Strength (Curse of the Gods #4)(14)

“Holy god-balls,” I breathed out, taking in the beautiful monstrosity.

“God-balls?” Siret questioned, pulling me toward the residence. “Why not, I guess. Try not to touch anything, Sienna likes her pranks and illusions, even if they’re at the expense of someone losing a hand.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“She’s not a very nice goddess. A god once tried to feed one of her longnecks—” he motioned to one of the pink bird statues out the front of her residence. It had a long, slender neck, topped by a tiny, mean-looking face with a sharp orange beak. “He thought the bird was real,” Siret continued, pushing open the door and pulling me into the first level. “It grew a giant snapper jaw and took his arm clean off. There was blood everywhere. I’ve never seen Sienna more pleased by anything. She couldn’t stop laughing. When people started slipping over the blood, I thought she would piss herself.”

I snorted, but quickly tried to mask it. That was not funny, not even a little bit. Except for the part where—

“Nope,” Siret broke into my thoughts. “There was nothing funny about it. I was having a perfectly decent night until that happened. The gods didn’t know what to do with all the blood—metals and such are usually unable to pierce our skin, unless we’ve been severely weakened by Minatsol. Sienna had to especially enchant the prank with some of Death’s magic so that it would break the barrier of our skin and draw blood. Everyone was freaking out about it. They all tore their robes off, but kept getting covered in blood. I think she must have come up with some kind of bleeding enchantment because I’m sure that amount of blood was unnatural.”

I was standing still in the middle of the room, Siret two steps ahead, tugging on my arm. He turned around when he realised I wasn’t walking, and took in my expression.

“That’s disgusting,” I finally said. “No wonder you didn’t want to touch me. I’m a maniac. A freaking blood-crazy maniac.”

“Technically, Sienna is a blood-crazy maniac,” he corrected me. “You’re just … a normal maniac.”

I shook my head to dislodge the images in my brain, casting my eyes about the room. The inside looked very similar to the outside: random and weird trinkets and pieces of furniture placed carelessly about. Different coloured robes had also been discarded here and there, some of them torn and some of them folded. Plates of food had been left out, and many many pitchers of drink were standing at one of the tables. The room was also devoid of people, just as the outside had been.

“Is everyone at the meeting already?” I asked, as we headed for the stairs.

“Yes, that’s why Aros needed to leave immediately.”

We climbed up to the second level, but Siret quickly stepped in front of me before I could clear the top stair, blocking my view of the room.

“What have you done?” he asked, his voice weirdly toneless.

“It wasn’t me,” Aros’s voice answered, before I could open my mouth. “I found her like this.”

I tried to push past Siret, but he was faster, tucking me behind him again. I was just about to make another escape attempt when his story from earlier came back to me, forcing me to hesitate.

“Oh gods,” I stopped, taking a step backwards. “There’s blood everywhere, isn’t there?”

“Let her see,” Aros spoke up, as Siret turned to face me. “She’s as much a part of this as we are.”

“She’s not,” Siret replied, his eyes on me, a frown weighing heavily at the sides of his perfect mouth. “She didn’t know what she was getting into, she didn’t know what stealing the cup would mean.”

These were too many riddles for me, so I sidled closer to Siret, plastering a confused look over my face, and then quickly slipped past him, evading the arm that he shot out to catch me. I paused after clearing the top step, shock forcing me to lock into place. There was a woman sitting in a wide, high-backed chair, a set of chains binding her wrists and ankles. Her hair was long and shiny, an ebony curtain that fell over her front to tickle her lap. Her skin was sickly pale, her eyes wide and unseeing.

“Is she d-dead?” I stuttered, when the goddess made no movement. “I mean, dead…er?”

“Worse,” Aros replied, the same frown on his face as the one marking Siret. “Her soul has been separated, locked into torment in another realm.”

“What realm? Minatsol?”

“Not a realm in the sense of another world, as you know Minatsol and Topia to be,” Siret began to explain, stepping up beside me, “but more like a pocket of existence where only bad things exist.”

“Like hell?” I flicked my attention from Sienna to Siret, to Aros, and back again. My horror over this situation was a slow build, starting somewhere in the base of my stomach and slowly travelling to my mind.

This wasn’t good.

A goddess was dead.

Goddesses weren’t supposed to die. They were supposed to be undead, immortal.

“Not quite like the myth of hell.” Aros stepped to my other side, his fingers reaching through mine, locking our hands together strongly. “It’s a prison-realm where things get trapped, and because they’re trapped, they’re in torment. There’s nothing there but torment and the inability to escape it. That’s where her soul is, and once it’s been sent there, we can’t get it back. She’s as good as gone.”