Strength (Curse of the Gods #4)(22)

Someone started freaking out then, and I glanced over the heads to what seemed to be a small crowd pushing in on a female. She was flailing about, as though trying to escape, and she kept shouting something about not wanting to die. Cyrus audibly sighed, the sound carrying over the platform through whatever means he had been using to amplify his voice. He raised his hand, an exasperated look on his face that was clear even from where I was standing. The crowd suddenly sprang away from the girl and she lifted into the air. Her freak-out got even worse then. She started screaming—not in a pained way, but in an I’m floating and I don’t know why kind of way—until Cyrus flicked his hand to the side and her body jerked rapidly over the heads of the other sols, flying right off the side of the platform as though she’d been a bug crawling on his robes.

I blinked in horror at the spot where she had disappeared, hearing the sound of her screams getting further and further away until they suddenly stopped. Cut-off. Because Cyrus had thrown her off the gods-dammed mountain.

“And you can consider that an early sacrifice. She could have been a god, but instead, she’s going to wash away, unclaimed, a useless waste just because she couldn’t keep her shit together.” His voice boomed over the platform again, setting my teeth on edge. “My name is Cyrus, and I’ll be running this Academy. Don’t annoy me. Don’t get in my way, and don’t throw any tantrums unless you want your blood to paint the rocks at the base of this mountain. Any questions?”

“Maybe you should tell them where they will be sleeping,” a dry voice answered, projected as strongly as Cyrus’s voice had been. I wondered if all gods had that ability, or just the bossy ones.

The speaker was a woman, red hair cascading over one shoulder, braided along the other side. She was wearing shimmery silver robes and her mouth was hooked up into an amused grin.

“Right.” Cyrus was downright scowling now. “You’ll be sleeping in special rooms set into the sides of the mountain. You will have a single dweller assigned to your needs for the life-cycle—they will be kept in your lodgings unless you push them out. Be warned, however, that if you kill your dweller, it will not be replaced. Any other questions?”

He enunciated that last part almost as a dare, and I was pretty sure that nobody was brave enough to ask any more questions, until the silver-robed woman spoke up again.

“Maybe you should tell them how to get there,” she suggested, crossing her arms over her chest, her smile growing. She clearly wanted to die.

Cyrus seemed to agree. His eyes narrowed on her for a click, like he was committing her face to memory, and then he turned to the sols—who were now all too frightened to move, speak, or breathe.

“Figure it out for yourselves,” he snapped. “As soon as the sun rises, your training will begin. You will return to this platform to meet with your trainer—it is up to them to punish you if you are late, and believe me, they will. This is as much a waste of their time as it is mine.” And with those words, he turned and stalked away.

“Come on,” Emmy muttered, her temper clearly rising, if her tight grip on my arm was any indication. “I already know where they’re putting everyone, they had us set up the bed-mats earlier.”

I didn’t argue, and surprisingly, neither did the Abcurses. We followed her as she led us from the platform; we were the first to leave the marble hall—the other sols were too busy freaking out. Thankfully, the exit was on the opposite side to where the screaming girl had been tossed off. We passed down several sets of stone staircases that had been built into the mountain, curving around the outside and leading to different platforms and structures built into the rock. Eventually, we came to a much larger opening, almost like a cave, though I could see light at the other end. It was a gigantic tunnel through the heart of the mountain, with lanterns swinging from the rock ceiling. There was a wooden sign also swinging from the ceiling, chains dropping it down so that it hung above the entrance to the tunnel.

The Falling Caves, it read.

“Please, gods, no,” I muttered, looking from the sign to Emmy’s grim face, and back again.

“Figures,” Rome grunted. “He wants to make the sols stronger, not pamper them.”

“I think I should just go tell everyone I’m not a sol,” I decided, spinning on one foot.

“Not so fast,” Aros chuckled, catching me before I could escape, his arm wrapping around my waist and pulling me back. “You’re really going to tell Cyrus that you’re not a sol? The god who killed you?”

“Wait …” Emmy’s voice was hoarse, barely above a breath. “Wait …” now she seemed to be struggling to breathe at all. “What?”

“Oh, right,” I started casually. No more avoiding this conversation. “I’m dead. Cyrus killed me.” Still a bastard. Just ask the girl who sailed off a cliff.

Emmy staggered back, her hands reaching out to press against the nearest wall. “I don’t … understand.”

That made two of us.

With a sigh, I took a step closer to her. Just in case she collapsed. I owed her for the last million or so times she’d caught me. “It’s a long story, and right now I don’t think we have time to go into all the details. Let’s just say that Rau was trying to make me into his Beta, and Cyrus was trying to stop that from happening, and the only way he could think to do that was to stab me and let me die in his arms. Then he smuggled me into Topia—to the Abcurses.”