Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)

“Introduce me to your friends,” I ground out, attempting to sound polite as I continued to stick my feet to the ground.

Emmy was staring too hard at the side of my face, apparently trying to convey some kind of secret message. She really needed to stop trying to do that. I sucked at secret messages.

“Yes,” Fred called out, taking a few steps toward us. “Why don’t you introduce us, Emmanuelle?”

“Emmy,” I quickly snapped, before I could stop myself. “Her name is—”

“Willa,” Emmy cut across me, making my head spin a little bit with all the names being thrown about the room. “As I said before,” I realised that she wasn’t talking to me, when she turned to the others, “this is Willa, my sister.”

“That’s only half an introduction,” Fred replied, clicking his tongue in admonishment.

I fought off the urge to break out of Emmy’s grip and slap him clean across the face.

“Willa …” Emmy continued obediently, taking a calming breath that had me at least partly convinced that she was fighting the same violent urge as me. “Willa … this is Frederique, Bradford, and Morgan. Their fathers will be competing against a panel of high-ranking Minateur guards in a few sun-cycles, in Dvadel.”

“Competing for what?” I asked, my eyes still locked onto Fred.

I knew exactly what they were competing for, but my tone of voice managed to turn it into some sort of scathing remark. I shouldn’t have been pushing them. Of all the sols in Blesswood, these would have been the worst ones to pick a fight with, but they were messing around with my Emmy, and all the secrecy was making my skin crawl.

“Competing over who will get to be in charge of unruly little dweller sluts like you, actually,” Fred replied, a stony smile suddenly etched onto his face.

There was a crash in the storage room that sounded suspiciously like one of the shelves being slammed up against a wall, and I knew that Rome was a moment away from breaking free and having a crusher moment with Fred, so I only smiled in response and hurried toward the exit of the room. I could feel Emmy following behind me, so I didn’t bother looking back.

“I almost wish you’d stayed and let whichever Abcurse is hiding around here somewhere start breaking faces,” Emmy muttered beneath her breath, as soon as we were in the hallway.

“They killed the Chancellor. They had a single rule: if they killed one more person in Minatsol, they’d have their sentence extended—and being the idiots that they are, that’s exactly what they did. So they’re in enough trouble as it is. I don’t want to add to it by upping the body count.”

“Makes sense.”

“So I take it you’re not actually attempting to manoeuvre into sexual positions with those three dicks?” I questioned as casually as I could, while I pulled open the storage door.

Rome was halfway through the wall, shelves bent and pushed aside all around him. He’d basically built himself a twisted, metal cage, and was now stuck in the mess he’d made, breathing through his frustration.

“Manoeuvre into sexual positions?” she asked, cocking her head at Rome. “Is that what you guys do? Because I don’t think this one is very good at the manoeuvring part.”

I blinked, turning away from the image of Rome pulling himself back through the wall and leaping over a fallen shelf to reach the doorway we stood inside of.

“I can’t believe you just insulted Two while he’s in angry crusher mode. Are you crazy?”

I wasn’t being serious, obviously, because Rome couldn’t have cared less what Emmy had said. His face was red and his breathing was heavy for another reason, and I could tell that he was just about to push past me and take the more direct approach into the secret meeting room, so I quickly stepped right into his path, taking up the whole doorway.

“Willa …” he started to warn, but it was Emmy who cut across him.

“Why don’t we take this somewhere else?” She seemed to be requesting, instead of demanding, which meant that she had at least some sense of self-preservation still inside her. “These halls are about to fill up with dwellers collecting their supplies for the sun-cycle and you probably don’t want the whole academy talking about how you mushed three really important sols into a stone wall during peace-talk time.”

She had a really good point, and Rome seemed to think so too, because he didn’t attempt to walk through me or toss me over his shoulder. He only stared at me, taking deep breaths until the redness subsided from his face.

“We need to leave,” he eventually spat. “Now. Before I change my mind.”

That was enough for me. I quickly grabbed his hand, pulling him back toward the way we had entered the temple. Emmy attempted to trail along behind us, but it was making me too nervous that I would lose track of her, so I forced her to walk in front of us instead. Getting Rome away from the damage he would cause if we left him alone down there was my main priority, but it didn’t mean that I had given up on getting answers out of Emmy. As soon as we were clear of danger, I was going to find out everything that she had been hiding from me, even if I had to use Rome to squeeze it out of her.

What I didn’t count on was the rush of people that collided with us as soon as we passed back into the main halls of the academy. It was finally lunch time, and everyone was heading toward the dining hall. It shouldn’t have surprised me that my new rule-breaker of a sister would use the crowd to slip away from me, but it still shocked me enough that I came to a standstill, people battering at me from each side until Rome planted himself behind me, forming a wall.

“What is it?” he asked. “Where did the dweller-Emmy go?”

“She gave me the slip.” My voice sounded hollow, disbelieving. “Again.”

He made a grunting sound, and it felt as if more of the anger bled out of him. It seemed that he was almost fully over the need to kill the three sols, which was both a relief and a disappointment. A few less dick-sols—as they would be henceforth referred to—would do our worlds some good.

What the hell is Emmy up to? Rome’s anger was dissipating, just in time for mine to rear its head again.

“I’m probably almost definitely going to kill my sister when I get my hands on her again,” I snarled, as we finally made our way into the dining hall.