“Where are the others?”
“Strength went after Karyn, Persuasion saved Seduction from ruining you, and Pain is standing right there.” He jerked his chin forward, indicating a spot behind me.
I turned, jumping a little bit when I noticed Coen standing in the corner, half obscured by shadows.
“Who the hell is Karyn? And what do you mean byruiningme?” I asked Siret, though I was still looking at Coen. We seemed to be locked into some kind of staring battle.
He had this scarily blank expression on his face, and his eyes were still too dark, too full of pain. Also, he was standing in a shadowy corner and that was suspicious and weird enough in itself.
“The girl who was pretending to be you,” Coen answered, probably thinking that I had been asking him the question. “And the level of power we have … you should know, Willa, it isn’t normal. It isn’t safe for you. For a dweller. If Seduction had taken complete control of you, it would have destroyed you.” His voice was too deep, too low. Like he was hurting in some way.
I walked over to him, almost surprised that Siret didn’t hold me back … but then I stopped. Surely … surely it didn’t have anything to do with the kiss.
Coen didn’tlikeme, did he?
Almost as soon as the thought flitted into my brain, I brushed it aside, a derisive laugh fighting to escape through my lips. Yeah right, the super-sol totally had a crush on me. Probably had ever since he almost shot me nonchalantly with a crossbow.Gods, I was such an idiot. I was an idiot to eventhinkthat one of them could have feelings for me that went beyond the obvious enjoyment they got out of watching me do something life-threatening every sun-cycle. They seemed to have accepted me into their group—they even seemed towantme in their group, and they definitely seemed to think that they had ownership of me in some way. Like I wastheirdweller-slave to look after. I supposed I kind of was, even without the stupid rules that governed Blesswood and our society as a whole. Even if dwellers and sols had been given even-footing in this world, I still would have belonged to them, because I literally couldn’t walk away from them. They were technically keeping me alive.
I moved the rest of the way to Coen, laying my hand on his arm again. I didn’t even flinch. It didn’t even occur to me that I might get hurt again. He seemed surprised that I hadn’t hesitated. He was looking down at me with a furrowed brow, his arm tensing beneath my fingers. Without a word, he swept down, hooked an arm around my legs, and tossed me over his shoulder.
“Oh,” I huffed, as the breath got knocked out of me for a moment. “We’re back to this, are we, One?”
Siret shook his head, the look on his face bemused, as though he had expected something completely different to happen. He followed behind as Coen strode down the hall, passing by the doors of all the people who had no idea what had just transpired so many feet from where they were sleeping. They stopped at Dorm Number Three. Aros’s room.
I couldn’t see much from my position as we stepped inside, the door closing behind us. But I could hear Aros and Yael murmuring to each other very quietly. Everything came back into sight as I was dropped to my feet. Coen moved away from me quickly, as ifIwas the one who could cause debilitating pain with nothing more than a graze of skin. I wanted to follow him, with my eyes mostly, because his behaviour was confusing.
Aros springing to his feet distracted me and I lost sight of Coen as he disappeared somewhere. The seductive sol closed the distance between us and then he was all I could see, and smell, and feel. Why the hell did he smell so sweet? It muddled my mind and made me think crazy stuff. Like the fact that I wanted to feel his lips on mine again. I had to forcibly grip the side of my shirt to stop myself from reaching out for him.
His face was gentler than I’d seen it before, and yet also strained. “Are you okay, Willa?” He wasn’t using his gift on me, I knew that—but his words still wrapped around my body, sinking into me. Aros didn’t need to actively use his seduction—it was infused into everything he did and said. And now that I had tasted it, it was so much harder to resist.
“Yes, I’m fine. I feel … fine.” It wasn’t even a lie. My head was a little fuzzy, my body felt a bit disconnected—which was odd—but otherwise, I felt the same. Like me. A really tired version of me.
My yawn must have taken up half of my face, or more. I couldn’t even bring myself to care that my mouth was wide open for everyone to see.
Siret, still standing close by, shook his head. “Half the time you act like we aren’t even in the room. What are you, dweller? How do you exist with us so easily?”
What kind of a question was that?I opened my mouth to say something else, but another yawn took over before I could speak. Aros’s hand draped across my lower back as he guided me toward his bed. A monstrous, four-posted, silk-draped thing, which took me forever to change the sheets on. Speaking of …
“Who’s been cleaning your room?” Because I sure as heck hadn’t been.
Aros’s golden head swung around as if he hadn’t even noticed. “No idea, just another dweller, I’m sure.”
For some reason, that bothered me.Iwas their dweller, and while cleaning was never going to be my thing—and frankly I had zero trust for anyone who thought that cleaning was their thing—except maybe Emmy, she was my exception—but it was still someone stepping on my turf. I made a mental note to find out who had been in the Abcurses rooms. Atti or Emmy would know. Those two super-dwellers knew everything.
I managed to haul myself up into the huge bed, and Aros’s hand remained on my back as he gave me a semi-boost. “Get some sleep, Willa. We’ll wake you when we find Elowin and those who helped her. She’ll never touch you again. You can rest easily, knowing that.” He draped a warm, woollen throw over me, and then turned back to his brothers.
I almost asked him to stay, because his words had triggered all the memories of the past sun-cycle. Somehow, until this moment, I had completely forgotten about being kidnapped and impersonated. That was what the Abcurses did to me. They wiped everything else from my mind and made the whole world revolve around them. Although … now that Aros had brought it back up, I couldn’t get the memories out again. The feel of the gag. The suffocation of a bag tied over my head.
I felt a sick sense of satisfaction that the boys were going to deal with her. They could do things which were far beyond me and I knew that if she wasn’t stopped, Elowin wouldn’t rest until I was wiped from this world.
Good luck to her.
The gods had been trying to wipe me out for eighteen life-cycles and I was still there. I would not be brought down by someone like her.
My mind was crazy with worries, and despite the fatigue plaguing me, I just couldn’t shut down long enough to sleep. I was about to give up on the whole sleep thing when a warm body slid into the bed beside me, pressing heavily along my side. Small prickles of pain-energy caressed me.
Coen.
Opening my eyes, I found him on his back, staring up into the ceiling above us.
