I turned to stare at him, narrowing my eyes. There was a tiny smile on his face, which meant that he had parroted my thoughts deliberately. Even Rome was smirking.
Jade frowned at Siret in confusion. She looked different to Elowin: less blonde and regal. I would have described Jade as soft and lovely. She was even shorter than me, with rounded curves and long, golden-red hair that was as straight as a board. Her eyes were large, grey, and they seemed almost depthless—and why the hell was I checking out a girl? Was I into girls now? That seemed like a weird thought. I was definitely into boys. Multiple boys, all at the same time … wait a click—
“I think there was something in my drink,” I groaned out. The pieces were finally slotting into place. “It was only water though. And god-lady wasn’t anywhere near it.”
Brina had still managed to screw with me, though. I jumped to my feet, swaying a few times as the walls spun. The moment I could walk without falling, I stormed off. Before the Abcurses or Jade could react, I was already halfway to the table of the gods. When I reached Brina, I skidded to a stop in front of her. She didn’t move, or even flinch. What? I wasn’t scary enough? I’d show her scary!
A half-smile then graced her stunning face as she tilted her head to the side.
“What did you do to me?” I demanded, both hands gripping the edge of the table. Mostly so that I didn’t fall over. Scary soon, I promised myself. For now, just stay upright.
“I gave you a little bit of charcoal powder,” she told me, that smile still in place.
“Oh. That doesn’t sound so bad.” For a moment there, I actually felt guilty for overreacting, but then the room spun again, and one of the glasses on the table right in front of me exploded. And then another.
Behind me, I heard a commotion as the glasses on the other tables began to explode, raining glass against my back. I could feel the little pieces pinging against my dress. I backed away from the table in front of me, shielding my face with my hands as the other gods all jumped to their feet.
“What the hell is charcoal powder?” I asked her, at the same time as Abil spoke.
“Cease, Rau!” His voice boomed, vibrating through the room, and drowning out my question.
If it had been silent before, it was an altogether new kind of silence now. I was pretty sure there wasn’t a single sol left inside the room who was daring to even breathe.
And then Rau started to laugh.
It was loud and long, and a sound that would surely haunt me until my dying moment. I could see his teeth as his mouth hung open, and his eyes had widened until his expression was painted in the kind of crazy that Emmy wore whenever another person scored higher than her on a test back in school.
“Alright, alright.” He held his hands up, displaying his palms. He was looking directly at me. And then … suddenly … everything was back to normal.
My vision wasn’t going haywire anymore. The glasses had stopped exploding, Abil’s distractingly perfect face stopped turning red, and Brina looked … disappointed. She was glancing from Rau, to me, and back again. She sat back down heavily, grabbing one of the goblets that hadn’t exploded—since it was made of some kind of metal—and took a massive drink of whatever was in there.
“Charcoal power would have revealed your sol-gift,” she announced, smacking the goblet back onto the table. “If you had possessed one.”
She thought I was some kind of secret sol? Wasn’t she supposed to be helping with Rau’s curse? What the hell was going—
“What the hell is going on?” Rome demanded, his voice a growl as he came up beside me, facing off with Brina—though his attention didn’t last on her for long before swinging to Rau. “What did you do to her?”
“I’ll tell you,” Rau answered, his high-pitched voice as grating on my nerves as ever. He spread his arms out, and with the gesture his smile spread even further. I could swear that the floors started vibrating. “I was giving the little dweller a taste of a real Original God.”
And then the room exploded into action.
I flinched back, but there was nowhere for me to go. I was suddenly surrounded on all sides by an Abcurse. My head was completely clear, but now every other sol in the room was acting the same way I had been. They were laughing and tripping over each other, shouting obscene things at each other. They were—shit—they were fighting already. One of them had picked up a plate of food and tossed it straight at Aedan. I wanted to pump my fist into the air and cheer, but that was hardly appropriate, so instead I attempted to push between Stone Boulder Number One and Stone Boulder Number Two—otherwise known as Rome and Yael. I didn’t succeed, though Rome did shift aside enough that I could come between them before his arm and Yael’s arm shot over my torso in a cross, preventing me from going any further.
The gods had been affected just the same as the sols, though Abil and the neutral silver-haired guy were on their feet, looking immune and pissed-off. Rau jumped over the table, his bulky form somehow managing the stunt in a nimble way, though his red robes knocked to the ground anything that hadn’t already been knocked to the ground. For a moment, I thought that he was coming for me, but he only grinned at me in a maniacal way and then passed by the six of us to walk directly through the middle of his Chaos toward the exit to the hall.
“Round two!” he announced, shouting the words over his shoulder.
Fourteen
Almost as soon as the word two was out of his mouth, something hard and cold shattered against the back of my head, and I watched dizzily as glass tumbled over my shoulders.
I temporarily blacked out, but as soon as the darkness had swept through my mind, it was drained out by Rome picking me up and tossing me over his shoulder. Somehow, with my head upside down, the looming threat of fainting dropped right out of me. I wearily lifted my body as the Abcurses started after Rau, my head coming up just in time to watch the gods at the table all moving quickly toward the entrance they had come through.
Abil was visibly controlling two of the gods that seemed to want to dive back into the Chaos.
“He’s gone,” I heard Siret growl. “And he’s sealed the door behind him.”
I watched as the last god—the silver-haired Neutral—closed the door behind their back entrance. It shifted before my eyes, merging into the wall. The handle disappeared, and I knew then … that second rounds were definitely worse than first rounds.
“Put me dow—”
“No.” Rome grunted the word more than spoke it, and his hand pulled up, landing a sharp smack right on my butt. “Be a good little curse and stay up there where you can’t hurt anyone.”
“Don’t you mean where I can’t get hurt?” I grumbled.
“Yeah. That too.”