I had the urge to take back what I had just said, but I shoved it away, tilting my chin up at Yael in badass acknowledgement.
Or it would have been a badass acknowledgement … if I hadn’t been so preoccupied that I didn’t see the dweller turning the corner of the corridor that met up with ours, pushing a trolley before him. I smacked into the trolley first, even though he had pulled it to a stop so that I would have enough space to skirt around it. It was filled with breakfast trays and pots of coffee, evidently for some lazy-ass sols who wanted their food brought to them in their rooms every morning. One of the pots wobbled, tipping over and pouring a stream of scalding coffee right onto the front of my shirt.
I screamed, jumping back and pulling the material away from my skin. I was hopping all over the place, muttering swear words beneath my breath and trying to blow cool air down my top to ease the burn. My skin was an angry red, but it hadn’t actually injured me in any serious way, and it definitely wasn’t the first time I’d been assaulted by a stream of too-hot liquid, so I was able to recover in time to see Yael advancing angrily on the dweller.
One of the downsides to ‘belonging’ to the Abcurse pack was that they took even the smallest of threats way too seriously. And it wasn’t just the threats to their family that they reacted to, but also the threats to me, because I was one of them now. Or at least I would be one of them until my soul stopped trespassing on their soul-land, or their heart-land, or wherever the sneaky pieces of me were currently residing.
Not the time.
I reined in my thoughts as Yael pushed a muscled forearm up beneath the dweller’s chin, roughly cutting off his air-supply. It didn’t surprise me to see him overreacting. We were all the same way: a little too impulsive, a little too reactive, a little too rough around the edges. It was why I let them stick around.
Because it was definitely me that was allowing them to stick around, and not the alternative.
Yael was muttering something to the poor guy, too low for me to hear, but I could tell that the dweller was about to pee himself. I didn’t really blame him, although I hoped he wouldn’t, because that was gross.
“Four!” I marched over to them, attempting to pull him away. “It’s fine. It was an accident.”
Surprisingly, he released the guy—who grabbed his cart and pushed it down the hallway at a sprint. He was definitely going to run into someone else, the way he was going, but apparently getting away from Yael was a priority. Yael swept his eyes over me, looking a little sheepish. I thought that he was feeling remorse for having overreacted, but that was so far-fetched that I started looking for other reasons instead. I followed his eyes down my shirt.
My nipples were saluting the world, even through my bra. The soggy material of my shirt had moulded to my body. I rolled my eyes, pulling it away from my skin again.
“Nothing you haven’t already seen, Four,” I reminded him.
He turned, continuing his way down the hallway, and I fell into step beside him.
“One.” He sniffed disdainfully.
“Four.”
“One. And I haven’t seen your tits before, Rocks.”
“Sure you have. You don’t remember—”
“I didn’t look,” he interrupted. “Can we talk about something else?”
Right, the pact, I thought, shaking my head in annoyance.
He suddenly stopped walking, his fingers wrapping around my wrist, spinning me to face him. “What?” he asked carefully. When I didn’t answer, he shook me a little. “What did you just say?”
I pretended to think about it, my heart slamming up against my ribs. I’d told them about the first time I had accidently slipped into Rome’s head while I had been sleeping, but I hadn’t told them about the second time. About being inside Siret’s head while they all discussed the boundaries of their friendship with me.
“Uh …” I pulled my arm out of his grip, shoving my hands into the pockets of my pants. It was a tight fit, because Siret had dressed me with Trickery that morning—which was a subset of his ability that I still didn’t fully understand—so the material seemed to have been stitched up around my body, made precisely for my figure. “I said … right, the … er—”
He didn’t even give me enough time to come up with a good lie. He just shook his head, grabbed my wrist again, and dragged me the rest of the way to the dining hall in silence. The others were already at their usual table. I cast my eyes over them, something warming inside my chest. Rome noticed me first, his gaze shooting to my wet shirt. He shook his head in exasperation.
“Hey, Persuasion,” a few of them muttered, though I noticed that my boobs had all the attention that morning.
I fought the urge to cross my arms over my chest.
“Eyes up,” I demanded.
Cue four almost-identical smirks.
“How’d the training session go, Rocks?” Aros had his golden head tilted, his eyes glinting with amusement. I wanted to stare at his perfect features for a while, but an answer was probably required.
“Fine—” I started to say, before Yael stepped up, his wide chest crowding my spine with heat, his hand wrapping over my mouth from behind.
“She’s been hanging out inside our heads again,” he announced to the table.
Well, thanks. Just put it out there why don’t you. I pulled his hand away from my mouth, but he didn’t back off.
“You make it sound so much more sinister than it really was,” I said, very casually. I didn’t even bother to deny it—they would ferret out the truth. It was better to simply own it. “I mean, occasionally when I sleep, I slip into one of your heads. It seems to mostly be when you shithead sols are planning something about my life without consulting me.”
They weren’t really sols, they were gods, but if I declared to the whole of Blesswood that there were five actual gods wandering around the halls every sun-cycle, all hell would break loose. As it was, a passing dweller had heard my admonishing tone as I spoke to them and she had gasped. It was a sharp sound, almost mechanical, and it instantly reminded me of Jeffrey. In fact, I actually had to check twice just to make sure the Topian server hadn’t been sent to Minatsol from the land of the gods to spy on us.