Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)(57)

I could feel the heat of four sets of eyes focussing on me, all giving me that look that I was growing used to by now. That here we go again look. I ignored them all to finish my story, because I wasn’t going to let them intimidate me out of it just yet.

“My mother was the one in charge of punishing Emmy, and she—” I squinted at the form walking into the middle of the arena, toward Aros.

“She what?” Coen prodded, almost begrudgingly.

I squinted harder, even though I could see perfectly fine. I just … couldn’t actually believe what I was seeing. My eyes darted over the wild mess of blonde hair, and the familiar, stumbling walk. I couldn’t see the woman’s face … but I didn’t need to.

“Your mother what?” Siret demanded.

“My mother is about to battle a god of Seduction,” I found myself saying, my own tone sounding completely dull and emotionless. “She’s about to battle my god of Seduction. In a fight. With powers. Here. Now. She’s here. Now. In the arena. About to battle—”

“Fuck,” Yael cursed. “Someone grab her before she—”

I had no idea who he was talking about, because I was already slipping away from them. I intend to beat them to the arena. I intend to beat them to the arena. I intend to beat them to the—

“Gods-dammit, Willa!” Siret shouted from behind me. “That’s not how it works!”

I pumped my legs harder and gritted my teeth, focussing with everything I had, until the sunlight broke out across my forehead and the surface beneath my boots gave way to sand.

I spun immediately, holding both of my hands up to the four gods appearing directly before me, murder in their eyes.

“One more step and I’ll take my clothes off!” I warned them. “I’ll get naked and use it to cause Chaos everywhere and then I’ll steal my mother and … and kick Three in the ball—”

“We’ll stay,” Coen cut across me. “Go and fetch your mother. It’s clearly what they want, otherwise they would have never brought her out here.”

I nodded at him, and cast a quick glance to the others, just to make sure they weren’t going to fight me on the decision, before I spun and ran toward the vision from my not-so-distant past. Aros was staring from me, to my mother, and back again. Maybe he could see the resemblance, or maybe he was just reading the look of panic on my face. She had stopped moving toward him, but she wasn’t turning—she was focussed. I skidded to a stop right behind her, and reached out hesitantly. I was a little put-off at how still she had become, and the feeling only increased as she turned and I met her eyes. I could feel my stomach sinking, a heavy dread settling there, mixed with disbelief and hysteria. It edged up, working its way through my body.

“Mum?” I squeaked out, the word catching on a sob.

“That is not my name,” she replied, her voice formal and metallic-sounding. “I am called Donald.”

“Mum?” I screeched, much louder this time.

“My observation is that this Sacred One is broken,” she announced, turning to Aros and pointing at me. “Should I call for a healer?”

Aros was at my side in a blink, his arms winding around me from behind, tucking me in against his chest. I wasn’t sure whether he was restraining me or comforting me. I was too busy trying to process what was standing in front of me, and what it meant. The announcer was speaking again, but the buzzing of panic was too loud in my ears to make out what the voice was saying. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a door opening at the base of the arena, beneath the god-box, and several bodies moving through onto the sands.

“Willa …” Aros was whispering my name, his arms tightening around me.

I still couldn’t focus properly. The woman before me wavered, and I could feel a tingling at the base of my skull, a darkness creeping into the edges of my vision.

No! I couldn’t let the Chaos take over right now. I wrangled with my focus, trying to direct it back to my mother, but the swarm of bodies spilling into the arena was growing larger with every passing moment, until I was forced to turn and confront the scene. Tears were spilling into my vision but I swiped them away, and suddenly the bodies weren’t just bodies, but servers. And they weren’t just swarming, they were charging. Most of them were armed with weapons: not the rudimentary kind that you would expect them to have, but the fancy, ornate kind that you would expect the gods to have.

I stumbled back a step and grabbed onto the arm of my mother—Donald—the server. She glanced to my hand on her arm, as though surprised, but then seemed to forget about me as the other Abcurses appeared, slowly forming a shield around us.

“You need to get out of here!” Coen yelled over his shoulder. “The gods want to punish us, and they’ve finally figured out how. You need to leave—” He paused to wrestle an axe from the hands of a server that had tried to swing in the general direction of his torso. He threw the axe aside, raised his fist, and brought it crashing down on the server’s head. I watched as the poor man dropped immediately to the ground, and then as Coen took down another four of them.

“You need to leave because these servers aren’t going to stop.” Yael was shouting this time, throwing aside a spear. “They’ll attack all the sols and dwellers at Blesswood until they can get to you. We can’t protect everyone here unless you’re already safe.”