“Why?”
“Because I’m not going to sit here while you lie and pretend there isn’t something you’re keeping from me. Because I’ll be able to understand more once I’ve seen it for myself. I was a bit… unconscious from crippling pain by the time it appeared on the scene.”
“I’m not keeping anything from you, I swear.” The lie stung my throat. I threw everything I had into smiling at him. He needed to believe everything was fine – if he found out what I’d agreed, he might do something stupid and mess it all up. I held out my hand to him, knowing that his touch would burn me inside. I had to endure it if I wanted to save him. “We’re going there right now – all four of us. I can dream with the god. Maybe that will give us some answers.”
Ayaz stared at my hand for a long time. Behind me, a clock ticked on the wall, marking the seconds as hours while my love turned over whether he trusted me. Agonizing moments where he laid our relationship bare in his silence and chose to believe my lies.
Finally, he stretched out long fingers and entwined them with mine.
“Let’s go talk to a god,” he said.
Chapter Twenty
Ayaz and I found Trey and Quinn in Trey’s dorm. Trey sat at his desk, bent over his books as he studied for exams. Quinn slouched on the sofa, playing some video game with the volume on mute in deference to Trey’s need for concentration. This was lovely, except for the fact that Quinn was supplying his own running commentary – which was equal parts annoying and hilarious – and Trey’s shoulders grew tenser by the moment.
“…feel the sting of my steel! Your own man has betrayed you. In the land of the witless and gullible, you would be king—Oh, hey Hazy. Ataturk.” Quinn paused the game and jumped up.
“Thank fuck you’re here.” Trey rolled his eyes at the TV screen. “Maybe you can take Quinnanigans for a walk or throw a stick for him or something.”
“Trey is proof that even cosmic gods don’t have a sense of humor. I’m glad to see you guys.” Quinn jumped up and wrapped his arms around me, his controller bouncing off my shoulder.
His touch shot heat straight to my core, and I had to grit my teeth to stop myself from meeting his embrace with a smoldering kiss. After Quinn’s fear of my fire, this was such a big step – a grand gesture of trust and faith and love as only Quinn could. I had to endure it, instead of sinking into it and basking in the glow of Quinn’s renewed passion.
I tried to return the embrace with as much sincerity as I could without being drawn into Quinn’s magnetism. He went to kiss my cheek and I ducked down, pretending to tie my bootlace. Quinn and Ayaz exchanged a glance.
Shit. They suspect something’s up.
Of course they do. They’re not idiots.
An awkward silence descended. I straightened up and started talking before they could all gang up on me. “Ayaz wants to see the pillar tonight, and I think it’s time I talked to the god again. You guys want to come?”
“Hell yes.” Quinn tossed down the controller with glee. “There’s nothing I love more than sneaking around creepy phallic objects.”
Trey glanced at his watch and frowned. “We’d better hurry. The teachers will start their rounds in an hour, and I want them to find us safe in our beds.”
We crept down the hall without speaking (a difficult feat for Quinn), not wanting any of the students to waylay us. Sounds from the dorm rooms bled from under the doors. Expensive sound systems booming old-school tunes, students fucking and talking and crying. It was amazing how even as everything had been turned upside down, this part of student life stayed the same.
We made it across the school to the auditorium without anyone seeing us. Quinn cracked the stage door and ushered us all inside. “I’ll stand guard here,” he whispered, crouching amongst the props stacked behind the door. “If anyone comes in, I’ll distract them. I’ll make a lot of noise.”
I kissed his forehead. As my lips brushed his skin, the fire inside me flared to life, begging for more of him.
Trey and Ayaz flanked me as we picked our way around the ruined stage. If possible, the auditorium looked even worse than before. It certainly smelt worse – damp fabric and charred wood and behind it, the scent of rotting flesh. The scent of the god’s chaos.
In the center of the room, the pillar gleamed, pristine and perfect amongst the ruin around it. It haddefinitelygrown – the sigil had disappeared through the ceiling and was no longer visible from the floor. I lurched forward, my palms drawn to touch it. The hum shuddered through my body. Trey held me back.
Ayaz circled the pillar, studying it without touching it. He spent a long time looking up, twisting his head this way and that as he tried to conceptualize it. The pillar had this weird way of warping the space around it – when I stared at it I got a sense that I only saw part of it, like the tip of an iceberg poking above the surface.
“Non-Euclidean geometry,” Ayaz muttered. “Cyclopean.”
“Is that a particular school of architecture?” I called out, struggling to free myself from Trey’s grip. “Because I’d just call it ‘giant and terrifying.’”
“That’s basically what Cyclopean means. It’s used to describe large blocks of dry stone fitted together without mortar, like the kind used on Mycenaean palaces. This work is so fine that it’s impossible to see the joins in the stone.” Ayaz squinted harder. “It’s definitely the same stone as the god’s cavern is made of.”
“That’s all the answers you’re going to get from it.” I wrenched my hand away from Trey’s grip. “My turn.”
“Don’t touch it,” Trey warned.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I grinned. To spite him, I slammed my hand against the stone.
