“Can we free them?” My voice was very low; I was afraid to draw their attention. There were so many of them, and even with this magic-cup-deterrent, it was scary.
Rome slipped in next to his twin, and even though Siret was walking pretty fast, none of them looked uncomfortable walking and whispering to me like this.
“There’s nothing left but anger and vengeance,” the most giant of the Abcurse brothers said. “If we free the spirits, they will wreak destruction across Minatsol, destroying the nine rings in no time. They can never be freed.”
I shut up after that, trying my best not to stare at the scary surrounding us. Scary and sad. I wished that I could un-see them, but no such luck. Thankfully, Coen hadn’t been lying about us being close to the exit; the brightness we’d been moving toward was increasing, and I sucked in a deep breath at the junction between cave and outside. The blood rushed through my body as Siret dropped me to my feet, keeping a tight hold on my shoulder, which was helpful against the weakness in my body. I was barely keeping myself up, but after all my carry on, I needed to prove that I could stand on my own two legs. The other Abcurses stepped in beside us, forming a single line of sols.
Their expressions varied from grim to stoic. I wasn’t sure what to expect judging by that, but something told me it was going to be a bit of a rough journey to get out of this banishment cave.
“Just take a deep breath, Willa,” Aros instructed from my right side, and then the six of us stepped through to the other side.
Well, sort of. The actual transition between the worlds, this time, was akin to having my skin torn from my body by means of grating it off. The cave did not want to let us go, and right now I was biting my lip hard enough to taste blood so that I wouldn’t scream out in pain. The agony felt like it lasted entire sun-cycles, and when we finally found ourselves outside, with tall, thick trees surrounding us, I all but collapsed to my stomach.
My hands ripped into soft, green grass, my breathing ragged as I fought against the last tendril of pain. I pushed myself partly up so that I could run my hands from my shoulders to wrists, obsessively checking to make sure that my skin was still intact.
Fancy shoes appeared in my line of sight, a shadow blocking the light above me. “You doing okay, Rocks? It’s a real bitch getting in and out of the banishment zone.”
I knew it was Coen. The pain-gifted sol had predictably been the first to recover. Hands fitted in under my arms and lifted me to my feet. I found myself staring into his dark green eyes, a storm of darkness hovering just around the edges. He was smiling, right until he focused on my face. The darkness in his eyes expanded outward then, shading over his features like a roiling storm cloud.
Reaching up, I tried to figure out what had happened to bring on that expression. Knowing me, it could have been anything. There could have even been a sleeper on my head. Those bugs hung above you, hidden in sticky white nets, and then when you were least prepared, they dropped into your hair. Most of the time you didn’t know about it, so they were able to burrow in and create a nest. They lived in your head, had their babies, and then when all their young were born, they would bite and kill you. Just so you wouldn’t be able to tell anyone that they were there.
My hands started frantically patting now. I’d seen a few sleeper-deaths in the seventh ring, and I was not going out that way. Not a freaking chance in hell. Coen’s eyebrows slowly drew together as he watched me jump around, shaking my hair out, flipping my head upside down and everything.
“Is it out?” I was shouting. Panic had me in its hold.
I didn’t fear much, but the creepy, multi-legged, weird-looking bug was high on my list. Almost right at the top. Only a few rungs below the recurring dream I sometimes had about someone dying and making me queen. Luckily, we no longer had monarchies, because it pissed the gods off too much to see us worshipping anyone other than them. So yeah, it was an irrational fear … but I still couldn’t seem to shake it.
“What is the dweller doing?” Siret stood next to his brother, both of them staring at me. “Has she lost her tiny mind? That was fast.”
Aros joined them on the other side and the slightest of smiles was visible at the corners of his full lips. “Pretty sure she’s trying to get a bug off her, I’ve seen this before in Blesswood.”
“Help me!” I shouted. What was wrong with them? Were they hoping I’d die from sneak-sleeper-attack?
Coen grabbed me then, huge hands wrapping around my biceps as he held me in place. I struggled for a click, before realising that it was fruitless. I was never escaping his grip.
“There is no bug on you,” he said slowly, like he was speaking to an idiot.