“Are you seriously saying that while you moveawayfrom me?” I hissed out quietly.
“Those are the Abcurse brothers—or two of them anyway. Coen has a gift for Pain, and Siret has a gift for Trickery.”
“The one that has a gift for pain … is he the one holding the crossbow by any chance?”
“Yeah …”
“Really?” I groaned, even though my heart was kicking up a riot inside my chest and my eyes were fixed to the annoyingly still crossbow bolt. “I didn’t even last onestepinto Blesswood.”
As the words left my mouth, Emmy kicked out a leg, knocking me into the ground. I felt the air brush past my face, something tugging against my hair, and then I heard the tellingthunkof a crossbow bolt embedding itself into the wooden gate behind us. A gate that had obviously been nudged shut at some point, to protect the dwellers congregating around the entrance. I stared at the bolt, my mouth dropping open, my brain short-circuiting, and then I looked back to Coen, who had ripped the blindfold off and strolled forward a few steps. He had bright green eyes, smoking to a dark colour around the edges of the pupils, and I now noticed that the colour of his hair actually bled a deep, burnt red, with only a few golden strands. He glanced down at me on the ground,frowned, and then wandered away, resting his crossbow over his shoulder.
Siret, who had been left at the tree, struggled out of his ropes, jumping over the base of the tree and sauntering over to us.
“Dear little dirt-dwellers!” he sang, raising his arms and grinning as the gate creaked open again. “Welcome to Blesswood, and to the beginning of the rest of your lives! Try not to get in the way when my brother decides he’s bored.”
“Or whenyoudecide you’re bored,” Jerath muttered beneath his breath.
Siret walked the rest of the way over, holding his hand out to me. I didn’t want to take it. I really didn’t. Emmy cleared her throat, though, her eyes full of panic, and I quickly grabbed his hand. He hauled me to my feet with far more ease than was really necessary to display to everyone, and I accidently stomped on his foot. He didn’t seem to notice. He brushed off my shoulders as I tried not to get distracted by the green-gold tint of his eyes. They were lighter than his brother’s, but just as stunning.Did all sols have such stunning eyes?
He almost had you killed!Right. His eyes sucked. He hadsuckyeyes, and so did his brother.
“See you round, Rocks,” he said, sweeping his gaze over me before turning and jogging down the path his brother had taken.
“Rocks?” I managed, as the guides started ushering the other dwellers inside again.
Everyone was trying pretty hard to pretend that nothing had happened, but I could see the nervous expressions on their faces, and the sympathetic looks they shot my way. They were wasting their energy. Shit like this happened to me all the time. Maybe not on asacred sol of Blesswood almost murdering me for no reason whatsoeverscale, but close.
Emmy was chuckling beneath her breath, which meant that she had worked out my nickname.
“What?” I nudged her.
“You dropped like a bag of rocks.”
“It wasn’tthatfunny.” I scowled.
Three
It was a sombre, sweaty crowd that made its way the last few yards into the inner domain of Blesswood. Our first introduction to the gifted sols had been enough for all of us to realise that shit had just gotten real.Reallyreal. Being a dweller in the village might be a lowly, unfortunate life, but we were all pretty equal there. Here, we would know every single sun-cycle that we were the dirt beneath the blessed feet of the blessed sols.
Dirt-dweller.
Punching a sol in the nose was probably frowned upon in Blesswood. I reminded myself to check the rule book on that one later, right after I learned how to punch. I should probably just stick with tripping and kneeing them in the groin, since it was one of my specialties. Maybe I could throw some tar on them. I was pretty sure that Siret and Coen wouldn’t be so confident if they had to shave off all their pretty hair.
“Follow me,” Jerath demanded, his voice loud enough to be heard over our panicked and rapid heartbeats. “There’s no time to settle in, you’ll find your bunk, dump your bags, and then get your assigned dorms, classes, and other duties. These were all decided long before you reached Blesswood, by the dweller-relations committee, so don’t bother arguing, you won’t get reassigned unless asolrequests it. No special circumstances.”
Wellgreat. What were the odds I pulled washroom duties for the rest of my life? Maybe being sacrificed to the gods wasn’t the worst thing that could happen here. I focused on sucking up as much of the surrounding beauty as I could, before I was stuck cleaning urine-pots and bowing down to sols. The main room of this particular building was huge, with a dome-shaped ceiling. There were these scattered panes of glass, which allowed trickles of sunlight to wash down the marbled white walls and pillars. There didn’t seem to be much in the actual room, furniture-wise. It appeared to be a central point, leading to a bunch of other buildings.
Jerath, who had somehow slipped intoleadermode—and was definitely letting the power go straight to his head—was waving everyone forward. “Hurry up, there’s no time for your slow, village backwardness right now.”
We were roughly ushered through a small, dark archway, which somehow ended up in the corner of the beautiful building, and then down some dark, wooden stairs. I could see the staircase also went up, but apparently, they wanted us as far from the gods as possible.
Jerath’s voice drifted back through the narrow stairs. “This is the dwellers’ stairway. You’ll use these back stairs to move around Blesswood as much as possible. The sols like their privacy; they want things done right, but without having to see or smell you.”
I decided thatchatty leader-Jerathwas my least favourite of all the Jeraths—he was so much more fun when he was silent and spraying sols with street water.
It was dark and kind of damp in this section. I preferred wide-open spaces, and less elbows in my ribs. Also, the sweaty nerves thing was really starting to become an olfactory problem. The sols should probably cross off thenot smell usthing. That just wasn’t going to work. Finally, after climbing down four million and fifty stairs, we reached the dwellers’ section. There was no natural light in this part; we were clearly far, far underground.
“Did anyone tell them about things collapsing on me?” I whispered to Emmy. “Someone should have warned them.”
