For the sake of the moment, she could grant him a truth if it meant changing the subject.
“I didn’t think twice when I did it,” she confessed. “In the Land of the Dead, when I…”
Shoving Acacius aside and stealing the syringe from Finnian, that was where it all went wrong. Had she handed it over to him, Father would still be alive.
“I could see that,” Acacius said after a beat, an awkward playfulness in his tone. It was progress. Weeks ago, just the mere topic of their old wounds would’ve coaxed an outburst from him.
“You came to me and asked for help, and I only saw you as a means to an end.” Marina’s eyes fell shut, the words not as difficult to say as she anticipated. “For that, I apologize, Acacius.Truly.”
A long moment passed.
His cheek lifted from the side of her head. “Where is this coming from?”
She shifted in his arms, rotating to face him. For once, she could be wholly honest with him. She owed him that much. “The kindness that you showed me at Evander’s punishing.”
His golden gaze was brassy and warm, like sunlight over her cheeks as he searched her face. Confusion shaped in the dip of his brow, and his silence held a justifiable skepticism. It was rare to see Acacius so reserved, like he held his breath. She enjoyed keeping him on his toes this way.
“That day, do you recall what you said to me?” she asked. “About creating a monster who could do what I could not?”
He nodded briefly.
The gory water of the hot spring caught in her periphery, flipping her stomach.
She clung to Acacius’s eyes as she took his hand. His touch was a distraction for her senses to keep from fixating on the blood-like liquid seeping into her pores. “You were the first god to ever intrigue me; the first to ever treat me as if I had a say in the matter. It was your words that planted a seed in me. Words that I embraced when being hunted in the walls of my own home. I longed to conjure a monster to rip apart the gods who dare lay their hands on me.”
Acacius licked his lips, flitting his eyes to her fingers across his palm and back up to her face. “Tell me, when your nightrazer first manifested, was it to protect you from one of these ruthless gods?”
“Late into the night, in the west wing of Mira’s palace…” Marina paused at the look shadowing Acacius’s features. “I often walked the grounds to calm my mind. Ziven, a middle god close to Evander, was the first to experience the wrath of my nightly creature.”
The memory wasn’t as visceral. The crisp horror of Ziven shoving her off the cobblestone pathway of the garden and into the sand, hidden by the greenery of papaya and breadfruit trees, had evaporated throughout the centuries.
Acacius’s brow softened, and he raised her knuckles to his lips. “I am glad you found wisdom in my words from that day.”
She gave him a small smile. “I am glad you approached me when you didn’t have to.”
Acacius wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into a hug.
Marina’s cheek pressed snugly into the center of his bare chest, the echo of his pulse loud in her ear. She could smell remnants of a flame on his skin. Buried under it were notes of moss and pepper.
He rested his chin atop her head. “Thank you for the apology, Rina.”
Warmth spilled in her chest, like melted caramel.
The same feeling had crept up on her in his temple, laying across his altar with him in her hand, captivated by his sounds of pleasure and how much she affected him. She’d messed up. Control had slipped from her grasp, and before she realized it, his face stared down at her.
She could feel the line that separated their hearts growing slimmer with each moment they shared. It frightened her. She couldn’t allow herself to cross over that line, not when he still blamed her for Ruelle’s death.
She had spent centuries alone, carved a home in the emptiness. Some part of her thought it was retribution, to live in the abyss. But Acacius did not pull her out of it; he joined her in its jaws.
Each meeting, each confession, each tracing of her tongue—she only delayed the inevitable, and Marina, for the first time, doubted her own strength.
18
HOLLOW CITY
Marina
Snowflakes drifted downfrom the night sky, the flurries glistening in the city lights.
