Strength (Curse of the Gods #4)(42)

Cyrus was smiling, but it was humourless. He knew that I wasn’t a Chaos anything, and he was calling me on my bluff ... but why? So that I didn’t make his life complicated by insisting that I train at Champions Peak? Or ... understanding suddenly dawned on me. He was worried that word of a Chaos sol would get out to the gods, and then Rau would realise that he had been betrayed. That Cyrus had lied to him. I hadn’t ascended to Topia as a Chaos Beta, I had ascended as myself, but Rau didn’t know that. All he knew was that I hadn’t ascended as his Beta, and that I was supposed to be dead.

The most logical explanation for him to draw would be that Cyrus had lied to him, and that I hadn’t really died.

Would that mean Rau would start trying to kill me again?

Did I really care, if I couldn’t die?

Did I really trust that I couldn’t die?

“Let’s just focus on the important question for right now,” Siret whispered behind me. “Do you care if Rau finds out about you being here?”

“No,” I answered Siret loud enough that Cyrus thought I was talking to him.

His brows crinkled, his eyes glimmering. “No what?” he asked.

“No, I’m not going to let you take this opportunity away from me,” I told Cyrus. “This is what happens when gods try to plan everyone’s futures as though it’s their right. If there is a stronger Chaos sol out there, they’re welcome to come and take my place, but until then, you have a Chaos dweller, and I’m going to teach myself.”

“I supposed it would be an impossible task, keeping this hidden forever,” Cyrus muttered. I knew what he was talking about, but the sols in the room would possibly assume that he was talking about there being a dweller with Chaos powers. “Very well, Willa. You can have your place here, I just hope you’re ready for the kind of attention that will bring you. See me after you have finished teaching yourself. I will have your assignment ready.”

I nodded, turning my back on him as we all spread out through the alcoves. I noticed that the girls all took seats, while the Abcurses stood, lingering by the entrance to the alcove. I glanced around, trying to figure out what to do with myself. Rome dove into his teaching session without much of pause. I watched as he reached over and broke off the arm of one of the couches, tossing it at his student.

“Do that,” he told her.

She reached over and did the same thing on the other end.

Rome shrugged. “Can you crush someone in a hug?”

“Not yet,” she answered, brushing at the blunt line of her fringe. She was scuffing the toe of her boot against the ground, glancing from Rome to the other sols and back. “Should I be able to do that?”

“Yeah, probably.”

I turned away from them, mostly so that I wouldn’t start laughing. Rome was not the teacher type. He was definitely more the crush things into pieces while grunting incoherently type, and he was trying his best to utilise those exact skills in his task.

Beside Rome, Coen sighed very loudly. “I’m not going to teach you shit,” he told the small, dark-featured girl sitting before him.

“Why?” she shot back, colour rising to her cheeks. She shot to her feet, shifting her eyes over to me, and then back to him. “You have to. That’s your job.”

“I don’t need to,” he sneered. “You want to cause pain, but there’s nobody here you can experiment on. I don’t believe it’s a skill you should practise at all, unless you really need to, so fuck off. Find something else to do.”

She stalked away from him, shoving her shoulder into mine as she passed. Pain shot through me, from my arm to my centre, sharp and fiery. I bit down on my lip, turning to watch her so that the guys wouldn’t see the look of pain on my face. When I had myself under control, I tried to shake it off, turning back around again.

Coen was now sitting on the couch that the girl had vacated, his feet kicked up on the other couch, his muscled arms folded behind his head, his eyes closed in respite.

Beside him, Yael and Aros were huddled together, whispering. Their students were sitting beside each other on the couch opposite them, talking to each other in a very surface kind of way, as their attention was almost entirely still on the two brothers. I shook my head, turning to find Siret, except that he wasn’t there. I blinked, striding forward. Gone.

“Where’d he go?” I asked the sol he was supposed to be teaching.

She was sitting on the couch, still awaiting instruction. “He’s right in front of you.” Her voice was laced with irritation, her words spoken hurriedly. She quickly flicked her eyes back to a spot in front of her.

“Yeah, Rocks.” Yael was beside me now, a smirk on his face. “He’s right there, teaching and instructing like an obedient god. Why do you have to be so dismissive of him like that?”

My mouth was dropping open, but I was distracted by a thunderous, grating sound from the other side of the room. I peeked around Yael to discover that Rome had pulled a marble tree branch clear from the divider wall behind him, leaving a gaping hole that looked into another room beyond them. A sol boy appeared in the opening, staring through at us. He opened his mouth, seemingly forming words, but I couldn’t hear anything.

“An enchantment,” Yael answered my unasked question. “Each of the alcoves is sound-proof. You shouldn’t be able to see between the marble branches, either, but I think Strength just poked a hole in that enchantment.”