“You’re getting us confused with bullsen.” I shook my head, insulted at the comparison.
“You don’t need to be fed?” he prompted, his expression blank.
“Food would be nice.”
“And you don’t need to be watered?”
“As in watered-down, like showered? Orgivenwater?”
His blank mask cracked, just barely, but it was enough for me to glimpse the surprise beneath. He didn’t answer me, trading a look with Rome. The others were similarly silent, their faces quickly morphing into the same, locked-down expression.
“You need help showering?” Siret finally asked, evidently the first of them to cave and ask the question that had held them all up. “Dwellers don’t shower on their own?”
“What? No.What? I meant—”
“We’re getting nowhere with this.” Rome cut across me, raising his hand in my face. So, they were competitiveandvengeful. I should never have taught him that trick. “The dweller needs to tend to herself. They need regular breaks and sustenance, just like the bullsen.”
“You guys don’t need regular breaks and sustenance?” I asked, folding my arms, and attempting to look down my nose at them.
I knew all too well how much tending they needed. I knew, because I watched people fetch them food, and I collected their laundry.
“We don’t needregularanything,” Rome returned, a laugh in his voice.
“Exactly,” Yael added, his smile matching his brother’s. “Our breaks are never normal, and our food is never normal. That’s how we stand apart from the bullsen and the dwellers. Everything about us is extraordinary.”
“Especially your egos,” I sneered.
“I said ‘everything’, didn’t I?”
Nine
Ishook my head, storming right past Yael, hitting him hard in the shoulder as I went. It hurt the way you’d expect bashing your shoulder into a boulder to hurt, but I didn’t just have plenty of experience in feeling pain … I also had a decent amount of experience in stalking away from people angrily. I was in familiar and comfortable territory—or at least Ihad been, until the sky started to darken, drawing tight and heavy, the clouds swelling as night-time accelerated across the horizon. I stopped walking, my head drawn back, panic building somewhere at the base of my spine.
“What the actual f—” the words were barely even out of my mouth before the Abcurses were suddenly all around me.
They were standing in a circle, their backs to me, and they were completely ignoring the doomsday sky, peering around us at the land instead.
“Which god did you stab, dweller?” Rome growled, his eyes roving over the slope of a nearby hill. He was turned just enough for me to see half of his face.
“I didn’t catch his name,” I replied automatically.
I found myself drawing closer to Rome, even though he appeared to be pissed at me. I couldn’t help it. His was the broadest back. My shoulder bumped against his spine and his arm suddenly twisted around, pulling me fully into him. I pressed my forehead to his shirt, keeping my hands tucked beneath my chin and my eyes closed.
“Please don’t let me die right now,” I started whispering, as the world darkened further, the ground starting to rumble beneath our feet. “I’m not ready to die, yet. I still don’t know how to cook, and I’d like to punch someone in the facenotby accident. Just once.”
“Shh,” Aros interrupted. He was standing beside Rome, evidently close enough to hear my panicked prayers. “You stabbed one of them. They aren’t going to do what you say just because you ask nicely.”
“They’re not here for her,” Yael spoke up, his words dark. “Trickery? You would know better than us … is it D.O.D.?”
“No. It’s not a trick.” Siret seemed to be speaking through clenched teeth. “He has no idea we stole the cup.”
“Show yourself!” Coen suddenly shouted, his voice carrying all the way to the cluster of trees we had left behind, almost seeming to shake their leaves.
From the darkness caused by the stormy sky and the shelter of the short forest, a man suddenly materialised, walking toward us. He was cloaked in a blood-red robe which swept over the ground, collecting sticks and dust as he swooped in toward us.
“Rau.” A collective growl announced the name from five different directions. I could even feel the name as it vibrated the entire way through Rome’s body.
“What’s with the nightmare illusion, Rau? What do you want?” Yael demanded, stepping away from the circle.
