She coughed, spattering Acacius’s cheeks crimson.
His forearm muscles hardened as he restrained himself from wrenching her heart out. “You killed your own father.”
She rolled her head to the side to look away from him, but he did not miss the single tear rolling down the side of her temple.
Proof of emotion.
Finally.
Impulse to press on flared brightly in Acacius.
Keep pushing her.
Deep navy tendrils bound her wrists and pinned her hands over her head.
She did not fight him.
He dipped in closer, grasping her chin between his thumb and index finger. “Your heart beats in my palm, Rina.” He turned her head and ran his tongue up her cheek, licking away her tears. A shiver ran through her, and he smiled. “Come alive, and play with my Chaos.”
The chains of his divine power around her wrists melted and dissolved through her skin and into her blood, a beautiful fusion. It traveled through her veins, lining her insides.
The connection provoked a fire in his bloodstream. He could feel the particles of his power swimming in her, mixing with hers, like he’d slipped beneath her skin himself and fell into her abyss. It was infinite and consuming—as he was. In its desolation, he could sense the potency of her darkness: every devious desire, her passions, suppressed anger, a primal hunger for love, the euphoria in overpowering those who opposed her.
Yes, that’s it.
Marina groaned under him, attempting to yank his arm from her chest cavity. The energy around her surged like a current, its intensity beckoning his power further.
Acacius’s stomach flipped with greedy anticipation as he ventured on. He wanted to see her fears, the thing she yearned for.
Give me everything.
She snapped her arm forward, and her long fingernails latched around his nape. With a steel grip, she hauled him down, smashing his face into the hard surface of the roof.
The cracks and bruises of the structure, the snap of his nose, the crumbling of his cheekbones, they all reverberated through his skull. Pain exploded like an intense migraine behind his eyes, brutal and trembling.
He gritted his teeth, delirium surging through his system and draining away his discomfort.
He teleported up to his feet. Marina materialized across the rooftop. He went to chase after her when his spine met a sharp blade. He sucked in a breath, agony striking the nerves down his legs.
Fuck.
He took a step forward, freeing himself from the weapon. The paralysis tingling in his feet vanished as his wound repaired itself immediately.
He whirled around, watching a ribbon of her Night retract across the distance where she stood, the injury in her chest already mended.
Her dark hair was windblown, and her curled hands shook at her sides. The material of her dress was stained cherry and torn, exposing parts of her abdomen. Blood smeared across her cheeks like war paint. Under the moonlight, bathed in red, she was sublime.
An unhinged smile stretched wide across his face. “I love that look in your eyes.”
And I would do anything to keep it.
Waves of midnight blue surged over him and disbanded into particles, birthing hundreds of moths that swarmed her like a starving vortex.
Her figure blurred in and out of focus, casting a gust of her Night to knock the formation of moths into a disarray. They scattered like leaves caught in the wind, and she reappeared closer to Acacius with their flurrying bodies painted behind her like a dramatic backdrop.
Her sharp nails cut into the groove of his arm. A charcoal fog licked at their feet with the steady rise of her power, engulfing them both. Acacius made no move to tear from her grasp as the world glitched around them.
He was lifted and tossed out on a flat terrain. Rainfall drenched his clothes. Pieces of hair stuck to his wet neck, and the crisp scent of evergreens flooded his nose. Muddied ground cover squished beneath his boots.
