorgeous. And they’d brought me into Topia. Right in that moment, I couldn’t figure out whether to hug them or run the hell away from them. They had taken me to the world of the gods. The one place a dweller would never,evergo.Ever.
It might have been crazy … but it was still a gift.
I didn’t even care if they killed me; right then I was happy. My joy spilled out, and in my usualact-before-you-thinkfashion, I dived forward. In the brief moment before impact, I saw raised eyebrows and wide-eyes, and then I landed against the brothers. I could only manage to get my arms across three of them, but that was enough. I hugged them as tightly as I could, their bodies solid against me.
“I don’t even care how we got in here. Thank you! I can’t believe this!I’m in TOPIA!”
I was muttering nonsense, my own happiness leaking out in random babble. Coen had been the one in the centre of my hug, next to him Siret, and on the other side was Aros. None of them moved; they just let me hold them for an awkward amount of time, and I couldn’t believe that I wasn’t being tossed across the world yet.
The silence washed over us, the peaceful nature of this land. It was almost like we were secured in the clear perfection of this immortal world for one click in time, and it was kind of nice. For that instant, I forgot that the Abcurse brothers were scary sols who would probably get me sacrificed to the very gods we were now in close proximity to, because they actually felt like friends.
A throat cleared behind us, and Yael said distinctly, “There better be a reason you’re hugging them and not me. And you’d better start sharing it around.”
Right, crazy competitive.
“I was going to, Four—” I started to say, before he cut me off.
“One! I’m number One!”
I pulled back and turned toward the persuasive sol, his eyes were so green in that moment that they didn’t even remotely look natural. His hair shone more in Topia’s light than it ever had in Minatsol. It was the colour of thick, dark ink, piled over gold—mixed just enough for the gold to rise up and peek through the darkness.
He was close, but he didn’t step into me. I knew he wanted me to come to him, but something held my feet firm to the ground. Beside him was Rome, the other one to not fall victim to my enthusiasm before.
“We don’t have time for this.” Rome grunted out the words, clearly annoyed by something.“Yael, go over and get your hug so you can feel equal and then we need to get to Luciu.”Noting my confused expression, he added, “It’s where the Original Gods reside.”
Wait just one freaking click…
“We can’t go there! They’ll kill all of us. You guys might be a big deal in Blesswood, but here you’re just sols who snuck into their world. You haven’t been chosen by the gods yet. This is suicide!”
Rome shook his head. “We’renot going to Luciu. You are.”
Saywhatnow?
Coen sounded from over my shoulder. “The gifts of the sols are god-given, which means they can sense our energy. We can’t get close without alerting one of them, but you … you’re a dweller. You have no gifts—unless we’re counting your lack of common sense and general physiological imbalance as a gift. Dwellers can’t even get into Topia without touching a gifted one. They’d never expect it; you’re the perfect one to sneak in.”
I was screwed.This was why dwellers and sols were not friends. Because of this. With a huff, since it didn’t matter anymore, I shoved through the brothers, not even trying to be gentle. I strode a few feet from them, needing the space. I took another long look at the world. I wanted to imprint it in my mind, if this was the last thing I’d ever see. I was especially entranced by the huge ocean of water out in the distance, so vast that there was no way anyone could swim across it. I’d never seen anything like that before and I knew I never would again.
“I can’t believe I hugged those assholes.” Muttered curses spilled from me. “I hugged them. Stupid Abcurses. Should have known they’d be bad luck with a surname like that. Cursed. Just like my life.”
