I stopped, hovering behind him. Was I flirting? I had no idea. I wasn’t doing it consciously. I just wanted to be part of their group. And I kind of wanted to be touching them all the time. Like right now, I noted. I had pressed myself to the length of Siret’s back, my arms snaking around to his front. One moment I had been standing there, and the next, I was hugging him. I had no idea how it happened. I wasn’t going to take responsibility for it.
“Yes, like right now.” His husky voice did funny things to my insides, and I pressed my cheek to his back, basking in the warmth that seeped through his clothing. “This is flirting, Willa.”
“Hugging is flirting?” I asked, my voice muffled against his back. “I didn’t start this. This isn’t my fault. It feels nice to touch you guys because you kidnapped my soul. I’m actually hugging my soul right now. This is a private moment. Butt out.”
He laughed, the husky tone still carrying in the sound, and I shivered a little bit, tightening my arms around him.
“I’m going to put the illusion of clothing on you now,” he said, reaching back, his hand gripping one of my sides.
I jumped, unprepared for the direct contact of his skin against mine. His palm was rough, his fingers seeming to dig into the softness of my skin. It took me a click to catch up to what he had said.
“So this is different to when you give me clothes in the mornings, right?”
“Yes. This is different. Those are actual clothes—they take considerable effort to create, whereas this is just an illusion. An illusion I only have to maintain for four people. I could do it in my sleep.”
“Five,” I corrected automatically. “Five people. You have to see whatever they see.”
He grunted. “Fine. You can step back; I’m done.”
I didn’t want to step back. I wanted to stay huddled up in his amazing warmth … but flirting with an Abcurse wasn’t just playing with fire; it was sitting down in the middle of a burning house and hoping that the flames didn’t consume you—all while knowing that they would.
So I stepped back.
Siret spun, and we both looked down. To my own eyes, I was still wearing my plain underwear. Siret had a slightly annoyed frown on his face, and his eyes didn’t linger for very long before flicking back up to my face; he had been true to his word, and had given himself the same illusion that he had given his brothers. For some reason, that made me want to hug him again.
“Let’s get some revenge,” I said instead, skipping around him and flinging open the door. “Which class is first?”
“Original Gods, and The Beginning—the most accurate subject in their curriculum,” he answered drolly. “I especially like the parts where they talk about how Terrence is such a nice guy.”
“I doubt they ever say that one of the gods is such a nice guy,” I returned, meeting his mocking expression with a grin. “They probably called him gracious and intelligent and charitable. Who’s Terrence, by the way?”
“The god of Bestiary.”
“Does that mean he has sex with animals?” I blurted out, tilting my head.
We had reached the circular common area, and I could feel the stares of the sol pair that huddled by one of the windows. The female was gawking, her cheeks turning red. The male was just staring confusedly. Maybe he’d never seen boobs before or maybe he didn’t know that there were people out there in the world who had sex with animals.
“No, that’s bestiality,” Siret replied, shoving his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels.
The male sol blinked, his mouth dropping open.
“Is there a god of bestiality?” I asked. I made to shove my hands into my own pockets, to mirror what Siret was doing … except that I didn’t have pockets. I had underwear. Not having any other choice I tucked my thumbs into the waistband of the underwear. I couldn’t actually apply any pressure without dragging them down and flashing the two sols—even more than I was already flashing them—so I had to hold my arms up, bent stiffly at the elbows. The end result was an awkward, strained posture, to counter Siret’s casual grace.
Siret chuckled, shaking his head. He had pretty much been laughing at me since I revealed my plan. Nice to know I amused someone. The sol pair quickly exited the common room, rushing down the hall away from us.
“Did I say something wrong?” I turned on Siret, my eyebrows arching up.
“Maybe it’s your body language. You look like an old woman with joint-pain right now.”
“Ah, yeah. I have my fingers in my underwear. No pockets.”
He drew his hands out of his pockets, lurching toward me. He stopped just before touching me, his hands hovering over my hips but not yet grabbing.
“I didn’t agree to that.” His voice was low, his eyes narrowed darkly. “I agreed to a moderate amount of shocking, not that much shocking—”
I released the band of my underwear, lifting both arms out on either side of me.
“Whoops,” I whispered. “Just one of those things I didn’t mean to do.”
He growled, but wasn’t awarded a chance to reply, because I had caught sight of Aros and Yael walking down the hallway toward us. The brothers always walked to their classes together, and I bounced between the five of them, sometimes going to class with a few of them, sometimes only one of them. I rarely stuck to a schedule—but that was their fault. They were always trying to assert dominion over each other, and I had become their favourite tool for dominion-asserting.
Whoever had ‘possession’ of me seemed to automatically become the center of dissension, as though they were taking more than their fair share of things. I had tried diffusing a few fights by reasoning that I wasn’t a thing to share, but they responded the same way every single time. They told me that I was their dweller; assigned to them, fair and square. There was even paperwork to prove it. Also, my soul was living inside them, free-of-charge, so apparently, that translated into ownership of my person.
God-logic.
“We knocked on your door, Trickery,” Aros announced. “Didn’t realise you were waiting out here. Hey there, Willa.”
His golden eyes flicked over me in greeting. It was something that each of them did—probably checking for new injuries. He didn’t display any shock at my state of undress, which meant that the illusion was working. Even though it was a cursory glance, and his eyes were only displaying warm friendliness … my body still reacted. Because my body was a cold-blooded traitor, and it never listened to me or heeded my needs. My emotional needs.
Yael strode straight past us without a word, though he caught my hand at the last moment, pulling me to walk beside him. The moment he touched me, wrapping his overly large hand around mine, I actually forgot I was playing a trick on the self-named Abcurses.