9. Kiera
Chapter 9
Kiera
I smell like sex. Even after washing myself thoroughly, I know it's true. It’s made even more apparent as I leave the bedroom with Theos and spy both Kalix and Ruen outside their rooms. Kalix grins as he raises a brow at the two of us. Scowling at his impudent expression of interest, I flip my middle finger and turn toward the end of the hallway.
Though we’ve been given no information about what's to be expected of us here in this ‘Academy,’ we follow the corridors back towards the main hall that we came through the day before. The sounds of voices lead us to a secondary hallway and antechamber where long wooden tables are filled with Mortal Gods and Terra are stationed against the wall, their faces waxen with long dark circles beneath their eyes.
I scan the sides of the room, searching until I find Niall—looking much like his companions with a ghostly pallor embedded into his skin. When he spies me back, he seems to straighten and gain some life back. His lips quirk and his hand twitches at his side as if he wants to lift it in greeting, but with a quick glance to the end of his row, he keeps it where it is. Following his gaze, I spy one of the Terra of Ortus standing as if presiding over the Terra brought with the Mortal Gods of the other Academies. As if under his direction.
For all I know, they could be.
“I see Maeryn,” Ruen murmurs, cutting towards the front of our group and heading towards a table on the edge of the room. “Come.”
I don’t hesitate in trailing after him and both Kalix and Theos take up positions at my back. The dining hall is wide and expansive with double the amount of tables that Riviere’s dining hall had boasted. No doubt, it’s due to the extra mouths they now have to feed. As we walk towards the table that Maeryn is seated at, I scan over the masses of both familiar and unfamiliar faces.
Mortal Gods talk animatedly about what’s to come now that we’re here. While some seem apprehensive about their new surroundings, more are exuberant and excited by the prospect of catching a God’s eye. Their voices and the snippets of conversation that I catch as I pass them serve to remind me that for most of these people, becoming a high-class servant to a Divine Being is what they think will be their best future.
My gut twists with disgust at the insight I have. Most likely the Gods will keep many alive to act as servants, but just as likely—these people, the children of the Gods, will end up being fodder for their greed. Facing forward once more, I keep pace with Ruen until we reach the table that Maeryn has commandeered for herself. She looks up from her plate as we approach, no surprise shining in the depths of her eyes as she spots the four of us.
Shuffling over to make room, she offers me a seat next to her and I take it gratefully. The Darkhavens, in turn, prod and shove their way onto the opposite bench seats, their massive bodies and dark glowers threatening anyone who has the misfortune of sitting too close to find new accommodations as expediently as possible. Maeryn reaches forward and snags a bread roll sitting in a basket at the center of the table and begins tearing it into small bite-sized pieces, dropping most of them into the bowl of brown and orange liquid in front of her.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing.
She looks down and grimaces. “I’m not entirely sure,” she admits, “but it’s all they offered for breakfast.” She bites into the remainder of her roll, her jaw working just hard enough to tell me that the bread is stale.
I return to glancing around the cavernous dining hall. “They’re not even trying to hide their dissatisfaction with the Mortal Gods,” I murmur absently.
Gone are the large, ornate tapestries and the gilded paintings that adorned the walls of Riviere Academy. Ortus, in its place, depicts nothing but discontent and absence of care. The deadened eyes of the Ortus Terra seem to stare over the vast space of the hall, unseeing and yet, seeing too much. As if their sight cannot be weighed by what is in front of them but by what lies beyond the realm of the tangible.
“Do we have any idea of what they’re planning for us?” Maeryn asks, drawing my attention back to her as she swallows her bread with a barely repressed look of disgust.
“Kalix and I went out last night,” Ruen admits, lowering his voice so that only those in the closest vicinity can hear his words.
I lean closer to the table, my eyes fixed on Ruen’s scarred face. “What did you find?”
There’s a light creeping sensation on the back of my neck, where my hair has been lifted and tied into a plait down the back of my head, as if someone is watching me. Unwilling to turn and see if that’s the case, I keep my gaze focused on Ruen as he speaks.
“It’s not so much what we found as what we didn’t find,” he begins.
“What does that mean?” Maeryn asks, frowning.
Ruen’s brow creases and dual lines form between his eyes as he seems to consider his next words. Then, with a sigh, he says,
“There are no classrooms. This is supposed to be the original Academy, but there are no signs that this place was used for anything at all. The other accommodations for Mortal Gods are all the same—unkempt and dirty. Many from both Riviere and Perditia have complained to the Terra of Ortus, but they haven’t done anything about it.”
“I’m surprised the Mortal Gods haven’t lashed out at them,” I say mildly. Back in Riviere, a Terra could have been slapped or beaten for daring to even look at a Divine offspring wrong.
Ruen’s midnight eyes meet mine. “They have.”
Maeryn inhales sharply, and when she turns to glance back I know without looking that she’s searching for Niall to make sure he’s unharmed. Doubtful that anything would’ve happened between now and when we walked in and I saw him, I maintain my concentration on the man across from me.
“They’ve lashed out?” I clarify.
He nods.
“How? I haven’t heard anything?”
“Oh, you know how we are, Little Thief,” Kalix says, leaning back on his seat as he reaches for a bread roll. “They slap, they scream, they demand better treatment.” He shrugs. “The Terra of Ortus don’t respond. Not to any amount of abuse. Therefore, the others have figured out that no matter what they demand, only certain things will be provided. Cleaning their rooms and offering better food than this,” he pauses to gesture at Maeryn’s sad excuse for soup or stew or whatever the hell it is, “will not be provided here.”
“What do they want with us?” Maeryn’s quivering question cuts through the rapidly thickening tension over the table.
“That’s the question we all want answered,” Theos says as a Terra I recognize from Riviere pauses by the table with a tray in hand. The man, already too slender, looks as if he’s lost even more weight even though we’ve only been here for a day and night, but his hands are steady as he sets down four bowls to be passed out to the Darkhavens as well as myself. I take the bowl and lift it to my nose, sniffing.
Sour pepper spices and a thick meaty scent wafts up from it. Even knowing the kind of shit I’d eaten in the past simply because there were no other choices when training under Ophelia, I don’t want to eat this. Not only am I concerned that it has something that’s turned foul amidst its questionable contents, but I am suspicious of anything given to us by the Gods at this point.
Everyone leans back and remains silent as the Terra finishes his duties before disappearing down the row, delivering more bowls to newcomers that have arrived. Kalix tosses his half-eaten bread into the bowl and then lifts a spoon to scoop a mouthful out and swallow it back.
As one, Theos, Ruen, and I watch him, curious. He chews lightly for a moment before swallowing and offering a shrug. “It’s edible,” he tells us. Theos casts a look at his own bowl doubtfully.
Unfortunately, despite my conviction that the food is not to be trusted, there’s only so much a person can hold out. I reach for the food with a grimace. Our questions are put on hold as we try to consume as much of the odd concoction of food as possible. As I expected from the scent, it’s over-spiced and yet somehow fatty and hard to swallow, but I manage to choke down a good half of my bowl before sliding it away and washing it down with one of the jugs of water stationed at the end of the table and a stale bread roll.
“Well, even if what they’re feeding us isn’t fit for animal consumption,” I say absently, rolling the bread between my palms in front of me, “if they’re still bothering to keep up the pretense, then we won’t be killed right away.”
Maeryn chokes on a bite of her own bread roll and coughs wildly into her hands as three pairs of serious eyes—green, gold, and blue—settle on me. I look back at them and blink.
“What?” I ask when no one says a word. “You can’t say I’m not right.”
Ruen pushes away his bowl and crosses his arms over his chest. “We don’t know that they want to kill us,” he says, keeping his tone low.
I roll my eyes. “What, then, could they possibly have brought us here for?” I demand. Before he can answer, though, I forge ahead. “That stupid Spring Equinox thing?” I snort. “Don’t play the fool, Ruen, you’re too intelligent to believe that.”
“K-kill us?” Maeryn’s shaky voice reignites my compassion. So often, I forget that Maeryn wasn’t raised like me or the Darkhavens. Compared to us, she’s as innocent in this world as Niall is.
Dropping bread onto the table next to my bowl, I turn towards her. While I want to offer some sort of comfort, I don’t want to lie to her. When I look at her waxen face and pale lips, eyes round and shimmering with fear, it’s even more difficult to speak.
“Why would they want to kill us?” Maeryn asks, glancing between me and the Darkhavens. “We’ve done everything they’ve asked of us. They have no reason?—”
“They don’t need a reason,” Kalix says, cutting her off with an annoyed sound from his throat. Her attention swivels to him. “The Gods rule this world and us and we are nothing to them.”
“We’re their children,” she defends, even if from her tone I can tell she doesn’t hold any sort of affection for our sires.
Kalix leans his elbows onto the table, making the mass of wood creak under his weight. “Where is your mother then, Maeryn?” he asks. “When was the last time you saw her? Spoke with her?” When nothing but silence answers his question, he snorts derisively. “That’s what I fucking thought.” He waves a hand through the air as if dismissing her. “We’re nothing but their mistakes. They drop us off at the Academy’s doorstep and go on with their lives. Now, they want to thin the herd, so to speak. We’re nothing but baggage to them and potential power.”
Shit. Shit! Fucking shit. I shoot Ruen a quick hard look, but he’s already turning to Kalix, grabbing ahold of his brother’s arm and hissing something dark in his ear. I’m already focusing my attention on Maeryn.
“Mae—”
“Don’t.” Maeryn holds up a hand when I try to say her name, her eyes fixed squarely on the wooden surface of the table. “Don’t lie to me, Kiera,” she says. “Even if I hate him, I can at least acknowledge that he’s being honest. Cruel as he said it, Kalix isn’t wrong. My mother hasn’t sent me a letter in over a year and even before that, it was sparse. I know I am no great pride for her. None of us are to our God parents.” She lifts her head, the red curls that frame her face seeming less vibrant and flatter than ever before. A misty sheen settles in her eyes as she faces me. “I’m sure there are things that you’re involved with that are dangerous and I know they have to do with the Gods, but…” She lowers her hand and glances over her shoulder. I follow her gaze to Niall standing against the stone wall, his back straight and his face holding onto impassiveness by a mere thread.
When he sees that Maeryn is looking at him, however, any attempt at indifference washes away to reveal the yearning he has for her. So deep and powerful, that it makes my own cold dead organ of a heart beat a bit faster.
“Don’t tell me,” Maeryn half whispers. “Don’t tell either of us if you can help it.” She works to keep the tremor from her voice, speaking slowly as she does. “We already know too much and neither Niall nor I are fighters. If they try to get information from us…” She sucks in a breath. “You can’t trust that anything you plan won’t be revealed.”
To some, such an admission might be seen as cowardly or even pathetic. Not to me. The fact that Maeryn knows her limitations and is unwilling to lie about them only serves to increase my respect for her. Her hands tremble when she settles them on the edge of the table as she rises from her seat.
“If you need my ability, call for me,” she murmurs, lowering her voice as she draws her legs and the mass of her skirts up and over the bench. “But otherwise, don’t ask us for more.” She looks at me as she stands to her full height, her cheeks flushed with what I can only assume is shame.
I don’t hesitate to reach for her, snagging her hand and holding on to it as I stare up into her rounded, lightly freckled features. “Thank you.” Making a low noise in her throat, Maeryn tries to retract her hand from mine, but I grip it tighter. “I mean it,” I tell her. “I know it’s hard to admit faults, Gods, but I fucking know it’s hard.” I offer her a smile and then gently rub the back of her knuckles with my thumb. “Knowing what you can and cannot do is not something you should be ashamed of.”
She shakes her head, the curls flying around her face as she chokes on a watery laugh. “Only you would say that,” she replies.
I nod in Niall's direction and fix her with a new, different, look. “All I need from you is to take care of him,” I say. “He’s a good man and I…” Fuck, was it always this hard to tell the truth? To be so open and vulnerable? “I don’t want to see him, or you, hurt,” I finish.
Maeryn’s shoulders sag and it isn’t until that moment that I realize how tense her body actually was. “Of course, I’ll take care of him,” she says as if that fact was obvious from the start. “That’s why I can’t help you with whatever you’re planning now. I can’t get him involved and if I’m involved, so is he.”
Tilting my head to the side, I grin up at her. “So, it’s like that then, huh?”
Immediately yanking her hand from mine, Maeryn gives me a withering glare and lifts her skirts. “You, of all people, shouldn’t be asking about my love life, Kiera,” she replies coolly before flashing a glance at the men behind me on the other side of the table. “You’ve got more than enough on your plate.”
Too fucking true. Laughing lightly, I watch as Maeryn turns away and strides down the aisle between the dining hall tables towards Niall.
Behind me, Theos’ dry tone breaks the spell of ease she’d woven over me. “Well, there goes our only healer,” he says.
Turning back to the Darkhavens, I purse my lips. “We’ll manage,” I tell him. “She said if we needed her abilities we could call on her.”
Theos shakes his head. “She doesn’t want to be involved at all,” he replies. “She only said that to make herself feel better.”
My hands curl into the edge of the table, nails digging into the hard wood until I can feel it splintering beneath my grip.
Thankfully, Ruen speaks before I can. “You can’t blame her for wanting to protect herself.” That damnable mask of neutrality is back in place. “Let it go for now, Theos. If we need her, we’ll call on her.”
Theos props his elbows up on the table and opens his mouth, no doubt to launch into some explanation as to why Maeryn is a coward who can’t be relied upon. Before he can piss me off in that way, however, a loud gong rings out across the dining hall. All conversation ceases as everyone turns toward the opening at the end of the room where three figures stand. To either side are Nubo and Zalika and in the center, a face as familiar to me now as the Darkhavens. My upper lip curls back in disgust at the broad expanse of his chest, unclothed but adorned with ropes of gold chain crisscrossing the muscles there. His skin is radiant even if his eyes are hard, cold, and empty of all compassion. Turning his head from side to side, the glint of a crown atop his dark hair reflects off a ray of sunlight pouring through the upper half of the transparent brimstone surroundings. When his gaze settles on me, his lips split into a wide, almost beast-like grin.
Whatever news he’s brought can’t be good. After all, nothing pleases Azai, the God of Strength, more than torturing his sons and no doubt, me.