by Jaymin Eve
“Terrance,” Coen snapped. “How did you get in here?”
I wracked my brain, the name sounding familiar. He was obviously a god, but I couldn’t remember what he was a god of. I wasn’t surprised when the Abcurses immediately shifted into gear, working to surround me … but I was surprised when they caught themselves, instead making room for me to stand between Coen and Rome. I tried to hide my smile.
“Pica has a soft spot for me,” he explained, his eyes finding me and settling on my face as though I was the one he had come to see. “You’re the girl,” he continued, his tone changing, becoming guarded. “The birds have whispered to me about you.”
Terrance. God of Bestiary.
“I might be the girl,” I answered him. “I guess it depends on what the birds are saying. Good things?”
He cracked a smile, propping his shoulder in the doorframe. Instead of answering me, he turned his attention slowly from Siret to Yael, to Aros, and then to Rome and Coen on either side of me.
“I assume you five are going to have an issue with me touching her?” he asked.
I raised my hand before they could reply, though I felt the immediate tensing in the bodies either side of me.
“Um, I might have a problem,” I announced.
In truth, I already knew that I was going to let him. Emmy had filled me in on what had happened when Cyrus took her to see the God of Bestiary. He had touched her in an attempt to sense her power—and had ultimately led them to discovering what it was. If he could do that for me …
“What is your problem, Sacred One?” a voice asked from the corner of the room.
I jumped, and several of the Abcurses spun around, though Yael only rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. Donald must have popped back into the room when I said that I had a problem.
“I don’t actually …” I stared, feeling the urge to rub my temples again. “I meant I had a problem with him touching me, not—”
She interrupted before I could force the explanation out. “I apologise for the disgusting dinner, Sacred One. I will burn the disgusting food and then bury the disgusting ashes and you won’t ever have to see it again. I will bring everything new and fresh.”
Failure. Disgusting food. Stupid Donald. Fail. Fail. Fail.
The litany of her inner reprimands immediately sprung into my head, colliding with my remaining nerves.
“What’s wrong with your server?” Terrance asked, his eyebrows shooting up slightly.
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” I snapped. “And the food wasn’t disgusting,” I added, turning to Donald. “We just aren’t very hungry tonight.”
“The food might be disgusting,” Siret countered with a shrug. “Maybe we’re just used to it because we don’t eat outside of Topia anymore. Maybe we can’t taste the difference anymore.”
“Compassion,” Coen hissed. “Remember? Like we talked about.”
“Right,” Siret agreed dryly, his mouth hooking up. There was no way he had listened to whatever conversation they’d had about “compassion.”
“I’ll make you a deal …” I spoke to Terrance slowly, an idea occurring to me as Donald looked between me and the food, unsure what to believe.
“I’m listening,” Terrance replied, his eyes still on Donald, who was now taste-testing the grapes.
We all watched as she picked up a grape from one of the platters on the second table, raising it to her mouth and knocking it against her teeth. When nothing remarkable happened, she pulled it up to her right eye, closing her left eye and squinting at it closely. When the results of her experiment were unremarkable again, she lowered it back down to her mouth, made a perfect O shape with her lips, and stuck the grape in there. She stood there, unsure what to do next, before turning to face the wall and blowing the grape out again. It hit the wall and fell to the ground, rolling beneath the table.
“Figure out what she is,” I said, as Donald crawled underneath the table in search of the runaway grape. “And I’ll let you do your test on me.”
Terrance didn’t waste a click. He started walking toward Donald immediately, and I stopped tuning out her near-constant inner monologue so that I could jump in if she needed me.
Sneaky grape. Bad grape. Disgusting grape.
“Server,” Terrance rumbled with a voice that was somehow both calming and authoritative. “Come here.”
Donald crawled back out from beneath the table, quickly springing up to face Terrance.
“What is your name?” he asked her, reaching out to touch the wild blond hair that was tied back from her face.
I twitched, feeling the need to run over there and tell him to keep his hands to himself. The Abcurses shifted then, finally closing in around me. There was suddenly a hand wrapped through mine, an arm around my waist, and the heat of two massive bodies before and behind me.
I guess they can only hold their protectiveness off for so long.
“Baby steps,” Rome grunted, his voice sounding from behind me.
I grinned a little, leaning back into his heat. The arm that had been wrapped around my middle retreated, allowing me to lean further back into Rome. I reached for Aros—who had been the one to retreat—finding his arm with my free hand. He pressed into my side and I felt an unfurling warmth spread rapidly all the way through me as my eyes met his golden stare. My mouth dropped open a little as I fought off a wave of dizziness and lust that threatened to drop me to the ground.
Holy gods, that was going to take some getting used to.
“My name is Donald, Sacred One.” The voice brought me back to the scene before us, and I peered around Coen’s massive body to watch the Bestiary God with my mother.
My name is Donald. My name is Donald. My name is Donald. My name is—
“What do you remember of your previous life, Donald?” Terrance asked.
He was still touching her, but I managed to curb my reaction again as I realised that it was for a purpose. His hand had now flattened over her forehead, his fingers spreading up over her skull. He was staring at her with a heavy intensity that had some of the breath seeping out of my chest.
“This is my life,” Donald answered. “My only life.”
My name is Winnifred Knight.
My body went cold, my limbs freezing at the faint sound of my mother’s real name. Her full name.
“Do that again,” I demanded, my nails digging into the warm hands that held mine.
Terrance ignored me, still intent on my mother. “What is your life now, Donald? What do you do?”
“I serve the Great and Sacred and Wonderful Gods of Topia.”
Willa.
Tears sprang to my eyes, emotion suddenly lodges in my throat. Whatever Staviti had done to her—there was a part of my mother that still existed. Maybe it was the part I had dragged back from the imprisonment realm, or maybe it was something else, but it was there. It was real. She wasn’t there to serve the gods. She was there for me.
“Why are you here?” I asked, rewording Terrance’s question as I left the warm circle of my guys to approach her.
Terrance remained quiet, waiting for her answer. Her eyes remained locked on his, but she answered me all the same.
“I am here for Sacred Willa.”
An uneasy silence met her statement, and I felt the disgruntled grumbling of one of the guys behind me. They were still suspicious that Donald might be under Staviti’s control despite seeming to be under ours. Her words supported their belief just as much as they supported mine.
“There is a great purpose imbued in her,” Terrance whispered, a foreboding tone riding his words. “She is not a normal server, but none of us know Staviti’s exact method for creating the servers, so I can’t tell you in what way she is different, only that she is. Most of Staviti’s creations have the freedom afforded them by their own essence, or soul. Every creature, every god, every living thing. They all have a soul—and that soul is not the creation of Staviti, it is a pure, empty vessel that slowly fills and forms
over the course of their existence. It is freedom. That is what makes the servers different.” He stopped, his hand falling away from Donald, a frown pulling down the corners of his wide mouth as he turned to face us.
“You mean the servers are different because they have no soul?” I asked, a sick feeling building somewhere inside me.
I was pretty sure that I understood him correctly, but I was naively hoping for a different explanation. I couldn’t bear to think of my mother like that, or any of the other servers.
Terrance shook his head though, and I wondered where I’d misunderstood. “It’s not that they don’t have a soul, it’s that Staviti damages it. Tearing the soul in many places, imbuing his will into them so that they can be controlled. Then when he’s done with the server, that damaged soul is sent to the banishment cave.”
Holy gods, that was even worse than I’d thought.
“But my mother?” I prompted, as his eyes drifted back toward her. “Her soul is not as damaged?”
“She has something whole remaining,” he admitted. “She was damaged, but whatever process he usually uses was not completed. A part of her soul remains pure. For some reason. Since this is Staviti we’re talking about, I can only assume that it was deliberate.”
Was it because part of her soul had resided in the imprisonment realm? The part that I now held inside of me?
We need to go back to Minatsol. I sent the thought out in my mind, and heard a quiet grunt of agreement behind me. We need to go back to one of the temples where the guardians transform the servers. If we can find out exactly how the servers are made, we might be able to figure out how and why they’re malfunctioning now.
I cast a brief look over my shoulder, drawing my eyes over the Abcurses. Coen inclined his head the slightest bit, while the others all appeared completely impassive. They had probably known that Coen would be the one to answer me.
“So it’s true?” Terrance’s voice drew my attention back to him.
“What is?” I asked, spinning back around. I hadn’t even realised that I had begun to turn more fully toward the Abcurses.
“You have a soul-bond with Abil’s sons,” Terrance replied. “All five of them.”
He almost made it sound as though I had forced the soul-bond out of them. As though I had stolen them.
“Maybe they all have a soul-bond with me,” I returned, tilting my chin up a little. “All one of me.”
Terrance looked as though he might smile, but instead, he only stepped away from Donald, toward me. Suddenly, his hand was outstretched, his fingers beckoning.
I gulped. Now it was my turn.
I found myself with a small sliver of personal space as the Abcurses stepped back. They didn’t go far though, and I sensed that Terrance wasn’t someone that they particularly trusted.
“Why does Pica have a soft spot for you?” I asked suddenly, wondering where his allegiances were.
He stepped even closer, stopping less than an arm’s length away, and a curious expression lifted his features. It was almost a softness.
“She likes to collect things,” he said slowly. “For a short time, I was one of those things.”
I remembered Emmy telling me that Terrance had slept with Pica. Cyrus had used his knowledge of the fact as leverage over Terrance. It made me look at him in a different light.
“You’re lucky you got out intact,” I said, a short laugh escaping me. “In my experience, she doesn’t like to let go once she’s collected you.”
Terrance’s expression shuttered and he ran a hand across his face in a tired manner. “Let’s just say that if she needs me, I appear.”
Ew. That was definitely more information than I needed to know about Crazy-pants’s sex life.
“I’m going to touch you now,” Terrance warned me, and despite the newfound tension in the room, he took another step closer. “Try not to kill me.” The last part was definitely directed at the Abcurses.
I refrained from reminding him again that I might be the one to kill him. That was the problem with being a dweller turned god: everyone continued to think of you as the weak, mortal being. I really needed to start demonstrating my power more.
At that thought, the entire table of food burst into flames, and the ground started rocking back and forth like the house was about to dislodge itself from the top of the marble platform.
From the corner, Donald straightened and began to scramble around the table, catching falling grapes and straightening bowls and platters of food on the second table. She was making me nervous, standing so close to the flames.
Disgusting food must not get away.
Her words broke through the barrier I tried to keep up between us. It happened every time she was feeling a particularly strong … emotion, if that’s what you could call them. With effort, I rebuilt the wall between us. It was imperative that I didn’t have her voice in my head all the time. For my own sanity.
Terrance turned to face the fire, staring at it for a moment.
“Is that all you can do?” He sounded almost bored, and I could understand that.
The fire thing was old news: everyone had seen me create flames multiple times. The house rocking on its foundation was a little newer, but I hadn’t actually intended to do that, so it was less of a skill and more of an accident.
The panteras had told me to visualise what I wanted and that the key to using my energy was to visualise and practice. I was getting better at it, despite my current demonstration. Unfortunately, I had been put on the spot and the fire thing was my fallback. Annoyance roiled inside of me; it was frustrating that I was always having to prove myself to gods. Turning to Terrance, I attempted to envisage something a little more impressive, but Donald’s words continued to break into my thoughts.
Disgusting food. Bad food. Must fetch more appealing mudhog. Need mudhog. Better mudhog. Two mudhogs!
The warmth inside my body increased; the swirl of energy that usually existed low in my centre rose, filling me and bursting from every part of my body. I didn’t glow like Cyrus; there was no white light, but there was power. I had no idea what to expect, because Donald’s inner tirade had banished all of my concentration, so I peeled my eyes open with a heavy dose of trepidation. I let out a shocked squeak as Terrance seemed to dissolve in on himself. Nothing was left except a pair of pants, some leathers, and a sizable lump beneath his clothing—though it wasn’t big enough to be his entire body.
A much louder screech distracted me and I jumped a few feet—mostly because it hadn’t come from the pants, but from across the room where Donald had been standing. She was now striding toward us with two mudhogs on leads.
“Donald?” I asked, blinking at her. “What are you doing?”
Delicious mudhogs. Not disgusting food.
I realised, just as the lump beneath the pile of Terrance’s clothing began to squirm frantically, exactly what had happened. The mudhogs Donald was dragging were both the same size as the clothing-covered lump.
Terrance sprung up after finally finding an opening in his clothes, and the small, wrinkly-skinned creature looked both confused and frantic as his hoofed feet tried to gain traction on the smooth marble. In the same instant, Donald’s two mudhogs suddenly sprang into action.
Shit.
Four
By this point, the Abcurses had collapsed on the floor. Coen and Rome were the only ones who hadn’t fallen into a mess of laughter while they watched a hysterical Terrance try to avoid the two mudhogs chasing after his little body.
“I can’t tell if they want to fight him or mate with him,” Siret confessed between bouts of laughter. “Usually it’s the males that mate with the females … but Donald might have just stolen the two randiest mudhogs on Minatsol.”
I gasped. “Is that why…? Are they chasing him…? Oh my gods.”
I turned wide eyes on Donald, who seemed almost as stunned as me, standing by a chair with two leads still dangling from her hands.
“Donald!” I call
ed out. “Can you please grab the two mudhogs and take them back to their home?”
She recovered in an instant. “Of course, Sacred Naked Willa.”
Siret’s laughter increased.
“You five should be helping too!” I snapped, unable to believe I’d just turned an Original God into a screechy mudhog. I shouldn’t have snapped at them for my own mistake, but I was possibly losing it as much as Terrance.
“Do you even know which one is Terrance now?” Coen asked, his expression hard to read, though his eyes were definitely laughing. “What if Donald takes him back to the dweller farm? It’s not that easy to tell the males until they’re excited.”
I was dead. Terrance was definitely going to figure out a way to kill me. I’d taken away one of our allies before we’d even begun. I hadn’t even made it to the damn party.
Hands wrapped across my arms, distracting me from the morose thoughts, and I jerked my head back to find Yael and Aros both gripping me, a hand on each arm.
“All is not lost,” Yael told me, his expression and voice heavy. “Turn Terrance back into himself, and … you might be surprised by his reaction.”
I swallowed roughly. “Maybe I shouldn’t turn him back. He’s … so cute as a mudhog.” And way less dangerous.
There was a scuffle on the floor then. Donald had dived across a small side table and two puffy cushion chairs and was now wrestling with three mudhogs. Apparently they hadn’t appreciated her interfering, and were now kicking her with their strong little hind legs.
Naughty little creatures. Muddy hogs. Naughty muddy hogs.
Donald’s thoughts were rapid and tinged with annoyance. Her emotions were more volatile than they appeared to be from her outward appearance. It might have been wishful thinking, but I almost believed that deep inside, where only I could feel her, she was breaking free from whatever Staviti had done to her.
“Willa …” Aros drew my attention back to them. “Yael is right, you need to turn him back.”
With a sigh, I pressed myself closer to both of them, absorbing some of their calm strength. They never panicked about things, and I had to remember that they were on my side. Terrance would be pissed, I had no doubt about that, but the Abcurses wouldn’t let him kill me.