by Kenna Bardot
"I'm happy for you all." I smiled because I was. For a Descendant - the kid of the Gods - Ascension was hard-earned. While Godsvail appeared to be a place for them simply to have fun and be entertained, most of their time and effort was realistically dedicated to ensuring that they would Ascend.
When you thought about the fact that they were given a total of fifty years to do it and only the opportunity to fight for it after twenty-five, it seemed long.
But for those who were cursed with immortality, it must have felt like too short a time to prove one’s worth.
I asked, because no one else spoke, but I could feel that there was something more they wanted to say, "Are you all nervous?"
"We still have time should this year end up not being for us." Shep closed his eyes, and I saw the pain flash briefly on it before he fell back onto the bed.
Char stood, straight and coiled up like a spring. "We shouldn't allow ourselves to be negative in any way."
"But we have to face the reality that shit can happen." Shep opened his eyes and looked at me. "Don't they, Mireyah? Isn't that what you said? Coming here was shit for you in every shape, way and form?"
I winced at his words but said nothing; did nothing. I could not deny what I inherently still believed was true.
"Shep," Ryle bit out and had the Tempestas rolling his eyes as he snapped his mouth shut.
"What do you want me to do?" I almost said 'sir' but stopped myself. In my preoccupation with how I felt towards them, I'd forgotten that not everything was about me. And while I was sad and confused enough about them, I wanted to spend as little time with them as possible, I knew how important it was for them to prove that they were worthy of the honor of being Gods.
Thus, it made sense that they would want to do everything possible to make it happen.
"There may be times we ask you to get us things or help us with the shit we're studying. It won't be anything too hard or take up too much of your time, so you needn't worry."
I shook my head sadly, desperate to walk forward and gather them all close and knowing that I couldn’t when there was a wall built in between us. "Please feel free to take up as much time as you want." I nodded my head eagerly, and I hoped it communicated that for all there was something that threatened whatever relationship we wanted to build, I still wanted them to succeed and help inasmuch as I could and was able to.
"Thank you, Mireyah. That's all for now," Hollis dismissed.
I stepped forward but immediately recoiled. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. Go away. We need to get ready." I bowed low and walked backwards and out the door.
Guess it was back to looking up at my ceiling in a steady way until something of more interest made itself known.
✽✽✽
The whole of Godsvail was abuzz. Humans and Descendants alike were bursting into random reactions all over the hallways - good or bad.
I didn't particularly know what was going on until I'd overheard - the list of all the Descendants who were going to compete and prove themselves worthy of Ascension was out.
I had no doubts that the guys already knew if they'd gotten into the list. They ran the school and anyone who got in their way eventually learned that mistake only once.
After all, I should know what I had experienced.
I'd withdrawn from them, but somehow, I was still drawn to them. It was an interesting and painful situation to find myself in.
I shuddered even as I walked into what I figured was the lion's den, deflating when I realized that the guys weren't in their common area. I stalked over to Hollis' door, opening that instead. This time, Annalee wasn’t there at the very least, but neither were any of the guys.
"Oh Gods, where the fuck are you all?" I threw my hands up in frustration, walking over to the wall to bang my head against it.
I walked back to the common area and turned around, taking in the different doors with symbols and trying to figure out where they could be.
Hell, I could be wrong, and they wouldn't even be in their quarters, and I was making a fool of myself.
A thud sounded from behind the door with intricate silver sun.
Tate's room.
I walked over and pressed my ear against the door, feeling a bit like a sneak. "Everyone should just calm down." Char, voice louder than it usually was and terse.
"Fuck you." Tate, angry and I could only imagine the evil look on his face as the words burst out. I'd been on the receiving end of it before. "Mireyah, is that you? I know what your feelings sound and feel like enough to know you're there. Might as well come in."
I stepped back from the door, flushing at being caught eavesdropping. I should have known what would happen in dealings with Descendants.
"She's not there, Tate. You're just deflecting." Shep, impatient and unhappy.
"Fuck it." I heard the footsteps approaching the door before it shot open and I saw Tate's angry face, silver eyes flashing as he glared down at me. "The least you can do is not ignore me."
"I can see now isn't a good time. I should go." I held my arms up, but Tate grabbed my wrist and pulled me into his room, slamming the door shut with a bad-natured kick.
"It's Mireyah."
"Yes, we can see that, Tate, thank you." Hollis pushed at his hair impatiently. "How are you, pet?"
"Fine, thank you, Sir Hollis." I cursed myself for addressing him that way even as I hated myself for coming to the fucking suite in the first place. I could never resist the pull of the five males even when they made me feel and do things I didn't want to feel.
"Great. Just great. Not only did we get the shittiest new today, but you're being a fucking ice-cold bitch again." He hit the wall with a bunched up fist, a very rare show of emotion for the Svadeni.
I opened my mouth and the word 'sorry' was on the tip of my tongue, but I found that I couldn’t say it. I could not say what I didn't really mean.
"Hollis, calm down." Ryle walked over and pulled Hollis away from the wall. From the indentations I could see that surrounded where his fist had landed, I concluded that it had been the thud I'd heard from the common area earlier.
"Pot calling kettle, Ryle. You're not exactly the calmest."
"Yes. But I'm not killing the fucking wall. Will it help?" He shrugged.
I cleared my throat, and Shep walked over, taking my hand in his. "What's wrong?"
I waved his concern away. "Nothing, nothing. Just suffering from a human frailty called morbid curiosity."
Char laughed; a single short sound full of derision. "Curiosity, of course, should have known. If you must know, Mireyah, Shep, Tate and I have qualified for Ascension. We will be tested one more time before we undergo the Final Battle, during which we fight until we are told to stop."
I looked over towards Ryle, who had his hand on Tate's shoulder. Tate shook it off with a shake of the head and walked off. I walked over towards Char and touched the tip of my finger to his cheek. "I'm happy for you."
I was.
I turned to look at Shep, who had followed my movement across the room. "And you and Tate too, of course, Shep."
"They hate it," Hollis spoke up from the bed, where he sat with his elbows propped up on his lap and his face buried in his hands. His voice muffled; it took more effort to figure out what he had just said.
I could follow the context clues easily though.
I walked over to him and took his hand, running a hand over knuckles where the skin had broken. No matter what I felt about him, I could still be sorry for how badly he must be feeling. "Of course, they hate it. The five of you are a unit so it stands that they want you and Ryle to have the opportunity too." I rubbed a thumb carefully over the wounds, hating how red it looked against his smooth skin.
"But I am sorry, Hollis." I sighed and rubbed my thumb over the hand. "I'm sure your time will come too."
"That's just it, Mireyah. It's possible it won't. From the time we were seven, we come to Godsvail. We're hidden away and don't interact with other Desc
endants or even humans until we're eighteen. But from the point until we reach this age, it's a constant battle against the pressure of making it when the time comes. Or be unworthy and become mortal and die. It's the worst fate for those of our kind.” Shep paced back and forth as he explained and in the background, I could plainly see Char rubbing his temples.
"Wait. What? How old are the lot of you again?"
"Thirty-two." Tate smiled at me. "We're not as old as you think. Unlike your Majele God. He's probably in his hundreds. Or older. Do you really want to get married to someone that old? You're what, eighteen?"
"I'll do whatever it takes for me to survive, because I've always been a survivor. It's how I've survived this place." My face twisted into a frown.
"And that's what you humans are good at, isn't it? Doing whatever and whoever it takes to survive." Char's blank stare stabbed at me, but I felt the judgment in it.
I raised an eyebrow at him and crossed my arms over my chest. "I’m confused. Am I a frigid bitch or am I a whore?”
“I didn’t mean-”
“Save it. That's how it is. May the Gods know why the fuck they think you're ready for Ascending."
"You don't really mean that, Mireyah." I turned on my heel to stare at Shep, face twisted into hurt and pain.
I felt a pang in my heart that I pushed away as I built my words. "Don't I? Words are the most powerful of weapons. It's important not to use them in anger. I'll leave you all to your whining." I bowed and moved towards the door, pulling it open and walking off.
No one tried to stop me.
Chapter 29
Ryle
I could feel the storm brewing. Tate was melancholic, verging on outright pissy. He'd come to my room looking for Mireyah each night before going off to hunt her down in the others' rooms. We needed her, her presence, her fire. But instead of providing us with that warmth, she was pulling back again.
And I didn't have a fucking clue why.
"Where is she?" I grunted when Tate flopped face first onto my bed.
"Her room, I assume. Apparently, she hasn't been sleeping with the others either." His voice was a mumble in the bedding, and I resisted the urge to chuckle when he turned over and picked a hair off his lips. If I wasn't fuming from the knowledge that Mireyah was avoiding us even in sleep, I might have outright laughed.
"What do you mean she isn't sleeping with them? Why would she risk sleeping in her room so close to the Final Challenge?" Ryder and Annalee would do anything to win, and while Mireyah had performed remarkably well in the Challenges themselves, there was no way she could truly defend herself if they attacked her while she slept.
The door opened, and the other three let themselves into my room. I didn’t care. They'd walked in on me in some compromising situations before, but there was nothing we didn't share with each other. No secrets between us.
The reality was that the relationship with Mireyah put a strain on all our relationships with each other too.
"I suspect she's putting distance because she knows she's leaving. Whether it's to protect us or to protect herself, I haven't decided yet." He rolled to his side, so restless with the thrum of agitated energy that had plagued both of us after the announcement of his possible Ascension. The move made him face the group at the door, and I watched as Char's eyes narrowed in on him intently.
I knew the look very well.
It was the same one I gave Hollis as he perched at the edge of my bed. We couldn't indulge, not until we could tell Mireyah about our relationships with one another. Not until we could explain to her that we did more than just share women between us. Usually the women were nothing but a body for us to use, a conduit to make us feel connected with one another, and a way to indulge because we all preferred the female body.
But until Mireyah there'd never been a woman who was one of us. There'd never been a woman who felt permanent.
There'd never been a woman we loved as much as we loved one another.
Until her.
"Who pissed her off?" Shep asked, his face set in a scowl.
I shrugged, because I honestly couldn't remember doing anything wrong. She'd been coming around, and then that letter from home had made her miserable, but it was more than that. She'd only been withdrawn before, now she snapped at us every chance she got. She acted like an attendant again, well, the shitty one she'd been, anyway.
"I'm telling you, it's because some of us Ascending. With her likely going to Sylfeshire, everything is up in the air for her," Tate stressed, curling up to a sitting position. Shep sat next to him, and my brother snuggled into his side. "It hasn't been that long since she lost her family. She still feels that. Now she thinks she's going to lose us too."
"Why would she think she'd lose us?" I asked. To me, it seemed obvious that we intended to do whatever it took to keep her. She'd been ours from the moment we first set eyes on her, even if none of us had realized it.
"Has anyone bothered to discuss it with her?" Hollis asked with a delicate eyebrow raised. When no one spoke, I couldn't believe how stupid we'd been. We just expected her to understand how serious the relationship was for us, without ever voicing it. Without ever telling her how we felt.
Hollis sighed. "Well, now is certainly not the right time."
"No," Char agreed with a huff, collapsing into an armchair. "She's been...suspicious. At best. Something has her rattled, and I think it may have something to do with Annalee. She doesn't stand up to her the way she did before. She doesn't cower, but there's definitely something different."
"I caught Annalee snooping in my room a few days back. She played it off like she was cleaning, but the bed wasn't even made. Do you think she found something snooping in Mireyah's room? Is holding something over her head?" Shep asked, and I turned wide eyes his way. What Annalee could hope to find by snooping through our things, I had no clue. "What could she possibly have on Mireyah?"
"I think we have more important things to worry about. If Annalee is snooping, she won't be an issue for long. I don't think she has a chance of winning, and that's probably why she's desperate. If anyone can beat Mireyah, it will be Ryder." Tate shrugged his shoulders against Shep.
"We should confront her. Find out what she's doing," Char said, and that settled the matter. Annalee would be ambushed the next time we caught her when we were all together. If only all our problems could be so simple to solve.
The tense nature of our conversation was nothing compared to what would come after Tate opened his mouth. "I'm not going to Ascend. I won't even go to the Arena Battle."
"What?" I whispered, but even I could hear the rage in the quiet tone.
"You're my brother. We Ascend together, or we don't Ascend at all." His tone was clipped, brooking no argument. I knew he'd made up his mind, and despite his somewhat more relaxed persona, he was just as stubborn as I was.
"You should make the most of the opportunity!" My voice raised, the frustration eating away at me.
"No," Tate argued. "There will be more opportunities, and we will do it together, as it always should be with brothers who shared a womb. Besides, you need me here to control your temper. What happens when someone like Ashric pisses you off and there's no one to pull you off his corpse?"
Char chuckled, tilting his head at me as if to concede Tate had a fair point.
It sucked that he did. "Hollis can."
"Please, that would mean he'd need to risk you punching his pretty face. We both know how he feels about that."
"Hey!" Hollis protested, and I saw Tate's eyes narrow in on the way I clenched my fists.
"You'll resent me for holding you back," I hissed, and the door opened as Mireyah ducked her pretty blond head inside.
Seeming to realize she'd been interrupting something, she stepped inside quietly and refrained from asking whatever inane question she'd probably come to get an answer for. What room to clean first, like it fucking mattered, knowing the way she'd been acting.
Ice cold. Like we didn't m
atter.
It only served to make my anger even more potent.
"I could never resent you, you tool," Tate's voice turned harsh, the cruelty he hid behind when he felt too exposed, too raw coming to the surface.
"And what if I never Ascend, hmm? You want to go to Sylfeshire? Because if we do, we have no chance of ever being with her!" I snarled back, standing from the bed and ignoring the very confused look on Mireyah's face. One day, she would understand what she meant to us.
I wasn't foolish enough to assume that time had come.
✽✽✽
Mireyah
"Woah," I said with a disbelieving laugh. "Don't make this about me. Whatever this is." I held two hands up in front of me, moving far enough into the room that I could close the door. All I'd wanted was to get some answers - finally confront Hollis about Annalee being in his room. The not knowing was killing me, keeping me up at night. I couldn't stomach even the most casual of touches from them, knowing that those hands had likely touched Annalee recently. Or anyone else recently.
It felt tainted.
Impure.
"My dear brother wants to reject the opportunity to Ascend in favor of remaining here with me," Ryle spat out, shoving a hand at Tate like wanting to stay with him was the worst crime imaginable.
I eyed Ryle warily. I knew he wouldn't like what I had to say, and that I would need to proceed with caution. No matter what my feelings were regarding them at that moment, it was obvious they were at the precipice of something that could ruin their relationship. I couldn't bear to see them drift apart from one another.
"I think it's admirable," I whispered softly nodding my head at Tate who stared at me in confusion. "You are brothers. Practically inseparable. When I think of what it feels like to know that I left Varo back home," I paused, that familiar burn stinging my nose as just saying his name to them felt like a betrayal. They were part of the system that had stolen me away from him. "I know I didn't have a choice, but if I had, I'd have done anything to stay with him and watch him grow."
Something in Ryle's demeanor softened, his shoulders sagging under the weight of my confession. "You have a brother," he whispered.