Finnian wedged his knee in between Cassian’s thighs and softly rubbed against his arousal.
Cassian let out a gruff hiss across the side of his neck.
Finnian froze.
The sound was loud in the silence of their kiss; the transition was sharp and instant.
Cassian’s thoughts starkly came rushing back in. From the battleground of feelings waging war in his subconscious to the contentment he felt in this moment with Finnian. What would happen now? What was Finnian thinking?
Finnian forced them apart with a small shove to Cassian’s chest.
His brain raced to process the last few minutes through the haze of his lust. The smoothness of Finnian’s skin, twisting his fingers through Finnian’s hair, and the way Finnian’s hunger flourished when Cassian had kissed his throat. Cassian wanted him. More of him. A terrifying expansion of the desire he failed miserably to ignore. Now it had grown tenfold.
The taste of Finnian lingered on his tongue as he stared at the god, tracking every visible sign of emotion his face willingly gave away—bruised lips parted, breathless, creases drawn over his forehead, staring back through glazed eyes.
“Finnian,” Cassian said.
A hard look flashed over his features at the sound of his name. “No.” He took another step away, his expression sharp. “Do not seek me out again. I mean it. Either curse me now or be done with it.”
His hatred, the conflicting resonance in which he spoke, made all the sense in the world. Cassian, the High God, who had taken his father away, showed him affection. After all these years of chasing him, tricking him, and now saving him. Finnian was right. Cassian could no longer go on pretending to be conflicted about the matter.
The truth glared down at him like the sun.
Cassian took a breath. The oxygen traveled deeper than it had in years. He lifted from the side of the vault.
Finnian flinched, but he did not move away, fully prepared to be branded.
Cassian wanted to embrace him. Let his feelings flow freely from his lips. What would Finnian say? Would he feel the same? What would happen then?
Do not give Ruelle someone to hold over you again.
Acacius’s warning echoed to the forefront of his mind, extinguishing the warmth in his veins.
He held Finnian’s reserved gaze, wishing he could convey a sliver of the adoration he felt towards him. “I do not have it in me to curse you.” The confession unraveled the ball of pressure in his chest.
Finnian’s eyes flitted around his face, frowning.
An ache spindled in Cassian’s heart as he nodded once. “I will not bother you again.” He backed away, his limbs growing heavy.
Finnian threw out an arm. “W?—”
Before Finnian could reach him, a gruelingcrackreverberated, and Cassian was gone.
12
THE VILLAGE OF SOULS
Finnian
The Present
Nathaira strolledat Finnian’s side as if the wind carried her, in an elegance painfully similar to his father’s.
It stirred up memories of their last day together at Naia and Solaris’s birthday celebration. Finnian at the dinner table, forced to listen to the tiresome conversation between Vex and Astrid. The fear catching in Naia’s breath when a middle goddess called attention to her necklace—the gem Finnian, himself, had gifted to her. Rain splattering along the cobblestone outside the open doors of the palace. Finnian standing in the corridor, trembling and attempting to comprehend the sight of his father in chains. Breath shallow, shaking his head, unable to process the brevity of what was happening.
Afterwards, he slept beside the waterhole with Alke’s corpse in his arms. While deities did not grow tired, Finnian had slipped into a state of dreaming, too dissociated from the new reality before him. Sleep was a form of escape, distancinghimself from the visceral loss of his beloved companion and father.
He awoke and had forgotten it all. Until he rose and Alke’s damp feathers peeled from the inside of his arm.
