Seduction (Curse of the Gods #3)

I let out an exaggerated breath. “It was dirty because of all the dead bodies. And before you even go there, the answer is no: we were not doing dirty things with the dead bodies, honestly what the hell is wrong with you five?”

“Tensions might be a little high at the moment,” Aros murmured, sounding defensive.

“So you didn’t have sex with a dweller named Gary or Zac or something in the back of a cart?” Siret apparently needed clarification.

“No,” I growled, pushing against his chest.

“Oh, well, in that case. Back to bed!” He spun on his heel and sauntered back to his blanket, completely ignoring the daggers that I was staring into his back.

“Um … yeah, I’m going back to sleep, too.” Yael took a step back to match Siret’s, and then he was turning and retreating to another blanket: typically, he was the only one not sharing a blanket.

Coen had fallen asleep on his rock, leaning up against the wall—and that was where he returned now, soundlessly, as though he wasn’t quite sure how to take back the whole dwellersex-cart incident. He had his feet resting on a blanket, though, and that was the blanket that Rome returned to now. He could only fit his torso and head onto it, while he stretched the rest of his massive body out onto the rock, folding his hands up behind his head and closing his eyes.

“Wake me up when it’s my turn to be on watch.” His soft grumble echoed through the cave, rousing my mother from her position by the crate.

“Yes, Sacred One!” she called out, scrambling to claim the task as her own. I think she felt better having a task, so I decided to give her another one.

“Why don’t you take the last blanket and try to catch some …” I paused, wondering if the servers actually rested at all. If they had a thing called Silence, then probably not, and I really didn’t want her to mistake my order and send herself back into a weird comatose state that she may or may not wake up from again.

“What would you like me to catch, Sacred Willa?” she questioned. “Some of my usual catching tasks include: Greg, the other lowly being under the command of Staviti the Great, Wise, and Benevolent. Our master likes to tell Greg to run, and tell me to catch. It is one of his favoured pastimes.”

“He sounds like a joy,” I replied dryly. She only returned my sarcasm with a blank stare, and I let out a sigh. “Okay, well … forget the catching. Why don’t you just find somewhere comfortable to sit? Maybe that blanket right there?” I pointed to the blanket hanging over the side of the crate. “Maybe you could lay on it? And maybe you could close your eyes but not send yourself into Silence? Can you do that?”

“As you wish, Sacred Willa.”

She moved obediently to the blanket, lifted it from the side of the crate, and shuffled over to the side of the cave opposite Coen and Rome. I didn’t blame her, after their recent show of anger—even though they were pretending to slumber now like the giant, gentle beasts that they weren’t. I watched as she spread out the blanket, stared at it for a moment, and then lowered herself onto it, face-down, her arms awkwardly outstretched to either side.

“Am I doing it right, Sacred Willa?” she called out, her voice muffled by the blanket.

I had no response for that. I stared at her, shaking my head, while Siret and Aros tried to control their laughter by the fire. They were the only ones not pretending to sleep. Probably because it was still their watch duty.

“Are your eyes closed?” I called back.

There was a pause, and then another muffled reply. “Yes, Sacred Willa.”

“Then you’re doing it … right.” I struggled to say that without laughing myself, or cursing, or groaning out in frustration and throwing a giant rock at the back wall—but some of us had to show a little maturity. Clearly, my mother wasn’t going to do it.





I was roused awake when Aros shifted to my right. He was standing, but that meant that the warmth I had been sleepily snuggled into was leaving—my yellow dress, while extremely comfortable, was not very warm—so I reached out for his arm, trying to pull him back. He fell back down beside me, his eyes tired as his hand slipped around the side of my face.

“I need to wake Coen and Yael up,” he whispered. “They’re taking the next watch shift.”

“I’ll take over the watch shift,” I murmured back, pushing myself into a sitting position.

Siret was on my other side, and his arm slipped from my waist to my lap. I thought that I had woken him, but he only made a small grunt and slipped his hand into my dress, settling it against the warm skin of my hip. Aros’s touch against the side of my face shifted, and then he was turning my head back to him and pressing his lips to mine. It was a sleepy acknowledgement.

“Wake someone up if you get tired,” he said, before lowering himself back down. He knew better than to fight me on staying up.

I was one of them. Part of the team. I needed to pull my weight.

Even if pulling my weight turned out to be really, really, really boring. Several times, I thought I saw a rock move, but it was just the flicker of the dying fire making patterns on the cave wall. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there for, but when footsteps sounded at the entrance to the cave, I was almost relieved. I disentangled myself from Siret and Aros—who had both somewhat curved around me in their sleep, their hands claiming part of me to hold onto—and reached for the knife that someone had left on the rock beside my mother’s cooking pot.

I was so ready for a fight. Or anything, really. Anything but more wall-staring.

Unfortunately, the god who appeared was more of the scary-but-still-annoying kind than the attacking kind.

“Cyrus,” I said, a little disgruntled.

“Doll.” He was speaking almost in a whisper, though it still managed to carry the derisive tone that always underlined my nickname. “We should speak outside.”

I glanced back to my sleeping Abcurses, and nodded. He was right—if they woke up and found him standing right in front of them, there was no way that they would go back to sleep after that. There were only so many interruptions they would be able to handle before they gave up on the whole idea of ‘rest’ and decided to find a different cave to hide away in while we worked on a better plan.

I followed Cyrus out to the cave’s entrance, and then hugged my arms around myself as he kept going, further and further, into the cover of trees. It wasn’t warm and balmy as it had been earlier in the night: the air had a snap of cold to it now, and I started to wish I was wearing that stupid red robe after all.

“What do you want?” I asked, when it seemed like Cyrus wouldn’t stop moving.