Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)

The water is fine.

I had long ago given up trying to figure out which of them was talking in my head, there were too many. They surrounded me on the ground, not to mention the many flying through the air, frolicking across the meadow, drinking from the stupid water.

“I’m never going to get this.” My words were a warning and a statement. “I have never been able to control my gift-that-feels-a-lot-like-a-curse.”

Chaos is not a curse. If the person wielding the Chaos only uses it for evil, it becomes a curse—but that is only by the fault of the person and not the gift. Chaos can be a beautiful thing, if you know where to look for it. If you learn to see it properly and wield it properly.

I thought about the panteras’ words, scanning their ethereal eyes while I mulled over the shifting of everything I thought I had known. Maybe they were right. Maybe the only reason my Chaos had been manifesting as fire was because I kept associating it with Rau.

“Okay,” I finally sighed out. “Will you show me?”





Nine





My name is Leden, the pantera told me. Her voice was softer than the others, almost a whisper, and her coat was a glistening, snowy white. She was beautiful.

I climbed onto her cautiously, hesitant to put dirt all over her lovely white fur, but she only made a small, snorting sound and reared up a little, forcing me to fall forward and cling.

Hold on, her soft voice cautioned me, sounding amused.

She launched up from the ground, and four other pantera followed, two spanning out either side of her as she took to the sky.

“Where are we going?” I shouted, pressing my face into her soft neck.

She was fast. Faster than any other pantera I had ridden—and she knew it, too, because there was a small hum of appreciation that vibrated through her body as soon as the thought flitted through my head.

We are taking you to the mortal glass. The eyes of the world.

“The what?” I shouted back. “Did you say eyes? You’re taking me to see some eyes?”

Leden didn’t answer, which wasn’t a good sign. I groaned, shaking my head and cursing internally. That was the gamble you made with magical objects: sometimes they were pretty and they tasted good, like the stream; and sometimes they were … eyes.

They didn’t fly far before they began to dip toward the mountains, swooping into a cave and landing in a spray of pebbles and dust. Leden wobbled a little before she managed to straighten herself, and I quickly jumped off her back and took a few steps away before I turned and grinned at her.

“The speed is excellent, but you need to work on the landing.”

She made a grunting sound in the back of her throat that was more animalistic than the graceful noises I had become used to from the pantera, and then she flicked her hoof into the gravel and kicked it up, sending a cloud of dirt and rocks right at me. I quickly covered my face with my arms and laughed. I liked her.

It seems the girl is forming a bond, one of the other panteras noted, causing my head to peek out from between my arms.

“A what?” I asked the cave in general, since I wasn’t sure which of the four, massive, black-furred pantera had spoken.

A bond, this time from Leden, it happens on occasion, between the gods and the pantera. They are children of the same magic, children of the same land.

“I thought you were here long before the gods?” I asked, turning to peer into the cave. It was dark—almost too dark to see anything, though I could still distinguish a faint, black glimmer.

And the land was here long before us, Leden replied, pushing her snout between my shoulder blades and urging me forward, further into the cave. It is not uncommon for the gods to bond to the animals of Topia.

“But I’m not a god,” I whispered, trying to resist the insistent pushes I was receiving, “and I also can’t see in the dark!”

We will bring light, one of the other panteras announced, and then only a moment later, tiny little balls of light began to flicker on, beating against the wings of miniscule creatures that flittered sleepily about the cave.

I stopped moving altogether, my mouth falling open and my eyes going wide. The walls of the cave were lined with a glittery black rock, so smooth in some places and so jagged in others—it almost appeared like glass. The little lights moved around, illuminating further into the cave, and I followed them without the nudging of Leden this time. I could see my own reflection in the rock, walking alongside me with so much awe painted over her face … but then the reflection began to change. Suddenly, I could see five broad backs, their owners all facing the edge of a marble platform.

“What’s happening?” I whispered, as one of the reflections spoke.

“We could just jump. I mean we can’t die or anything.” It was Siret’s voice.

“You know Staviti would have stationed people below,” Yael replied, sounding downright depressed. “Maybe even Crowe himself. Staviti is serious this time—if D.O.D hadn’t insisted that we should be used to test the sols in the arena fights, he might have attempted a way to strip us of our gifts by now.”

“This is bullshit,” Rome growled. “Staviti loves it when sols die—that’s the whole point of the arena fights isn’t it? He doesn’t want them to prove themselves. He just wants them to die.”

“It isn’t about sols dying.” Aros seemed to be offering the voice of reason, judging by his tone. “Staviti doesn’t like us not obeying his commands because it shows the other gods that he can be disobeyed.”

They are not like the other gods, Leden told me, her breath warm against the back of my neck. They are the only beings born of a union between the gods.

“How is that possible?” I asked, reaching out to touch the broad back of Coen against the rock. “So many hundreds and thousands of life-cycles and no children born?”

The voices of the Abcurses were fading away, barely audible to me anymore as the reflection gradually shifted back into my own face.

There were other children. Leden’s soft voice grew even softer, her tone only a gentle hum inside my mind. The sorrow emanating from her was suddenly so acute that I had to wrap my arms around myself.

“What happened to them?” I asked, my voice a rasp.

Staviti did not allow them to live. The reply was short—simple—and yet it dripped with the kind of loss that made my heart ache. The panteras had been born in Topia, just like the Abcurses. It would make sense that they felt connected to the other children born in Topia.

“Why did I see the Abcurses?” I turned from my own reflection, finding the four black panteras lit up by hundreds of little illuminated bugs, while Leden waited directly behind me.

You see who you want to see, Leden answered. Every shard of glass in this cave is a part of Topia. It is how the world is seen. How every being on this world is seen. It is as sacred as the water, and just as protected—