“No.” She took in the ivy-infested brick around her.
He ignored her defiance and asked, “Why have you kept your monsters from our fights?”
From the moment he attacked her in the Pit in Isolde, he expected her infamous nightrazers to swarm him. However, they had been strangely absent.
At first, he assumed she was holding them back to grow her hand-to-hand combat strength, but then she’d decapitatedTorin, knowing the attack would get his blood on her, which triggered a traumatic response. Why didn’t she use them then?
The question wouldn’t stop nagging Acacius’s mind.
After a wave of silence, she exhaled sharply, meeting his inquisitive eyes. “I do not wish to rely on others to win my wars any longer.” She maintained the distant affliction in her voice, but Acacius could hear a twinge of something else. Defeat? Shame, maybe?
“Yet you seemed to struggle in the arena the moment Torin’s blood decorated your skin.”
She rotated her head, hiding her face from him. “I do not like to get blood on me. It deadens my senses, causes me to spiral as it sinks into my skin.”
He could sense her discomfort. It was a perfect opportunity to pry deeper and exploit her weakness for future conflicts.
“Why?” His tone softened, assuring her that she was safe to open up.
She jutted out her jaw, staring down the shadow-lit corridor.
“Evander.” She spoke in a decibel barely above a whisper. “The night he trespassed in my bedchamber. I cleaved his head from his neck before he could...”
Before he could finish his assault.
Acacius recalled her words on the day of the god’s punishment. He never could forget the weary look in her eyes as she recalled how Evander touched her without permission.
A knot constricted in Acacius’s chest.
Back in his mortal days as a boy, he laid in his cot, holding his hands over his ears to mask the screams of scared women in his village. Cassius would boil water for tea, and Iliana would embrace him and hum to mask the sound.
As he got older, his fear bristled into rage toward all the men who took and took, as if they were entitled to whatever or whoever was in their path.
Acacius began greeting them in the deepest part of the night, with blades that sawed through their wrists and released their greedy hands.
Men were fragile, but gods were not.
Acacius had little tolerance for those like Evander, and as he watched Mira punish him, he imagined all the deranged ways he could make the god atone.
Marina licked her lips and pulled back her shoulders, finally meeting his gaze. “When I retaliated against him, his blood showered over me. Ever since then, I lose control when I make another bleed and it gets on my skin. It makes me feel as if I’m still being hunted, as if I’m never truly safe.”
He did not expect her to share to this extent with him. Marina was smart. She probably assumed he would use this information against her in their next fight, and yet, she didn’t hold back. Why?
Perplexed as he was, Acacius empathized with her struggle.
His brow furrowed. “It does nothing if it’s your own blood?”
“When I was younger, I attempted to overcome the trigger by running a knife down the length of my arm, lathering it against my skin, but it was no use.”
Acacius’s stomach churned as he studied her expression, hunting for more information. The idea of her harming herself tore through him like grapeshot.
Marina held his eyes with a subtle somberness. “When the blood surged out, I still felt protected, like my body knew it was my own tangible energy.”
Acacius pursed his lips, disturbed by the harsh visual. Violence usually enthralled him, but not this time.
Words of comfort climbed up his throat.
He swallowed them down. Bringing her to his hot spring was enough. Offering her comfort would cross their line into a territory he had no interest in exploring with her.
