There was a beat of dead silence, before one of them groaned. Aros’s words were far less smooth than usual. “I’m out, guys.”
The sound of steps and then a door shutting followed. I knew I should roll over and get back to my feet, but now that I’d managed to make a fool of myself for the hundredth time in front of them, I really didn’t want to move. My ass was showing, but nothing else. Which seemed like something I could deal with.
Something warm draped over my body, and I lifted my head to find Siret crouched right beside me. “I thank the gods every single sun-cycle that you tripped into our lives, Soldier.” His smile was so bright, like he was on the verge of laughing. “But you really need to get dressed now, otherwise Chaos might get his wish.” He stood and was almost out of the room when he turned back and said, “Move that perfect ass. You have one click or I’ll be back to dress you myself.”
He was gone then, and the room felt so empty without them in it. I pulled myself up from the bathroom floor, praying to the gods—except Rau, that asshole was getting no prayer from me—that the floor in there was cleaned by a super-dweller like Emmy or Atti, and not a lazy, face-planting dweller like me.
Stumbling across to the pile of clothing left by the Abcurses, I found clean sets of everything I usually wore. Underwear, dark fitted pants, and a simple black shirt. My boots were sitting a little further away; I pulled them on when I was dressed.
I pushed the door open to find the Abcurses lined up and ready to get out of there. I caught Coen’s eye, since he was standing closer than the others. His gaze dropped from my face for a moment, settling on my chest and then flicking lower, before he quickly pulled his head up and stormed off down the hall. He really needed to stop looking at me like that. I was kind of regretting the nudity now, because my legs were a little too weak. It wasn’t good to have weak legs right before a kick-ass mission. Not that I had any experience with kick-ass missions. But … I assumed.
“Let’s do this,” I announced, filled-to-the-brim with a confidence that didn’t really make sense, since I had no idea what we were actually doing.
I knew that we were going to hunt down Elowin, and that she was going to wish she’d never messed with me on account of the five badass sols apparently hell-bent on defending any threat to their pack—a pack that I was now a part of. But that was where my knowledge reached a bit of a hurdle, because I didn’t know how we were going to get our revenge, and I didn’t even know if it would be possible. The boys weren’t normal, but they weren’t gods, and Elowin was older than them. Older—with more experience, and enough of a brain to get herself out of Blesswood. Just in case.
Maybe she was trying to draw them out. Maybe they also presented a threat to her natural order of things. Maybe she was pissed at them for dragging me out of my place and standing me above the dwellers; for excusing me from the duties that she had given me, and refusing to accept the repercussions of their actions.
Maybe … shit, maybe this was her revenge-plan.
“Her who?” Yael asked, as the others spun around and strode off. He must have been assigned Willa-duty.
“Elowin,” I said, hurrying to catch up with the others. “What if this was her plan all along? To draw you guys out of Blesswood—to get revenge on you for upsetting the hierarchy here at the academy?”
“What, and ambush us with a couple of sols?” Rome shot over his shoulder, flashing me a rare grin. He clearly found the concept amusing, so I shut up about it.
“Could you guys maybe stop hearing my thoughts?” I asked, only just realising that Yael had questioned something that I’d said to myself. “It’s bad enough that you’ve all seen me naked, and that you’re keeping the poor pieces of my soul prisoner—do you really need to butt into my private conversations too?”
“Firstly, it’s your own fault for talking to yourself so much,” Siret countered as we hurried through the abandoned hallways. “Normal people aren’t constantly speaking to themselves like they’re actually expecting an answer. Not that you should change it. It’s damn entertaining.”
I scoffed, choosing to ignore him. The anxiety was beginning to claw into me as the streaks of dawn sunlight began to flicker through the windows. I had felt some safety in the darkness, but now I was afraid that the world was waking up. Or, more specifically, that the gods were waking up.
“And secondly,” Aros added, glancing over his shoulder at me before following Rome up the staircase ahead, jumping four steps at a time without even a puff in his breath, “we aren’t keeping your poor soul prisoner. It’s keeping us prisoner.”