Strength (Curse of the Gods #4)(55)

“Come to think of it,” Aros mused, apparently joining in on my thoughts, “you have been less clumsy since your ... recent change. There has been less falling, tripping, and crowd-toppling.”

“More fires though,” Siret countered.

“Less fires actually,” I shot back, liking the idea that I might have left some of my clumsiness behind, in my other life.

“Well, bigger fires then.” Siret was smiling, raising his brows at me.

The panteras had stopped moving, coming to rest by the stream that they had made me drink out of before showing me the mortal glass for the first time. I allowed Siret’s smile to draw me over to him, and then I allowed him to draw me to the bank. We all took seats along the side of the bank, claiming large rocks that were nestled into the reeds. Whoever we were waiting for clearly hadn’t arrived yet, because the panteras were just milling around in preparation.

I dropped my voice, leaning toward Coen, who sat on the boulder beside me.

“Whoever we’re waiting for doesn’t have a soul,” I whispered.

His head snapped toward me, his eyes darkening in some kind of warning. “What? How do you know that?”

“Leden told me.”

“She told you we’re meeting someone with no soul?” Yael hissed out, jumping from his rock and moving in front of me. Very quickly, I was surrounded by Abcurses.

“Sort of.” I shrugged a little. “She implied it. That’s why the cave disappeared. It won’t show itself to a person unless they’re connected to this land. Whoever is coming isn’t connected.”

“Is it a dweller?” Siret asked, his brow furrowing, his green-gold eyes flicking to the nearest grouping of panteras.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Maybe, but she seemed to imply that it was a god. A god without a soul.”

“It’s not possible.” Rome sounded angry, or maybe it was a hint of fear. Neither option was good news for me.

“It is though!” I paused, working my tone back to a whisper. “The imprisonment realm, remember?”

“That’s my point.” Coen seemed to be agreeing with Rome. “If they’re locked in the imprisonment realm, they can no longer access their body. They’re locked away, removed from themselves. They can never return and they can never truly die. That’s the whole point of the imprisonment realm—you may never return to your body, and it’s the only way to separate the soul from the body.”

My mind flashed back to Jakan again, and I briefly entertained the thought that Jakan himself was the person we were waiting for. He was Staviti’s brother, after all. If anyone could escape the imprisonment realm and find a way to access their body again, it would be the brother of Staviti.

Rome was shaking his head, listening to my thoughts. “Cyrus would have told you if he expected you to smuggle Staviti’s long-lost brother into Minatsol, and you saw the glass when you asked to see him: that man is long gone, or long lost. Cyrus specifically asked you to fetch an item, not a person.”

“What kind of item could a soulless person possibly have for Cyrus, though?” I wondered out loud, even as the panteras began to display signs of agitation, knocking their hooved feet into the ground and flexing their giant wings.

I stood, the others pressing in close about me. Our guest had arrived.

The man didn’t have to push through the panteras—they got out of his way on their own, practically repelled. The air around him crackled with energy, and whatever inbuilt system I had to warn me of danger was currently going haywire.

Run!

“Abcurses don’t run, Soldier,” Siret murmured close to my ear.

“Are you sure?” I fired back, watching as the tall stranger moved closer. “This no-soul-guy is kind of scaring me.”

Aros, looking far more relaxed than he should have, casually crossed his arms. “It’s just Crowe, nothing to panic about.”

Crowe. As in … the freaking God of Death? That sounded like the definition of a great time to panic. No wonder the cave didn’t want to show him the glass. Crowe was the only Original God capable of killing other gods—unless Staviti could un-create gods as easily as he created them. Crowe was still a god, though, so the only explanation for the cave hiding was that Crowe had somehow lost part of his soul.

He stopped about ten feet from us, his black robes swinging gently in the breeze. I found myself examining him closely, imprinting his face in my mind. Crowe wasn’t at all like I had imagined him … though I really had no idea what I had expected. He was taller than Rome by at least a foot; he towered over almost everything around him. His hair was like burnt gold, brushing across the top of his shoulders, thick and straight. His features were slashed together in angry, hard lines, but this didn’t make him unattractive.

His eyes met mine and I managed not to gasp, even though I wanted to. His entire pupil and iris were black, swirling mesmerizingly. For a moment I wondered if he was blind.

“I can see you.”

His voice was deep, and it felt like it infiltrated into my brain, tendrils digging deeper with each word.

“You can also read my mind, apparently,” I said.

At this stage I was on the verge of just assuming that every god could read my mind and that I’d have to adjust my thoughts accordingly from now on.