A sob broke in her chest.
This is what you wanted.
She cried harder, the gut-wrenching sound spilling out of her without remorse. Uncontrollable and freeing, she let it all out.
I don’t care about anything anymore.Words that she had said so carelessly before, and yet, she could barely hold the agony that came with the end.
All her pent-up anger and sorrows snapped.
She slapped her palms onto the hard surface of the ground, hanging over her corpse’s face.
“I hate you for what you’ve done! I hate you so fucking much!” She shouted each word. Spit and snot flew from her lips. “You could’ve tried harder with Father! You could’ve been kinder to Naia and Finnian but you believed whatshetold you! You were stupid and let her manipulate you and I will never forgive you. I will never forgive you for the time that you let pass! Because ofyouFather is dead! You deserve far worse than death! I hate you?—”
“Marina.”
Her breath caught in the back of her throat, thick with mucus and tears.
The noise of her ruthless thoughts stilled to the sound of his voice.
She turned, blinking the moisture from her eyes. His blurred silhouette came into focus, tall and majestic and standing across from her.
He looked the same, and completely different too—less of a god and more of an uncontained, mortal being. His trimmed beard framed a soft smile that shaped his gaze, a pastel lilac sparkle. His dark hair rested over his ears without a single flower to decorate its waves.
The sleeve of his olive velvet robe hung widely from his arm as he outstretched his hand toward her. “Hello, my darling magnolia.”
Marina fumbled up onto her feet and threw herself into him, securing her arms tightly around his neck. A familiar cloud of sweet nectar and freshly cut melons swept up her nose. “I regret everything, Father. I am so sorry for what I have done.”
Father embraced her, cradling the back of her head.
“You’ve said that far too many times to me,” he murmured into her hair, squeezing her frame. “Pain is a lesson, and I believe you have learned from it this time.”
Her breath came out in a wretched string of weeping.
She hid her face into the crook of his shoulder, burying her knuckles into the fabric of his robe, never wanting to let go. “I cannot comprehend how you would ever forgive me after what I have done to you.”
“One day, you will.” He broke away enough to look at her. “Until then, you must decide where to go from here.”
“And if I wish to stay with you?”
Ash would be okay, protected by those she left behind—her siblings, Ronin and his organization, and Acacius. She had full faith that he would fight to see her wishes through.
“Then you can.” Father dried her face with the backs of his fingers. “Is that what you wish to do?”
She looked back at her corpse.
I want to stay, her heart yearned. To make up for all the lost time with her father, to exist in a realm without pain and hardship. It sounded like a utopia. A relief to her heavy, branded bones.
But…
Acacius waited for her.
Do you think you could? I mean, ever fall in love?
He’d acknowledged her with such tenderness in that moment, and it had terrified her how easily the answer came to her tongue. It was the kind that saturated her like the molten metal of his forge. She wanted to spend all her days with him, lost in him, in his realm, but that second of intimate falling had taken her by surprise. Horror had wrung her insides, and she feared that when she hit the bottom, it would shatter her entirely.
It was a lie that she believed, exasperated by the falsehoods of gods and her mother, always chasing a love that did not choose her in the end. Over and over, she’d slam the ground yet never fall completely apart.
Proof of her resilience.
