Acacius’s motives and actions were a contradiction, though. Hate would constantly spit from his mouth, blaming her for Ruelle’s death, but a moment later he’d be calming her during a panicked episode or regarding her with affection as he thrusted inside of her.
She’d meant her apology, but she wasn’t sure if it reached him. Words never seemed to get them anywhere. Perhaps they were better as enemies.
“Okay then.” Soren reached over and ruffled a hand over the top of her head. Frozen particles scattered over her arms.
Marina huffed out a stale breath, batting his hand away. If he weren’t a friend doing her a favor, she’d have removed his wrist for daring to touch her.
He laughed.
She yanked her hood over her head, scowling. “Take me to where you know they linger.”
“If you get caught, you’re on your own.” Soren’s sly tone reminded her of a competitive child, baiting her to some kind of challenge.
She tilted her head in a mocking manner, eyes beginning to glaze over. “Are all assassins born with such egocentrism?”
“I think that’s just something I honed from watching you.” He tugged on the drawstrings of her hood, shrinking it around her head.
She kicked him in the shin.
Soren let out a grunt, backing away with quick footwork. “Keep up,Nina.”
Like the cocky son-of-a-bitch he was, he backed right off the edge of the building, flicking his fingers off his forehead in a lazy salute.
Marina rolled her eyes, loosening her hood. “The damn show-off.”
She teleported away in dense, wispy plumes, following the threads of his divine power as he wove through the city.
They stepped out into a shadowy, isolated alleyway, tucked inside a labyrinth of brick structures. The air was charged with a mystic current that raised the hairs across her skin. She recognized it from the times she stood in Finnian’s presence.
They’d ventured into the magical side of Hollow City.
Marina took a sweep of her surroundings. The neighborhood was quiet, only filled by the faint echo of tires treading on pavement and distant horns ricocheting through the layers of the city.
She narrowed her eyes on the playground across the street. Snowfall continued around her in a peaceful interim. In front of the jungle gym held a large, backlit sign that read: TEMPEST PRESCHOOL.
Marina’s pulse flickered.
She swung to Soren, who stood further ahead in the alleyway, waiting for her. “Ash’s school?” Fury burned up her throat.
Soren held his finger up to the front of his mask and signaled her to follow him.
She peered past his frame into the oily black expanse of the narrow alley, to the burnt-orange glow of the fiend’s eyes beaming through the darkness.
Soren’s shoulders stiffened as he turned to Marina. “Well fuck.” His words were muffled through the material that covered his mouth.
The Herald stepped out of the alley’s dark belly and into the dim gleam of the streetlamp. It stood upright, in a humanoid form, and wore a tattered robe, the thick fabric of its veil obscuring its face. Atop the crown of its head protruded a ringof birch branches stripped of bark—a skeletal halo of nature’s inevitable wintering.
This really was a Herald, the same kind that infested the arboreal isle where she last met Acacius.
Bile flooded up her esophagus at the sight of it. He positioned the beast less than a block from Ash’s school, like a fucking vulture circling its prey, attracting Chaos and Ruin to the child.
Marina stepped in front of Soren, eyeing the eldritch monster while envisioning all the ways she planned to turn it to ribbons. “Return to Tavora and never come back,” she commanded.
A low growl rumbled out of it as it cocked its sinister mask at her.
By the time Marina blinked, she was thrown off her feet.
The creature’s talons locked around her throat mid-air as they soared across the road. Pressure exploded in her skull. The Herald hurled her weight like she was a paper doll. Marina raised her arms over her head, bracing herself as she crashed through the wooden planks of the school’s fence and into the playground’s green metal bars.
