“Get. Out!” he shouted.
“That’s a great idea,” I said as I jumped to my feet and started shuffling back toward the door. “You should take your own advice. Get out, get some air. You’re going mountain crazy; it’s a thing, trust me—I was trapped in a cave, once. See, I wandered off from a school group and ended up having an unfortunate meeting with a mountain cat, so I ran into a nearby cave to get away from it … or her … or him. It didn’t exactly expose its underside to me, so I’m not sure on the gender, but you don’t look like you care about that particular detail.”
Cyrus looked like he wanted to gouge his eyes out. He was rubbing his temples in a shaky, agitated way.
“Don’t mountain cats live in caves?” he finally asked.
I nodded. “Oh, yeah. Apparently there was a reason it was standing right there, so close to the cave. It lived there! Fancy that. A few other cats also lived there. What a memorable sun-cycle. I almost lost my innards.”
“What the hell does this have to do with mountain sickness!” Cyrus was on his feet now as well, his white robes askew.
I stopped moving toward the doorway. “Right, well, I ended up crawling up into a small ledge. It had an opening that the cats couldn’t fit into, though they kept sticking their paws in and attempting to skewer me with their claws. They trapped me there for two full sun-cycles.”
Cyrus turned pleading eyes on Emmy. “Summarise, please. I just can’t speak Willa this morning.”
Emmy’s face grew tight with an approaching lecture, and I was starting to feel sorry for Cyrus. The poor guy: he seriously didn’t know what he was getting himself into.
“Firstly,” she began sharply, “if you stopped drinking so much, your brain wouldn’t hurt.”
Cyrus’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth, but she cut him off with a wave of her hand.
“Secondly, Willa is just saying that by the time we managed to find her, lure away the beasts and get her down from the ledge, she was delirious. They called it mountain sickness because she wasn’t the first dweller to get cornered by a mountain cat.”
“How could you tell the difference between mountain sickness and her usual sickness?” Cyrus asked dryly. “Was she talking crazy? Tripping over things? Or did she have a completely normal conversation with you while keeping her clothes on the entire time?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, choosing to be the bigger person and not acknowledge his words. Mostly because they were … well, accurate.
Emmy’s lips twitched, but she held in her laugh like a loyal friend. “It doesn’t matter how we knew. The part you need to worry about is the delirium she caught. Being trapped with stone surrounding her for many sun-cycles was enough to make her a little loopy. We all get sick from being inside too much, we need the sunlight and fresh air.”
“I’m not in a cave right now,” Cyrus stated, his tone far less snide than I had come to expect from him.
Emmy’s face softened. “Marble is still a stone, even if it’s smooth and shiny. You’re still always inside, secluded away, plotting to kill the rest of us.”
“It’s making you cranky,” I added.
Cyrus frowned. “Gods don’t get cranky.”
I could have rounded up half a dozen protesters to contest that—just by walking down the hallway, but whatever he wanted to believe.
“We should go splash in the ocean,” I suggested, excited at the prospect. Growing up, it had been something we couldn’t even dream of, but the vast water was suddenly surrounding us, trembling in wait at the base of the mountain.
For a click, I almost thought that he was going to agree, but as darkness flashed across his eyes, he dropped back into his chair. “You have duties, Willa. You’re a sol trying to be a Beta now, right?”
Wrinkling my nose at him, I grabbed Emmy and together we backed away. “You know that’s bullsen shit. Think about the splashing thing, it’s probably better that I’m not right in the midst of things anyway.”
“Especially after last night,” Emmy piped up, sounding less than pleased.
I swung my head in her direction. “What do you know about last night?”
She lifted one eyebrow, giving me her are you serious look. “Everyone is talking about the dweller who has the power of a sol. The dweller who has somehow leeched power off the five gods she attached herself to. All of the sols are trying to figure out how you did it so that they can do the same. By their calculations, if a dweller can be as powerful as you, then a sol can be as powerful as a god.”
Naturally, that’s how the arrogant sols assumed I’d managed to draw my power. It couldn’t possibly have been mine by nature … and well, they were probably right about that, but they could have believed in me anyway.
“It’s probably better that they think I’m leeching from the Abcurses rather than I was stabbed to de—” My words were cut off by Cyrus as he moved at super-speed, coming around from behind his desk and wrapping his hand around my mouth.
“Staviti and Rau have ears everywhere,” he warned me quietly.
Wrenching my face out of his grip, I took a step back, before pointing a finger at him. “Didn’t you just order me to hop, skip, and sneak my way into Topia for you? If there are ears everywhere, shouldn’t you have … written the order down or something?” His face was turning an interesting shade of red. “Look, Emmy,” I pointed at the rising colour, “he does the same thing you do when you’re mad.”
“Just get out,” Cyrus ordered for the third time.
I decided we’d pushed him enough for one sun-cycle and hightailed it out of there, Emmy following closely behind me.
“You can’t go to Topia for him, Willa,” she murmured as soon as we were clear of his little den. “You shouldn’t be drawing any attention to yourself. Don’t give Staviti any reason to send you to the imprisonment realm …”
I smiled. She was bringing up the imprisonment realm in the hopes that I would explain it to her—I knew her well enough to recognise the way her statement trailed off, waiting for something from me. If there was one thing Emmy hated, it was not knowing things. Usually she had all the knowledge.
“It’s getting really hard to navigate the politics of this world,” I admitted to her as we walked back toward the level housing the god-residences. “I’m not good at walking a fine line.”
“Your guys aren’t going to let him do this. All you have to do is tell them.”
I hesitated, slowing my steps. “I’m not sure if that’s the right thing to do. Telling them feels like it might just create a huge drama.”
“How do you think they’ll react if you get yourself thrown into this imprisonment realm!” she whisper-yelled the last part.
I waved a hand at her. “I’ll explain the imprisonment realm later. Suffice to say, it’s not a place you want to go. It’s worse than death—pretty much the god alternative to death.”
That explanation did not satisfy her at all, but it was too late for further protesting, as we had reached the room we had left the Abcurses in. Sure enough, we were greeted by five, pissed-off looking gods waiting in the entrance.
“Um, hi,” I squeaked, stepping closer to them. They closed around me in a circle, their shoulders blocking Emmy from view, making it feel like it was only the six of us.
“You went to Cyrus without us?” Yael sounded somewhat calm, but his eyes were telling a different story.
“Do you know how dangerous he is, Willa?” This was from Rome, who reached out for me like he was going to shake me. Only his hands stopped just before touching me.
“He could have snatched you up for Staviti this time,” Siret added, his features pulled into hard, angry lines. “We’re a team, Willa. Don’t leave us behind.”