Father rocked her in a tranquil rhythm, caressing the back of her hair. “I have failed you, Marina, and for that I apologize. It isIwho must ask for your forgiveness.”
Marina dug her fingers into the front of his olive robe, the tears and snot that drained down her face sticking to him.
Impossible.
Why didn’t Marina ever try harder to walk in the path of his light?
The eternal road of her life stretched out before her with only a heavy weight to bear in her body. A time to dwell in all the years lost, never able to live out her distant, perished dream of laughing alongside him as someone other than a stranger across the table.
“I do not wish to live any longer.” She squeezed him harder, as if the Land would snatch him away just as it did when Finnianheld him earlier. Her breath ran in and out, unstable and burning. “Take me with you. There is nothing left for me here.”
Father held her tighter, his grip fastening her cheek over his heart—an organ that no longer cupped life within its walls. “If you have nothing left to live for, then allow me to give you something. Make me a promise, Marina.”
She blinked through the bite of her tears, listening closely. “Anything.” Her hope flourished, eager to grasp onto a lifeline.
Father guided her by the side of her face to look up at him. His eyes glistened, the same dark shade as her own. “Protect Ash. Allow him to grow up and experience the love neither I nor your mother were ever able to fully give you.”
The love of a family.
A fresh wave of tears filled her eyes, and she slacked against his hands, the agony in her chest too much to hold.
Father’s lips pressed against her forehead. “I love you, my darling magnolia.”
She pursed her trembling frown, silencing her woes.
Birdsong played amongst the tall, mystic wisteria surrounding them. A light breeze touched the damp skin of her cheeks. Her mind stilled and her senses sharpened, as if a part of her understood the brevity of this moment.
Years later, when grief threatened to drown her, she would look back on it and remember every detail. The hymn of the healing earth, the sweet scent of honeysuckle on Father’s robes, the engraving of his soul leaving its mark on her.
She could not reverse what she’d done, but she could spend her life in the suffering she deserved, atoning.
“I love you, Father.” The words left her without restraint, as easy as an exhale. Why did she never say them until now?
“Trust yourself, and carve your own path, darling, instead of the one others demand of you,” Father said. “That is all I have ever wished for you.”
She finally understood.
For centuries, she’d walked the path of her mother, breeding a cycle of greed and malice. This was her chance to choose, with her own volition, and carry herself in the love he left behind.
His vow stood before her, waiting for her to grab it.
Marina placed her palm on his scruffy cheek, memorizing the baby’s breath decorating his hair, the calming waves of his presence—her final frame of him, glorious and glistening, without the sallow shell of his skin.
“I promise. I will protect Ash.”
Hours later,and it was all still fresh behind her swollen eyes: Finnian engulfed by her shadows, the fear in his sharp gaze draining away and replaced by devastation the second she called outFather.
She regretted not listening to the confusion that twisted her insides before plunging the needle straight for Finnian’s heart. That second of doubt that pleaded for her to stop and locate the source of dread on her youngest brother’s face. A god who, like her, rarely showed such a thing.
Marina clenched her hand into a fist, her long nails breaking the skin of her palm. She could still feel the resistance when the syringe punctured Father’s flesh. It haunted her tendons, pulsed white-hot panic into her bloodstream all over again.
I murdered him.
Marina inhaled a breath through tight lungs and peered up at the ripples in the sea-sky trailing behind a stingray. Clouds of fish floated in its wake like a murmuration of starlings,disappearing into the long stalks of the kelp forest. Rays of sunlight shimmered through their swaying strands.
She wanted to scream at the beauty of it all.
Do you see how even the light is capable of piercing through so many layers?
