Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)

I felt … lighter. Ever since I had accidentally-on-purpose overheard them discussing the pact, there had been a pressing weight on my shoulders, trying to tell me how to be and what was okay. I didn’t do well with restrictions, clearly, but now I was free again. We all were, and I was determined to keep my part of our new deal. There would be no more fighting over this.

“I’m going to clean up,” I announced, an upbeat tone to my voice. Turning to Siret, I added, “I’m going to need some kickass clothes, kickass boots, kickass glov—”

“I get the point,” he said drily. “You’re going with a theme, and the theme is—”

“Kickass. Yes.” I clapped my hands a few times. “Okay, great. Be back soon.”

I spun around, accidently causing Rome’s shirt to fly up a little—and I probably flashed some thigh in the process, but no one said anything. We were all on our best behaviour. Or at least I assumed we were. I was almost at the top of the stairs when the sound of a throat clearing caught my attention. Tilting my head back to them, I noticed none of them had moved an inch.

“What?” My smile was way too broad for our situation, but happy seemed to be radiating out of me.

I had wanted the pact gone since the very first sun-cycle of the pact existing, and I had finally won. No one answered me, and I felt my cheeks lower as my smile faded away.

“What?” I repeated, worried now that my one click of happiness was almost over.

Coen was the one to answer me. “Just letting you know that we’ll be called to the Sacred Sands Arena in fifteen clicks, and you need to eat. So …”

He trailed off, and I was starting to get the idea of where this was all going. We had just dissolved the pact, and I was heading down to the bather. They wanted to come with me and I wanted them to come with me, but I was pretty sure five and one was something we needed to slowly work our way up to. Besides that, if I wanted to keep the peace, I needed to be careful about keeping things even between them. I needed to delicately work out some sort of schedule.

“I’ll be quick.” Those words were pretty much thrown over my shoulder as I dashed down the stairs, tripping over the last few and tumbling to the ground.

A huff left me as I lay there. It was really unfair that I got a bunch of Chaos fire power, but I still couldn’t manage to stay on my own feet. I was grateful, though, that I managed to scurry up and hide in the other room before any Abcurse came to investigate the thump.

Pulling off Rome’s shirt, I folded it haphazardly and put it on a shelf. It probably should have bothered me that I had no real possessions. Hell, I didn’t even know where my things were that I had been holding onto. Most likely my fist-rock and the scraps of dress I owned were still in Coen’s room. My medical kit and poison antidote—the only things I brought from my village—were still with Emmy. She wouldn’t misplace them. No doubt my duffle was sitting neatly on my bed.

I fiddled with the controls on the wall, finally figuring out how to get the water to fall from the ceiling, I considered the reason why I had never bothered to retrieve that bag when I was first soul-linked to the boys. Part of me had never felt like a dweller. It wasn’t that I thought I was above dwellers, or equal to the sols. In fact, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I simply hadn’t felt that there was a place I belonged. I had never been a proper dweller, and I could never be a sol. I’d always just been me. A weird mess of a being who was determined to prove everyone wrong and live at least twenty life-cycles.

Everything in my duffle had represented a part of my old life. It didn’t fit me anymore. I wondered if it ever had. Or was it that possessions just didn’t mean much to me? I held on to the people I loved, which, before a few moon-cycles ago had only been Emmy. Now I had so much more.

Letting the warm, soothing water wash over me, I felt some of the frantic pace of my mind calm. I was so rarely calm, it was actually a novel experience. No thinking, just enjoying.

“Am I interrupting?”

My eyes shot open and I glared at Cyrus. “Get the hell out, can’t you see I’m enjoying my—”

I had been about to say my alone time, but his low groan cut me off.

“As much as I appreciate a woman enjoying herself, I need to get this soul-link reinstated between you and the god-squad out there. I’m … concerned about this little arena experiment that Staviti has cooked up, and I want to make sure they can keep Chaos from overwhelming you.”

I reached up and clutched the stone still hanging between my breasts. “I want to keep the link with the stone as well; that way I can have some distance from the boys without killing myself.”

Cyrus regarded me for a long moment, his eyes lingering on my chest. I was just rolling my eyes when the door to the bather room slammed open.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?” Rome snarled, crossing the room in a micro-click.

Without waiting for an answer, his fist slammed into Cyrus’s face; he had moved so quickly that I had barely blinked before the Neutral god was flying across the room. The problem was, he was flying right toward me, and even though I ducked, he still tumbled into the bather with me. Water splashed everywhere as his body slammed me into the hard base.

“Ugh,” I huffed, pulling my head out of the water and trying to get my breath back.

It was made even more difficult due to the fact that Cyrus had his head pressed into my chest.

“This makes us even for the last time, doll.”

Right. Face in penis. I remembered.

Leveraging my hands under him, I pushed with all of my strength, but he didn’t move an inch. I was just lifting my leg to try knee in penis when he disappeared—tossed across the room to slam into a nearby wall. I didn’t know which one of the guys had done that, and I didn’t stop to consider it because I could suddenly feel the strong swell of power in the room, making the air that much harder to breathe.

I scrambled up, letting out a gasp as the rest of the room came into sight. For the first time, I saw a real reason to fear Cyrus as the Neutral God. He was soaking wet, his hair slicked back—defining the hard, gorgeous planes of his face. His eyes were blazing, his shirt plastered across broad muscles. A wispy, white energy was forming around his hands, but the power building in the room had every hair on my arms standing on end. The Abcurses actually looked a little wary—not scared, I’d probably be dead before I saw that expression on their faces—but cautious.