Strength (Curse of the Gods #4)(48)

“Freaking east,” I muttered, stomping harder as I followed them.

Our conversations were brief then as we picked up the pace. We travelled down the mountain, up another mountain and around a small river that fed back into the ocean. We were now approaching a dense forest, and I was hoping the pocket would be before the treeline.

“Are we there yet?” I huffed out.

“Not yet,” several voices grunted out in reply.

“I was really hoping it wouldn’t be in the forest,” I added conversationally. “I was killed in a forest just like this. Do you remember?”

“That’s not something we’re ever likely to forget, dweller-baby,” Coen told me, brushing aside some low hanging branches that would have smacked me in the face. “And we’re getting closer.”

Sucking in another deep breath, I pushed on, trying to enjoy the moment alone with my Abcurses. The trees really were bothering me, though. The forest was so much like the last one we’d been in.

“Think about the swimming instead,” Yael suggested.

Aros groaned before Yael had even finished his suggestion. “Gods, please don’t. I only have so much control. Willa’s thoughts drive me crazy.”

Think unsexy thoughts. Think unsexy thoughts.

Everyone laughed, except Aros, who groaned again. “The mantra is even worse than if you just tortured us with the thoughts.”

“New plan!” Yael declared. “Think about … your new energy.”

My feet were swept out from under me as Rome scooped me up and somehow managed to navigate a jagged boulder the size of a small hill. No doubt he knew that it would have taken me twenty rotations to climb it on my own. I relaxed in his arms, enjoying the brief respite from walking.

“It’s strange, my energy,” I told them. “It feels more controlled, and yet at the same time, I don’t really know what to expect from it. It’s almost like … I have no rules.”

Saying the words out loud made me realise how true it was. My energy didn’t seem to want to subscribe to a particular category of power. It was swirling so strongly—no part of it felt like ‘fire’ or ‘earthquake’ or ‘chaos’.

“Is that possible?” I asked. “For me to have multiple god-powers?”

There was a moment of silence before I continued. “Do you all feel your power? Are you able to tell that it’s Pain or Trickery? Will I ever know what I’m capable of?”

“You don’t just wake up one sun-cycle a god and know instinctively what your power is,” Rome told me. “Generally, you use the power and learn from it. There are cases of some gods who thought they had a particular power, only for it to end up another, closely connected power.”

“Exactly,” Aros chimed in. “Love and Seduction are closely-related powers, but ultimately different. For the most part, though, the moment you use your power, it’s pretty clear.”

Coen nodded. “Yep, like mine could have been electrical forces. There’s a god who can harness the energy of a storm, and my Pain mimics lightning energy. But I have no control over the weather.”

I felt the zap of his power run across my skin, and it was exactly how I imagined an electrical current would feel … right before it killed you.

“Chaos fits me,” I mused. “It encompasses so many different things. Anything that disrupts the normal way of existence, right?”

They didn’t have an answer for me, and I wasn’t even sure myself. It still didn’t quite feel right, and Cyrus seemed so sure that I wasn’t the Chaos Beta. So … what the hell was I?

Rome had set me back on my feet now, but he was still close enough to wrap his giant arm around me. The warmth he exuded—along with his intoxicating scent—was enough to make me lightheaded.

“The panteras might have some answers for us,” he said. “Try not to stress about it until we talk with them.”

By the time we made it to the pocket, I was exhausted enough that I could have fallen asleep right there in the woods, but Coen encouraged me through the lightly misting waterfall and pulled me through the magical energy without so much as a warning. Arriving in Topia didn’t curb my need to rest, however. I wanted to curl up with the Abcurses: the six of us together, safe, where nothing could ever tear us apart. This, of course, was pure fantasy, because I was pretty sure we’d never been so unsafe in our lives. Staviti was keeping a close eye on everything now. No one was safe.

We emerged in a part of Topia that I had never seen before. It was still lush, overflowing with life and colour, but the plants and trees were so dense that they seemed to be closing in on me somehow. I could barely even move through all the foliage.

“This is the Garden of Everlasting,” Coen explained, as we pushed our way through. “The plants here are resistant to magic and energy. They do not die. Every life-cycle they merge closer and closer. We believe that one sun-cycle, no one will walk through this land unless the garden allows them to.”

Huge, purple flowers hung from vines above our heads, intertwined with the large trunks and branches of the nearby trees. Instead of feeling claustrophobic, as might have been expected, I actually felt safe. I was overwhelmed by the feeling that not even Staviti would be able to see through the magical garden.

Tension I hadn’t even realised I was carrying eased from my body. My shoulders relaxed, and I started to move with more carefree abandon than I’d felt in a long time.