She deserved to suffer, after all the hell she’d inflicted.
Nobody deserves to suffer.
Guilt fastened down on the tops of his shoulders.
She deserved it.
Mira deserved it.
Freya threw her arms around his neck. Her presence, her warmth, was like the sunlight casting its rays down on him. He clung to it through the sickness roiling in his gut. She was a cloud of hibiscus, a smile that was all teeth, giggling like a child.
“Are you well?” she whispered it into his unimpaired ear.
Something in him screamed for help, hoping she’d hear it.
He awkwardly patted her back. “Enjoy your new title.”
“Visit anytime you wish.” She gave him a squeeze. “Consider your banishment lifted.”
He wanted to thank her. To tell her of all the nights he paced the square feet of his homes, longing to teleport back to Kaimana and check on Naia—to walk the cove, dip his legs in the water hole, be lulled to sleep by the clinking call of whales and the swarming jellyfish swaying through the moonlight glow. But the itch hewing his brain was growing louder, and the frantic edge was spreading in him like blood in water.
He released Freya and turned to Cassian.
The High God assessed him for a brief second before silently offering out his hand.
Finnian stared down at the smooth grooves of his palm, the slight curl of his long, pale fingers, with a frenzied desperation to grab onto him, a lifeline to pull him afloat from the dark waters submerging over his head.
He can fix this—fix me.
The voice was his own, hysterical and unhinged. A sound rattling in the inner depths of his skull that knotted his stomach.
Give him Ash’s blood, it whispered.
The sight of Cassian weathered, like ink blotches spreading along the blankness of a page.
Finnian’s heart rate jumped erratically.
He grabbed onto Cassian—solid, warm, familiar.
“Are you ready?” Cassian asked.
Are you afraid?
Finnian nodded.
Hardly.
The voice was one he did not recognize—deep, euphonious.
Cassian’s fingers tightened gently around his hand, the surge of divine power cresting around them like a wave.
Take my hand and step where I step. We’ll keep them as clean as we can.
The room around him, all his senses, slurred. He felt disoriented, as if he was trapped inside of a dream.
The memory was distant, nebulous, like he was looking at it through the bottom of a glass bottle. Though, it was a setting he’d been to before. In Augustus, walking the countryside and admiring the fireflies and nature,alone—until Cassian appeared and ravaged his peace.
Only, he wasn’t alone. He was alongside a man with short, black hair and round, blue eyes. A man Finnian had no recollection of ever speaking to in his life?—
