My hands started frantically patting now. I’d seen a few sleeper-deaths in the seventh ring, and I was not going out that way. Not a freaking chance in hell. Coen’s eyebrows slowly drew together as he watched me jump around, shaking my hair out, flipping my head upside down and everything.
“Is it out?” I was shouting. Panic had me in its hold.
I didn’t fear much, but the creepy, multi-legged, weird-looking bug was high on my list. Almost right at the top. Only a few rungs below the recurring dream I sometimes had about someone dying and making me queen. Luckily, we no longer had monarchies, because it pissed the gods off too much to see us worshipping anyone other than them. So yeah, it was an irrational fear … but I still couldn’t seem to shake it.
“What is the dweller doing?” Siret stood next to his brother, both of them staring at me. “Has she lost her tiny mind? That was fast.”
Aros joined them on the other side and the slightest of smiles was visible at the corners of his full lips. “Pretty sure she’s trying to get a bug off her, I’ve seen this before in Blesswood.”
“Help me!” I shouted.What was wrong with them? Were they hoping I’d die from sneak-sleeper-attack?
Coen grabbed me then, huge hands wrapping around my biceps as he held me in place. I struggled for a click, before realising that it was fruitless. I was never escaping his grip.
“There is no bug on you,” he said slowly, like he was speaking to an idiot.
“Well …” I spluttered out. “Why were you staring at me like that? You went all dark and gloomy and I thought it was a sleeper.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, which felt like amusement, although the corner of his eye did the same, and that was more like anger. Before I could try to salvage the relationship I thought I’d been building with these sols, Coen freed my right bicep and traced a thumb over my lip. “You have blood on your face,” he said. “Were you hurt in the crossing?”
I stared at him as his thumb shifted, rubbing back and forth along the slope of my bottom lip. If there really was blood on my face, he was only spreading it around—which was hardly surprising, because he wasn’t watching what he was doing. He was staring right into my eyes, an intensely focussed look in his.
Before I could answer, Aros was in my face. “How could she get hurt? We were assured it was the same for dwellers and us to cross. And we were touching her!”
I found myself reaching out to comfort him, before deciding at the last moment that it was a bad idea. “I bit my lip, that’s all. I’m fine.”
I heard a snort from someone behind. Fair point.Finemight have been an exaggeration, but I wasn’t hurt from the crossing to Minatsol. I should have been more specific.
Yael, who’d been silent and distant, didn’t hang around any longer. He turned and started pushing his way through the thicker growth to the east. The rest of the Abcurses gave me one more look over, before following their brother. Siret nudged me, indicating I should go in front of him. Pretty sure I heard him mutter something about stopping me from breaking my neck, but I could have been wrong.
As soon as I stumbled free of the alcove of trees and bushes we’d been in, I realised that nothing in the hilly area we were in was familiar. Siret nudged me again; his brothers were already quite a few feet in front of us, so I picked up the pace.
“Where are we?” I asked, leaves and debris kicking up under my feet as I jogged to keep up with their pace. “This isn’t where we entered Topia from.”
He didn’t answer at first, and I wondered if he was just going to completely ignore me.Seriously?I was here because of their need to procure an item which probably did not originally belong to them, no matter what their story had been. Why would the gods care about anything a sol had? Instinct told me it had been stolen from the gods by the Abcurses in the first place, and the gods had wanted it back. I was the only sucker they could rope into helping them and now I was going to face a certain, painful death-by-angry-deity.
“The banishment cave is across the other side of Minatsol.” Siret’s voice was lazily drawled, like he could barely be bothered to answer. “We have a couple of sun-cycles walk to get home.”
“What?” I screeched, grinding to a halt. “But I was in Topia for like one rotation. I was with the Gods for like half a rotation. How could you five get to the cave in half a rotation if it’s going to take usa couple of sun-cyclesto walk back?”
Siret nudged me again, clearly not liking my refusal to walk. “Those sun-cycles are going to turn into moon-cycles if you don’t start walking, dweller. Don’t make me carry you again, it’ll be far less pleasant this time.”
A red haze kind of washed over my eyes. I was so furious that when I opened my mouth, it actually surprised me that steam didn’t emerge. “You dragged me into this, how the hell am I going to explain being away from Blesswood for this long?”
Siret must have realised that I wasn’t going to move; he leaned down closer and spoke in fast, clipped tones. “To reach the banishment cave within Topia is fast, which is why we were able to get there so quickly. We are in Minatsol now, so there’s no quick way back to the academy. We could have gone through Topia, but the risk was too great with you having stolen something from the gods. They tend to take those things seriously; they would have been searching for you very quickly. Add on the fact that you stabbed one of them, and, well … It’s much safer on this side.”
Okay, that all made sense. With a sigh, I turned and started walking again.
“Oh, and, Rocks?” Siret added. I swivelled my head around to see him. “We’ll make sure no one at Blesswood punishes you for your absence. We have more than a little pull there, which is something you should remember.”
Whatever.Arrogant sol.
Emmy was going to be out of her freaking mind with worry. She was probably going to start asking a whole bunch of questions, until every damned livingthingin the academy had been notified of my absence. There was no way that Yael was going to be able topersuadeevery single one of them to forget. That would require more power than it was really possible for a sol to possess. That would require the power of a god. I knew that there was nothing I could do right then to change the situation, but that didn’t stop me from losing my mind with worry.Damn those sols!
We walked for the better part of the sun-cycle, picking our way through forests and winding trails that dipped through the mountains. My feet started aching far too soon to complain aloud about it without embarrassing myself, and slowly, the ache began to travel up my legs. Coen was leading us, with Rome two steps behind him, me stuck in the middle, and the triplets bringing up the rear of our procession as they talked quietly amongst themselves.
“So … your mother …” I tossed the words over my shoulder, trying to speak through the ache in my ribs. “Is she still alive?”
“Is it normal for dwellers to ask each other that?” Siret shot back, sounding amused.
