Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)(79)

Well, now I was a little bit terrified of Cyrus.

“You know I can’t stay hidden in here forever, right?” I walked away from them all, feeling the eyes following me.

The Abcurses were anxious. They wanted to touch me, to reassure themselves that I was really there, really real. I wasn’t sure how I knew that, I could just feel it. Just as I could feel their reluctance to reach for me with Cyrus in the room.

“It’s a temporary solution.” Cyrus sounded somewhat disgruntled. I supposed that was understandable, considering that he had just absorbed a curse and been tortured a whole lot, just in the name of saving possibly the universe but probably just himself.

“How close are we to finding a permanent solution?” I asked. “One where I can see Emmy, and check on Evie, whose face you almost burnt off, in case you don’t remember. I also wouldn’t mind punching Dru in the ballbags. And it would be nice to get my things from Blesswood.”

“I already brought them,” Aros spoke up. “You’ve been out for quite a few sun-cycles now. I checked on dweller-Emmy, too. She wanted me to give you this.”

He came over to the doorway where I had stopped, and handed me a small, cracked timepiece. It had been a gift for Emmy, from our mother. She never remembered birth-dates—or any dates, really—but that sun-cycle had been special. It had been one of the rare sober times, and she had returned home with a cracked timepiece and a wide-brimmed farmer’s hat with a hole in the top of it. She had told us to choose which present we wanted, and Emmy had chosen the broken timepiece, because she was never late to anything anyway. I had chosen the hat, because I could widen the hole in the top and pull it all the way down over my head, so that the wide brim acted as a catching-plate for all the food I dropped at dinner time. Emmy had hated my genius contraption, and it only lasted through seven dinners before it mysteriously disappeared.

I smiled at the memory, turning over the broken timepiece in my hand. There was now a chain looped through the top of it, and I turned without a word to the others, approaching my mother in the living room.

“Hi mu—Donald.” I held out the time piece. “I have something for you.”

She had been sitting on one of Cyrus’s white couches, her back ramrod straight and her eyes fixed steadily, unblinkingly ahead. She jumped to her feet when she heard me speak, and then bowed twice in short succession.

“Greetings, Sacred Willa.”

She stared at the timepiece—obviously not recognising it, and then reached out and took it from my hand, raising it to her lips. I blinked, confused, as she tried to bite down on it.

“Oh my gods.” I quickly stepped forward and snatched it out of her hands. “Why are you always trying to eat everything?” I looped the chain quickly around her neck, and then stepped back again. “You’re supposed to wear it.”

She looked down at the timepiece, and then back up at me. There was no emotion in her face, but for some reason … I was strangely okay with it. Maybe I was deluding myself, but I refused to think of her as simply a server: something separate to me and the life I had lived. She was my mother, no matter what form she took. No matter how drunk. No matter how forgetful. No matter how … dead.

“Thank you, Sacred Willa,” she said.

“Just Willa,” I tried again, turning away from her with a small sting of disappointment.

“Thank you, Willa.”

I paused, my head snapping up. The Abcurses were all standing in the entryway to Cyrus’s room. I met Siret’s eyes—because he was a little further in front of the others—and I could see that he was just as shocked as I was. I spun, slowly, but my mother was already back to sitting on the couch and staring blankly. I assumed Cyrus had probably told her to do that. Maybe she had started trying to eat his furniture. I glanced behind the guys as I walked back to them, seeing no sign of Cyrus.

“Where did he go?” I asked as I stopped in front of Siret. He didn’t reach for me, but I could still feel the pull in our soul-link that ached for closeness.

“He left—off to another of his secret lairs. Said we could have a few sun-cycles here to ourselves. Rest. Recover.”

I nodded, and cast my eyes toward the bed. Apparently, that was all the invitation they needed. Rome was already moving over to it, kicking his shoes off as he went.

“I could sleep for a whole life-cycle,” he groaned, picking up the mattress and sliding it from the bed frame.

I blinked, watching as he dropped it on the floor and sank onto it with another groan. Movement from behind me had me turning around before I could ask what the hell he was doing, and I noticed Coen walking into the room with another mattress dragged behind him. He dropped it beside the first mattress, and then kicked his shoes off, walked over to me, and pulled me right down beside him. I crumpled to the soft surface, my white robe fluttering around me, and he stretched me out until I was laying partially on my back and partially on my side, with him curved around me.

I’ve died and gone to Topia, I thought, as Aros tugged off his shirt, kicked off his boots, and dropped to the mattress on my other side, pulling my hands to his chest and tossing a heavy leg over my thigh. Yael and Siret claimed the rest of our makeshift bed, and I relaxed just enough for my body to sink into the heat that surrounded me.

“Does anybody know what I am?” I hadn’t really directed the question at one of them in particular, and so none of them answered me, at first.