I felt … lighter. Ever since I had accidentally-on-purpose overheard them discussing the pact, there had been a pressing weight on my shoulders, trying to tell me how to be and what was okay. I didn’t do well with restrictions, clearly, but now I was free again. We all were, and I was determined to keep my part of our new deal. There would be no more fighting over this.

“I’m going to clean up,” I announced, an upbeat tone to my voice. Turning to Siret, I added, “I’m going to need some kickass clothes, kickass boots, kickass glov—”

“I get the point,” he said drily. “You’re going with a theme, and the theme is—”

“Kickass. Yes.” I clapped my hands a few times. “Okay, great. Be back soon.”

I spun around, accidently causing Rome’s shirt to fly up a little—and I probably flashed some thigh in the process, but no one said anything. We were all on our best behaviour. Or at least I assumed we were. I was almost at the top of the stairs when the sound of a throat clearing caught my attention. Tilting my head back to them, I noticed none of them had moved an inch.

“What?” My smile was way too broad for our situation, but happy seemed to be radiating out of me.

I had wanted the pact gone since the very first sun-cycle of the pact existing, and I had finally won. No one answered me, and I felt my cheeks lower as my smile faded away.

“What?” I repeated, worried now that my one click of happiness was almost over.

Coen was the one to answer me. “Just letting you know that we’ll be called to the Sacred Sands Arena in fifteen clicks, and you need to eat. So …”

He trailed off, and I was starting to get the idea of where this was all going. We had just dissolved the pact, and I was heading down to the bather. They wanted to come with me and I wanted them to come with me, but I was pretty sure five and one was something we needed to slowly work our way up to. Besides that, if I wanted to keep the peace, I needed to be careful about keeping things even between them. I needed to delicately work out some sort of schedule.

“I’ll be quick.” Those words were pretty much thrown over my shoulder as I dashed down the stairs, tripping over the last few and tumbling to the ground.

A huff left me as I lay there. It was really unfair that I got a bunch of Chaos fire power, but I still couldn’t manage to stay on my own feet. I was grateful, though, that I managed to scurry up and hide in the other room before any Abcurse came to investigate the thump.

Pulling off Rome’s shirt, I folded it haphazardly and put it on a shelf. It probably should have bothered me that I had no real possessions. Hell, I didn’t even know where my things were that I had been holding onto. Most likely my fist-rock and the scraps of dress I owned were still in Coen’s room. My medical kit and poison antidote—the only things I brought from my village—were still with Emmy. She wouldn’t misplace them. No doubt my duffle was sitting neatly on my bed.

I fiddled with the controls on the wall, finally figuring out how to get the water to fall from the ceiling, I considered the reason why I had never bothered to retrieve that bag when I was first soul-linked to the boys. Part of me had never felt like a dweller. It wasn’t that I thought I was above dwellers, or equal to the sols. In fact, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I simply hadn’t felt that there was a place I belonged. I had never been a proper dweller, and I could never be a sol. I’d always just been me. A weird mess of a being who was determined to prove everyone wrong and live at least twenty life-cycles.

Everything in my duffle had represented a part of my old life. It didn’t fit me anymore. I wondered if it ever had. Or was it that possessions just didn’t mean much to me? I held on to the people I loved, which, before a few moon-cycles ago had only been Emmy. Now I had so much more.

Letting the warm, soothing water wash over me, I felt some of the frantic pace of my mind calm. I was so rarely calm, it was actually a novel experience. No thinking, just enjoying.

“Am I interrupting?”

My eyes shot open and I glared at Cyrus. “Get the hell out, can’t you see I’m enjoying my—”

I had been about to say my alone time, but his low groan cut me off.

“As much as I appreciate a woman enjoying herself, I need to get this soul-link reinstated between you and the god-squad out there. I’m … concerned about this little arena experiment that Staviti has cooked up, and I want to make sure they can keep Chaos from overwhelming you.”

I reached up and clutched the stone still hanging between my breasts. “I want to keep the link with the stone as well; that way I can have some distance from the boys without killing myself.”

Cyrus regarded me for a long moment, his eyes lingering on my chest. I was just rolling my eyes when the door to the bather room slammed open.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?” Rome snarled, crossing the room in a micro-click.

Without waiting for an answer, his fist slammed into Cyrus’s face; he had moved so quickly that I had barely blinked before the Neutral god was flying across the room. The problem was, he was flying right toward me, and even though I ducked, he still tumbled into the bather with me. Water splashed everywhere as his body slammed me into the hard base.

“Ugh,” I huffed, pulling my head out of the water and trying to get my breath back.

It was made even more difficult due to the fact that Cyrus had his head pressed into my chest.

“This makes us even for the last time, doll.”

Right. Face in penis. I remembered.

Leveraging my hands under him, I pushed with all of my strength, but he didn’t move an inch. I was just lifting my leg to try knee in penis when he disappeared—tossed across the room to slam into a nearby wall. I didn’t know which one of the guys had done that, and I didn’t stop to consider it because I could suddenly feel the strong swell of power in the room, making the air that much harder to breathe.

I scrambled up, letting out a gasp as the rest of the room came into sight. For the first time, I saw a real reason to fear Cyrus as the Neutral God. He was soaking wet, his hair slicked back—defining the hard, gorgeous planes of his face. His eyes were blazing, his shirt plastered across broad muscles. A wispy, white energy was forming around his hands, but the power building in the room had every hair on my arms standing on end. The Abcurses actually looked a little wary—not scared, I’d probably be dead before I saw that expression on their faces—but cautious.

“I came to reinstate the soul-link. I did not touch her.” Cyrus’s voice was low and rumbly as the walls shook around us. “I should have expected her to be naked … and I should have waited, so I will not … pursue this challenge right now. But if you touch me again …” His eyes were the coldest, soul-sucking pits of hell I had ever seen. I was chilled to my bones just looking at him. “I will not be so lenient,” he finished.

Some of the tension in the room eased again, and I blinked a few times as a thick, cream-coloured towel was handed to me. It looked as though my relaxing bather-time was up. I wrapped the huge length of material around myself, securing it tightly before Aros helped me out of the large bowl.

“Are you okay?” he asked, leaning down close to me before reaching out and rubbing his thumb over my lips. He pulled his hand back so I could see. There was a light smear of red across his thumb.

That bastard made me bleed?

Sure, technically Rome was the one who had punched him, but I loved Rome so it was easier to blame Cyrus.

“I’m fine,” I said, shooting my best glare at the Neutral God. “He hits like a dweller who’s in their fiftieth life-cycle.”

Cyrus’s lips twitched just slightly, and then he turned that frightening gaze on me. He moved then, his strides eating up the distance between us in no time at all. “You need me, doll. Don’t push me too far.”

Those low words were hypnotic as they filled the air around me. He lifted his arm, and Siret was suddenly between us.

“I need to touch her,” Cyrus growled. “You’re making my life much harder than it needs to be.”

He seemed frustrated, pulling his hand back to run it through his still wet hair. “My life was perfect, and then one favour for that Chaos asshole, and now …” He trailed off, and from my protected position between Siret and Aros, I saw the Abcurses exchange a look.

“You must have some kind of vested interest in this.” Yael crossed his arms over his chest, propping one shoulder against the pole he was standing near. “You’re getting all emotional. Who would have thought: Neutral has emotions?” He turned to Siret. “You owe me something D.O.D. wouldn’t want you to steal. I choose the pantera stone.”

“Alright.” Siret gave his brother a nod, but then lowered his head and cursed.

Those two had problems. Everything was a competition … especially with Yael. Rome was staring right at me—some of his rage had faded away, but his eyes were filled with turmoil.

I’m okay, I mouthed, knowing that he was kicking himself for sending Cyrus into me. His fists clenched, and I would have crossed to him, but I needed to remain where I was to make sure that Cyrus and the guys didn’t try to hurt each other. I also needed to get rid of Cyrus now: he stirred up too much trouble.

“Thank you for helping us.” I turned to him, trying to be diplomatic. “I’m ready for the link to be reinstated now.”

“Good.” He glanced from me to the others, and then seemed to change his mind, striding for the door. “Get dressed and meet me in the next cube. Alone. This doesn’t need to be a fucking group affair. It’s a simple enchantment, and I’d like to keep it that way—simple, I mean. The last time I needed seven people to do an enchantment, it was to fix the illusion that someone created to convince all the gods that they had woken up with the wrong set of genitals.”

“You can’t prove it was me!” Siret shouted after him, as Cyrus passed through into the hallways, slamming the door behind him.

The rest of the tension in the room drained almost immediately.

“Cube?” I questioned aloud, choosing to ignore the mention of genitals. Talking about them always seemed to get me into trouble.

“That’s what they call the marble residences,” Coen informed me, almost in an off-hand manner. He seemed to be distracted as he moved to the door, grabbing Rome’s arm as he passed. “Siret, put some clothes on her before it’s too late and she gets called to the arena without the soul-link intact. We’ve done enough fucking around.” He opened the door, motioned Rome to go ahead of him, and then turned to glance at me over his shoulder. “We’re going to have a quick meeting in Trickery’s cube—we’ll see you out on the platform after you’re done with Neutral.”

I felt like questioning his suddenly brisk and almost sterile attitude, but closed my mouth and nodded instead. I thought I understood already: we had an unprecedented arena match to prepare for, but instead, we were fighting like we were in the thirteenth life-cycle. Well, the rest of us were fighting. Coen was apparently being responsible and acting his age—whatever that was.

Yael and Aros followed him out, leaving me with Siret, who placed his hands on my shoulders and shook his head at me.

“Your Chaos is a force to be feared, Soldier. Only you would end up in a bather with a Neutral god completely by accident.”

“Now that I know about the Chaos … it’s almost unbelievable that I didn’t suspect it earlier,” I told him, watching his face for a reaction. “I really should have just stopped one sun-cycle—probably after setting something on fire through almost impossible means—and thought to myself: you know what, there really is only one possible explanation to this. I must be a race-less hybrid with the power of a god. Because why not? Right?”

He cracked a smile, and I felt the trickle of his magic over my skin as he loosened the towel I’d wrapped around myself. I felt the material drop at my feet, but he kept his eyes firmly on my face, which had me breaking out into a matching smile.

“I think that’s a very logical explanation to come up with.” He pulled back and looked me over with a nod as I felt the fresh wrap of cloth settle against me. “And with the way you’re dressed right now, I would totally have believed it. Now get our damn soul-link restored properly so that we can hear your disastrous thoughts a little more clearly. They’ve been coming and going ever since Cyrus messed with the link in the first place.”

I quickly glanced down at myself—taking in the boots that were definitely the ass-kicking type, and the soft leather pants and tight black top that he had woven onto me like a second skin.

“You’re brilliant at this.” I could feel my smile widening as I turned to walk backwards toward the door—an admittedly dangerous endeavour, but it was hard to drag my eyes away from his tousled hair and the bright focus in his eyes. “Thanks, Five.”

“Don’t let him touch you,” Siret warned me, becoming serious again. “Not any more than necessary.”

“He’s not exactly a horrible pervert who preys on rogue dwellers.” I reached for the handle and pulled open the door with a flourish, because the ass-kicking boots were giving me some serious confidence. “I think he just likes to tease me. And I don’t think he’s interested in me—I think he’s interested in what I represent.”

“Rogue dweller?” Siret was grinning again. “Is that what you represent?”

“No.” I pulled my head up a little in defence of my title. “I represent a flaw in the drive for perfection.”

Both of Siret’s brows shot up, and he took a few long strides to the doorway, until he was looking down on me from a height again. He compensated by lifting my chin and bringing my eyes to his.

“You’ve thought about this,” was all he said, his tone wiped of emotion.

I tried to nod, but his finger on my chin prevented the movement. “I have. A little. I mean … I didn’t write a sonnet about it or anything, but yeah I thought about it.”

“Tell me what you thought,” he demanded quietly.

I was starting to get embarrassed now, so I quickly forced the words out before I could stumble over them. “You’re all Original Gods—even more original than the others because you were created as children, and you grew up on Topia. They were created, too, but as adults. As beings that were already fully formed. You five are different. Topia formed you, and from what I gather, the magic of the gods isn’t so much in the gods, but in Topia itself.”

I paused when Siret’s mouth dropped open, but he quickly wiped the surprised look off his face and tapped my chin again.

“Keep going,” he urged. “Tell me the rest.”

“Well …” I averted my eyes, so that his reaction wouldn’t put me off my theory. It had sounded like a good theory inside my head, but I was starting to second-guess it now that I was spilling it all out into the open. “You five are almost perfect. The perfect beings. You never allow anyone into your perfect circle, and that is accepted because the gods prize perfection. It’s what they’re driven toward. It’s why they make everything from marble; it’s why they wear only pure colours, and they don’t mix those colours; it’s why they strip the humanity from the dwellers to allow them to serve; and it’s why they banish the old servers and bring in the new servers so often. It’s all in search of perfection. But you five found me, and accepted me, and haven’t let me go. I’m as far from perfect as a being can get, and that’s what has Cyrus so interested in me. I’m a kink in the system. An irregularity. Something unexplainable.”

Siret fell a step back from me, and his laugh was sudden and loud, shocking me to the core. I thought that he was laughing at me until he suddenly stopped, grabbed my face, and forced my lips to his in a hard kiss.

“Perfect,” he muttered. “You’re perfect.”

He released me almost as quickly as he had grabbed me, and turned without another word, striding down the short hallway and back into the main room. I followed, but he had already left the cube by the time I managed to shake off the paralysis that his kiss had put me into.

It was going to take some getting used to, these new rules.

Not that I was complaining.

I stopped by the small table in front of the fire, because it had been freshly laid out with food again—by means as mysterious to me now as they were the first time. I was beginning to suspect that there was another magical panel in the wall—one that somehow delivered food, just like the one that delivered water into the bather. I glanced up to see if I could spot anything, but it was just pure, unblemished marble. I grabbed an apple and made a sandwich from the selection of meats, cheeses and breads that had been set out, eating as I walked to the next cube and knocked on the door.

“We have manners, all of a sudden?” Cyrus questioned, pulling open the door.

“Just have my hands full,” I replied, waving the sandwich before his face and nudging past him to get into the room. “I had to knock with my elbow. Let’s get this done, shall we?”

Cyrus seemed to be trying not to frown at me. “Do you want to finish your sandwich first?”

“Why?” I asked, pausing before taking another bite. “Will it not mix well with the magic? Is this like that swimming rule that Emmy is always telling me about just in case I stumble out of Blesswood and into the river that surrounds the place, like some kind of out-of-control cart with broken wheels? Am I not allowed to have magic performed on me with a full stomach?”

“I’m sorry I brought it up in the first place,” Cyrus muttered lowly, before his voice rose to a normal pitch again. “Just … never mind. I need to touch you now—are you going to scream for one of your boyfriends and have them smash me into a wall? Or can we handle this without the drama?”

“It was nice of you to let him do that,” I smiled politely. “I really appreciate it, and I’m sure they did too.”

He sighed, rolling his eyes up for a moment. “Answer the question.”

“No, I won’t scream. Unless you have to touch me in any inappropriate places—and if you do, then I feel like your job as a rule-enforcer should be taken away because that’s an abuse of authority.”

“You’re right.” He narrowed his eyes on me. “I’ll make a complaint as soon as I’m done here. There has to be someone around here to handle complaints and deal with them accordingly.”

“They really don’t do any quality-control on you, do they?” I asked. “They do quality-control on the dwellers all the time; making sure they do their jobs and are still loving the gods and the sols with every fibre of their beings. Someone really needs to quality-control you.”

He groaned, grabbed the apple out of my hand, and shoved it so hard against my mouth that I had to bite down on it out of reflex.

“Make sure you bring breakfast every time we speak,” he said. “It was a great idea. Now hold still, and don’t scream.”

I tried to say I can’t scream because you shoved an apple in my mouth—but it turned out that I also couldn’t do that. Because I had an apple in my mouth. Cyrus seemed to find my conundrum funny, because his lips twitched upward into a self-satisfied smirk, and then he had his hand against my chest, right over the semanight stone. The smirk faded away almost instantly, and he closed his eyes.

He’s doing the intention thing, I thought, watching the focus on his face. Was that something they taught in the sol schools? And if so, who taught the Original Gods and the Neutrals?

They’d never had any reason to teach ‘control over god-given powers’ in the dweller schools, because they were too busy teaching things like ‘how to cook and clean and worship things.’ I hadn’t succeeded in many of my cooking endeavours, because objects and ingredients kept sneaking into my recipes that weren’t supposed to be in there. I also hadn’t been very good at the serving lessons, because I seemed to naturally repel order and cleanliness. The worshipping lessons I had actually excelled in, because genuflecting to a statue with my forehead against the floor had turned out to be a very comfortable sleeping position.

“You’re thinking very loudly right now and it’s hard to concentrate,” Cyrus complained, his forehead creasing in frustration.

“Sorry,” I muttered, after dislodging the apple from my mouth. I pulled it back up to take a bite. “It’s all in the intention, Neutral. Just a tip.”

“Thanks, doll. That’s really helpful.” He popped his eyes open again and wrestled the apple off me, attempting to shove it back into my mouth.

I managed to knock it out of his hand, but that unfortunately sent it bouncing to the floor. I watched as it rolled beneath a decorative side-table, and then I turned to the rest of my sandwich instead. Cyrus was already back to ignoring me, and I paused with my mouth half-full as pain fissured along my chest, sending a flood of darkness to the edges of my vision.

I quickly swallowed the bread that was trying to fuse with the back of my throat, and tried to muster the words to warn Cyrus that I was about to black out, but it was already happening.

Great, I thought, as my eyelids started to flutter. Try to fall forwards, not backwards.

I teetered for a moment, on the edge of luck and balance, before the forces that drove my life eventually won, and I started to tip backwards.