The moment his skin touched hers, a dark fog burst between them, and a nightrazer crawled out of its jaws. Malik was younger back then, only a middle god, and it took hours for his arm to regrow. However, he never laid a hand on her again.
She stared at him absently, reaching for something in the emptiness of her chest. Whatever fueled her to stand up for herself, enforce boundaries, and protect her pride, was nowhere to be found.
The tub was still full of bathwater, and she wished she’d drowned herself when she had the chance.
“She asks for you all the time, you know,” Malik said.
A twinge in her chest cut through the hollowness. The image of Mother assaulted her thoughts, in a dark cell under the kingdom, suffocating eternally from the effects of Finnian’s hex.
Malik inclined his head, as if he spotted the flicker of emotion pass over her expression. His gaze twinkled with a disturbing fervor. “It’s all your fault she’s even in that hellhole.”
Her chest went light.
He was right. She was the catalyst—the one who failed to bring Naia home, and the reason Mother was still cursed. If she had been free, she would’ve won against Freya, and Finnian wouldn’t have been able to hex her.
You failed Mother.
Pressure drove down on her sternum, constricting the muscles in her ribcage with every inhale.
You do not deserve her love.
“I made a promise,” she forced out through her teeth.
Hold on to it.
“A promise?” Malik huffed out, running his fingers through his silver hair.
You must see it through.
“Yes.” She pressed her knuckles against her collarbone to distract herself from the ache tearing wider in her heart. “Tell Mother that I will visit soon.”
Malik gave her a condescending pinch on the cheek, grinning like a gleeful sadist. “Such a good girl.”
Marina recoiled from his touch, ripping her hand up to break his fingers.
He stepped back, flashed her another shit-eating grin, and then he was gone.
Father always smelledof nectar and something aquatic, fresh, like melons and cucumbers. Marina never asked where the fragrance came from.
Why did she never ask?
“I turn away because I do not wish for you to see my disappointment.”
She was ten years old again, his words puncturing her chest and the walls of the training grounds closing in on her. She felt small, brittle, ashamed of what Mother would call an accomplishment.
I’ve done everything asked of me. Why?
No, she wouldn’t say that to him this time.
Instead, she reached for his hand.
The box high in the amphitheater fell around them like crumbling walls, and the ashy grove in the Land of the Dead took shape across the terrain.
“Father, please don’t leave me! Not yet! I didn’t mean—” Marina cried, her limbs shaking uncontrollably. She squeezed her fingers around Father’s hand, panic torching her chest. “I need you to stay! We’ve barely gotten time to—” Tears flowed into her mouth, the salt dissolving on her tongue. She couldn’t get her words out fast enough. Time approached like a bullet’s inevitable path, and the second it hit, everything would end.
“I want more time?—”
Father rotated to her, the motion slow, graceful. Vermillion streaks washed down from his eyes, leaving trails down hischeeks, over his smiling lips. Sunlight shone like a halo behind him, brilliant and white, soaking him into its chasm.
