She flickered out, then, leaving her words behind for me to ponder.
“That’s what the cup does?” I asked the others. “It gives you … stuff to drink?”
“It holds the power of Creation,” Siret replied. “And it gives stuff to drink.”
“Okay then, so what is this pool?” I couldn’t let it go. I had been asking them questions for sun-cycles, about everything. Everything and anything that popped into my mind.
Maybe it was because I had become accustomed to just letting things go for most of my life. Especially the things that made no sense, despite how often senseless things happened, like clumsy curses colliding with my chest and the daily threats to my life. Not even my inability to conform and dwell in the dirt with the rest of my people made sense.
“It’s just water, Will,” Rome answered. “Staviti uses it to channel his Creation to make all our lives easier.”
“Not all of our lives,” I muttered back.
Siret chuckled. “It’s Topian water; it only works inside Topia. If he tried to use it for the sols in Minatsol, it wouldn’t work.” His calm voice was enough to capture my full attention.
My mind immediately forgot about dwellers and focused on another word … water.
That word had so many meanings to me now. Firstly, there was the mystery behind the sacred waters of Topia. The panteras had taken me to the stream and had asked me to drink from it, telling me that it would enhance my powers. They had also told me at the time that I’d been given the water before, that it wasn’t my first time. They were really cagey with the information, which meant that I was definitely taking a trip back to visit them as soon as I could.
“What’s on your mind, Soldier?” Siret asked, not picking up on my thoughts.
I blurted, “Water.”
There was a beat of silence, which gave me a click to look between my guys. The five Abcurses: five specimens of perfect, over-sized, godly sexiness—
“Your thoughts came back at a good time,” Coen remarked, as varying shades of amusement fell over each of their faces.
I glanced to my left, where Yael sat. There was something behind the amusement in his eyes. Something heated. I swallowed and glanced at the seat next to his, where Rome sat. The same heat was there, boiling behind his expression and setting my insides to squirming. The dark green depths were mesmerising, swirling as they watched me from across the table. Suddenly, my mind jumped to a very different kind of water.
I’d recently learned how to swim with Rome and Yael. There had been a lot of swimming, among other things, going on that night. None of us had acknowledged the fact that the pact had been broken. It didn’t seem like a breach in our friendship, but more of a natural progression in our relationship. I had acted out of character, spurred by grief over the death of my mother, but I didn’t regret it. Not for a click.
I kind of wanted to do it again. Keep it even, Willa: that’s what they’d said to me. I was technically obliged to do it again. With each of them.
“Can you go back to having no thoughts?” Yael’s voice was strained.
I didn’t blush. For some reason I couldn’t conjure up the slightest embarrassment about being with Rome and Yael, at the same time. It felt natural, and it wasn’t anybody’s business but ours.
“Do you think it’s time we chatted about what happened?” I asked, looking between them again.
I wasn’t sure where this new streak of maturity was coming from, but I knew that Emmy would be so proud. I had always told her that she wouldn’t regret saving my life. Several times. Now, finally, I was proving it with sex discussions. Coen crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back in the chair, still wearing a somewhat amused expression. I liked it a lot more than his death-eyes, but since I didn’t see it much, I was completely unsure about what might come out of his mouth.
“What exactly do you think we should chat about?” he asked, a twitch at the corner of his mouth.
My eyes went very wide. I quickly stuffed two swimmer puffs into my mouth so that I didn’t have to answer immediately, because I had no idea how to properly start the conversation. So far, we had all been sleeping in the same room like a pack of howlers, seeking comfort through close proximity after everything that had happened. None of the Abcurses wanted to let me out of their sights, and I didn’t want to be away from them either. An asshole had put a blade through my chest the last time I walked away from them … it was enough to deter me from ever doing it again.
So, we definitely weren’t going to be having any more swimming lessons in the near future. Our focus had been on each other: on growing closer, healing, and treasuring a brief time of comfort and safety. I wasn’t eager for things to go back to how they had been with our pact in place—I was finished with being their girl-brother. And I didn’t want to pretend that I hadn’t shared that experience with Rome and Yael. I wanted to continue moving forward, so it felt like something had to be said.
Siret’s grin was so wide that he looked to be moments from laughing. If anyone was going to find our situation amusing, it would be him. I focussed on chewing as I searched for what to say, because I had no idea what would happen if I choked as an un-dead dweller.
“Don’t hurt yourself, dweller-baby.” Coen took pity on me. “There are no rules, no need to check that our feelings are hurt. Just …”
“Keep it even,” I mumbled, interrupting him.
“Exactly,” Aros agreed. “Now that we know our powers shouldn’t have a negative effect on you, there doesn’t seem to be a reason to police your intimacy with us anymore.”
I nodded. “Like the bullsen during mating season.”
Siret snorted and shook his head. “No, Willa, not like the bullsen. This is more than mating season for us, you know that.”
Right, I forgot they didn’t like me to use the domestic labour beasts as a reference point for relationship development. Unfortunately for them, my influence in this department had been limited to my mother’s relationships, growing up. Unless they wanted me to start charging them tokens for swimming lessons, they needed to let me pull references from wherever I wanted. Although, the ‘Abcurse’ way of mating sounded a lot nicer. The bullsen grunted too much, and I didn’t even want to think about what kind of noises my mother had made.
Siret lost it then, his laughter setting off the rest of the guys at the table. I tried not to laugh—because I was significantly more mature than them—but a sound escaped anyway. Luckily, I had a goblet raised to my lips, so I passed it off as almost-choking. After that, our conversation drifted to topics unrelated to water sports, and as we finished up the food and moved to stand, I realised that I hadn’t asked them about their mother.
“You’re pretty easily distracted,” Yael agreed, answering my thoughts as he so often did.
That’s not the point. I took a deep breath. “So, your mother … Adeline, goddess of beauty … who has been missing for how many life-cycles …. feel free to jump in at any time here, guys …”
I felt like I had missed the first part of the story: the part where they explained why their mother had been ‘travelling’, and where she had been ‘travelling’ to. Also, who she had been travelling with, and what kind of clothes she took travelling. Admittedly, I was a little too invested in exactly how the Goddess of Beauty handled long stints of travel, because I was sure that she didn’t sit at the back of a bullsen cart, sweating and fanning her face to drive away the stench of the beasts. There likely weren’t even bullsen on Topia, they probably had winged, sparkly beasts.
“We don’t even really need to distract her,” Yael muttered lowly to the others. “If you let her go off into her own mind, she distracts herself.”