Strength (Curse of the Gods #4)(28)

“Shouldn’t you be somewhere else, dwell—” she began, but was cut off as Rome’s hand shot out, colliding with her shoulder and sending her flying several feet across the room.

We all turned to watch as she slammed into a group of gods and sols, knocking them all to the ground, and then we turned back to Rome. I was sure that my mouth wasn’t the only mouth hanging open.

“You shouldn’t shove girls,” I stuttered out, though I was less upset about the girl being shoved than I was about the fact that he’d beaten me to it.

He shrugged.

“You really shouldn’t,” I repeated, sounding even less convincing.

Siret started laughing then, the sound causing even more silence to descend through the hall. We were beginning to cause a scene.

“Why not?” Rome grunted. “Nobody gets to speak to you. I don’t care if it’s a man or a woman, I will use my Strength against any of them.”

“You can’t ban people from speaking to me.” I rolled my eyes, but only a little bit, because I didn’t want to miss even a micro-click of the girl’s embarrassment as she apologised profusely to one of the gods, her fists still clenched and her face still pinched in anger as her gaze flicked back to me.

What the hell is her problem?

“Other than being shoved halfway across the room?” Aros answered my thought, laughter clear in his voice.

“I just did what we all wanted to do.” Rome apparently felt completely justified in shoving a girl across the room for daring to speak to me.

“People are going to speak to me,” I cautioned him. “They’re going to call me dirt-dweller, they’re going to threaten me, they’re going to try to get between us—” I was just about to get to the rousing and inspiring part of my speech where I declared that I wasn’t going to let any of those things get to me, but Yael cut me off.

“That won’t happen,” he growled, stalking forward and wrestling me from the other two, before walking me out into the centre of the room.

He released me and jumped up onto one of the tables.

“ATTENTION!” he shouted. Whatever conversations we hadn’t already cut off with our previous display, now ended. All heads turned in Yael’s direction. “There’s something you all need to see,” he announced, once everyone was silently waiting for him to continue.

I was standing there, waiting right along with everyone else. I wanted to know what he was going to say or do, but apparently his demonstration was done. He jumped down, his hands wrapped around my waist, and suddenly I found myself being lifted to the table.

“Show them,” he demanded. “Show them exactly what a dweller can do.”

I melted, my eyes on his. He hadn’t said show them that you’re not a dweller, but show them what a dweller can do. I wanted to jump down off the table and kiss him, and by the smirk on his lips, he knew that, but he shook his head, indicating the waiting people.

People. Ah, shit. I wasn’t ready for this. I hadn’t even attempted to use or unlock any new abilities since dying. My eyes darted toward Yael and he gave me a decisive nod. He believed I could do it, so I had to try.

Taking a deep breath, I turned so that I was facing the majority of those gathered about the room. I tried to widen my legs, for a more secure stance, but there were little grooves between the wooden planks of the table, and the edge of one of my boots got caught. My arms waved as I stumbled and I would have gone head-first into the marble below if Yael—no doubt anticipating my clumsiness—hadn’t caught and straightened me before any blood could be shed.

That didn’t mean the damage hadn’t been done, though. The crowd around us erupted into scornful laughter, the sound seeping deep into my soul. In that moment, I felt like I was a million life-cycles old, and so utterly tired. I’d been laughed at a lot in my life; so many times that I’d basically turned my every thought and movement into a joke. If you pretend for long enough that you don’t give a shit, and that it’s all fun and games, eventually some of it sinks in. Right in that moment, though, the raucous, biting nature of the laughter was too much.

I saw the flash of dark green in Yael’s eyes; his anger had my own flaring brighter. Just like Emmy, and so many others: I was no longer content to dwell in the dirt. I was Willa freaking Knight. Undead. With zero fucks left to give.

Flames shot up around my table with an almost deafening roar. I hadn’t been planning on doing anything quite that spectacular; they were a little wilder, and more out of control than I had expected. With a gasp, I yanked Yael into me, because he had almost been taken out by my wall of flames.

When he was up on the table with me, my breathing started to slow down. “Did I get you?” I asked, eyes frantically darting across him. I thought it looked like one of his sleeves was smoking a little, but he just shook his head.

“I’m fine. You did good, Willa-toy.”

In that moment, I realised that there wasn’t a single sound in the hall, other than the roar of my fire. I shifted from facing Yael to staring out over the top of the flickering flames, meeting the eyes of as many gods as I could. I needed to do this for dwellers, everywhere.

“You did that, Trickery,” a voice rang out. “She’s a damn dweller, they don’t have gifts.”

It came from a god I didn’t know. “Chalice, the Beta of suspicion,” Yael murmured to me.