“I really am the dumbest dweller she’s ever met,” I admitted, standing up. I looked her over, noting the gash on her forehead and the spaghetti covering her clothes.
I needed to cover this up. It didn’t matter that she had tried to stab me, and that she had knocked herself out on my bowl of spaghetti. I was a dweller, and she was a sol. Those were the only two important factors, and they meant that I was going to get my head chopped off and offered up to the gods. The gods wouldn’t want it, of course, because it had to have been the unluckiest of all the other detached heads, but that wasn’t important. Nobody ever actually asked the gods what they wanted. The gods did the asking, if any asking was going to occur—and as far as I knew, a spoken word from a god was rare.
That made me doubly unlucky, because I’d received a few spoken words from a few different gods other than the Abcurses. None of them were good words.
Some were downright foreboding words.
And I was procrastinating as I tried to figure out what to do.
Having no other option, I ran to the nearest supply closet, yanked open the door, and hunted down a bedsheet. I then hurried back to Fakey and tossed it over her. Not exactly subtle and inconspicuous, but I didn’t really have many options. One of the boys was going to check on me at any moment—and I didn’t want them to see me dragging the crazy-assed-sol down the hallway by her legs. I also couldn’t report the incident, because no excuse would be good enough. The sacred sol was pretending to be my best friend, so that she could stab me, but my bowl of spaghetti saved me, and then she head-butted it, and now she’s unconscious.
The dwellers of Blesswood considered themselves lucky if one of the sols sneezed on them. I should have been taking her attempted murder as a compliment. Probably.
I stepped back from my handiwork, picking a strand of spaghetti off my arm and surveying the lumpy sheet. I needed something more.
When in doubt, I thought, confuse them.
With that in mind, I ran back to the supply closest and grabbed up an empty cart, before quickly piling a bunch of other sheets on it and crumpling them up so that they looked dirty. In the hallway again, I reached sheet-covered-Fakey and bent down, attempting to haul her up into the pile of sheets.
Attempting and failing.
I stumbled when my legs were half straightened, the momentum pitching me forward. Fakey’s head slammed into the side of the cart with a solid thud.
Crap, crap, crap!
Pulling back the sheet for a few clicks, I was relieved that no new gashes had been opened up on her face, although there might have been a decent bruise already forming across her left temple. Probably that wasn’t from me. She totally had that when she got here, I decided, and I felt much better about the whole thing already. Using every ounce of my strength, I managed to get her top half up and onto the cart. I was sweating up a storm as I bent down again to try and contend with the bottom part. She was damn heavy. Just hanging there like a dead weight. I needed to move it though because someone was going to come along at any moment and—
Was that blood on the sheet?
This would not look great should another sol or dweller happen to stroll past. Thankfully, though, the hall remained empty and I eventually managed to leverage her heavy ass into the cart. Scurrying around, I folded and primped the sheets so that they covered her fully, and it looked a lot like a pile of dirty laundry.
“Willa, what the hell are you doing?”
I let out a shriek as a low voice sounded from close by. Spinning around, my hand clutched to my chest, I found Yael and Coen standing shoulder to shoulder about six feet away. The pain-god had his arms hanging loosely at his sides, but his hands were clenched.
“Are you okay?” he asked, stepping closer to me.
Yael, who had been the one to talk first, didn’t say anything more or move closer. His eyes were too busy staring holes into my cart. I stepped in front of it, trying my best to hide the blossoming blood stain.
“Just doing some dweller chores,” I said in a really fast rush of words. “You know, laundry and sheets, and stuff … and what are you two doing here?”
I was inching backwards now, trying to push the cart with my butt as I moved. Of course Fakey, who clearly had bones made of lead, was making it difficult for me to get the wheels moving.
Yael must have decided he needed a closer look and in a flash, he was at my side, reaching out to place a hand on the cart. “We live here, Rocks, that’s why we’re here.” His breath washed over me as he leaned in very close. “What are you up to? I can sense your unease from a mile away.”
While he’d been distracting me, Coen had pulled the top sheet off. I didn’t realise until he let out a rumble of laughter which shocked the shit out of me. Yael and I both spun around, and my eyes dropped to the sight of Karyn, out cold, blood still oozing from her face.
I held both hands up as I took a deep, rattling breath. “Guys, I can totally explain this.”
Yael and Coen took one look at each other and lost it. They were doubled over, with their hands on their knees, roaring with laughter. I blinked a few times, trying to figure out if I had done what Siret feared he’d done before. Had I broken them or something? They never laughed like that.
“I have no idea what entertained us before you came along, dweller-baby,” Coen said, his laughter dying down to a few chuckles and shakes of his head.
Yael kicked out then, sending the cart off down the hallway, in the opposite direction of where their rooms were. He then slung an arm around me, leading the way back to their rooms. “Don’t worry about the sol, someone will find her sooner or later and get her to a healer.”
I shook off his arm, drawing myself up as tall as I could. Which was pathetically short compared to them. “You didn’t even ask me what happened,” I complained, looking between the pair of them. “What if she was dead? Would you even care?”
A minute exchange passed between them, and Coen was the one to answer as he stepped right up into my personal space, his massive body towering over me. “If she was dead, the only thing I’d ask you was if you needed a hand burying her body. She’s not worthy. She’ll never be a god. She’s a waste on this world.”
“What did she do to you, Willa-toy?” Yael’s smooth voice washed over me and I felt my will bend to his needs, to his wants. There was no denying him when he was like that.
“She pretended to be Emmy and then tried to stab me. Somehow her head connected to my bowl of pasta.” Which was still on the floor, further along the hall. “I’m actually really hungry still.”
Yael smirked at this but all humour was gone from Coen’s face.
“She tried to stab you?” Coen was very still. His words in themselves were not alarming, and he didn’t shout, but something in the tone and way he said it had every hair on my body standing on end. I swallowed hard, trying to clear the sudden thickness in my throat.