He shrugged lightly. “She says strange things, sometimes. Her body is still functioning. I don’t know where it is right now, because you took it from Topia.”
“Herd,” my mother repeated, her hands now seeming to grasp something invisible in front of her. She made a stabbing motion. “Herd. Herd.”
“Oh gods,” I moaned. “She’s copying what Donald is doing in Minatsol. Emmy mentioned that Donald was malfunctioning, trying to herd her with an invisible pitchfork. Is this why my mother hasn’t ever seemed quite ... right in the head?” I asked the question of Jakan, who had moved to stand beside my mother, leading her shadow gently down from the hill to where I stood.
“You don’t understand the feeling,” he told me. “You are never apart from the pieces of your soul that have been ripped from you. Your mother has been incomplete for a long time.”
“Will this fix her?” I asked, reaching out and taking her wrist. She was still trying to stab things with her other hand.
Jakan smiled again, but the gesture was sad, somehow … different to a real smile. Tainted by something that I didn’t yet understand.
“Does she really need fixing?” he asked. “Can’t she be perfect in her incompleteness?”
I stared at him, uncomprehending. “Are you trying to say you’re going to miss her, and that you don’t want me to take her away?”
“What I have to say no longer matters, Willa. You must return immediately. The other pieces of your soul are in danger.”
I snapped one of the cuffs onto my mother’s wrist before the full weight of his words had even sunk into me. It must have been the sudden shift in his tone, or the way that my mother stopped trying to stab at things, her whole body going slack, her head hanging from her shoulders as though partly unhinged.
If the other pieces of my soul were in danger, that meant the Abcurses were in danger. I snapped the other cuff to my other wrist, and watched as Jakan covered both cuffs with his hands, his eyes settling on the shadow of my mother, before shifting to me.
“This will not be easy,” he told me. “Staviti is your enemy. He does not want any beings in Topia other than the ten perfect beings that he created. He will do everything in his power to kill any sol who has a chance of ascending to godhood, and any god who has already ascended. If he could put a stop to ascension in itself, he would.”
I nodded, my brain absorbing the information and storing it away somewhere to be dealt with later. I had one thing on my mind, and one thing alone.
I needed to protect my Abcurses.
“Thank you,” I murmured, as our eyes met again.
“Close your eyes,” he replied. “Reach into the chains as though they are a rope, and when you think you can see it, grasp that rope and pull. It will resist you. Keep pulling. Eventually, you will find your way home again.”
I did as he told me, my eyes closing, my consciousness directed toward the chains. It was easier than I had thought it would be, since everything in me was already reaching out for the Abcurses and the other pieces of my soul.
I clasped the invisible tether, and the chains hummed with power against my skin.
“Jakan,” a clear, bright voice rang out. My mother’s, I realised. I had never heard her sound so coherent, so ... alive.
“Jakan!” she cried out again, in despair, this time. “No! I want to stay with you!”
Shock barrelled through me, because I had never heard her speak any beings name like that. Like … she loved him. Did that mean that Jakan might be more important to me than just Staviti’s brother and something the mortal glass wanted me to unravel? Could he possibly be … my father?
I cried out for him as well, but it was too late. We were being pulled back the way we had come, and I could feel the jarring snap of my soul crashing back into my body, before everything went dark.
Seventeen
I woke up to the sounds of screaming. When I blinked my eyes open, the cliff-top that Rau had challenged the sols upon had drastically changed. There were scorch marks along the grass, and a giant mess of charred, twisted rubble where the main hall had been. There was a god standing amidst the debris, his feet safely balancing on a single, unblemished plank of wood, his robe still somehow pristine as it fluttered about him, pushed by some invisible breeze.
All around the rubble, the sols and gods had gathered, each of them turned toward a woman who had collapsed on the ground, her screams of agony filling the air.
There were five broad backs spanning out in front of me, positioned to protect my body. I was laying on the grass, an inert body beside me, the chains linking us together. For just a moment, I thought that it was my mother, but that was only wishful thinking. The blood-red robes that enveloped the form belonged to Rau. He remained still, his eyes open, as though he was dead. I shoved the cuff off and scrambled to my feet, rousing the attention of the guys. Each of them spun around, and I was suddenly tangled in the embrace of too many arms.
“We could still feel you,” one of them muttered.
“We knew we hadn’t lost you,” another added.
I was still disoriented, still dizzy and trying to get my bearings, but it felt right being momentarily crushed and then repositioned, only to be crushed again as they fought with each other to hold me properly. A kiss landed on my lips, another on my cheek, another on my neck. I basked in the warmth of them, the solidness of them. Each unique scent, and the brightness of their colouring. It was shocking, after being stuck in the world of grey dust, but it was a welcome shock.
“Staviti is trying to kill everyone,” I muttered, as we turned to watch the woman again.
I didn’t recognise her.
“What do you mean by everyone?” Coen asked, claiming my right side, his eyes on the god standing above everyone, his voice almost a whisper.
I squinted at the god, and then almost fell back a step in shock. It was Staviti. On the Peak. Watching a woman break down. From the remains of the hall.
This was apparently too much information for my brain to handle, because the only word that I could manage to form was, “What?”
“She means everyone,” Rome supplied. “I heard it in her mind before she started freaking out. He wants to kill all of us.”
“Everyone but the Original Gods,” I clarified. “His brother told me.”
“His brother ...” Aros trailed off, turning away from the scene before him to stare at me, his brow crinkled. “You mean Jakan—”
I leapt forward, quickly covering his mouth, but it was too late.
His brother’s name had captured Staviti’s attention.
“Willa Knight,” his voice boomed out, cutting over the sounds of the sobbing woman. “You have taken something from me.”
“If you lost something, you should probably check that mess there,” I found myself responding as I pointed to the broken pile of building that he stood on, my voice almost loud and confident ... if you ignored the tremble of terror undermining everything.
He smiled, his head shaking slowly from one side to the other, and then he was moving toward me. With each of his steps, a wooden plank shot out from the rubble, providing a smooth and unblemished step to aid his descent.
“You have taken one of my creations,” he said, when he was before me.
I could feel the tension coursing through Coen and Rome on either side of me, and I knew that all five of my Abcurses were a click away from jumping in front of me and starting a fight with Staviti just to distract him.
“We’re even then,” I said, trying to force my voice into a semblance of calm, the way he was doing. “You took my mother from me. I took Rau from you.”