Bright, blinding white.
It flashed over my eyes and dropped through me, spreading heat and pain through my limbs until I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to cry or scream. The agony spread right to the very tips of my toes, and then as suddenly as it had appeared, it swept out of me.
All the pain swept out of me.
Cyrus released me, and I fell back to my feet, my hands clutching at my chest. It wasn’t all tight and achy anymore, or ripping me into pieces. The Abcurses were finally here!
“No, they aren’t,” Cyrus answered drolly, and it took a moment to realise that he was answering a thought.
“What?” I snapped my head up, fixing him with a surprised glare. “You can hear my thoughts now too?”
“That’s how the soul-bind works, doll.”
“Doll?” I squinted, inexplicable rage bubbling up inside of me, as though on some level I had actually figured out what he had done, but it hadn’t fully formed into a thought yet. “We have cute nicknames for each other now? What the hell is going on? What the hell did you just do?”
“We don’t have cute nicknames. You have a nickname, and it isn’t cute—”
“What isn’t cute about dolls?” I interrupted, before he could even answer my other questions.
“You’re a ragdoll, Willa Knight.” Now, he was smiling. And it wasn’t a nice smile. “Your head is filled with straw and you flop around like you have no actual bones. I should try breaking one of them, one of these sun-cycles, just to be sure that you have them.”
Before I knew it, I was running at him. I wasn’t sure what my grand plan was, but my fist apparently had a mind all of its own, because it was tunnelling toward his stomach. Until he caught my hand and it wasn’t moving anymore.
“What did you do to me?” I demanded again, staring up at him. Pretending that I hadn’t just attacked him.
“I anchored your life force to mine. The same way you anchored yours to Abil’s sons.”
“So … my soul pieces haven’t been living inside them this whole time?”
“Soul pieces?” He had gone right back to frowning at me as though my head was full of straw. “Where did you come up with that idiotic notion?”
“It’s a skill,” I snarled, trying to yank my hand free. He only tightened his grip.
So I decided to kick him in the balls.
He dropped me, hopping back with a vicious hiss, and I turned and ran before he could reach out for me again … except I was on a marble platform floating up in the sky. Stranded. With a god who may or may not have some kind of anger problem … who I may or may not have just kicked in the balls. Before I got more than a few steps, a form popped into being right in front of me, and I crashed straight into Wanda, sending us both tumbling down to the vine-covered marble. He had been holding a big jug of water and a little stone cup, and the jug somehow managed to up-turn itself on my face, while the cup thumped heavily against my chest.
I decided to stay down. It was safer than standing up.
Wanda, however, couldn’t have jumped to his feet any faster. He was spouting out apologies quicker than he could breathe. When I said nothing, he tried to kneel for me, but that didn’t turn out so well for him because I was already lying down, so he flattened himself to his stomach, and tried to get lower than me. It was an impossible feat, but he tried anyway.
“QUIET!” Cyrus was standing beside me, staring down at Wanda as though all the crying and apologising had given him an instant headache. “Go and fetch Rau; tell him the girl has been anchored.”
Wanda disappeared before I could reach out and pat his hand, which I’d just had an urge to do, and then Cyrus was reaching for my dress, probably about to toss me around like a ragdoll again. His fingers were only inches away from the material when a voice boomed out across the platform.
“Touch her one more time, and you’ll lose your fucking hands.” Yael was striding through the vine-choked columns, and I could see Aros right behind him. Siret appeared next, with Rome and Coen behind him.
They all looked ready to tear the platform apart, and Cyrus along with it. The hand hovering over my dress retreated, and Cyrus straightened to face them. They fanned out before him, looking like they were about to attack on all sides, but Aros broke away from the wall-of-muscle and knelt down beside me. I grabbed him when he was close enough to grab, and I wasn’t even sure if I was lifting myself up with my grip of his shirt, or if he was doing it with his grip on my waist. And I wasn’t sure how I ended up hugging him. Or how my legs ended up wrapped around his waist. I definitely wasn’t sure how my mouth landed on his, but I was aware that he was the one to stop it, and not me.
He groaned, but he was also laughing, and his hand was on my neck, holding me back from his mouth.
“You need to get kidnapped more often if that’s the way you’re going to greet me every time we come to save you,” he whispered, ducking forward to brush the words against my ear. “But first, you need to tell me exactly what he did to you. We felt something … it was … horrible.”
“You WHAT?” Rome shouted from behind us. Aros spun around to face them, and I tried to climb down, but he only pulled me up higher, forcing me to twist my torso around so that I could see the others.
“She had anchored her life-force to each of you through a soul-bind, and has been feeding on your powers to keep herself alive.” Cyrus was telling them. “Rau’s curse should have killed her, and this is how she has been surviving. I can understand why you would be upset—”
“We’re upset that you removed it,” Yael interrupted. “You … you shweed!”
For a moment, not a single person even dared to breathe. Cyrus looked confused, but the others seemed to be torn between rage and amusement.
“What …” Coen paused, taking a deep breath, “the hell is a shweed?”
“It’s a cross between a shit-head and a weed,” I said, causing everyone to turn to me.
“Her idiocy is contagious,” Cyrus stated. He almost looked surprised.