Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)(65)

“We can’t trust any of the gods right now,” Coen said, his voice terse.

I swallowed roughly. “I need to hear what he has to say.”

“You can hear from right there,” Rome countered.

With a loud exhalation, I stopped trying to move forward, and stopped attempting to pull my hands free. If I was being honest, I kind of needed the support anyway. Cyrus was relaxed, standing with ease; his bright eyes observing us all closely in the same calm and unaffected manner that he usually displayed. The disconcerting expression made me uncomfortable, and I didn’t even know why.

“Why are you keeping an eye on Emmy?” I asked.

He shrugged, his white robe lifting and shifting across broad shoulders. “I have a theory about how all of this plays out. I’m not going to ruin that by letting the dweller die.”

That made … no sense. Asshole.

Siret let out a low laugh from behind me, and I knew that my thought had been heard.

For now, I’d accept that Emmy was under Cyrus’s watch, and when he changed his mind about that—which no doubt he would—then we would deal with it accordingly.

“Why are you here, Neutral?” Aros bit out. He had moved close to my back, working with Rome and Coen to close me in.

Cyrus stepped to the side, revealing a crate sitting at the entrance to the cave behind him. It was made from wood and a golden, glittery metal: it was finer and more ornate than any storage crate I’d ever seen.

“I heard about what happened in the Sacred Sands Arena,” he announced. “Thought I would drop off some supplies and information.”

“Information first,” Yael demanded.

He was his usual, bossy self again, and there wasn’t a hint of the worry in his voice that I was sure he felt. I knew him well enough now to see the tension in his tight jaw and the muscles in his arms that were starting to stand out starkly against the dark tan of his skin.

Cyrus’s eyes flashed and his own casual geniality disappeared. “Staviti wants Willa. He is not going to stop until he gets her, and he doesn’t care how many dwellers and sols he has to destroy to make it happen.”

I’d already deduced most of that from what the servers had told me, but hearing it put so bluntly hit me like a punch to the chest.

“What does he want with her?” Rome was practically vibrating next to me, his huge body seeming to swell even larger as his voice boomed out.

Please don’t say kill me. None of the servers had attacked me. No Order Stick had been used on me, but maybe Staviti was waiting to do it himself. Maybe there was something specific he wanted from me before he did it. Maybe he wanted to turn me into a server like my mother, so that he would have a matching pair. No, that couldn’t be it, servers were made from dead dwellers. So what the hell was it?

Cyrus met my gaze full-on, his pupils burning through me with their intensity. “She is too powerful already, and will become the Chaos Beta when she dies. Rau has been trying to rally anarchy against the Creator, and if he gets the power of a Beta, he might just succeed.”

“So … he definitely doesn’t want to kill me then.” I laughed.

Cyrus’s brow wrinkled. “Of course not. If you die right now, you become the Beta.”

That was something I was aware of—but not in the same way as I was aware that I had blonde hair and a general lack of balance. It didn’t quite seem like a fact. It didn’t quite seem real.

“What is he going to do with me if he can’t kill me?” It was worth asking; being prepared was always a good thing.

“He will weaken you. He will make you wish and pray for death—but he will not let you die until you are too weak to cross into Topia.”

Everything inside of me stilled, fear seeming to attack my mind from all sides, prickling along the back of my neck. I fought through it, falling back on my usual coping mechanism.

“He’s not very original for an Original, is he? Torture and death, blah, blah. He needs a new bad-guy rulebook.”

Six sets of eyes locked onto me with matching expressions that I had become used to seeing. They were looking at me as though I was insane. Probably because I had a huge, beaming smile plastered right across my face. Admittedly, smiling in this situation made me pretty damn insane, but if I didn’t smile, I would lose it completely, and losing it wasn’t something I was ready for.

No one spoke; I wasn’t sure any of my guys could get words out from between their clenched jaws, so I tried again. “Maybe one of you should just kill me now? Then I’d be a Beta and it would be too late?”

It had been a random thought, but the moment I said it, it felt like a good plan. A great plan, even. Rome and Coen had let me go at this point, so I could turn and better see all of their faces. No one looked pleased by the plan.

“We’re not killing you,” Siret said. “Even if one of us was capable of doing that to you, Chaos would take you as soon as you became the Beta. That, or Staviti would find a way to end you with one of Crowe’s blades. You’d find yourself in the middle of a war. A war we might not be able to save you from.”

I pushed out my bottom lip, and for once, I allowed my face to show how troubled I was.

“Are you seriously pouting because we won’t kill you?” Rome blinked a few times.

I sniffled, and he threw his hands in the air, before whirling around on Cyrus—except Cyrus was gone, and all that remained was the crate. It looked like he had decided to bail before we started fighting amongst ourselves. My mother had no such qualms: she was opening the lid of the crate to reveal what was inside—from my vantage point, I could only make out the top of a bread loaf.