Strength (Curse of the Gods #4)(37)

Bored.

I snorted. “Right.”

“And I can’t do illegal things,” he added, ignoring my sarcasm. “I’m the one who punishes others for doing illegal things. I’m above the rules. I am the rules.”

“But I’m not.” I stood from the chair, planting my hands on my hips. “So when I go to carry out your rule-breaky tasks, I might get caught. When I’m caught, I can’t be like ‘I’m above the rules. I am the rules’,” I mimicked, putting on a deep, moody baritone. “They’ll laugh me right into the imprisonment realm.”

“The what?” Emmy spoke up, her voice holding that little hint of mania that I had grown accustomed to hearing.

“Tell you later,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth, before returning my attention back to Cyrus.

“It’s my decision,” he said dismissively, his gaze flicking to Emmy for a moment. “And that’s final. Now leave me alone, I have important things to do.”

Emmy and I both stared at the single word on the parchment, before raising our eyes to his face.

“Get. Out!” he shouted.

“That’s a great idea,” I said as I jumped to my feet and started shuffling back toward the door. “You should take your own advice. Get out, get some air. You’re going mountain crazy; it’s a thing, trust me—I was trapped in a cave, once. See, I wandered off from a school group and ended up having an unfortunate meeting with a mountain cat, so I ran into a nearby cave to get away from it … or her … or him. It didn’t exactly expose its underside to me, so I’m not sure on the gender, but you don’t look like you care about that particular detail.”

Cyrus looked like he wanted to gouge his eyes out. He was rubbing his temples in a shaky, agitated way.

“Don’t mountain cats live in caves?” he finally asked.

I nodded. “Oh, yeah. Apparently there was a reason it was standing right there, so close to the cave. It lived there! Fancy that. A few other cats also lived there. What a memorable sun-cycle. I almost lost my innards.”

“What the hell does this have to do with mountain sickness!” Cyrus was on his feet now as well, his white robes askew.

I stopped moving toward the doorway. “Right, well, I ended up crawling up into a small ledge. It had an opening that the cats couldn’t fit into, though they kept sticking their paws in and attempting to skewer me with their claws. They trapped me there for two full sun-cycles.”

Cyrus turned pleading eyes on Emmy. “Summarise, please. I just can’t speak Willa this morning.”

Emmy’s face grew tight with an approaching lecture, and I was starting to feel sorry for Cyrus. The poor guy: he seriously didn’t know what he was getting himself into.

“Firstly,” she began sharply, “if you stopped drinking so much, your brain wouldn’t hurt.”

Cyrus’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth, but she cut him off with a wave of her hand.

“Secondly, Willa is just saying that by the time we managed to find her, lure away the beasts and get her down from the ledge, she was delirious. They called it mountain sickness because she wasn’t the first dweller to get cornered by a mountain cat.”

“How could you tell the difference between mountain sickness and her usual sickness?” Cyrus asked dryly. “Was she talking crazy? Tripping over things? Or did she have a completely normal conversation with you while keeping her clothes on the entire time?”

I crossed my arms over my chest, choosing to be the bigger person and not acknowledge his words. Mostly because they were … well, accurate.

Emmy’s lips twitched, but she held in her laugh like a loyal friend. “It doesn’t matter how we knew. The part you need to worry about is the delirium she caught. Being trapped with stone surrounding her for many sun-cycles was enough to make her a little loopy. We all get sick from being inside too much, we need the sunlight and fresh air.”

“I’m not in a cave right now,” Cyrus stated, his tone far less snide than I had come to expect from him.

Emmy’s face softened. “Marble is still a stone, even if it’s smooth and shiny. You’re still always inside, secluded away, plotting to kill the rest of us.”

“It’s making you cranky,” I added.

Cyrus frowned. “Gods don’t get cranky.”

I could have rounded up half a dozen protesters to contest that—just by walking down the hallway, but whatever he wanted to believe.

“We should go splash in the ocean,” I suggested, excited at the prospect. Growing up, it had been something we couldn’t even dream of, but the vast water was suddenly surrounding us, trembling in wait at the base of the mountain.

For a click, I almost thought that he was going to agree, but as darkness flashed across his eyes, he dropped back into his chair. “You have duties, Willa. You’re a sol trying to be a Beta now, right?”

Wrinkling my nose at him, I grabbed Emmy and together we backed away. “You know that’s bullsen shit. Think about the splashing thing, it’s probably better that I’m not right in the midst of things anyway.”

“Especially after last night,” Emmy piped up, sounding less than pleased.

I swung my head in her direction. “What do you know about last night?”