Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)

“Yeah,” I mumbled, pulling my head up to try and spot Rome through the mess of tangled bodies. “We really should. For your sake.”

Rome was the only person in the hall still standing. He was up against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his foot pushed back against the stone, a small smile on his face as his eyes crawled over the people now struggling to get to their feet. He was enjoying the Chaos. I liked that. It was my Chaos after all. I wasn’t very good at making it happen on command, but I was excellent at making it happen by accident.

Dru started to grab me around the hips to help me up, but I quickly scrambled off him and leapt over the nearest fallen dweller. The mountain-sized sol seemed surprised to see me leaping around, all uninjured and unfazed. That made two of us.

“Can I walk you to class or something?” he asked, jumping to his feet and following me over the dweller.

I took another few steps back, until I felt an arm hook around my front. I glanced down, seeing a big hand settle across my right hip, fingers digging in. A bolt of heat travelled right through my body, and I tensed up and pushed back all at once, eliciting a small grunt from the body behind me.

“No,” I croaked out, before clearing my throat. “No, that’s okay! Thanks, though … Ah … I’ll see you later, alright?”

“Right.” He was frowning, apparently displeased that Rome had interfered, though he really should have been used to it by now. “Sure. See you.”

He turned, and I watched him walk off as the rest of the fallen people managed to find their feet and recover their dropped items. Rome didn’t release my hip until Dru was out of sight, and even then, it was only to spin me around to face him.

“You should—”

“Stop talking to boys,” I interrupted. “Yeah. We’ve had this talk before. It’s irrational. I can’t avoid all males.”

“Just the sols.” He frowned. “And the dwellers. And the gods.”

“So just … all males, then?” I arched a brow at him.

He nodded, once, short and sharp—as though we had just figured out our differences and come to a mutual agreement, and then he took my arm in hand and started to march me in the wrong direction. Wrong, because I was supposed to be following Emmy, who was now out of sight.

“Shit!” I pulled out of Rome’s grip, spinning around and quickly scanning the people again to see if I could spot her.

She wasn’t there, so I started off in the direction I had last seen her. She was going to see the stupid guy with the stupid name. I was sure of it. I wasn’t sure how I was going to stop it once I discovered that I was right, but that was a concern for Future Willa.

“Where are you going?” Rome fell into step beside me, but luckily didn’t grab me to turn me in the other direction again.

Luckily for him, because he would have been too strong for me to resist and it would have forced me to use my super special Beta-God abilities on him … or throw a tantrum. Always have a backup plan.

“I’m following Emmy,” I whispered, hurrying to the end of the passage and then kicking into a run toward the dining hall.

It seemed like the sort of place a guy named Fred would ask to meet a girl, because it was the most obvious and unoriginal meeting place in the whole of the academy, and I didn’t have very high hopes for Fred’s originality or subtlety.

“You’re stalking her,” Rome corrected. “Following is far too innocent a description for the look on your face right now.”

“This is the face I wear when you shouldn’t mess with me because I mean business.”

“Ri-ight.” He drew the word out, but the smile was back. I liked it. I was pretty sure I wanted him to smile all sun-cycle. I was pretty sure I would do almost anything to keep the smile there, just so that I could keep looking at it.

The smile grew.

I mean who needs a fancy smile anyway, I thought, even louder than before. It’s just a smile. Lots of people have smiles. That guy has a smile. That guy has a smile. Oh that guy is—

“Pay attention to where you’re walking,” Rome snapped. “We don’t need another accident happening.”

We were back to the bossing around, apparently. Well, two could play that game.

“How about you pay attention for me, and that way I’m free to multitask and maturely follow my sister around to make sure she’s not doing anything stupid.”

“What level of stupid are we talking here?” Rome asked, ignoring the first part of my bossing. “Are we talking stupid like a Beta who can’t seem to stop talking to other males, forcing me into ‘crusher’ mode, as she so eloquently phrases it? Or is it more like Trickery when he decides that his little amusements are more enjoyable than letting us all know what he’s up to?”

My feet tangled up again, but I managed to right myself before falling. Progress? Damn right it was! I knew Rome was referring to my latest rebellion against the Abcurses, during which I had walked around the halls of Blesswood semi-naked. Only … they didn’t know that I had been walking around semi-naked, because Siret had used his Trickery to mask the fact.

“Coen almost put Siret through a wall!” I burst out. “Are you telling me that is the lesser level of stupid?”

What was he going to do if I didn’t stop talking to other guys? No, Willa! A small part of me was suddenly determined to find out, but that was almost definitely the Chaos part, right?

Rome was nodding, his eyes locked on me. “Yes, he went easy on the bastard. I would have put him through ten walls.”

With a shake of my head, I started walking again, hoping I would forget the last conversation we’d just had. The violence of his words and actions stirred something inside of me, almost as though it was calling to the budding Chaos contained within me. Either that, or I was hungry and my stomach was trying to tell me to eat.

The dining hall was reasonably empty when we entered, which meant that it wasn’t quite lunchtime, yet. There was no sign of Emmy—no, Emmanuelle. She was most definitely not earning her nickname back until she returned to the rule-loving, responsible, solidly-upstanding dweller that I knew her to be.

I could pretend to be mature and rational for a little while, but it definitely wasn’t the best long-term solution. The real me would break through at some stage and go on a rampage to get back at the mature, rational me for locking her up for so long. The real me was a wild animal, and she needed space to … roam. Or hunt. Or sleep on tree branches. Or just space to not be forced into a polite, sol-driven social structure.

Rome let out a small bark of laughter at my side, which I ignored. I actually had a good grip on my ability to shut the Abcurses out of my head … though it only worked when I really wanted them to stay out—which wasn’t right now. We’d already come far too close to losing our soul-link, and I needed the comfort of knowing that the connection was still there.