Fatigue from the fight and stress washed over me and I basically collapsed onto the floor. I needed to sit. “I still don’t understand,” I said. “Explain everything to me.”
“There’s only so much we can tell you without you becoming an even larger target for the Original Gods,” Coen said. “You’ve already made yourself known to Rau and Abil. That’s bad enough.”
I was about to start losing it, Willa style, when Aros at least gave me a little more information.
“All you need to know for now is that we are gods, that we are stuck on Minatsol for the rest of this life-cycle, and that Minatsol weakens us—which was why we had to get Siret to Topia.”
Somehow, I was on my feet; and then somehow, I was out the front door. I couldn’t even remember moving, but running was happening and then the chest-shredding was happening and I found myself collapsing near the supply closet that had once been my temporary sanctuary.
Crawling inside, I curled up in a ball and tried to assess everything I now knew. The Abcurses were gods … their parents were Abil and Adeline. Abil was scary beautiful and scary deadly—and I was pretty sure that Emmy had called him a god of Trickery. Rau had hit me with some sort of curse and he was creepily acting as though I was special, somehow, because I survived it. It was almost as though he had a particular kind of interest in me now … almost as though he saw me asuseful.
A heavy thud against the door made me jump. “Get out here, Soldier.” Siret commanded. “Don’t make me crawl into a supply cupboard; that shit is for dwellers.”
“Iama dweller,” I yelled back. “I don’t belong out there with you guys!”
The door slammed open and a long arm reached in and hauled me out. I found myself being held up off the floor, evil green cat-like eyes boring into me. “You’ve never been a dweller, Willa. And if you couldn’t play with the gods, Rau’s curse would have killed you.”
Oh for fuc—
“Do you assholes have to be right all the time? And stop listening to my thoughts!”
The other four were down the hall a little, waiting for me to get my shit together. Siret set me back on my feet, and I held both hands up in front of me. “Sorry about that, minor panic attack—I’m okay now.”
And funnily enough, the moment I said it, I knew it was true. I was okay. I was more than okay, actually. I must have been having some kind of a delayed reaction to everything that had happened. Maybe it was Yael’s fault, for repressing my emotions. Either way, the freak-out seemed to be over, and I could feel a calm beginning to settle into my bones. Elowin was dead, Rau had fled, and Siret was alive. In the greater scheme of things, everything reallywasokay.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked, looking between the perfect, arrogant faces of the five males who had rapidly become the centre of my world.
Siret tucked me in under his massive arm, and we walked toward his brothers. “Classes tomorrow. Hope you’re prepared, because you’re going to learn everything the sols get to learn.”
I groaned.Learning… that was the worst plan ever.
Rome laughed. “We’ll keep you safe, Willa. Even if Rau comes for you again, he won’t get through us.”
And what about when they leave? When their exile has ended?
“You’ll be coming with us,” Siret whispered, close to my temple.
“Why are you guys being punished anyway?” I asked, thinking about all the things they could have done wrong to make the gods angry enough to banish them from Topia.
“Trickery thought it would be a good idea to—” Yael started, but Siret cut him off.
“We don’t need to talk about it right now.”
I nudged Siret’s side, the motion gentle because I didn’t know if there were any lingering effects of his injury still bothering him or not. “What’d you do?”
Siret sighed, his arm falling from my shoulders, and he muttered something incoherent.
Rome laughed. “We can’t hear you, Trickery.”
“I tricked Staviti into trying to mate with one of Bestiary’s creations, okay!”
I stopped walking, my mouth falling open, my words tumbling out on a squeal. “Youwhat?”
Siret tossed his hands up in the air. “You wouldn’t understand! It’s a running joke, between the gods. Staviti has been in love with Pica—the goddess of Love—since the beginning of time; she was the first companion that he created. But she didn’t love him. She eventually fell in love with Rau, and so Staviti banned all of the gods from pairing up, or having children together. He thought that it would be better fornobodyto have a partner than for Pica and Rau to be together. Anyway, so to get around his rules, D.O.D.—ourdear old dad—used his magic to disguise our mother as Pica. She ran to Staviti and asked him to gift her with children. It’s the only way to have children, in Topia, since Staviti controls everything. So she told him that she would finally love him, if he allowed her children. He agreed, and gifted her two pregnancies, on the condition that she not seek out Rau to be the father of her children. He obviously thought that if he took Rau off the table, she would turn to him instead.”
“Uh …” my brain seemed to be short-circuiting. That was all a little hard to swallow. “So he thought Adeline was Pica, and heallowedher two pregnancies?”
“That’s right.” Yael was the one who answered, this time. There was a wry smile twisting his lips. “By the time he found out that he had been tricked, it was too late. And being the asshole our father is, he manipulated the magic to get as many sons out of those two pregnancies as possible.”
