“Sorry.” I didn’t sound sorry at all, but that was because of the wheezing. “I just meant … there’s three of you … and two of them.” I paused, notching my hands on my knees and bending over to catch my breath. “And those two are like the size of monsters. How’d she live through all of that? Does she have some kind of fertility gift or something? Do you have another bunch of brothers tucked away? More Abcurses? A few unlucky sisters?”
“Beauty. Her gift is beauty,” Aros answered, ignoring my other questions.
“Oh. Cool.”Made total sense.Those boys had magical genetics. “But that doesn’t really explain the whole twin-triplet thing.”
“The whole twin-triplet thing?” Yael gave me a look that seemed to be part inquisition, part annoyance.
“Well it’s not really normal or common,” I hedged, starting to walk again as he loomed closer. “I mean … to have a set of twinsanda set of triplets. That’s pretty rare.”
I could feel him behind me. Hovering. I’d obviously hit a touchy subject. Apparently, the twin-triplet thing wasn’t something they wanted to talk about. I stubbornly focussed my eyes on the ground ahead of me, pumping my little dweller legs as fast as they would go without actually breaking into a run. Because that would be obvious. It was much less obvious to power-walk as fast as possible, even if it made me certain that my legs were about to snap in half from over-exertion.
“We aren’tnormalorcommon,” Yael finally muttered, his hands gripping my hips and lifting me from the ground midway through a power-stride.
He pulled me up and then tossed me behind him. I thought I was going to land on my ass and probably break a few things, but I only landed against a hard chest, arms easily plucking me from the air. Aros. I could actually smell him; that faint combination of something addictive and sweet, and a hint of burning. I realised after a moment that it was the smell of smoking sugar-plants. A very familiar smell to me, since the sugar-plants had been one of our main export goods back at home. I blinked up at him, but he wasn’t even looking at me. He was just striding on, as though I hadn’t been tossed at him, and he hadn’t caught me. As though girls flying through the air at him happened every single sun-cycle.
It probably did.
“So how often do you guys sneak into Topia?” I directed the question to Aros, since he was now much closer to me than the others.
His golden eyes flicked down to me, switching between my eyes before moving over the rest of my face. “Every now and then. How often do you fall on your ass?”
“Every now and then.”
He shook his head, shifting me closer. One of his arms was hooked beneath my knees, the other banded across my back. He was cradling me like a baby. “You should be more careful.”
“Says the guy who sneaks into Topia.”
“You concerned about us, Rocks?” Siret turned his head, his eyebrows lifting, his teeth flashing.
“No.” I crossed my arms.
It was hard to look impassive and intimidating while being cradled like a baby, so I settled on pouting. Aros smirked, taking in my expression before lifting me up. The world around me dropped away as the gold in his eyes became more prominent, almost shifting with energy as his face loomed above mine. Very suddenly, and completely without warning, his lips were pressing against the very corner of my mouth. I was simply too shocked to react. The kiss was barely even a kiss, but my body didn’t seem to know that. The simple brush of his lips had sent spiralling heat all the way through me, locking down the air that should have been flooding in and out of my lungs. He pulled his head up, the smirk back in place, and continued walking.
Meanwhile, I was pretty sure that he had just reached into my chest and pulled out my poor little dweller heart. Now it was laying somewhere behind us. In the dirt. Beating pathetically.
“Seduction is using histalentto change his rank!” Siret shouted, his voice carrying with enough force to make me flinch.
Up ahead, I could see Coen and Rome stopping, the setting sun turning them into huge silhouettes as they spun around, threads of yellow and gold weaving over their bodies and highlighting the fact that I really shouldn’t be encouraging them to compete over an imaginary ranking, because they werefartoo powerful-looking to mess with, just for the fun of it.
“That’s cheating!” Coen shouted back.
“You cheat, you die!” Rome added, in an equally booming voice. Why the hell was he playing into this when he already seemed to know that it wasn’t arealranking?
I told myself to come clean; to open up that mouth of mine that was always getting me into trouble and tell them all what Yael and Rome were obviously keeping to themselves. Or maybe they weren’t keeping it to themselves. Maybe they had completely disregarded the fact that the ranking had nothing to do with them and everything to do with their dorm numbers, because they didn’t care. Because itwasa competition. Because they were making it a competition. Because they clearly wanted one of their brothers to murder me.
I had to come clean.As soon as possible.
We had reached the others by now, and they all seemed to be staring at Aros, waiting for an explanation. It was annoying me, because they couldn’t just turn it into a competition without me agreeing. The whole thing was my idea. They couldn’t just steal it. Plus, Aros was still cradling me like a baby, and for some reason, it was making my temper bubble. I wanted to be standing on my own feet, preferably towering over all of them.
“My ranks, my rules,” I blurted.
“So wecanuse our—” Rome began, but I held my hand up, palm facing outward, hoping that it would cut him off.Hell no, Crusher couldn’t use his ‘talent’ on me.
He stared at my extended hand for a moment. He seemed confused. It was possible that nobody had ever tried to cut him off before.
“No, you can’t!” I twisted out of Aros’s arms, landing on my hands and knees in the grass, pain shimmering up my body. I quickly pulled to my feet, brushing off my knees. “Nobody is allowed to use their talent on me to change their rank. Because that would be cheating. And like I said: my ranks, my rules.” I realised that I was doing the exactoppositeof what I was supposed to be doing, but it seemed like a pretty promising way to prevent the Abcurses from using their talents on me, period.
“We might as well stop here for the night,” Coen muttered, breaking up the stare-off that I had going on with his brothers. “The dweller is getting cranky. She needs to be fed and watered and rested, or whatever dwellers need.”
