Strength (Curse of the Gods #4)(5)

“Stop laughing at me.” I forced the words out through a grimace. “And stop listening to my thoughts while I’m complimenting you.”

“Wasn’t laughing,” Coen countered, the smirk still in place.

“Neither was I,” Aros lied. I could feel him behind me now, one of his hands landing on the curve of my hip, his breath against my ear. “I was agreeing. In a way. I’d kill to become your robes right now, to cling to your—” His hand had inched higher, slipping from my hip to my waist, and then to my ribcage, before Coen was suddenly leaning forward and yanking it away.

“That’s enough of that, Seduction,” he ordered.

I could feel Aros tensing behind me and knew that another fight was about to break out, so I quickly slipped out from between them, marching off in the direction of a grouping of trees close by.

“Where are you going?” Yael called out, a few clicks later.

Away from you assholes! I shot back in my head.

“Willa!” Siret yelled. “Where the hell are you going?”

“Oh now they can’t hear my thoughts?” I grumbled, spinning around and cupping my hands over my mouth to shout back at them. They weren’t even that far away, so why the hell was it so hard to hear them? “I’m going to find your mother!” I informed them all. Why weren’t they moving? “And when I find her, I’m going to tell her that you’re all assholes!”

“How are you going to get there?” Rome shouted back, his voice strangely drowned out. “Are you going to swim?”

“Swim?” I replied, in a normal tone, before the roaring of noise behind me finally registered.

It had been a dull but constant sound back where we’d emerged from the secret door, but now that I was closer to the trees, it was deafening. I spun around, facing the small and scraggly woodland. The sound was familiar, now that I paid attention to it, and I ducked through the treeline to come alongside the top of a very steep waterfall. I glanced down and then took several hasty steps backward. Those rocks didn’t look comfortable. I quickly walked back to the guys and then … walked straight past them, marching in the other direction.

“Can you just admit you have no idea where you’re going?” Yael groaned, following behind me.

“I could,” I returned thoughtfully, as though actually considering his feedback. “Or you could just tell me where to go.”

He reached out and snagged an arm around my waist, pulling me in against his side in a quick and efficient movement. I dangled there, my feet above the ground, somehow managing to cross my arms stubbornly over my chest.

“We need to go through a pocket,” he told me, twisting on the spot and disappearing with me. I ended up clutching at him, my fingers tangling in his dark green robes.

Over the last seven sun-cycles, they had begun to wear their god-colours again, while I mostly just wore white. I was a neutral, without the neutral powers, or the neutral badassary—

“Not a word,” Yael interrupted my thoughts, setting me back down on my feet.

I glanced around us briefly, taking in—you guessed it—another marble platform, before snapping my attention back to his face. “Not a word what?”

“Badassery.” His eyes rolled briefly as the others all popped into existence around us. “It’s not a word.”

“Amended,” Siret broke in.

“Amended what?” I asked him, beginning to get frustrated.

“The legitimacy of badassery being a word. I just amended it. It’s now an official record in the tome of Known Words and Meanings.”

My smile was so sudden and so wide that it actually started to hurt my face. I ran the few steps toward where Siret stood, flinging myself against him. He caught me easily, chuckling as he drew me up against his chest, his arms tight around my back.

“Added,” Rome grunted moodily.

“Added what?” I asked over Siret’s shoulder. “And can you guys speak in full sentences please?”

“Added to the Known Words and Meanings record.” He was still talking moodily. “I added shweed.”

“How did you?” I broke out of Siret’s arms, happiness and disbelief bubbling up in me. “Your power is Strength!”

“I know.” He reached out, grabbed Siret by the back of the neck, and squeezed. “Add it,” he ground out. “Don’t make me look bad.”

Siret shrugged out of the hold, shoving his brother in the chest, though Rome didn’t budge much.

“All you had to do was ask,” he groused.

Love. This was without any doubt my definition of love. My fabricated words were something that frustrated even Emmy, the way I made up words and messed with the original meanings of everything. The Abcurses, however, barely even blinked an eye. They just rolled with whatever came out of my mouth.

“You guys love me,” I chirped, overly happy. My moods had been fluctuating quite widely, and it looked like this sun-cycle’s emotion was euphoria.

Before any Abcurse could speak—and I was really curious to know what they were going to say because a range of emotions were written across their faces—a light purr of a voice drifted across the marble platform to us. “Well, hello there.”

If seduction had a sound, it would have been this women’s voice. Smooth, slightly rich and throaty. This was a person who could hit the high and low notes in any ballad. Reaching out, I pushed Rome and Siret to the side, standing there like a moron. All I could do was stare at the god before me.