Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)(75)

“I need to wake Coen and Yael up,” he whispered. “They’re taking the next watch shift.”

“I’ll take over the watch shift,” I murmured back, pushing myself into a sitting position.

Siret was on my other side, and his arm slipped from my waist to my lap. I thought that I had woken him, but he only made a small grunt and slipped his hand into my dress, settling it against the warm skin of my hip. Aros’s touch against the side of my face shifted, and then he was turning my head back to him and pressing his lips to mine. It was a sleepy acknowledgement.

“Wake someone up if you get tired,” he said, before lowering himself back down. He knew better than to fight me on staying up.

I was one of them. Part of the team. I needed to pull my weight.

Even if pulling my weight turned out to be really, really, really boring. Several times, I thought I saw a rock move, but it was just the flicker of the dying fire making patterns on the cave wall. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there for, but when footsteps sounded at the entrance to the cave, I was almost relieved. I disentangled myself from Siret and Aros—who had both somewhat curved around me in their sleep, their hands claiming part of me to hold onto—and reached for the knife that someone had left on the rock beside my mother’s cooking pot.

I was so ready for a fight. Or anything, really. Anything but more wall-staring.

Unfortunately, the god who appeared was more of the scary-but-still-annoying kind than the attacking kind.

“Cyrus,” I said, a little disgruntled.

“Doll.” He was speaking almost in a whisper, though it still managed to carry the derisive tone that always underlined my nickname. “We should speak outside.”

I glanced back to my sleeping Abcurses, and nodded. He was right—if they woke up and found him standing right in front of them, there was no way that they would go back to sleep after that. There were only so many interruptions they would be able to handle before they gave up on the whole idea of ‘rest’ and decided to find a different cave to hide away in while we worked on a better plan.

I followed Cyrus out to the cave’s entrance, and then hugged my arms around myself as he kept going, further and further, into the cover of trees. It wasn’t warm and balmy as it had been earlier in the night: the air had a snap of cold to it now, and I started to wish I was wearing that stupid red robe after all.

“What do you want?” I asked, when it seemed like Cyrus wouldn’t stop moving.

He did, then, spinning around to face me. “So many things,” he replied thoughtfully, cocking his head as I drew level with him. “I want a change. A new system. I guess you could call me a revolutionary—but I also want to survive, and revolutionaries generally don’t have a great history of surviving.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn’t have much of a chance to argue before a flash of red in the trees caught my eye. I craned my neck to get a better look, panic starting to swell up in the base of my stomach. Flashes of red were never a good sign: especially out in an isolated, dark place.

“If you scream,” a grating, high-pitched voice announced from the trees, “I’ll make sure those boys of yours don’t wake up at all.”

“Rau,” I hissed, moving around Cyrus to face the cloaked man as he strode from the trees.

I pulled my knife up, holding it out in front of me with both hands gripping it tightly. I still had no idea how to use a knife in self-defence, which seemed like a substantial oversight given how often I ran into perilous situations. I thought about screaming through my mental link for the guys, but I wasn’t sure just how well Rau would be able to follow up on his threat. Could he really defeat them? Maybe he isn’t alone … I glanced into the trees to see if I could spot any more flashes of colour, but Rau was moving toward me quickly, forcing my attention back to him.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife—eerily similar to the knife I held in my own hands. Wait a click … it wasn’t just similar, it was the same! I glared down at the blade I held, feeling as though it had betrayed me in some way, only to find that I was clutching a short, smooth stick. It wasn’t even sharp at the end.

“What the hell?” I threw it aside, the panic inside me growing to an overwhelming point. “I didn’t know Chaos could do stuff like that,” I said, hoping that maybe if I started talking, Rau would stop moving toward me.

I glanced to my side, at Cyrus. I was almost surprised to see him still standing there, but then it dawned on me that maybe he had drawn me away from the Abcurses on purpose.

“Chaos can do most things,” Rau told me, that voice of his rubbing up my skin the wrong way. “There’s a potential for Chaos in almost every situation. You just need to know how to use it. But I can teach you.”

His eyes were gleaming, and I cast another look at Cyrus. Why wasn’t he saying anything?

“Did you set this up?” I growled out at him, taking a subtle step backwards.

Rau had stopped moving, finally, but he was still too close. I could see the spots of precipitation marking his robes from the damp grass, and the way his eyes flickered in constant appraisal of both myself and Cyrus, along with the environment around us. He couldn’t seem to keep his attention on one thing long enough to even identify what it was, before he was moving on to the next thing. I would have thought him distracted and skittish, except that his posture was braced. Ready for something.