The next morning I sat on the floor of the small sitting room attached to Coen’s bedroom. I had claimed it as my ‘space’ over the last moon-cycle, since it had been so empty, and I had been in serious need of a place in which to have alone time that wasn’t the cleaning closet in the hallway. Coen hadn’t seemed to mind, but I also hadn’t really asked his permission. I was taking cues from the way they acted with each other. They entered each other’s rooms without knocking; wore each other’s clothes without asking. They stole each other’s books, weapons, and other personal items—I assumed it was okay for me to do the same, so I had claimed the mostly-empty space.
Originally, there had only been a single chair pushed up against shelves half-filled with books, and a dark-toned rug on the ground. Now, one of the shelves had been cleared off to hold my things: a rock, with an imprint of Rome’s knuckles; a tiny, jewelled beetle crawling around in a jar, with a few lettuce leaves stuffed in there for sustenance; a wrapped medical pack; and a scrap of purple cloth. It was all I had left of the dress Siret had used his power to fashion around my body. Maybe it was a weird collection of things to be possessive over, but they were mine, and that was the end of that.
I leaned backwards, allowing myself to stretch out against the rug so that I could stare up at the ceiling. One of the guys was nearby—I didn’t know which one, but the pain in my chest wasn’t threatening to tear me apart. They always left someone with me for that very reason. I frowned at the ceiling, going over our awkward conversation from the sun-cycle before.
Those morons actually gave me the sex talk.
It was niggling at me on so many different levels. Why did I have to make their pact easier for them? That was stupid. I never agreed to the pact in the first place. A hesitant knock on the door brought me out of my thoughts and I jumped up, wrenching it open to reveal Emmy, standing there in Coen’s bedroom, her eyes wild and skittish, her hands wringing in front of her.
I laughed. “I wouldn’t have told you to come at this time if any of them were going to be here,” I tried to reassure her, pulling her into the little room and shutting the door behind her.
She sat down on my rug immediately, as though it might help her go unnoticed if anyone burst into my part of the room. “One of the dwellers refused to do his chores this sun-cycle,” she told me, her voice a whisper.
“Oh?” I prompted.
“Yeah.” She nodded, her lips twisting into a grimace. “He said he wasn’t going to go back to work until all the dwellers started pulling their weight. Apparently, he’s been doing double shifts on one of the sol bathrooms because other dwellers have been slacking.”
I frowned, wondering if that was somehow my fault. “What happened? When he refused to do any of his chores?”
“They sent him back to his village in disgrace.”
I winced. Those villagers took their service to the sols really seriously. The poor guy was probably going to get strung up in the village square … and it might have been my fault.
“I’m going to do my chores,” I announced suddenly, springing to my feet and knocking my elbow against one of the shelves.
I rubbed at it absently as Emmy jumped to her feet with me, her eyes widening. “But you can’t. You tried that. The Abcurses refused to go with you.”
“I didn’t really try that hard.” I twisted up my face into a guilty expression. “You know I hate cleaning, Em. You didn’t actually expect me to fight for cleaning privileges, did you?”
She rolled her eyes, before giving me a brief hug, and then quickly backing out of the room. “Good luck!” she whispered, leaving the door open as she took off into the hallway.
Since I was in Coen’s room, I moved to the second room, raising my fist to knock on the door. I paused just before my knuckles hit the wood, indecision seizing me.
Rome was probably going to be the hardest one to cajole into anything. He seemed to act significantly cooler towards me than the others. I dropped my hand, glancing at the other doors. There was no way that Rome would offer to be on Willa-duty anyway. He considered it a personal affront that my soul had latched onto him. I leaned back up against his door, wondering which of the other three had stayed behind.
Screw this, I thought, projecting my thoughts loudly with the next word. Abcurses!
A micro-click later, the door behind me swung inwards. The movement was swift and strong, and much too fast for me to stop myself from falling backwards. Luckily, there was a second door behind the first; huge, imposing, and ridged with muscle.
“Hey.” I tilted my head back as Rome’s chest caught my fall. “I was just … um …”
He glanced down, and my voice seemed to die in my throat. He was caught off-guard, which made his face a little less like a stone than usual. A massive hand settled against my stomach, as though to steady me.
“What have we told you about doors?” he asked.
“They move … so I shouldn’t lean on them.” My words sounded husky. It was embarrassing, but my whole body had turned traitor the moment that curse crashed into my chest. Now it wanted to get as close to the Abcurses as possible at any moment in time, and then once I was close, it seemed to set off a bomb inside my bloodstream.
He didn’t acknowledge my answer. Only stared at me. Probably because my body was curling back against his, pushing upwards as I raised onto my toes. I didn’t know why I was raising myself up, it just seemed like the right thing to do. Rome was so tall, I wanted to make us fit better together. He grunted just as I slotted in perfectly against him, and then his hand swept down over my stomach, hooking into the waistband of my pants and pulling me forward, away from his body.
He stepped with me—his grip still forcing me at arm’s length—and slammed the door to his bedroom shut behind him. “Let’s go for a walk. I need some air.”
“Speaking of walks …” I swatted at his arm until he released me, pretending that I hadn’t just plastered myself to him. I was great with denial. “Do you think we could walk by the arena? I apparently have cleaning duty there, and I’ve never once cleaned anything there.”
“No.” The answer was final.
“Crusher says no!” I impersonated what I assumed was a giant, using as deep a voice as possible and walking with my arms and legs all pushed out as though I had too much muscle to function properly.
He stopped walking, turning to face me with an incredulous expression. “I do not look or sound like that.”
Dropping my arms back to my sides, I muttered, “I took a few creative liberties.”