Offended?
She snapped her head up, fury fresh and cresting over the shock in her veins.
“Heentered my bedchamber without permission! I demand he be punished for this!” She seethed, her chest rising and falling in vicious strides.
“He has shown interest in you, Lady Marina.” Raksa kept his gaze trained on the wall ahead, arms pinned behind his back, posture strong.
She loathed how he said it, like Evander’sinterestin her justified his despicable actions—as ifthat was that. Nothing to be done.
Marina curled her fingers into fists to control the tremors shaking her arms. The honeyed layer of Evander’s essence crusted under her fingernails. “That does not give him permission to enter my bedchamber!”
She sealed her lips into a tight line to smother the scream clawing up her throat—a violent, hysterical, furious scream, desperate to escape and loosen the knot in her chest.
“As a goddess, you have an obligation to?—”
Marina jerked her hand up between them, her pulse raging in her ears. “Do you wish your head to experience the same separation as Evander’s did?”
Raksa narrowed his eyes at her.
She held his challenging glare, more than happy to put him in his place.
“Marina,” Mother said in a warning.
Marina could not ignore the obedient pull in her muscles, despite her desire to see Raksa bleed for his foolish ideology of subservient goddesses.
She lowered her arm, gritting her teeth to keep the shadows from bleeding through her fingertips.
A beat of silence passed.
Marina’s anger burned up her neck and into the tips of her ears.
She looked over her mother’s head onto the iridescent pattern glimmering along the crystal wall. Emotions bubbled and spilled out in Marina’s expression, her voice, her mannerisms. Marina could not meet her stare. Her mother’s disapproval was not something she could hold at the moment, and the shame that came along with disappointing her.
It was all too much, and Marina longed to disappear. No, to sleep. One of the only mortal luxuries she found joy in. A form of escapism, to drift off into the world of dreams and linger somewhere others were not. That blissful activity was now tainted.
The tips of her fingernails bit into the skin of her palms as she clutched her fists tighter.
“Daughter, look at me.” Mother’s voice cut through the thrum.
Marina’s gaze fell onto her, unable to disobey.
The High Goddess’s pale eyes drifted from her face to her trembling limbs.
Her knees were on the verge of buckling, and her shoulders relentlessly quivered, as if she were covered in snow. It was an uncontrollable, treacherous bodily action that she fought by stiffening her muscles, to no avail.
Tears bit at the back of her nose as she met Mother’s stare, her revulsion toward herself hot in her stomach. Showing such emotion was weakness.
Marina forced her chin up, grounding her jaw. “I will not apologize for what I did. Heforcedhimself on me.”
Mother stepped out of the shadows, her brow soft and head tilted. She reached an arm out and cupped Marina’s cheek. “Your fierceness is what I love about you so, my daughter.”
Marina eased into her mother’s palm for comfort. She was a safe place. Someone who would never harm her.
“That will be all, Raksa,” Mother said without looking over at him. “You may leave.”
Footfalls of the attendant echoed as he saw himself out.
Marina waited for the sound of the door to click shut before speaking. “Mother, I?—”
