“So how exactly is this plan going to work? How can we hold off the pain from the soul link?” I asked, toying with the bread still in my hand. “I think Rau did it once before, but it didn’t last long. Only long enough to get me to Topia.”

Aros pushed back his chair, tugging a timepiece from his pocket and checking it, before settling his eyes on my face. “We have about thirty clicks before classes start up again. Grab some more of that bread—since it’s the only damn thing you eat anyway—and we’ll go for a walk. This isn’t the place for these conversations.”

I glanced around at the sols that stared and the dwellers that skirted past him, giving him and the rest of the Abcurse table a wide berth. It was easy to think that they were invincible—that they couldn’t be held accountable for anything in Minatsol because they weren’t from Minatsol, they were from Topia. Unfortunately, that wasn’t true. People still had ears, and dwellers especially still liked to gossip. I was sure that the gods would have spies within the halls, watching every movement the Abcurses made. They clearly didn’t care that they were being watched, but there was always a line. Apparently, discussing the secrets of the gods out in the open was one of those lines.

“Okay.” I nodded, dropping a few slices of the cheesy bread into a napkin and wrapping them up.

I jumped out of my seat, waiting to see who would follow us. When none of the other guys stood, I found my eyebrows inching up in surprise. It wasn’t like them to let me have alone time with the Seduction god. Usually, it caused me to misbehave.

There had to be something else going on.

“Well … bye, then,” I said awkwardly, looking around the table.

“See you in class.” Siret winked at me, before shooting a look to Aros, who ignored it.

“See you, Willa-toy.” Yael only glanced up momentarily before returning to his food.

“Don’t be late for class,” Rome grunted.

I looked to Coen, and he grinned back, his eyes flicking to Aros the same way Siret’s had. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, so I only shrugged and moved to follow Aros out of the hall. Once we were clear of the doors, I pulled out one of the cheesy bread slices and began to eat, strolling quietly by his side until we were out of the building altogether and walking toward one of the gardens.

“Are you bringing me out here to murder me?” I asked casually, finishing off one slice and moving onto the next.

Aros snorted. “Why would I take you to a rose garden in the middle of the sun-cycle to kill you? Give me a little credit. I’d do it in the dark at least, and at most, I’d pick a more interesting location. Always do a job properly, even if it’s murder.”

I followed him to a bench and plonked myself down, taking more care not to drop the cheesy bread than I took to make sure I plonked myself onto the actual seat. Fortunately, Aros was paying attention, and he caught my arm right before I missed the bench completely, moved me a few inches to the right, and then released me. I resumed plonking, and then resumed eating, all without blinking an eye. I was getting used to our routine of me almost making a fool of myself and of them only just catching me in time.

“Thanks,” I muttered. “But I still think this is weird. I’m only ever alone in the garden with you guys when you’re giving me mind-shielding lessons, and I thought we’d given up on those.”

“You were pretty useless at them,” Aros agreed, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankle, his posture turned to the side as he watched me devour the final slice of cheesy bread.

“Oh, hey,” I frowned, crumpling up the napkin, “with encouragement like that, it’s a wonder I didn’t succeed sooner.”

“I’m about as good at coddling as you are at doing what you’re told, sweetheart.”

I rolled my eyes, stuffing the napkin into the pocket of the pants that had become my staple daytime wear. They were some kind of heavy linen blend that moulded perfectly to my skin, since Siret had been the one to create them. There were leather patches at the knee, and hips—because apparently I needed the extra protection. My shirt was simple: a deep red that I knew now to be the colour of Chaos. Siret had started turning some of my clothes red, and I kind of liked the colour, so I didn’t say anything about the sudden change.

“Are you going to tell me why we’re here?” I prompted. “Because it isn’t to talk about how to escape the pain of the soul-link. I know we could have done that at the table—or if not the table, back in the rooms.”

“I needed to talk to you, Willa.” Aros was suddenly serious, his golden eyes tracking over my face, his hands resting limply in his lap, all of his attention on my reaction.

It was unnerving.

“What about?” I started to fidget, pulling the napkin back out of my pocket and channelling all of my focus into tearing it into very even strips. I paused halfway through my task, after Aros remained silent in answer to my question, and my head snapped up again. “This is another sex talk. Oh my gods. You five are ridiculous and I’m going to punch every single—”

“It’s not a sex talk.” He chuckled, but it sounded strained.

“You’re lying!” I tossed the half-shredded napkin at him and buried my face in my hands. “How many times does this need to happen?”

His laugh was warmer this time, and he captured my wrists, pulling my hands away from my face. “It’s not like that, okay? They just wanted me to … check in with you. After what happened with me and Coen. The way we unlocked your Chaos …”

I stilled, my body going into temporary shock. The last thing I needed was to be reminded of that whole incident in the middle of the sun-cycle, out in the open, where I couldn’t do anything about it.

“Wait just a freaking click,” I demanded, pulling my wrists free and jumping to my feet so that I could look down on him—a move which worked on dwellers and sols, but apparently not Aros. He was still level with me, even with me standing and him sitting.

“It’s not what you think!” he held up his hands, attempting to pacify me.

I hadn’t actually formed any thoughts about why we were in the garden; I’d jumped into action before the thought had a chance to solidify in my mind. Maybe this was my chance to get some more information.

“Oh, really?” I planted my hands against his chest and quickly stepped either side of his legs before he could stop me. I pulled my legs together, trapping his thighs between mine, and quickly pushed my hands along his shoulders, linking my fingers together behind his neck so that he wouldn’t be able to feel them shaking. “You didn’t bring me here to have this talk so that we wouldn’t have to have it back in the room? Where I’d do something … like this?”

The gold in his eyes was flashing to dark bronze, and his hands had moved to the bench, curling around the edges, his knuckles turning white. He wasn’t allowed to touch me. That was interesting. The others must have made him promise.

“Please don’t push this right now, Willa. I know you’re not a damn baby. I know you don’t need this talk. The others fucking insisted.”

“They think you and Coen … tricked me into it?” I asked, not budging in my stance, though my eyes were now narrowed on his in suspicion.

He smiled, but the tension was back in his expression, and rapidly spreading to the rest of his body.

“They didn’t use that word,” he answered, and the hook in the corner of his mouth deepened, his teeth flashing at me. “Pushed, maybe. We did push you.”

“You did,” I echoed, getting a little lost in his eyes.

His hands moved from the bench then, like he couldn’t resist any longer. They slipped around my back, up over the curve of my spine and to my shoulders. He rested them there, his thumbs slipping down over my collarbones.

“Did you want it, Willa?”

“Want it,” I repeated.

Maybe he was hypnotising me, because all I could seem to do was repeat key words back to him. Push. Want. Push. Want. They were on repeat inside my head.

Push. “Yes.” I nodded. Want.

His fingers tightened in their grip, and he drew me closer, making a sound in the back of his throat.

“Well, now that we’ve sorted that out,” a voice announced from behind me, “why don’t we get to class?”

I attempted to pull away from Aros, but his hands tightened further, his expression going tight.

“What the hell are you doing here, Persuasion?” he growled, his eyes never leaving mine.

“We waited. You didn’t bring her back. They sent me out,” Yael replied. He sounded casual, but I knew better.

Yael always sounded casual, until the moment he decided to demand something. That moment would be as soon as Aros walked away. Which put me in a very awkward position. It put me in a position that made me want to fling Chaos at the both of them and run in the other direction.

So that’s exactly what I did.

I could feel my newly unlocked energy swirling aimlessly inside of me, and it was easy to draw on with my emotions already riled from Aros—but I had no idea where to aim it or how to aim it, and I also had no idea how it would manifest. My only choice was to hope for the best as I closed my eyes, broke quickly out of Aros’s grip, and muttered, “Chaos—”

Aros was up from the bench and before me in a fraction of a click, his hand wrapping around my mouth. He was too late. All around us, people were screaming.

“What the hell did you do?” he asked, his eyes wide.

I tried to reply, but only a muffled sound came out, because he was still trying to silence me. I tugged on his arm until he reluctantly drew it away, and then opened my mouth to reply—until another sound distracted me.

Laughter. Yael was losing it.

I glanced over Aros’s shoulder, and stillness stole through me. Yael was standing there with his book bag held over his midsection, bent over with deep, gasping laughter. He was also completely naked. I flicked my eyes back to Aros, and we both looked down at the same time.

“GODS!” I shouted, as he casually stepped back, grabbed his book bag, and covered himself.

He looked torn between laughter and shock, but I wasn’t finding anything about the current situation funny. I barely had the foresight to clutch at myself and make sure I was still clothed—which surprisingly, I was—before I was left to stand there numbly, staring at Aros’s book bag.

I had seen it all.

It was burned into my mind.

Him covering it wasn’t doing anything to combat the image that had just become tattooed on the inside of my brain.

Aros was laughing right alongside Yael, now, and my stunned eyes were distracted from them by the sight of nude-coloured streaks flying past the garden. Sols. Dwellers. Teachers. Oh my gods … I had made everyone naked with my Chaos.

Everyone except myself.

Well that was new.

I wanted to run out of the garden and see the spectacle, but Yael went out first, took a single look, and declared, “No. Not happening.”

He and Aros made me sit on the bench between them until everyone was inside, and by the time we made it back into the academy, there was already an announcement echoing through the halls that classes would be cancelled for the rest of the sun-cycle while they ‘investigated’ the incident. Based on my past records, I would have thought it obvious that I was the one behind Operation Bare Ass. It was pretty much what I was known for—but nobody came looking for me.

As for the Abcurses, they were so distracted by my latest bout of Chaos that they didn’t even question me when I announced that I needed to find Emmy—Siret simply told the others that he would go with me, and then he waited above the dweller-dungeons while I went in.

The dweller quarters were surprisingly full by the time I got to Emmy’s room. It seemed that the sols weren’t the only people in Blesswood relieved of their tasks for the sun-cycle; the entire school—including the dwellers—had been given the afternoon off. Maybe dweller-sol relations were improving already … or maybe the sols were too embarrassed to have their blessed genitals on show for all the dwellers.

When I finally tracked down Emmy and told her what had happened, she didn’t even seem bothered by the fact that I had caused her to lose her clothes along with the rest of the academy.

“How did you do it?” she asked, nothing more than curious.

I was beginning to wonder if I had rubbed off on her over the life-cycles. Nudity wasn’t a big deal to me, not dweller-nudity or sol-nudity. Maybe the Aros nudity that I had caught a glimpse of … that was a very, very big … Ugh!

Trying to supress the image was more difficult than I had expected, but I somehow managed to focus back on my best friend. A best friend whose eyes were so washed-out in colour they seemed to be reflecting the crappiness of her dweller room right back at me. I noticed how dark the circles were beneath them, and all of my worry for her piled back in again.

“I have no idea,” I finally said. “This Chaos power is random and dangerous. I just lost control of it.”

That was mostly a lie. I had deliberately intended to Chaos the shit out of Aros and Yael so that they would stop fighting—but I was honest about the control thing, at least.

I sat down on the bed beside her, leaning my shoulder and shifting around a bit to try and get comfortable, before finally giving up with a huff. My fingers were brushing rhythmically at the rough covers of her nicely-made bed when the next words burst out of me.

“It’s growing stronger.” It was a rushed whisper, but I was relieved to be able to express my fears to someone.

I loved the Abcurses—they fit with me as though we had all been meant to find each other and keep each other, and I knew that they would never judge me. But they were also gods—born gods at that—and they didn’t understand the frailties and vulnerabilities of sols and dwellers. Which meant that I wasn’t going to get any sage advice, sympathy, or chocolate. Three things that Emmy was very good at … minus the chocolate, which was a delicacy we had never really been able to afford as dirt-dwellers. But if we had been able to afford it, Emmy would have been great at it. Hell, even I would have been great at it. I would have excelled at it. I would have specialised in it. I would have gone on to make a name for myself. I would have been an upstanding and outstanding pioneer in the field of Chocolate. I would have started a dynasty.

I would have changed the world.

I hadn’t even realised that my head was dropping until I was suddenly staring at her hand now on top of mine. She was patting me.

“Will,” she murmured sympathetically. “I can’t even imagine what you are going through right now. This power has come out of nowhere and you don’t have anyone to teach you how to use it properly.”

My head shot up then, and I almost kicked myself when I realised that I had reached out and piled my problems onto the one person who needed me more than I needed anything else. I opened my mouth, ready to apologise, to tell her that I shouldn’t have given her all of my problems on top of the problems she already had, but she cut me off before I could voice the words.

“The only being who might be able to clue you in on turning from dweller to sol, or whatever you are now, is the Creator. And I wouldn’t think it wise to present yourself to him carrying a Beta Chaos power.”

Emmy was so smart. She deduced things that I only knew because I was living in this world and had the knowledge of five god-brothers. She was also clearly using my lesser problem to distract me from bringing up Atti again—which, admittedly, was exactly what I wanted to do.

“Rau is going to use me, Em,” I sighed, falling back against the wall again. If Emmy wanted to talk about Chaos, I’d talk about Chaos. “He’s going to take this power and try and overthrow everything, and I have no damn idea how to stop him because I can’t even stop myself from tripping over my own feet. Or being naked. Or making the entire school naked.”

Emmy let out a bark of laughter, loud and harsh. “Willa Knight, I did not just hear you say that. You have more control and strength then any dweller or sol I know. You were born of Chaos. You’ve always controlled it, right from the sun-cycle you stumbled into this world—your mum wouldn’t stop telling that story of how she birthed you and you almost came out backwards. I never used to think it was true, but now I’m convinced.”

I laughed along with her, but my mind was starting to spin. Born of Chaos. It was an odd way to phrase it, but I guess in a way she was right. Unknown father. Absent, mess of a mother. My life had never been calm, it had always been chaos. Emmy had joined that chaos because her perfectly normal life had been pulled apart by death, but she was not born of chaos like me—for her, it was simply a by-product of being close to me.

Neither of us spoke again for some time, each of us lost in our own thoughts, each of us battling our own demons. It wasn’t until she let out a small sigh that the spell was broken, and I found myself reaching out to the side and snagging her around the shoulders, pulling her to me. She resisted for a bit, but I wouldn’t let her escape this time. I just held on tight, wrapping both of my arms around her, and hugged her as tightly as I could without crushing her ribs.

She was stiff, unresponsive, and it had almost reached the point of awkward—where I was about to chalk this up to another failure, and hope to try again later—when a much heavier sigh escaped from her. It whooshed past my ear, blowing my curls back, and then she collapsed against me. She felt so frail in my arms, her thin frame shaking; the intensity of it rattled me. Her chest was heaving with sobs, her breath wheezing in and out as she tried to draw in air and cry at the same time. It was like an avalanche trying to fit through a tiny hole in the side of a mountain, there was so much pain rushing from her with no way to easily escape.

The sudden ache in my chest was so intense that I wondered for a moment if I was having a heart attack. Eventually I realised that my own cheeks were wet, and that my arms were trembling almost as much as Emmy’s as I tried to wrap myself even tighter around her. I felt like I could put her back together just by holding her—all of the broken pieces and the jagged edges that she had been locking away since she lost Atti.

I didn’t know how long we cried for, but eventually the anguished gasps and sobs died off from Emmy, and I started to gently rub her back while whispering nonsensical words of comfort. I told her that we would go back to our village one sun-cycle; that we would explore all over Minatsol, and that I would never let anyone hurt her again. That Atti loved her and would want her to be happy, and that we would all be together again, when the time was right. I had no idea if any of it was true, but they were secret dreams and wishes I held in my own heart, and it felt better to wish them out loud.

She finally fell asleep against me, and I was only slightly disappointed that there had been no revelations about what she was up to with those sols. But we had made progress, and I would have to accept that.

For now.

Untangling myself from Emmy, I tucked her into the bed and spun around to leave the room. I barely managed to cut off my shriek at the shadow there, my feet tangling up as I reached for one of Emmy’s shoes and tossed it blindly. Siret lazily batted it away, sending it into the wall with a muted thud. All five of the Abcurses were standing beyond the doorway to Emmy’s room. All five of them, leaned back against the wall, arms crossed over their chests, expressions sombre.

“How long have you guys been standing there?” I whispered low enough that it might not wake up Emmy. I hadn’t heard or noticed them outside. I hadn’t felt them in our soul-link, or even felt the twinges of pain from their absence while they hadn’t been there. “You were here the entire time?”

Siret shook his head, before holding his arms out to me. Without hesitation, I walked into them, and he wrapped me up as tightly as I had wrapped up Emmy. That ache in my chest increased, and I fought against the emotions that wanted to swamp me.

“Your pain …” Siret’s low murmur drifted to me, and I remembered how they had told me long ago that they could feel my pain.

Another set of arms replaced Siret’s and the burnt sweetness was the only hint I needed to know that it was Aros.

“Felt like your heart was breaking,” he grunted softly, before picking me up off my feet and moving us further away from the room. I heard Emmy’s door click shut, and then his voice rose again to a normal level. “We don’t know if it’s the soul-link, or just because we’ve all spent so much time together, but we can’t ignore it …”

He trailed off as I was passed to another Abcurse. Yael’s strong arms swept around my lower back and hauled me up higher so that we were practically face to face. I blinked a few times, mesmerised by the strange intensity shining from him. It was the glow of god-energy: I had seen it on some of the beings when we went to Topia, but my boys rarely displayed it. It was possibly because Minatsol drained them of their powers gradually, but it was also possible that they were deliberately toning it down to blend in.

We stared for some time, before he set me on my feet and ushered me across to Coen, who was patiently waiting. It was unlike Yael to have nothing to say, but in all truth, that look had held a lot, if you read between the lines of silence. Possession. Reluctance. Relief.

Frustration.

I waited for Coen to hug me, anticipating his strength and those tendrils of pain that he liked to lace across my skin, and I wasn’t disappointed. Just as I was relaxing against his body, Rome joined us. The twins held me. I couldn’t properly describe the sensation of being surrounded like that. Heat and strength and power. It thrummed across my skin and I stopped thinking, letting myself enjoy the moment.

Over the top of my head I heard Rome say something, but it took a few clicks before my ears and brain registered what it was.

Tell Staviti to go screw himself.

I stiffened, before pulling back. They parted slightly, letting me see the other three again.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “You can’t tell that … guy … to go screw himself! He will … un-create you—or whatever he does!” The words burst from me in an angry whisper.

Each of them seemed to be staring directly at me with no unease in their expressions whatsoever, but I knew that they had something to tell me. It was obvious. They didn’t just go around muttering that the Creator could go screw himself all the time.

A thought occurred to me, then. “You were all close enough to Emmy’s room to come as soon as you felt my pain. You were already up there waiting for me with Five? Which means … you all came to find me?”

Aros lifted a hand in a placating gesture, which only had my worry spiralling out of control further. “You’re right,” he said, “we were all waiting for you. Staviti has called us for the trial tonight. We just got a message from D.O.D.”

My stomach clenched, and probably everyone in the dweller-dungeon could hear the rapid pulse thrumming through me. “Is that normal? For him to make a date and then change his mind just as quickly?”

Why was I the only one who seemed worried or upset by that? Couldn’t they feel the ominous clouds on the horizon? It felt like we were teetering on the precipice of something terrible, and as soon as the storm hit, the winds would push us right over the edge.

“It’s going to be fine, Willa-toy.” Yael’s voice was low and rumbly, his Persuasion trickling across my mind, calming the rush of adrenaline that had been trying to kick me into action. “Staviti almost always does this; we were expecting it.”

I wanted to growl at them, and I could have fought against Yael. He wasn’t hitting me with too much energy, but another part of me needed to take the edge off my worry. It was too much. So I let him continue to influence me.

“We’ll have to leave soon, which means that we need to try and see if we can lengthen the link between us now.” Rome started ushering me toward the door.

Yael’s Persuasion stayed with me all the way back to Coen’s room, which was also where my little hidey hole still was. I might have a schedule where I slept in a different room and bed each night, and had my clothes and things scattered between all five, but I always felt like Coen’s space was a little bit more mine than the others.

As soon as we were fully inside with the door closed behind us, a figure stepped out from my little area and I couldn’t stop the small snarl that escaped from me.

What the hell was he doing here?