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by Jaymin Eve
What in the actual fu—
“Aren’t any of you going to stop her?” Emmy pressed, her voice rising to a squeal, her finger pointing again. Jabbing, really.
She seemed terrified now that Fakey had revealed herself. It was the first time she had ever stood up to a sol, and the sol she had chosen was obviously a powerful one.
“We already have,” Rome grunted, his eyes still glaring at me and Siret. He hadn’t even bothered to turn around.
I blinked, having no idea what he was talking about, and watched as Fakey reached the doorway and then stopped, a frown stuck on her face. After a single click, she was on the floor, folding in on herself as though the air around her was trying to crumple her into a ball. Her head thwacked back, hitting the stone, and her mouth open wide on a silent scream. I started forward, toward her, but Siret grabbed me back. None of the Abcurses seemed surprised to see Fakey arching against the stone floor, apparently in so much pain that she couldn’t even scream. None of them were even paying much attention to her. Except Coen, who was giving her his Glare of Death.
And then it hit me.
Holy shit. “Coen!”
His head snapped around, his eyes slamming into mine. The darkness there was so deep that even though I wasn’t actually moving, I had the oddest sensation of falling forward. Fear slammed into me, but it wasn’t a fear for myself. It was fear for Fakey, who I didn’t even like. Coen slowly turned his eyes from me, as though he had given me that bare moment to speak out against Fakey’s torture, but when I hadn’t said anything to stop him, he had taken it upon himself to continue. The second time his power hit her, the scream finally escaped her body, grating up through her throat and echoing eerily around the walls. Siret released me, his gaze becoming focussed, and I figured that he was shielding the sound somehow. I had no idea if that was something he could do. When none of the dorm rooms burst open, I assumed that it was.
Come to think of it, we’d been making a hell of a scene for a while now, and not a single person had showed. Siret must have been doing something to hide us the entire time.
Fakey screamed again, drawing my eyes immediately back to her. It didn’t look like anybody was going to rush to her rescue.
Which left … Dammit. It left me.
“Coen.” I called his name softly this time, walking over to him, reaching out for his arm.
“Willa—don’t!” Yael’s warning was sharp, but the words were delivered too late.
My skin was already touching Coen’s, and the fire of agony flashed right through my body. An arm hooked me from behind, golden fingers wrapping around my wrist and pulling my hand away from Coen. A pathetic sound travelled out of my throat as my legs buckled, flashes of colour racing over my vision and obscuring the faces around me. The pain was burning and wild, ripping me apart with the sharp sting of fire that only seemed to worsen, instead of fading away. The voices around me swelled, the arms cradling me tighter, and then another feeling swept into me. The fire was still there, ripping through my limbs and searing my blood, but it was … different. Almost … I almost … wanted it.
My body was confused. It hurt, but it didn’t. It burned, but it only burned in all the right places. Hands spun me around, and while I suspected that I kept spinning, that was impossible, because I was anchored against a hard chest and there was a grip at the back of my head, pulling me up. The fire swelled, becoming something more as lips pressed against mine, hard and coaxing. I reacted on instinct, because my mind didn’t seem to know what was happening. I still couldn’t figure out what I was feeling. Whether I was hurting or not. Why I was arching into the hands, why my mouth was parting, my own hands grasping, almost-silent sounds sparking up from somewhere inside me.
Somehow, through the intense meld of pain and pleasure, my mind began to register details. The pain was slowly leaking away, and it was being replaced by other sensations. The burning smell of sugar-plants. The hard feel of muscle beneath my fingers. The taste of something addictive.
Aros.
A rough, rumbling sound seemed to echo from his body, passing through me.
And then he was gone.
Or …
I was gone.
I tumbled to my knees, blinking around the sudden darkness, my hands finding the floor, words breaking up in my throat before I could get them out into the air.
“W-Willa?” The stuttered question had come from Emmy, which meant that I was still in the same room, and so was she.
“What … what happened?” I managed to ask, my hand wrapping around my throat, my eyes still trying to adjust to the darkness.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Siret muttered, somewhere right above me. He sounded strained. “Just an average sun-cycle in the life of a dweller who really wants to get herself killed.”
“Where’s Aros?” I squeaked.
No answer.
I flung out a hand, my fingers wrapping in material. I started to pull to my feet, but Siret grabbed my arms and set me before him quicker than I would have managed it myself.
“Where’s Aros?” I repeated, the concern in my voice carrying.
“He stepped out for a bit.” This had come from Siret again.
“Emmy?” I asked the darkness.
“Still here.” Her voice was stronger this time. “Thanks for making me watch that, by the way.”
“Why the hell is it pitch-black right now?” I grumbled, ignoring her sarcasm.
Just as I said it, the real world flickered back into focus. All of the other Abcurses had disappeared. Only Siret remained.
Fakey was also gone.
Sixteen
I was trying not to admit it to myself, but there was a pretty good chance that I’d just done something really bad, and now we were all standing in the aftermath of it. It was hard to come to terms with, though; after all, I had been trying to save a girl that definitely wouldn’t have tried to save me in return—or to begin with. So that wasn’t a ‘bad’ thing. Aros had used his gift on me to drown out Coen’s pain, and that wasn’t a ‘bad’ thing either.
Yet … something ‘bad’ seemed to have happened. That much was clear. They had all disappeared, and Siret was covering for them.
“We should go,” Emmy announced, staring at me, trying to convey some kind of secret message.
Unfortunately, no matter how often she tried to teach me the art of silent conversation, it wasn’t something that I was ever going to master. I wasn’t even good at normal conversation. I thought she was telling me that I should go with her, but she flicked her eyes to Siret and then grabbed Atti’s arm, quickly striding out of the room.
“I have no idea what kind of secret message you just tried to give me!” I shouted after her, just in case she wasn’t already aware.
I saw her head shake as she left, but she didn’t turn around.
“Why do I feel like everyone knows something that I don’t?” I spun to face Siret, planting my hands on my hips.
“Because that’s usually the case?” He arched a brow, not even a little bit intimidated by me.
“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 by ruining me?” 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 c
omplete 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’t like me, 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 even think that 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 to want me in their group, and they definitely seemed to think that they had ownership of me in some way. Like I was their dweller-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 if I was 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. I was 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.
“Go to sleep, dweller-baby. I’ll kill Elowin as soon as we find her.” He didn’t sound like he was kidding. Each word was low and laced with truth.
“Next time, just say like … sleep well, or something normal,” I said. “Not go to sleep, I’ll be murdering someone in no time. It doesn’t sound as comforting as you think it does.”
He chuckled, a small spark zapping up my spine in retribution. It felt nice. How did he do that? Pain was supposed to feel bad.
I wanted to keep my eyes open, to stare at him for a bit longer, but the broken part of me relaxed immediately with the contact of an Abcurse, and the slight prick of his energy was almost hypnotising me as it continued to whisper along my body.
Before I knew it, the darkness spread and I lost the last threads of my consciousness. I had no idea how long I slept for, but it was one of those sleeps where you don’t move from the same position for many rotations and nothing registers in your subconscious at all. The moment the darkness eased—the moment I would usually have been pulled to wake up—I found myself in the head of an Abcurse. And judging by the view of the other four, it was Siret.
“We have no idea what Willa has become, but there is no doubt … she’s affected by our power.”
Aros groaned, his golden head hanging low. “It was instinct; I just reacted. Her pain called to me … Pain and I have shared our women for so long, I just … I needed to counter his energy with mine. It’s the way we keep the sols alive when we need something to fuc—”
Yael surged out of his chair, a snarl rising to his lips. He looked almost animalistic, but Rome only planted a hand on his shoulder and shoved him back down again. Typically, he didn’t stay there. He was back up again in a flash, shoving Rome out of the way and advancing on Aros again. Rome grabbed him just before he got there, and Aros jumped up to face him, holding up his hands, the palms facing outward.
“I wasn’t goin
g to …” he shook his head, grimacing. “I’m trying to explain this, Persuasion!”
Rome shoved Yael back again, biting out a curse, his thick arms folding. “Ever since she came, it’s been chaos between us.” He jabbed his finger, and my—Siret’s—head swung toward the bed.
Once again, I found myself staring at my own image. This time it was even more eerie, because the face set against the pillows on Aros’s bed was sleeping soundly, almost peacefully. For a moment, they all fell silent, watching me sleep, and then Siret was turning back, his voice low when he spoke again.
“Let him explain, Persuasion.”
Yael gave a single, sharp nod, and Rome stepped back, giving him space.
“You all know that we share,” Aros muttered, glancing at Coen quickly, who didn’t seem to be likely to offer him any kind of assistance. “And you know why. Our power isn’t like yours. Our power is directly physical. If Pain loses control, the girl dies. If I lose control, she becomes obsessed, and usually ends up killing herself—so in either scenario, she dies. I just reacted to Pain’s power trying to destroy her, and I used mine to counter it. And then … she …” He trailed off, and I could see that Coen’s face was darker than ever.
He looked like he wanted to rip something apart, but he still wasn’t saying anything.
Siret made a grunting sound that was part-acknowledgement, and part-annoyance. “We know why you and Pain do that shit together, and it’s the very reason it can’t happen with her. She’s not even a sol. You both need to balance out your powers with each other for a sol to get close … so how the hell do you think a dweller is going to live through it? It’s not possible. We’re lucky she’s alive.”
“She touched me,” Coen finally snarled. “Seduction didn’t start it, and I didn’t start it either. And I’ve known you idiots for an eternity; you would have reacted the same way if she’d kissed you like that—”