With a victor decided, the crowd began teleporting away, like berries bursting. Little by little, the room emptied.
Acacius stretched out his fingers, releasing the tension in them.
Azara and Iliana were the first to leave, throwing up tufts of smoke in their shadows.
Solasta and Mavros followed, their departures hissing in the air.
He turned his head to the lingering High Goddess.
She stared down at her sister, parting her lips in bewilderment.
Acacius followed her line of sight down onto Marina.
The High Goddess of Night’s lethality had melted away. In its place, her chest rose and fell in winded gulps, like she’d lost her breath. She brought a hand up to her cheek, smearing the ruby sap, and pulled it away, gaping down at her stained palm.
Naia turned to Acacius, her evergreen eyes pinning on him.
Acacius met her stare with the tilt of his mask.
The confrontation activated his suppressed rage toward the goddess. The glimpse of admiration—appreciation, even—had all but washed away. The anger he felt at her dormant power flushed through him once more, and it took everything to contain his voracious urges to eat her alive.
The corner of her mouth lifted in a polite smile, and she bowed her head.
Acacius looked away, rejecting her peace offering.
In his periphery, Naia’s form dissolved. Particles of glistening starlight fluttered in place where she stood.
He set his jaw and refocused back onto Marina, listening to her heartbeat ricochet in a fast, uneven tempo. The breath scraped from the depths of her lungs, her chest still pumping erratically. Deities lingered in their seats, murmurs slipping from their tongues as they watched her.
Leave.
The demand echoed in his mind, flexing the power in his core to teleport away. He never stayed behind after a duel. In fact, he was always the first to leave the second a victor was decided.
But his eyes remained on her, unable to disregard the quivering in her shoulders and how she studied the blood caked on her hand with dread dripping down her expression, no recollection of her surroundings. It was abnormal for her to show emotion this way, to have tunneled vision rather than closely observe those around her.
Before he could register his own actions, he materialized before her.
At the feel of his presence, she jerked her head up and recoiled.
Vermillion stained her eyelids and cheeks. Her face, her arms, the front of her dress, it was all blemished with Torin’s blood. A sightly masterpiece that buzzed in Acacius’s chest.
But then he locked eyes with her, falling into her dilated pupils. They churned with a fear he recognized—a frequent look he found in Cassius’s and Iliana’s eyes.
Trauma detonated inside of Marina, and the pull in him to console her was frustratingly difficult to ignore.
Without thinking, Acacius offered her his hand, reluctant to whisk her away from prying eyes.
To his surprise, Marina latched onto him in a desperate hold, her long fingernails biting into his skin.
A vigilance surged to life. With softness he hadn’t known was possible, he cusped her frame into his side and swept them away in a cloud of cobalt.
11
FEEL NOTHING TOGETHER
Marina
Evander’s bloodencrusted on her cheeks, carving through each tributary of her nervous system.
