Strength (Curse of the Gods #4)(54)

“Show me Jakan!” I cried out, my hands flattening to the stone, as though I could climb through it and deliver myself to the base of the mountain with the two boys.

The glass remained blank, cloaked in darkness. I waited, and then I repeated myself, my words softer this time: a request rather than an order.

“Show me Jakan, please.”

The glass glimmered back, refusing to shift into another scene.

“Why won’t it work?” I asked.

“Jakan must not be connected to the land,” Aros replied, sounding just as confused as I was.

“He has to be.” I shook my head. “He was Staviti’s brother. He should be connected just like Staviti is.”

“He was Staviti’s brother,” Rome corrected me. “He must no longer be alive. What you’re seeing is the world as it was hundreds of life-cycles ago. Perhaps Staviti was the only brother to survive.”

“Was he a god, even back then? Was he born a god?” I stepped away from the glass, towards Leden.

I can answer many of your questions, she replied, but the others have forbidden me. It is not for us to choose a side in the battle between mortals and immortals.

“I didn’t even know we were in a battle.” I glanced from Leden to the glowing eyes behind her. There was a humming sound emanating from them. It sounded like some kind of warning, a resonance of disapproval.

We have allowed you to speak to the mortal glass. A deep pantera voice skimmed across my mind, seeming to echo all around me. The Abcurses stirred, as though wary of the sudden change in the atmosphere. It is time, now, for you to carry our gift to the Neutral God.

I was almost surprised that they actually had something for me to bring to Cyrus. I had been more of the opinion that I would have to figure out what Cyrus’s object was, before stealing it and sneaking it back to Minatsol. I had been agonising over how to ask the panteras what the object might be without alerting them to the fact that I was going to ‘borrow’ it. So far, the best I had come up with was: ‘if there was a god with silver-white hair, a drinking problem, and rage issues ... what might he want to steal from you?’ followed by, ‘can I hold it for a click?’

“What is the gift?” I asked, as the panteras inside the cave began to stir, moving toward the entrance at a slow and languorous pace.

It will be arriving very soon. Leden had been the one to answer me, her flank brushing against my upper arm as we followed the others.

We moved out of the cave and I turned to glance behind me to make sure that I hadn’t accidentally lost an Abcurse. Siret’s smile hiked up at the corners and Yael’s eyes flicked down my front, as though taking stock of me the same way I was taking stock of them. Coen nodded at me, his eyes shuttered, his expression guarded—we’re fine, he seemed to be saying. Aros held my gaze a little too long—causing me to stumble sideways into Leden, who paused until I had managed to steady myself again. Rome nudged his chin forward, indicating that I should start watching where I was walking.

I was about to do just that when the shifting of colour caught my eye. I could have sworn that one of the trees had moved. I stopped walking altogether, squinting at the entrance of the cave—except that it was no longer there. There was a forest there, right where the dark opening should have been. The branches interlocked thickly, time-worn roots threading through the ground, making it look like they had been there for an eternity.

“Where did the cave go?” I whispered to Leden, my hand on her silky mane.

Just as the mortal glass does not see the secrets of those unconnected to the land, it does not want to be seen by such people, Leden replied, her voice in my head almost a whisper now. The glass is selective—it will only appear for those who are connected, and the cave’s purpose is to protect the glass. By that logic, the cave will hide itself from any person who is not connected to the land.

“You mean ... a dweller is here? In Topia? That’s your gift to Cyrus? A dweller?”

Leden snorted out a gentle sound, possibly amused. There are many ways to be disconnected. For a god, it is the soul that connects to the land, not the body—the body is only a receptacle. If the soul is taken away, the person is no longer connected.

I opened my mouth to ask exactly how a soul could be disconnected from a person’s body, but the answer came to me before I had managed to voice the question. The imprisonment realm. I had seen it with my own eyes: Sienna tied to the chair, her dark hair falling about her, her wrists and ankles bound in chains. I thought back to Jakan, and how the glass had refused to show him. Maybe he wasn’t dead after all—maybe there really was a reason the glass had chosen to show me Staviti’s brother. Jakan was the key to figuring this out—I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I was somehow sure of it. My intuition is never wrong.

“Your intuition is wrong all the time,” Siret muttered, suddenly behind me.

“I can’t recall it ever being right,” Rome agreed.

“It was right about you five all being assholes,” I shot back, before glancing over at Leden. “Excuse the language.”

“They can read your thoughts, Rocks,” Coen informed me. “I’m sure they’ve heard worse.”

I turned and kicked a rock with the toe of my shoe, watching as it sailed toward his face. It had been a small rock, but I still found myself frowning at how he flicked it out of the way so easily. It wasn’t until I caught up to Leden again that I realised I had kicked a rock. With my own foot. As in, I had managed to do something slightly athletic without tripping and falling on my face. Kicking rocks was a very dangerous athletic activity, since it was so easy to misread the position of the rock and allow it to roll beneath your shoe instead of launching from the toe of your shoe—therefore throwing off your momentum and sending you falling backwards. That had been my previous experience with all rock-kicking attempts.