“Restraint is my least favourite word right now,” I grumbled, before wiggling to let him know I wanted to get down. Back on my feet, I moved forward into the next room. The one with the steam that felt like it cleaned from the inside out. Siret followed me, and together we breathed deeply for a few clicks, which actually served to calm me down.
Part of me knew that my reaction to Siret was because of Aros’s seduction powers, combined with my stupid soul’s co-dependency, but I was starting to feel as though I would self-combust if one of them didn’t kiss me. If one of them didn’t touch me … everywhere. I wondered what it would be like to be truly loved by an Abcurse. They thought I couldn’t handle it, and part of me agreed, but most of my other parts really didn’t care.
When we were finally clean and covered in robes, we stepped out of the bathing chamber. Rome, Coen, Aros, and Yael were leaning against the far wall. Just waiting there. None of them wanted to leave me, or each other, while the gods were so close.
“So, which one of you wants to dress me tonight?” I lifted my hands up and did a little twirl, which caused the longer robe to flare out, my feet getting tangled in it. I went down in a heap on my stomach, a cool breeze washing across my bare legs as they sprawled out behind me.
“That’s ten tokens.” Yael sounded pleased with himself; I wasn’t in any position to see who he had bet against, but I did hear the exchange of currency. Assholes.
Coen set me on my feet in one easy movement, and I narrowed my eyes on Yael. “Stop betting on me. It’s rude.”
His grin was a little worrying, and I realised that I’d given him an order. Something he hated.
“What will you give me if I stop betting on you?” he asked.
“What could you possibly want from me, Four?” Even though it never worked out for me, I couldn’t stop myself from goading him further. “I have nothing you want.”
His eyes lowered, running across my body before landing back on my face. “I disagree, Willa-toy.” Then with a large step he was right by my side, his hand landing on my lower back. “But tonight I’ll be the one to give you something. Tonight I’m going to dress you in my colours. Tonight you’ll wear green.”
Yael had said that he would make me a dress, but in reality he only stood next to Siret, murmuring low instructions. Since he apparently had no idea how dresses were made or which parts of the dress were called what, the process was painful and long.
“There,” he finally announced. “Done.”
I was about to step away from beneath Siret’s hands, but the fingers laying over my shoulders curled inwards, anchoring me there.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Siret asked Yael.
Since I was facing the both of them, I got to witness the look of annoyance that flashed over Yael’s face. His gesture had been nice in theory, but apparently he wasn’t any better at dressing me than he was at letting go of his feud over Coen’s nickname.
“I have no idea what I’m forgetting,” he admitted with a growl. He didn’t like admitting that.
His eyes were on my chest—not in a sleazy way, but in a way that suggested he was looking for some flaw or another in the cut of the dress.
“Oh,” spoke up a voice from behind us. “Yeah, I see it now. Major oversight, Persuasion.”
That had been Rome. It wasn’t really in his nature to tease, or to be overly sarcastic—that was more a job for Yael and Siret. But he was definitely finding some kind of sick enjoyment in the fact that Yael had failed at something. I wanted to turn around and tell the other three sitting on Yael’s bed to leave him alone, but I was fairly sure that me defending him would be an even bigger blow to his pride, so I just stayed silent.
I was also staying silent because Yael wasn’t the only one who couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the dress. He had first instructed Siret to fashion me an ivory under-dress, which fit snugly against my body, hugging me like a second skin. It ended at my thighs, but he had asked for a second layer over the top. The outer dress was woven from fine, delicate lace; the colour was a green so simultaneously bright and dark that the lace looked more like interlinked gemstones. This layer ended near the ground, leaving a lot of bare leg and thigh on show—thankfully my healed wounds were nothing more than silvery shadows, which the boys said would fade out completely in the next few sun-cycles. I loved the dress just as much as my first purple one from Siret. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a thing wrong with it.
“What?” I finally asked, breaking away from Siret and spinning slightly on the spot, trying to look over my shoulder.
Unfortunately, the tight under-dress was too tight, squeezing my legs together so that I somehow became doubly as uncoordinated as I had been a few clicks ago. So halfway through my spin I managed to pitch sideways and almost face-plant into the rug. Thankfully, I had enough good sense to break the fall with my arms.
“Ugh,” I muttered into the rug.
“That,” Siret sounded satisfied, “is what you were forgetting.”
I could hear the rumble of Rome’s laugh, but I ignored their laughing at me and shoved myself to my feet. As soon as I was upright, Yael stepped forward and gracefully lowered himself to his knees before me. Um, hello there.
My breath caught as Yael reached out with both hands, running them up the outside of my legs. Lifting the lace of the dress as he went. Heat followed the path he traced, and I couldn’t quite tell if it was just my body’s reaction, or if he was using some sort of god magic on me.
“Now you’re perfect,” he said, gracefully standing and taking a step back.
I swayed a little, trying to find some sort of equilibrium, before realising that my legs no longer felt like they were glued together. He had created two cuts on either side of the tight under-sheath, which allowed me to move easily. I smiled and lifted my head to the guys, and was taken aback to see the looks on their faces. Yael had already turned away, so he didn’t see what I was seeing.
Absolute astonishment.
“What?” I whispered to Siret, who was closest still.
He shook his head once, and then again, before he said in a voice that was so low it was almost inaudible, “Yael has never kneeled before anyone. Not even Staviti—”
A knock on the door startled us all, cutting Siret off. By the time I’d turned in that direction, the door was already being opened by Yael. Emmy stood on the other side, looking calm and happy as our eyes met. I realised she was wearing her best formal dress: one that she had received as a gift from her favourite teacher after graduating.
“It’s the real dweller,” Aros said, close to my ear.
Thank the gods. If it had been that shape-shifting bitch again, I might have done something we’d all regret. Like trip and plant my fist into her face, followed by my foot into her gut. Followed by the door to her face.
I hurried over to Emmy, my heart bursting. This was the distraction I needed from that Yael revelation, not to mention I’d missed her so much. Something I hadn’t really realised until she was standing before me.
“You look gorgeous, Will!” she exclaimed as I reached her.
I hugged her hard, breathing in the familiar comfort of her herb-scented soap as it washed over me. “You look beautiful too.” I pulled back. “I thought dwellers weren’t allowed to attend the dance? Other than the cursed ones like me, that is.”
“Cursed one,” Siret corrected me. “There’s only one of you.”
Emmy had gone pale, as though I’d just suggested we kill all sols and make a dweller King of the World. “Don’t be silly, we just have to be in our best clothes. Everyone is in a frenzy in the kitchens.”
“I’ll bet.” I snorted. “So why are you here then? Is everything okay? Atti?”
“Everything is perfect with Atti.” Emmy’s smile was back in place now, and I forced myself not to roll my eyes. She was gone, so very gone over that boy. It was nice to see, but also scary. What if he hurt her? What if I had to initiate girl code and kick h
im in the balls?
Siret laughed then, which had Emmy giving him a quizzical stare. I, of course, knew that he’d just heard my badass warrior thoughts.
“Why are you here, dweller?” Rome had obviously had enough of this little conversation and was hurrying things along.
I was about to scowl and remind him that this was my best friend, my sister, and not to refer to her as a dweller, when Emmy spoke up. “I have a few clicks to spare and thought Willa might like some help doing up her face and hair.”
I could tell immediately that she had taken no offence at being called a dweller, probably because she was one and had never aimed to be anything more than the best damn dweller she could be. It was one of the million things we did not have in common.
“I’d love that,” I said quickly, more for the time I got to spend with her. Our worlds were drifting apart at a rapid rate, and I wasn’t okay with that. I truly missed her.
“We’ll get dressed in Rome’s room,” Siret announced, striding towards the door. “We’ll just be next door if anything happens.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a warning to Emmy, or just general information. Either way, the five of them left us then, and the room seemed a lot bigger, quieter, and somehow lonely without them in it.
A huge burst of air exploded from my friend. “They’re so intimidating,” she finally managed through her deep breathing. “Seriously, I don’t know how you’re around them so much.”
Really? “They’re overwhelming at times, sure, but they’re also some of my favourite beings in both worlds. I couldn’t imagine my life without them anymore.”
Emmy’s lips thinned, but she didn’t say anything. Although I knew her well enough to know that something was brewing in that genius mind of hers.
“Just … just be careful,” was what she finally muttered. “Don’t lose yourself in them, Will. They might just be too much, even for you.”
I hugged her again. “I’ll be okay, I’ve been messing with dangerous stuff my entire life. Somehow I always survive.”
That worried look didn’t leave her face, but she managed a semblance of a smile for me. Reaching forward, she took my hand, and then led me across to Coen’s mirror. “Okay, to do a dress like this justice, I think you need your hair out, in curls, with simple makeup. Dark eyes, pink lips, rosy cheeks.”
I nodded a few times, not really caring what she did. “Sounds good, hope you brought some magic with you though, because I don’t own anything to make those things happen. Except the curly hair. I already have that.”
She spun around then and I realised she wore a small pack on her back, which I hadn’t even noticed. “I have everything we’ll need.”
Why did I even question her? Emmy was never caught off-guard, she was always prepared. Always. Besides … she would have known that I didn’t own a single powder or vial of hair oil. I settled myself down on a cushion, away from the mirror so that I could watch the door to Coen’s room while she worked on me. I was starting to get as paranoid as the guys, expecting something or someone to bust in and start attacking at any moment.
Emmy was unloading the tonne of junk she had somehow stuffed in her bag: palettes of different coloured powders; tinted stains for lips; oils, lotions, and glittery things. Basically, a lot of stuff that I had absolutely no experience in.
“Where did you get all this?” I asked. Dwellers were provided with the basic necessities, and not a whole lot more. Certainly nothing on this scale.
“Atti’s mother works in a very wealthy household; her sol is someone gifted with alchemy. So she invents these products to sell to the sols. Apparently she’s actually really nice, for a sol, and she gifts Atti’s family things.”
“And he passed them on to you.” I smiled, thinking about the straight-laced dweller handing his girlfriend those potions and powders. I would have bet the one and a half tokens in my possession that he had blushed as he handed it all over.
“Close your eyes,” Emmy instructed. “Don’t open them again until I say.”
Damn, she was bossy.
“So how is all the rebellion stuff going?” I queried, trying to act only mildly interested.
She paused, her hand frozen in its task of trying to make me look like a respectable dweller.
“How did you find out about that?” she finally asked, her tone soft and resigned.
“I was there. Watching it all through a storage cupboard with the Abcurses.”
She snorted. “Of course you were. I heard about two of the guards being found unconscious in a storage room. I should have put two-and-two together and immediately assumed that you were somehow involved.”
“Mean.” I frowned, but she only grabbed my chin and forced me to puff my lips out even more, and then something was brushing across them.
“They get you into even more trouble than you manage to get yourself into,” she finally said. I had been silent, because I had felt the lecture brewing up. “I thought that was impossible.”
“Yeah, but they also get me out of more trouble than I could get out of myself. That has to count for something.”
“I’m just trying to help you, Will.” She pulled back a little, allowing me to open my eyes. “Friends don’t let friends think that they’re invincible if thinking they’re invincible is exactly what’s going to get them killed.”
“Friends don’t foreshadow friends’ deaths,” I shot back.
“Friends listen to what Emmy tells them to do so that they can stay alive.”
“Those aren’t friends; those are slaves.”
“Dwellers don’t have slaves.”
“So nobody listens to Emmy then—”
She pulled back from my face again and picked up a wooden hairbrush, whacking me in the arm with it. “How about this: you stop acting like you’re invincible and I won’t make you look like a travelling dweller entertainer who hasn’t bathed in seventy life-cycles.”
“Deal,” I grumbled.
She grinned at me: her superior Emmy grin, and I let her poke at my face and brush at my face and almost take my eyes out at least seven times until she moved onto my hair and the whole painful process began all over again. When she finally declared me ready, I sprang to my feet and turned around to face the mirror.
“Cool,” I said, moving for the door.
“Oh hell no.” Emmy grabbed me, dragging me back to the mirror. “This is where you have an epiphany and realise that you’ve never looked more beautiful in all your life and you tell me that I’m amazing and try not to cry.”
“Had high expectations for this encounter, did you?” I asked, my tone teasing.
She narrowed her eyes on me, and I didn’t want to get into another fight so I turned back to the mirror and really looked at myself. My hair was smooth and curled perfectly, by some miracle. My eyes were dark and smoky, my lips tinted rose-petal red.
“Whoa.” I stepped closer to the mirror, just a little bit entranced, and accidently bumped my forehead against the glass.
“Don’t mess it up!” Emmy pulled me back and then started pushing me from the room. “So you like it then?”
“Am I the it?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “Yes, Will. You’re the it.”
“I love it,” I told her, my face breaking into a grin.
Thirteen
We parted ways in the corridor because Emmy was expected back in the kitchen, but she didn’t leave before extracting another promise from me to ‘not act like I’m invincible.’ I had no idea what that really entailed. It probably didn’t entail hanging out with the Abcurses, which meant that I had just outright lied to my sister’s face because there was no way I would stop being the sixth limb on the fake-Abcurse family tree. I was their girl-brother through and through, and I wasn’t going anywhere.
I knocked once on Rome’s door before barging inside. I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, but it definitely wasn’t my five guys surrounding another woman. A dark-haired woman so beautiful just looking a
t her made me want to dig a hole and crawl right into it, to curl up into the dirt where I belonged.
And wow … insecure much, Willa?
On cue, five heads snapped in my direction, and the circle around the woman was broken. Siret and Aros had stepped away and were now standing in front of me, staring at my face, my dress, my hair … like they couldn’t quite decide what had changed about me.
“You look amazing, sweetheart,” Aros finally murmured, a slow smile curling his mouth.
One of the other guys grunted in what sounded like an agreement, but it was Coen who decided to introduce the woman.
“Willa, this is Brina.”
“Ah.” The woman started to walk forward. “This is her.”
I shrank back a little bit, but Aros had grabbed my hand, so I couldn’t turn and run out of the room like I wanted to. Maybe I was being insecure and jealous—for no reason whatsoever, mind you: they’d all been simply standing there—or maybe there was something else going on. Something that my brain was picking up on that it wasn’t sharing with me just yet. I was probably scarred from Fakey the First and Fakey the Second. But no … that wasn’t it.
“Yeah, this is her,” I managed. Brina was right in front of me now, and I noticed that she was a good head taller than me, her body willowy and her face a perfect picture of symmetry. Her eyes were somehow the colour of violets, her lips a dark ruby. “Holy crap,” I spluttered out, my eyes running over her azure robes. “You’re a god!”
She smiled. It was a little condescending, but it wasn’t exactly mean. It was simply the way a god would smile at a dweller who spluttered out ‘holy crap, you’re a god!’ to their face. That was how she looked at me.
“I’m the Beta god of Sorcery,” she told me. “Your …” she flicked a look to Aros’s hand, wrapped so tightly around mine, “protectors sent me a message about Rau’s curse.”
“It hasn’t really affected me all that much,” I mumbled. “Other than tying me to these five.”
Persuasion (Curse of the Gods Book 2) Page 17