I already knew that the plan was to get Evie to a healer, and I assumed that it would be easy enough for me to separate myself from them in the chaos of the moment, but I had no idea what I was going to do after that. Cyrus had said that he would check on me, which meant that he was somehow already keeping an eye on me. I just needed to get somewhere private before I could test that theory, and I couldn’t do that with Dru breathing down my neck.

“Shouldn’t you be carrying her?” I asked pointedly, as Emmy struggled to get Evie out of the cart.

Dru glanced at them, and then shrugged. “I suppose.” He managed to squeeze himself out of the cart through the other door, before pulling Evie free and lifting her into his arms. “You,” he narrowed his eyes at me, sticking his head back in through the door, “you need to follow us—you can’t wait here.”

“Sure,” I lied. “I’m right behind you!”

We were in a densely populated area of Soldel, lots of small hut-like dwellings bunched close together. Dru seemed to know where he was going: he moved with purpose, which gave me a surge of confidence that he was really going to get her help. I moved with them for a few clicks, wanting to make sure that they were almost inside before they noticed me gone. Relief hit me as I saw that one of the huts we were moving toward had a small healer symbol above the door. It was a simple emblem: the crossed arms with clenched fists on the end to show the power of a healer.

I turned to bail, but my feet froze. There was one thing I needed to check first. “Are you sure this healer is going to help a dweller?” I called out to Dru. “Sols don’t usually care that much about whether or not we die.”

Evie was most probably injured because of me, and I needed to make sure that she would be taken care of before I disappeared. Dru paused, before turning back slightly to see me better. Some of the sheet had fallen off Evie and I couldn’t stop my gasp. She looked terrible, hanging limply, her pale skin red and splotchy. There were angry weeping sores scattered over every inch of skin that I could see, and it looked as if half of her bushy hair was gone. I had to swallow hard multiple times to keep the contents of my stomach from erupting. At my side Emmy had her hand pressed against her mouth, her face a chalky white as she stared.

Had I actually done that?

“I know this healer.” Dru looked semi-serious, his usual joking façade fading. “She will help if I tell her to.” I must not have looked convinced, because he hurried on. “She’s going to be fine. Right now I’m keeping the dweller unconscious, which will help with the shock and pain. She shouldn’t remember any of this when she wakes.”

“Is that your gift?” I realised that I had never even wondered what Dru was capable of as a sol. They were almost always gifted in something. I would have guessed that his was weight-lifting, or dweller-shot-put. You know, something which required biceps as big as thigh muscles.

He was turning away again, and I was glad to see that he did not take lightly the urgency of healing Evie. I was sure he wouldn’t answer my question, but to my surprise he did call back to me, “Yes, I am gifted with Psyon. I can dull the senses. Cloud the mind. Manipulate the brain waves.”

Something creepy would have been my second guess … so that sounded about right.

Emmy dropped her hand then, her breathing heavy and ragged. “She’s going to die. Those burns, they’re … they’re so bad, Will.”

I took a step toward her, my arms wrapping around her shoulders, as I pulled her into a tight hug. “Dru said she would be fine. We have to believe that he knows the capability of this healer. I need you to go in there and make sure that they don’t treat her like a dweller. Lie if you have to. Tell them she’s sleeping with the chancellor’s grandson and he would be pissed if she died.”

Emmy let out a strangled laugh. “Not even a lie, so should be easy to sell.”

Not a li … Oh, gross. Nobody needed to be that dedicated to a cause, even a good cause.

Emmy started walking then, only to suddenly realise what I had said. “Why will I have to make sure Dru and this healer don’t slack off on Evie? Where are you going, Willa?”

She had her school teacher voice on again. I was obligated to answer. “I need to track down a god.” My voice lowered on the last word. “I think he knows something about what is going on with my blackouts, and the fire, and a tonne of other things. He won’t visit when others are around though, so I need a moment alone.”

She stared me down for a few tense micro-clicks, and I tried not to squirm like I was lying. Because for once, I really wasn’t.

“Is this god an Abcurse?” she finally asked.

I shook my head. “No, they’re all in Topia. For … reasons.”

Emmy brushed that away like she really didn’t give a shit. “If there wasn’t so much going on I would have realised earlier how weird it was that they let you out of their sight.” Her eyes got really huge then. “You’re out of their sight, Will! The link … how are you not dying in pain right now?”

She lurched toward me, hands held out in front of her as though she could stop the pain just by touching me. I was the one now to wave her concerns aside. “That’s why I have to find this god. He did something to temporarily transfer the link, but I don’t think it worked. Or it didn’t work very well, anyway. So now I have a god to find, and a pair of balls to kick.”

Some of the worry and fear eased on her face then as she shook her head at me. “Never change.” As she turned away to head into the healer hut, I heard her call back over her shoulder. “And please try not to get yourself killed.”

Where was the faith?

As soon as they were out of sight, I turned and hurried along the path, searching for a secluded place. The streets were fairly empty, but there were still plenty of doors and windows—all of which could easily be looked out of. Cyrus was a monster, taller than the Abcurses, with an ego to match. He would draw attention easily. The last thing I needed right now was more trouble or attention.

A darkened, stone-lined alleyway caught my eye, and I hurried toward it. It seemed to grow gradually darker the further back it went, which would hopefully mean that there were no sols living within. It also turned cooler as I ran along, and I felt that pang in my chest at being there alone. If Siret had been there he would have made a joke and woven me into the tightest sweater ever. My boobs would have been popping out, but my nipples would have been hidden. They really liked me to keep my nipples under wraps.

When I felt like I was about halfway along the alley, I stopped and leaned back against the cold wall, mentally shouting out for Cyrus. I had no idea if he would still be able to hear me in this way, or if there was any connection between us, but I had to try.

Cyrus, you bastard of the gods, get your ass here now! You’ve really fucked up this time, buddy! You have no idea. No idea what I’m going to do to you. I don’t know either, yet, but it’s going to be bad. Really bad! It’ll be the worst you’ve been in trouble since you were a damn kid and your damn mother caught you looking up the skirts of the other gods, or whatever you did to get in trouble. Never mind, I just realised you were never a kid. That explains the lack of child-like innocence in your eyes. Eyes which I’m going to repeatedly stab just as soon as you get your ass over here!

My rant went on and on, and I kicked out at the wall while calling him every curse name I could think of.

Bullsen tit.

Shweed.

Tosspot—that was a personal favourite of my mother’s.

Ballbag—another favourite. It’s what she called our town leader when she was sober enough to realise how useless he was. “He’s just a walking ballbag, Willa. No brains.” She wasn’t wrong either: he was the reason I ended up with the Abcurses, when he reassigned my gender and named me Will Knight.

I owe you one, Leader Graham, you ballbag.

Cyrus still hadn’t appeared by this time, so I decided to abandon the mental shouting and try some actual shouting. Maybe he was powerful enough to hear his name on the breeze or something. They could do that, right?

“Cyrus!” It was a tense whisper-shout. “Get down here right now! You need to fix whatever it was you broke!”

I didn’t see the shadow creeping up behind me until it was too late. A low shriek burst from me as a heavy hand landed on my shoulder, and for the third time in as many rotations, I found myself fighting against a darkness that wanted to eat away at my mind.

I came to in a cart. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me? This was beyond a joke now. If I woke up in one more cart, I was going to hack the stupid wooden transport into a million pieces. The disorientation was worse this time; my head was fuzzy and my mouth was dry as though I had been walking through the desert without water for too many sun-cycles.

As I tried to roll over and sit up, my head slammed into the side of the cart, and the pounding behind my eyes increased. As some of the fuzzy cleared, I realised why I’d hit my head in the first place. It looked like I had been tossed into the corner, my back to whomever was controlling the cart.

Hating the vulnerability of not seeing, I rolled away from the side of the cart and clumsily launched myself into a sitting position, spinning around at the same time. A pair of familiar faces were sitting across from me, staring, and as anger built within me, a tinge of red started to flicker on the edge of my vision.

“Don’t you be trying any of that,” Dru said, with a smirk. “Keep whatever messed up freak-show power you have to yourself. I have no problem knocking you out again, but just be aware that you’ve been down for two and a bit sun-cycles, and if you go down for another, you’ll probably die of thirst.”

Over two sun-cycles? Was he for-freaking-real? “Emmy? Evie?” I managed to croak out, understanding why my mouth was dry as the desert.

He shrugged. “Left them with the healer—your friend seemed to have it under control.”

I tried to squelch some of my worry. There was nothing I could do about it right now. I needed to deal with these new pair of ballbags across from me. Even though only one of them had balls.

Karyn grinned as I turned slitted eyes in her direction, trying to kill her with a single look. “Bet you thought you’d seen the last of me when I didn’t show up again.”

I tried to play dumb. “You mean that time I knocked you out and stashed your bleeding body in a laundry cart? With the dirty, old, used up, pee-sheets?”

Gods, it would have been so awesome if they had been peed on.

Karyn’s psycho-nice face disappeared, and she launched herself at me. Dru caught her when she was half-way across the cart, hauling her into his lap. “Baby, you know we can’t anger the gods. You’ve been trying for a long time to get rid of her, this is our best chance. Blesswood is chaos. Her protectors are missing. She keeps blacking out and burning shit down. It’s perfect.”

I chose to focus on the fact that I had been right: I was the one causing all the chaos. Which made sense considering what I was—but I had been learning to control it while I had been with the Abcurses. Now I couldn’t control shit.

I missed them.

The thought hit me so hard and I pushed it deep down. Into the place where my mother’s neglect was. Where my loneliness was. Where my isolation due to a curse which I did not ask for was. I locked the crushing emotions away, striving to keep a clear head.

“So you two have been working together?” I should have known. Dru had beady eyes, definitely evil.

Karyn, who was still melded to Dru like they were the same person, nodded. “Yep, Dru was Plan B, if Elowin and I couldn’t end you.” She tilted her head back and her face softened as she gazed into his eyes. She seemed to be showing her appreciation for him stepping up to the challenge of killing me. After I cleared my throat, she turned back to me with what looked like great reluctance. “He was going to take one for the team and pretend he had an iota of interest in a dirt-dweller like you,” she told me. “He would earn your trust, and then you would follow him wherever he wanted.”

Dru let out a frustrated sigh. “It took much longer than usual because you never do what I think. And you always had those five dumbasses around.”

Dumbasses? He was one to talk. Speaking of, I’d actually been surprised he could talk when we first met. The stringing of words together in coherent sentences seemed beyond him. It felt good to insult him, even if it was only in my head.

“Where are you taking me?”

Karyn’s creepy grin was back again, and I wished there was more space between us. “To a place where you can’t bother us ever again. We won’t have directly killed you. I’ll even let Dru help you out of the cart. All gentlemanly-like, if the gods are watching.” Her laughter was high-pitched and grating. “How are we to know if you can make it back on your own. Maybe someone has before.”

My eyes darted around the cart, trying to determine if I could jump out. The back was fully enclosed, so I had no idea where we were, but I would take my chances. I was faster and stronger, now that I was a beta-sol-dweller, so as I dived toward one of the zippered side panels, I managed to get my hand up under it, wrenching the opening free before either of the sols even moved.

I had half of my body through, wiggling in the small gap, when I felt hands on my legs. Thrusting myself forward, I kicked out with all of my strength. Connecting solidly, I felt the thump and heard the curse, which I ignored to continue freeing myself.

The cart came to a screeching halt. Bullsen could be heard pawing at the ground and making loud snuffing noises. I had just hit the ground and was scrambling to my feet, when three sols appeared.

Dru was very red-faced, his nose already looking swollen. Karyn was standing beside him, and next to her was a girl that I recognised as one of her friends back in Blesswood—she must have been the one who had been driving the cart. I was tensed, crouched low, waiting for them to attack me. Instead, they all exchanged a single happy look, tossed a bag at my feet, and then climbed back into the cart.

With a shout of laughter, the clicking on the ropes could be heard, and then the cart and bullsen were moving. I stood there frozen, watching them disappear into the distance, wondering why they had let me escape.

It wasn’t until I turned and looked around, taking in my surroundings, that the true horror and realisation hit me. They hadn’t cared about me escaping because this was where they had been planning on leaving me all along. The dirt beneath me was dried and cracked, a stale, arid taste to the air. There was barely any vegetation, and absolutely no civilisation in sight.

We were in a place so dead and desolate, that it could only be one area.

The abandoned rings. The dead zone.

I stared at the plume of red dust that was slowly settling back down to the ground, and then walked over to the cart tracks, nudging at the indentations with my boot. There were no other tracks around—there was nothing else around. Just dirt, and sun. A sun that was about to set … and I had no food, no water, and no map. Not that there were any landmarks to reference on the map.

“Cyrus!” I shouted again, turning my face up to the sky even though I knew that Topia wasn’t actually in the sky.

He didn’t answer, of course, so I ended up screaming out an incomprehensible sound of frustration instead, before marching off down the tracks left behind by the cart. I had no idea where I was going, but at least I was following some kind of direction.

I picked up the pace a little as the sun began to sink lower and lower. My legs were aching and there was dust in my eyes, but I couldn’t just stop and sit down under a tree. There weren’t any trees, and there were probably wild packs of animals that came out at night to snack on the bones of abandoned dweller-sol-betas. That was probably why nobody ever came back from the dead zone—other than Dru and Karyn, apparently.

I was almost running by the time something finally came into view. I pulled a hand up over my eyes, squinting against the horizon. It was only a blurry outline, backed by the sun, but it seemed to be moving. I halted, watching as what seemed like another cart approached me from the horizon. The cloud of dust rose behind it, gently obscuring the sun in a hazy red glow, and for a moment, I was reminded of my Chaos. Of the damage I had done to Evie’s face. It seemed as though my soul-link to the Abcurses had been keeping me from blacking out and leaking Chaos up until this point, but now I was on my own. Well … on my own with whatever version of me took over whenever I blacked out and leaked Chaos everywhere. So … not really on my own at all. I also still had the semanight stone, if that counted for anything.

I waited while the cart approached, unable to see the person steering it properly through the haze of dust. When it finally skidded to a halt, veering off to the side of me, I realised that it had been following on the exact same track as Dru and Karyn had left. Maybe they had changed their minds, and were back to kill me.

“The hell are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” The blunt question drew my eyes up to the front of the cart, where a guy was standing from the driver’s seat, looping the reins for the bullsen over a handle in front of him.

He was easily several life-cycles older than me, but there was something experienced about him that denied his still-handsome appearance. A roughness that came from hard work and cynicism, instead of age. I knew that he was a dweller immediately.

“A couple of sols knocked me out, threw me into the back of a cart and dropped me here,” I announced plainly.

I even gestured in the general vicinity of my head, to indicate where the ‘knocking out’ had occurred. He arched a dark brow and jumped down from his seat, causing me to glance toward the cart to see if anyone else would come out.

“So,” he brought my attention back to him as he approached, “what’d they knock you out for? Did you steal something? Polish the wrong shoe? Accidently sneeze in front of someone important?”

I couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corners of my mouth, and I examined the guy a little more closely: he had sooty hair, dark eyes, and darkly tanned skin, as though he spent a lot of time in the sun. Probably driving carts. Through the dead zone …

“Wait a click.” I shook my head, frowning, and gestured back to the cart, checking again to see if anyone was poking their heads out to see what was going on. “What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“It’s my job,” he replied, like it was obvious. “I take the deceased out to the ruins, and … er … put them to rest.” He was rubbing his hand over the back of his neck, watching the look on my face.

The look that was probably full of disgust and horror. Which would explain why he was suddenly acting uncomfortable.

“What kind of deceased?” I eventually asked. “And who the hell pays you to do this?”

“My father pays me.” He almost looked like he was blushing now, and he started to glance back toward the cart. “It’s the family business, you see. One of the gods asked my great-grandfather to take the bodies to the cave behind the temple, where the guardians live—”

“Guardians?” I interrupted. “I thought nothing lived out here?”

“Well if the guardians catch it out here … it probably won’t live for long.” He cut his eyes back to me, trying to convey the seriousness of that statement, but I was still stuck on all the horror and disgust over the fact that he carted dead things around.

“You still haven’t answered me,” I prompted. “What bodies?”

“The bodies of the dwellers.” He watched the alarm chase away my disgust, and then he was shaking his head, seeming torn between amusement and annoyance. “They’re already dead. I don’t kill them or anything. I just take them from one place to another.”

“Who the hell is killing dwellers then?” I demanded, my voice becoming shrill.

“Nobody! Or … well, I guess sometimes … listen, I really need to get this load to the temple before nightfall, otherwise the guardians get pissed. And you really don’t want to know what happens when the guardians get pissed. You can come with me, and I’ll hide you in the cart. Or you can stay out here and wait for them to find you. If you decide to come with me, I’ll explain everything to you on the way back home, and then we can discuss what the hell to do with you.”

He walked over to the cart, pulled back the canvas wrap, and motioned me inside. I stayed right the hell where I was.

He groaned. “Look … what’s your name?”

“Willa.” I wasn’t even looking at him. I was still staring at the cart. “What’s yours?”

“Zac. And I kind of want to keep it that way. If I’m late tonight—or if they catch you out here—we’ll become Patricia and Kenneth. I know this probably doesn’t make any sense to you, but they do things with the bodies. Change them. Give them new names, and then send them to Topia to serve the gods.”

“Actually that makes perfect sense.” I took a shaky step toward the cart, bracing myself for what I’d find inside.

Zac seemed to relax as soon as I made it clear that I was going to go with him, and he pulled the canvas back further for me. Laid out across the benches were several wrapped bodies, shapeless white figures, all stacked up on top of each other. The smell was awful, now that my nose wasn’t full of dust.

“Just … try not to make any sounds, okay?” Zac seemed almost embarrassed that he was forcing me to hide in a cart full of dead people, even though he was technically saving my life, and probably putting himself in danger to do it.

It made me realise that I should probably be a little more grateful, so I quickly pushed into the opening and then reached out and caught his hand before he could close the canvas on me.

“Thanks.” I tried to sound sincere, instead of sick-to-my-stomach. “I won’t blow your cover, I promise. And as soon as we reach the ninth ring, you can get rid of me. I’ll find my own way back to Blesswood.”

His dark eyes widened for a moment. “You’re from there? You were serving in Blesswood? That’s a long way to travel, just to dump a dweller. It would have been easier if they’d killed you and waited for someone to come and collect the body. I don’t do the Blesswood pickup myself, but my brother works the sol-cities. There’s another guardian temple right in the middle of Tridel. So why didn’t they just kill you?”

“Well,” I shook my head, a laugh bubbling out, “turns out I’m not so easy to kill. By the way, you’re a weird guy, Zac.”

“Says the dweller walking around the abandoned lands all on her own before sunset,” he replied dryly, quickly securing the canvas and disappearing.

I looked around, trying to find somewhere to sit before the cart started moving—but I was too late, and one of the wrapped bodies was jostled off the seat before I could move, landing right at my feet with a sickening thud. I tried not to scream, or anything pathetic and girly like that, but a sound might still have slipped out, because the little wooden window facing toward the front of the cart slid back.

“Did you just squeal?” Zac asked.

“No,” I snapped back. “Do I look like the kind of girl that squeals?”

“Little bit, actually.”

I reached forward and slammed the little wooden window closed again. “Asshole.”

“This asshole saved your life,” he sang back to me, apparently all cheerful and friendly, now that we were moving again.

“You don’t really have many friends, do you?” I shouted back, stepping over the body and crouching into the only unoccupied corner of the bench it had fallen off.

“It’s a lonely profession, this.” He slid the window back again, so that he could talk to me.

“That’s because you drive dead people around. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but dead people aren’t that responsive. They’re not fun to show affection to.”

“Especially the ones that died of flame-rash.”

I jumped clean off the bench again, accidently landing on the chest of the body that had rolled off earlier. I edged away, backing myself against the canvas lining. I was three clicks away from jumping out of the damn cart and taking my chances with the guardians.

“You squealed again,” Zac decided to inform me, laughing. “I was only kidding about the flame-rash. The guardians only want the dwellers that they can turn into pleasing little puppets for the gods. There’s nothing pleasing about a flame-rash death.”

“You want to make more friends?” I spoke through gritted teeth. “Then here’s a tip: quit talking about gods-dammed flame-rash. That stuff is nasty.”

“Noted.” He suddenly sobered up, and I saw one of his eyes peeking through the window at me, before turning away. “You can sit down. None of the bodies are contaminated. If you pull the panel off the front of the seat, you’ll be able to crawl into the storage space beneath. We’ll be there in two clicks.”

“We haven’t gone very far,” I said aloud, while internally I was cursing Dru and Karyn for dropping me so close to the secret guardian-hideout.

“Who’s Dru?” Zac asked.

Okay, maybe not that internally.

“Some ballbag,” I replied.

“Aww. Is he your boyfriend? Did you guys get into a fight? Is it because you were being a bad dweller and pissing off the sols?”

“Seriously?” I groaned, crouching back onto the bench seat. “Who taught you manners? Please tell me it was one of the dead people. That would make so much sense.”

He didn’t reply, and I realised why a moment later, when the movement of the cart started to slow. I pulled my legs up to the bench, curling my arms around and trying to turn myself into a little ball of invisibility. I could hear muted voices, and then louder conversation as we approached.

“Zachary,” a man spoke up, his voice so raspy it made my skin scrawl, “you’re late.”