Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)

“You’ve thought about this,” was all he said, his tone wiped of emotion.

I tried to nod, but his finger on my chin prevented the movement. “I have. A little. I mean … I didn’t write a sonnet about it or anything, but yeah I thought about it.”

“Tell me what you thought,” he demanded quietly.

I was starting to get embarrassed now, so I quickly forced the words out before I could stumble over them. “You’re all Original Gods—even more original than the others because you were created as children, and you grew up on Topia. They were created, too, but as adults. As beings that were already fully formed. You five are different. Topia formed you, and from what I gather, the magic of the gods isn’t so much in the gods, but in Topia itself.”

I paused when Siret’s mouth dropped open, but he quickly wiped the surprised look off his face and tapped my chin again.

“Keep going,” he urged. “Tell me the rest.”

“Well …” I averted my eyes, so that his reaction wouldn’t put me off my theory. It had sounded like a good theory inside my head, but I was starting to second-guess it now that I was spilling it all out into the open. “You five are almost perfect. The perfect beings. You never allow anyone into your perfect circle, and that is accepted because the gods prize perfection. It’s what they’re driven toward. It’s why they make everything from marble; it’s why they wear only pure colours, and they don’t mix those colours; it’s why they strip the humanity from the dwellers to allow them to serve; and it’s why they banish the old servers and bring in the new servers so often. It’s all in search of perfection. But you five found me, and accepted me, and haven’t let me go. I’m as far from perfect as a being can get, and that’s what has Cyrus so interested in me. I’m a kink in the system. An irregularity. Something unexplainable.”

Siret fell a step back from me, and his laugh was sudden and loud, shocking me to the core. I thought that he was laughing at me until he suddenly stopped, grabbed my face, and forced my lips to his in a hard kiss.

“Perfect,” he muttered. “You’re perfect.”

He released me almost as quickly as he had grabbed me, and turned without another word, striding down the short hallway and back into the main room. I followed, but he had already left the cube by the time I managed to shake off the paralysis that his kiss had put me into.

It was going to take some getting used to, these new rules.

Not that I was complaining.

I stopped by the small table in front of the fire, because it had been freshly laid out with food again—by means as mysterious to me now as they were the first time. I was beginning to suspect that there was another magical panel in the wall—one that somehow delivered food, just like the one that delivered water into the bather. I glanced up to see if I could spot anything, but it was just pure, unblemished marble. I grabbed an apple and made a sandwich from the selection of meats, cheeses and breads that had been set out, eating as I walked to the next cube and knocked on the door.

“We have manners, all of a sudden?” Cyrus questioned, pulling open the door.

“Just have my hands full,” I replied, waving the sandwich before his face and nudging past him to get into the room. “I had to knock with my elbow. Let’s get this done, shall we?”

Cyrus seemed to be trying not to frown at me. “Do you want to finish your sandwich first?”

“Why?” I asked, pausing before taking another bite. “Will it not mix well with the magic? Is this like that swimming rule that Emmy is always telling me about just in case I stumble out of Blesswood and into the river that surrounds the place, like some kind of out-of-control cart with broken wheels? Am I not allowed to have magic performed on me with a full stomach?”

“I’m sorry I brought it up in the first place,” Cyrus muttered lowly, before his voice rose to a normal pitch again. “Just … never mind. I need to touch you now—are you going to scream for one of your boyfriends and have them smash me into a wall? Or can we handle this without the drama?”

“It was nice of you to let him do that,” I smiled politely. “I really appreciate it, and I’m sure they did too.”

He sighed, rolling his eyes up for a moment. “Answer the question.”

“No, I won’t scream. Unless you have to touch me in any inappropriate places—and if you do, then I feel like your job as a rule-enforcer should be taken away because that’s an abuse of authority.”

“You’re right.” He narrowed his eyes on me. “I’ll make a complaint as soon as I’m done here. There has to be someone around here to handle complaints and deal with them accordingly.”

“They really don’t do any quality-control on you, do they?” I asked. “They do quality-control on the dwellers all the time; making sure they do their jobs and are still loving the gods and the sols with every fibre of their beings. Someone really needs to quality-control you.”

He groaned, grabbed the apple out of my hand, and shoved it so hard against my mouth that I had to bite down on it out of reflex.

“Make sure you bring breakfast every time we speak,” he said. “It was a great idea. Now hold still, and don’t scream.”

I tried to say I can’t scream because you shoved an apple in my mouth—but it turned out that I also couldn’t do that. Because I had an apple in my mouth. Cyrus seemed to find my conundrum funny, because his lips twitched upward into a self-satisfied smirk, and then he had his hand against my chest, right over the semanight stone. The smirk faded away almost instantly, and he closed his eyes.

He’s doing the intention thing, I thought, watching the focus on his face. Was that something they taught in the sol schools? And if so, who taught the Original Gods and the Neutrals?

They’d never had any reason to teach ‘control over god-given powers’ in the dweller schools, because they were too busy teaching things like ‘how to cook and clean and worship things.’ I hadn’t succeeded in many of my cooking endeavours, because objects and ingredients kept sneaking into my recipes that weren’t supposed to be in there. I also hadn’t been very good at the serving lessons, because I seemed to naturally repel order and cleanliness. The worshipping lessons I had actually excelled in, because genuflecting to a statue with my forehead against the floor had turned out to be a very comfortable sleeping position.

“You’re thinking very loudly right now and it’s hard to concentrate,” Cyrus complained, his forehead creasing in frustration.

“Sorry,” I muttered, after dislodging the apple from my mouth. I pulled it back up to take a bite. “It’s all in the intention, Neutral. Just a tip.”