“It was right about you five all being assholes,” I shot back, before glancing over at Leden. “Excuse the language.”
“They can read your thoughts, Rocks,” Coen informed me. “I’m sure they’ve heard worse.”
I turned and kicked a rock with the toe of my shoe, watching as it sailed toward his face. It had been a small rock, but I still found myself frowning at how he flicked it out of the way so easily. It wasn’t until I caught up to Leden again that I realised I had kicked a rock. With my own foot. As in, I had managed to do something slightly athletic without tripping and falling on my face. Kicking rocks was a very dangerous athletic activity, since it was so easy to misread the position of the rock and allow it to roll beneath your shoe instead of launching from the toe of your shoe—therefore throwing off your momentum and sending you falling backwards. That had been my previous experience with all rock-kicking attempts.
“Come to think of it,” Aros mused, apparently joining in on my thoughts, “you have been less clumsy since your ... recent change. There has been less falling, tripping, and crowd-toppling.”
“More fires though,” Siret countered.
“Less fires actually,” I shot back, liking the idea that I might have left some of my clumsiness behind, in my other life.
“Well, bigger fires then.” Siret was smiling, raising his brows at me.
The panteras had stopped moving, coming to rest by the stream that they had made me drink out of before showing me the mortal glass for the first time. I allowed Siret’s smile to draw me over to him, and then I allowed him to draw me to the bank. We all took seats along the side of the bank, claiming large rocks that were nestled into the reeds. Whoever we were waiting for clearly hadn’t arrived yet, because the panteras were just milling around in preparation.
I dropped my voice, leaning toward Coen, who sat on the boulder beside me.
“Whoever we’re waiting for doesn’t have a soul,” I whispered.
His head snapped toward me, his eyes darkening in some kind of warning. “What? How do you know that?”
“Leden told me.”
“She told you we’re meeting someone with no soul?” Yael hissed out, jumping from his rock and moving in front of me. Very quickly, I was surrounded by Abcurses.
“Sort of.” I shrugged a little. “She implied it. That’s why the cave disappeared. It won’t show itself to a person unless they’re connected to this land. Whoever is coming isn’t connected.”
“Is it a dweller?” Siret asked, his brow furrowing, his green-gold eyes flicking to the nearest grouping of panteras.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Maybe, but she seemed to imply that it was a god. A god without a soul.”
“It’s not possible.” Rome sounded angry, or maybe it was a hint of fear. Neither option was good news for me.
“It is though!” I paused, working my tone back to a whisper. “The imprisonment realm, remember?”
“That’s my point.” Coen seemed to be agreeing with Rome. “If they’re locked in the imprisonment realm, they can no longer access their body. They’re locked away, removed from themselves. They can never return and they can never truly die. That’s the whole point of the imprisonment realm—you may never return to your body, and it’s the only way to separate the soul from the body.”
My mind flashed back to Jakan again, and I briefly entertained the thought that Jakan himself was the person we were waiting for. He was Staviti’s brother, after all. If anyone could escape the imprisonment realm and find a way to access their body again, it would be the brother of Staviti.
Rome was shaking his head, listening to my thoughts. “Cyrus would have told you if he expected you to smuggle Staviti’s long-lost brother into Minatsol, and you saw the glass when you asked to see him: that man is long gone, or long lost. Cyrus specifically asked you to fetch an item, not a person.”
“What kind of item could a soulless person possibly have for Cyrus, though?” I wondered out loud, even as the panteras began to display signs of agitation, knocking their hooved feet into the ground and flexing their giant wings.
I stood, the others pressing in close about me. Our guest had arrived.
The man didn’t have to push through the panteras—they got out of his way on their own, practically repelled. The air around him crackled with energy, and whatever inbuilt system I had to warn me of danger was currently going haywire.
Run!
“Abcurses don’t run, Soldier,” Siret murmured close to my ear.
“Are you sure?” I fired back, watching as the tall stranger moved closer. “This no-soul-guy is kind of scaring me.”
Aros, looking far more relaxed than he should have, casually crossed his arms. “It’s just Crowe, nothing to panic about.”
Crowe. As in … the freaking God of Death? That sounded like the definition of a great time to panic. No wonder the cave didn’t want to show him the glass. Crowe was the only Original God capable of killing other gods—unless Staviti could un-create gods as easily as he created them. Crowe was still a god, though, so the only explanation for the cave hiding was that Crowe had somehow lost part of his soul.
He stopped about ten feet from us, his black robes swinging gently in the breeze. I found myself examining him closely, imprinting his face in my mind. Crowe wasn’t at all like I had imagined him … though I really had no idea what I had expected. He was taller than Rome by at least a foot; he towered over almost everything around him. His hair was like burnt gold, brushing across the top of his shoulders, thick and straight. His features were slashed together in angry, hard lines, but this didn’t make him unattractive.
His eyes met mine and I managed not to gasp, even though I wanted to. His entire pupil and iris were black, swirling mesmerizingly. For a moment I wondered if he was blind.
“I can see you.”
His voice was deep, and it felt like it infiltrated into my brain, tendrils digging deeper with each word.
“You can also read my mind, apparently,” I said.
At this stage I was on the verge of just assuming that every god could read my mind and that I’d have to adjust my thoughts accordingly from now on.
“She won’t adjust her thoughts,” Yael warned Crowe.
“She won’t need to,” Coen added, “because you will remove your presence from her mind. Now. It’s making us unhappy.”
When he said unhappy, the tree he was leaning against cracked, and I realised that uphappy was a minor understatement. The Abcurses were on edge, their powers starting to bleed out into the world. Crowe inclined his head slightly, and that digging sensation in my brain disappeared. I waited to see if the guys would relax after that, but none of them appeared to.
“You have something for Cyrus?” Yael brought the conversation back on track.
Fine lines appeared around Crowe’s eyes. “Cyrus? No. The panteras are the ones I have brought this gift for.” He lifted both of his hands up, palms flat, and closed his eyes for a fraction of a click. There was a pop, and then a set of chains appeared in his hands. The heavy bronze metal looked familiar, the cuffs thick and ornate with symbols carved into every available surface.
“Normally I would not hand a weapon with this level of power over to any beings—but the panteras are beyond the gods.” His swirling eyes focussed on the chains. “However, now that I’m here, I feel that … they’re meant for you.”
He took a step forward, ready to place the chains into Aros’s hands.
I let out a muffled cry. “No, don’t touch them!”