He wanted her to fight back, like she had during their encounter in the forest. To feed the war he started with her. Deep down, he didn’t believe she would fall, much less willingly.
Marina crawled up on shaky arms and knees.
Torin’s boot came down in the middle of her back.
A groan pushed out of Marina as she collided with the stone again.
Torin drove his weight onto his foot, forcing her to stay down. “Admit defeat. It’s over.”
I do not care about anything anymore.
Her words tore through him all over again.
This was it. Whatever little spark that kept her going had burned out. She was giving up.
Acacius gritted his teeth as he squeezed the railing even harder. Like hell he would let her get off so easily. Bested by a fucking middle god.
Acacius opened his mouth, her name rising in his throat.
“MARINA!” Naia’s ferocious shout shook across the hall, beating the release of his own war cry.
Startled and slightly confused as he processed the feminine roar, Acacius swung his head to look down the line of Council members.
Naia held the brass barrier with white knuckles, the metal bending in her grasp. Her soft, button-like features were arranged in vehemence, brow pinched with fury as she glared down at her sister.
Everyone in the hall gawked at Naia for speaking out of turn. As a Council member, they could not intervene underanycircumstances. Not that Acacius didn’t approve, though. In fact, he found the feisty goddess and her outburst amusing, and itmay have been the first time he genuinely respected her. It brought him pleasure to imagine the astonishment on Iliana’s face behind her starlight beam. She and Cassius nearly broke when decorum and rules fell into disarray.
Acacius looked back at Marina.
She held herself up on the heels of her hands, her long, onyx strands sticky with blood.
Come on.
A sweat broke out across Acacius’s forehead as he ripped away from the railing.To hell with it.He fidgeted with his fingers, the movement distracting himself from the anxiety brimming in his bloodstream.
Bindings of midnight birthed from Torin’s back like wings, their form morphing into fingers that slithered across the floor for Marina. Acacius recognized this attack, watching the ends of the tufts sharpen like spears.
“Fucking get up,” he murmured to himself.
The floating claws loomed over Marina like a bear trap ready to bite.
She remained with her head down.
Torin shoved his foot into her back once again, grinning with putrid delight. “It’s been a pleasure?—”
In one primal motion, Marina shot to her feet, knocked Torin off her back, and slung out her arm. Darkness in the form of a crescent moon took shape from her fingertips and sliced cleanly through Torin’s neck.
The god staggered backward, gargling out unintelligible noise. A fine line of blood painted itself across the base of his throat. Pain warped his features, and his head slid off his torso.
It hit the floor in a harshthud.
Marina glowered down at his decapitated body, her face streaked in crimson.
Joy spread in Acacius’s chest like shrapnel from a cannon blast.
Finally.
He smiled beneath his mask as the locked breath deflated from his lungs.
