“Lord Acacius was kind enough to aid me in my goal,” Marina said, smiling in the same patronizing way Finnian had spoken to her.
Gods, he regretted not inflicting more torment on her back in the great hall.
Alke’s body dissolved into particles and melted away in her grasp. The small orb of his soul fluttered away like a firefly.
“Acacius!” Cassian snarled, jerking against the chains holding him against the fence. “Release me at once!”
Acacius twisted to look back at Cassian. “I do this for your own good, Brother.”
Finnian kept his eyes locked on Marina. She held the syringe up against the silver glow of the full moon, inspecting its contents. “And what do you plan to do with it?”
Acacius’s disturbing mask faced Finnian. “She plans on handing it over to me?—”
“You are a fool,” she muttered.
A monstrous shadow hoisted from the ground and devoured Acacius before he could respond.
This nightrazer was colossal compared to the others. It stood meters tall, its form a writhing void, entrapping Acacius against the fence with another set of the Chains of Confinement. If he wasn’t alongside Cassian, Finnian would’ve found it amusing.
“Marina!” Acacius shouted out, enraged. His mask had fallen off during the collision. Pinned near Cassian, the resemblance of their appearances was uncanny. Two High Gods rendered powerless by the daunting creatures of the Night.
Kill her,the voice lulled.
A tremor vibrated down Finnian’s nape.
The muscles in his shoulders spasmed from it asthe black gloom thickened around him, obscuring Cassian and Acacius from his periphery across the grove. Nightrazers morphed from the darkness, like ghosts dripping in oil, baring their rows of teeth in the folds of their faces.
They surrounded Finnian, advancing slowly like a pack of wolves.
One corner of his mouth pulled into a cruel smirk as he cut his eyes back onto Marina, quirking his head. “Kill me and you will avenge Mother? How cliché.”
She twirled the syringe into a more secure grip, like the way one held a gun when preparing to aim. “Death frightens you. It is why you bring souls back from this realm. You cannot fathom endings.”
Finnian’s gaze fell to the blood. Fear pricked his skin like hoarfrost. A foreign feeling.
Death could never touch him, and now it was right in front of him. One wrong move and he would become a permanent resident of the Land.
He glowered at her. “And you cannot fathom being a failure. Yet, here you are, trying to make sense of it. Because you know, deep down, Mother does not love you. She loves your power, what you can do for her. Nothing more.”
The monsters stalked closer, pulling at the space that remained.
Marina’s lip curled, and she disappeared as one with her shadows.
Finnian inhaled a sharp breath.
A nightrazer lunged from his left. Another from behind him.
Violet-blue lightning sparked to life in the sphere of his hand. He drove his arm out and sliced it through their cores, electrifying them from the inside. Their spectral touch chilled his bones, as if he’d reached inside a corpse.
Ear-piercing wails sounded over the hissing of the electric popping and sizzling in his palm. One by one, their forms lifted like a dreary fog.
Finnian matched their pace, cutting them down before they had a chance to lay a finger on him. He could sense the movement of Marina’s divine power mixed in, hidden amongst them, waiting to strike.
His heartbeat hammered against his sternum. Between the beating of blood and the unyielding ringing of the curse caught in his skull, his hearing went uneven, cutting out the sound waves funneling into his left ear.
The veil of nightrazers was endless, and the more energy he wasted on them, the more it gave Marina a chance to attack.
“Enough of this!” Finnian squeezed his hands and the pulses of electricity sparked like a match. The lightning transformed into an angelic, ivory light, wisping around his knuckles.
