“Well …” I spluttered out. “Why were you staring at me like that? You went all dark and gloomy and I thought it was a sleeper.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, which felt like amusement, although the corner of his eye did the same, and that was more like anger. Before I could try to salvage the relationship I thought I’d been building with these sols, Coen freed my right bicep and traced a thumb over my lip. “You have blood on your face,” he said. “Were you hurt in the crossing?”
I stared at him as his thumb shifted, rubbing back and forth along the slope of my bottom lip. If there really was blood on my face, he was only spreading it around—which was hardly surprising, because he wasn’t watching what he was doing. He was staring right into my eyes, an intensely focussed look in his.
Before I could answer, Aros was in my face. “How could she get hurt? We were assured it was the same for dwellers and us to cross. And we were touching her!”
I found myself reaching out to comfort him, before deciding at the last moment that it was a bad idea. “I bit my lip, that’s all. I’m fine.”
I heard a snort from someone behind. Fair point. Fine might have been an exaggeration, but I wasn’t hurt from the crossing to Minatsol. I should have been more specific.
Yael, who’d been silent and distant, didn’t hang around any longer. He turned and started pushing his way through the thicker growth to the east. The rest of the Abcurses gave me one more look over, before following their brother. Siret nudged me, indicating I should go in front of him. Pretty sure I heard him mutter something about stopping me from breaking my neck, but I could have been wrong.
As soon as I stumbled free of the alcove of trees and bushes we’d been in, I realised that nothing in the hilly area we were in was familiar. Siret nudged me again; his brothers were already quite a few feet in front of us, so I picked up the pace.
“Where are we?” I asked, leaves and debris kicking up under my feet as I jogged to keep up with their pace. “This isn’t where we entered Topia from.”
He didn’t answer at first, and I wondered if he was just going to completely ignore me. Seriously? I was here because of their need to procure an item which probably did not originally belong to them, no matter what their story had been. Why would the gods care about anything a sol had? Instinct told me it had been stolen from the gods by the Abcurses in the first place, and the gods had wanted it back. I was the only sucker they could rope into helping them and now I was going to face a certain, painful death-by-angry-deity.
“The banishment cave is across the other side of Minatsol.” Siret’s voice was lazily drawled, like he could barely be bothered to answer. “We have a couple of sun-cycles walk to get home.”
“What?” I screeched, grinding to a halt. “But I was in Topia for like one rotation. I was with the Gods for like half a rotation. How could you five get to the cave in half a rotation if it’s going to take us a couple of sun-cycles to walk back?”
Siret nudged me again, clearly not liking my refusal to walk. “Those sun-cycles are going to turn into moon-cycles if you don’t start walking, dweller. Don’t make me carry you again, it’ll be far less pleasant this time.”
A red haze kind of washed over my eyes. I was so furious that when I opened my mouth, it actually surprised me that steam didn’t emerge. “You dragged me into this, how the hell am I going to explain being away from Blesswood for this long?”
Siret must have realised that I wasn’t going to move; he leaned down closer and spoke in fast, clipped tones. “To reach the banishment cave within Topia is fast, which is why we were able to get there so quickly. We are in Minatsol now, so there’s no quick way back to the academy. We could have gone through Topia, but the risk was too great with you having stolen something from the gods. They tend to take those things seriously; they would have been searching for you very quickly. Add on the fact that you stabbed one of them, and, well … It’s much safer on this side.”
Okay, that all made sense. With a sigh, I turned and started walking again.
“Oh, and, Rocks?” Siret added. I swivelled my head around to see him. “We’ll make sure no one at Blesswood punishes you for your absence. We have more than a little pull there, which is something you should remember.”
Whatever. Arrogant sol.