Strength (Curse of the Gods #4)(79)

That voice was definitely not one of my guys, unless one of them had gotten decidedly feminine in the last few rotations—or however long I’d been out for. Whatever was in the liquid, it worked almost immediately, and whatever hold I’d had on reality faded away again.

The next time I woke, the pain was almost at a manageable level, so I pushed through the fuzziness in my head and forced my eyes open. The first thing I saw was an arm: bare, bronze, and well-muscled. It was not my arm, but it was an arm that was very close to my heart. Literally and figuratively.

I wiggled up in the bed, pausing when I realised that I was in bed with five sleeping gods. All of my gods. They were sprawled around me, keeping me at the centre of them all.

Coen’s arm was the large one I’d first seen. Yael’s was close to his.

I started to cry. Tears flooded my eyes and trailed down my cheeks as I sat there and watched the gods. It wasn’t until a calloused thumb wiped away one of my tears that I realised they weren’t really sleeping anymore. No one said a word as they pulled themselves up, surrounding me, pressing in closer. I ended up with Siret behind me, Yael to my right, Coen to my left, and Aros and Rome in front. I was the centre, the Abcurses a circle of heat around me.

“Where is Emmy?” I acknowledged the most pressing pain in my heart. Tears ran unchecked down my cheeks, wiped away by a different Abcurse each time, their hands pressing to my face as they touched me.

Before anyone could answer me, a tall, thin woman walked into the room. It only took one glance to assure me that it was a god. She was stunning, her hair extra-long and perfect, her eyes sparkling with beauty, her cheeks so damn rosy. Unnatural. Her beauty was unnatural.

There was no wariness in the boys, but there was something familiar about her that I couldn’t place.

“Pica,” Aros said.

Oh, Pica. Wait a freaking click … Pica? Like, the one god Staviti was in love with? The literal Goddess of Love? Her name was ringing some sort of bell for me … was she at the Peak? Had someone said that?

For the first time, I noticed my surroundings. We weren’t in our rooms. I was in a huge bed—clearly, because it fit five massive gods with ease—but the room beyond that was unfamiliar. There was a lot of pink, however. Bright pinks, pale pinks, even a nice purple-pink floral design near the door.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Where are we?”

Rome cleared his throat, laughter in his words when he said, “This is Pica’s home. She … invited us to stay with her for the next little while.”

Pica hurried forward then until she was standing right at the end of the bed. “I’ve waited a long time to meet you, Willa.”

I just blinked, waiting for my brain to figure out what she meant. “You’ve waited to meet me?”

She nodded, her eyes wide and bright. “Oh, yes, I think of you as the daughter Staviti stole from me.”

Say what now?

“Uh, I’m really confused,” I finally admitted. “What happened on the Peak? Where is Staviti? How are we not all dead?”

The moment I said dead, the mental image of Emmy sprang to mind. Those lifeless eyes would haunt me forever. My tears were still flowing. I couldn’t seem to shut them off.

“Someone tell her already,” Rome finally bit out. “If I have to see her cry like this for one click longer, Pica will be building herself a new kidnapping room.”

Kidnapping room? I thought she’d invited us.

“It was sort of a ‘impossible to refuse invitation,’” Yael admitted, reading my thoughts.

“Emmy is alive, dweller-baby,” Coen announced, distracting me from that disturbing statement. He lifted a hand and gently wrapped it around my face. “You saved her life. You …” He cleared his throat, sharing a look with the others before he finished. “You turned her into a god.”

My world stilled. Even the breath that had been rattling in my lungs stopped. I just stared at him.

“She’s in shock,” someone murmured. “Get the dweller-Emmy so she can see for herself.”

I don’t know who left, or what happened, because I was still frozen in place.

It wasn’t until familiar blond hair appeared in my vision—along with familiar blue eyes, and a familiar smile—that the icy hold on me cracked.

“Emmy,” I sobbed, caving forward on myself, arms wrapping across my chest like I could hold my heart inside from where it was trying to burst out.

She pushed through the Abcurses before basically crawling into my lap. She enclosed me in her arms, and I sank against her. “How is this possible?” I cried against her neck. “I saw you die.”

“You saved me, Willa.” Her voice was low, serious. “You shared your energy with me. You brought me back to life.”

“And almost goddamned killed herself in the process,” Siret muttered from nearby.

“Emmy is a god,” Pica trilled. Damn woman was so chirpy; she was making it really hard for me to cry in peace. “We don’t know what she’s a god of, yet, but we’re all expecting big things.”

I pulled back, then, to get a closer look at Emmy. “But, you look the same?” I questioned. “Shouldn’t you look different?”

Emmy shook her head, and the most breath-taking of smiles spread across her face. “You look the same. Becoming a god doesn’t change your outside, but I promise, I have never felt so strong in my life.”