Before she could finish, Mother hauled her forward by the wrist into an embrace.
The affectionate gesture shattered Marina’s barrier, weakening the dam of her willpower to hold herself together.
A sob sprang from her lips, and she threw her arms around Mother’s waist and clung to her like a child, digging her face into her shoulder as she wept. The act of crying felt good, like a purge, dispelling the poison trapped under her skin.
“Listen to me carefully, Marina.” Mother held her tightly, caressing the side of her hair. “Evander will not be the last. There will be more. I will punish this one, but you must deal with the others. If I fight your battles, they will see you as feeble.”
It was an ugly reality of their world that Marina had thought wouldn’t touch her. The enraging truth festered in the marrow of her bones. She knew of too many gods like Evander, overheard them bragging about theirdozensof children, each with a different goddess. As if their seed was gold.
Marina cried harder, tightening her hold around Mother’s waist. “Can you not station more guards at my door? We can tell Father of the situation. I know he will want to assist.”
Mother scowled. “You see how your father looks at you with disdain, Marina. Gods do not like powerful goddesses. They fear us most.”
Marina had memorized Father’s every look of contempt. She was not stupid. He had an excuse at the ready whenever she requested to walk through the garden with him or to dinetogether in the great hall and play a game of chess—his favorite. Another harsh truth she avoided: Father had not wanted anything to do with her since she’d mercilessly taken the lives of two mages in her mother’s arena. Perhaps there was more to his ire—perhaps he did not simply disapprove of violence.
Did he loathe her because of her title? Because goddesses were not supposed to be powerful? Perhaps that is why he favored Naia.
“It is up to you, Marina,” Mother said, “if you wish to be more like your sister.”
At the mention of Naia, Marina’s tears ceased. She grew heavy with the memory of her older sister cowering on the training grounds, and the repulsion twisting Mother’s face at the sight of it.
Marina’s chest squeezed with a different type of fear.
The room was blurry, warped, like she was looking at it through layers of water. Her cheek stuck against the damp skin of Mother’s shoulder.
She blinked to clear her vision. “What do I do then?”
“You must learn to take advantage of a god’s foolishness. Or you must become more powerful than them.”
Nausea churned in her stomach.
To take advantage of their foolishness meant to allow a god to enter her bedchamber, take their seed, and create a legacy of her own.
A numbness unfurled behind her ribcage. Her mind fell blank, and her bones grew heavy in her skin at the thought of being a matriarch.
“Which of the two did you do?” She didn’t like how hollow, detached, her voice was. But she wished to know. Mother did not lack the power nor the wits to get what she desired most.
Mother brushed a long strand off Marina’s shoulder. “Both, my dear. I created a legacy and ended up with you—my proudest creation. OnlyafterI became your father’s reckoning.”
Marina blinked in lethargic sweeps as her mother’s words sank in.
She often crossed paths with other goddesses, their bellies swollen, claiming to beliving out their dutiesto their parents. But for Marina, the idea of motherhood did not allure her.
And even if it did, the thought of being nothing more than an object to quench a god’s lust coiled her organs.
Which left only one option.
Marina’s hands, still flaking with blood, began to burn arduously.
Bile climbed up her esophagus. There was a frantic urgency in her to wash her skin clean, scrub Evander from her body, erase him completely.
“And if I do not succeed in either one?” Marina asked, her pulse racing in her throat.
Mother pulled away. “Marina.” She placed her thumb under Marina’s chin and guided her head to look up. With her other hand, she peeled wet locks of hair from Marina’s cheeks, her touch as delicate as her tone. “Do you wish to be as useless as Naia?”
Marina’s heart twisted.
No.
