Page 13 of The Curse of Gods (The Curse of Saints #3)

Will was seven years old when he realized his father was cruel.

He’d had three years to come to terms with it. Three years to learn that crying to his mother did him no good, and that the best way to avoid his father’s wrath was to obey.

It’s how he found himself here, dressed in a suit that any other ten-year-old would mock him for relentlessly, standing alongside one of his father’s most wretched attendants, Nial.

Technically, Will was supposed to be the one sharing the news.

That’s what his father had ordered him to do.

But he’d thrown up after their first house call, right there on the widower’s front stoop, her cries still ringing out from the other side of the door.

Nial had taken the paper from his hands with a scoff, muttering something about softness and boys who would never become men.

Will hid his trembling hands in the pockets of his trousers and focused on keeping his chin raised and shoulders back as he followed Nial down the dusty path that wove throughout the farmlands.

His mother said such postures were to make him look like a gentleman.

But the shadow that loomed before him showed nothing but a gangly boy who hadn’t grown into his limbs yet.

“You’re not going to vomit again, are you?” Nial’s gruff voice sounded from beside him.

“No,” Will muttered, his chin jutting out as he fixed his attention on the farmhouse in the distance.

“Good. One more, then I’m off to get a drink. Let your father know it’ll be on his copper. Payment for having to babysit his sniveling son.”

Will’s hands tightened into fists, his knuckles stretching against the fabric of his pockets. He could feel his affinity racing through his veins, answering the siren call of his anger.

Gentlemen do not throw around their power like beasts , his mother’s voice chided in his mind. It would be years before he learned the truth behind her words; before he recognized that power lay not in brute force, but in timing, and manipulation, and lies.

“Who is it?” Will asked as he forced his fingers to unclench.

“Callias Veliri. His wife, Eliza, was a Caeli on the passage.”

Veliri. Will knew that name. Aya Veliri was a Persi who went to school with him. He’d never spoken to her, but he’d seen her in the halls, often with a blond-haired Incend that he knew for a fact had set fire to Ms. Scheuler’s Conoscenza just the other month.

Aya was pretty, with long dark-brown hair and blue eyes that looked like the ice that froze over the creeks of the Malas. His stomach churned as he thought of those eyes filling with tears once they delivered their news.

Gods, he wanted to go home. Not to the town house, but somewhere else.

Somewhere with a nice mother and a loving father and maybe even a dog whose fur he could bury his face in whenever he tried to hide his tears.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to hide them in this new place.

Not if he had a mother who’d hug him tight and a father who’d see it wasn’t weak to feel.

Feeling was, after all, what the gods had made him to do. Why couldn’t they see that?

These other parents would. They would see how emotions stirred in and around him and they would not think it weak that sometimes they overcame him. That sometimes, his own were too powerful to ignore.

He wanted parents like that so badly that he could feel his eyes burn with it. And didn’t that make him pathetic? Pathetic and selfish. Here he was, on his way to break the news to a girl that her mother was dead—at the hand of his own father’s greed, no less—and he was sulking in his own sorrow.

At least he had his mother and father.

Will tugged at the lapels of the jacket his father had forced him to wear. It was a stiff, uncomfortable thing, black with gold thread, the compass and arrow sigil of their house stitched over the right breast pocket.

He hated it.

The collar rubbed against the back of his neck, but he forced himself to ignore the way it made his skin itch as Nial led the way up the winding path.

Aya’s home, a white farmhouse with a pale blue porch, sat in a large field, the property portioned off with a wooden fence that had seen better days.

Nial grumbled something under his breath about dilapidation as he pushed through the rickety gate, and Will felt that stirring of his power once more as his jaw clenched.

He thought it was lovely. The chipped paint and the autumn-coordinated flower beds and the land stretching as far as the eye could see.

He could breathe here in a way that he couldn’t in the Merchant Borough.

He sucked in a lungful of fresh mountain air just to prove it.

It calmed his racing heart and settled the dread that was roiling in his stomach as Nial’s heavy fist knocked on the Veliris’ door.

Maybe she’s not home. Please, gods, have her not be home.

His prayers went unanswered as Aya opened the door.

She took in Nial first, then her gaze flicked to Will.

It lingered on his jacket, something hardening in those ice-blue eyes as they traced the arrows and compass sigil.

Her grip on the door tightened, the skin of her knuckles blanching white with the force of it.

She knows.

Will’s affinity stirred again, but this time, it wasn’t in anger. It was in desperation.

“Good day,” Nial began, his tone rehearsed as he stared down at the sheet of paper in his hands. Fifteen godsdamn houses, and he still relied on the parchment like a fledgling actor.

Will, on the other hand, could recite it by heart.

It is with a heavy heart that I must report the loss of the Juniper , a merchant vessel of the Castell fleet…

“Who is it, mi couera ?” a deep voice sounded from within the home. A hand appeared above Aya’s on the door, and suddenly it was swinging wide open. Callias Veliri looked at them with gentle confusion, a welcoming smile pulling at his lips. “Can I help you two?”

Nial cleared his throat. “It is with a heavy heart that I must report the loss of the Juniper , a merchant vessel of the Castell fleet.”

Callias sucked in a sharp breath.

“Our records show that your kin”—a pause as he scanned the sheet—“Eliza Veliri was serving aboard.”

“Oh gods,” Callias whispered. His kind face was shuttering, his body collapsing against the door as tears sprang up in his eyes. Will could feel his agony brushing against his shield. He still hadn’t quite mastered how to protect himself entirely from others.

“She has been reported missing along with…”

Will could hardly hear the rest of Nial’s speech above the gut-clenching cry that burst from Callias’s mouth. But he knew it, knew just how cold and callous his father was to include it.

…along with fifteen others in service to the merchant house. Ten crates of Zeluus-forged weaponry. Six crates of wool.

He looked to Aya, who was still standing ramrod straight in the doorway.

Her lips were pressed into a thin line, her body held so rigidly he thought she might snap.

He could see the quiver of her muscles as she kept herself together, fury and despair lining her defiant stare as Nial droned on, his voice flat beneath the sobs of her father.

Will’s affinity surged, and this time, he let it.

There were intricacies to this, he knew.

Elements of his power he hadn’t yet mastered—things like feeling another’s emotions without letting oneself drown in them.

But he could take some of that hurt his father had caused. He could maybe even lessen it.

Help her.

It was his only thought as he let his power reach for her, desperate to ease what he could only guess was unimaginable pain.

He felt a whisper of something—something cool and soothing, like the mountain air had been on his lungs. But it vanished as Aya’s gaze met his, and then he felt…

Nothing at all.

No pain, despite the tears in her eyes. No fury, despite the rage in her stare. No whisper that there was even someone before him.

Was he doing it wrong? Ms. Scheuler had said Sensainos could detect the essence of someone, even if they shielded. What was happening?

Will’s head cocked as he pushed his power forward, filling it with warmth, and sympathy, and every ounce of earnest apology his scrawny self could weave into it.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

But again, it was met with nothing.

“Unfortunately, because the voyage was incomplete, payment will not be rendered for services. All accounts for those lost will be settled within the fortnight, and any remaining payments owed to you by Master Castell will be made in—”

“Leave,” Aya’s voice was quiet, but it cut through Nial’s monotone like a knife. And yet it wasn’t the attendant she addressed.

It was Will.

He swallowed hard. “Aya.”

It was the first time he’d ever said her name aloud, and it cracked against the lump that remained in his throat.

“Leave.”

She was trembling as she grabbed her father’s arm and tugged, pulling his sobbing figure away from the door so she could slam it shut.

Later that night, as Will clutched a pillow to his chest and let the hurt of the day seep through him, his tears wetting the silk beneath his cheek, he realized he hadn’t felt a whisper of Aya’s persuasion affinity when she ordered them to go.

It was masterful control for someone so young. Maybe her tremors hadn’t been those of anger, or fear, or even sadness, after all.

Maybe they’d been restraint.