“I wanted your love more than anything, even knowing what we had wasn’t real.” He paused, lost in his thoughts. “Why did I try so hard to keep you when we were both unhappy?”
A memory flourished behind his eyes from his boyhood, snuggled in Iliana’s embrace, watching Cassius nurse the fire contained in the stone pit that they crafted in the dusky hours.
The forest pillowed around them, the night stars gleaming in between its branches.
Acacius peered up at the glowing specks, listening to Cassius and Iliana’s conversation in the background. They spoke of theirdesires, of the lives they wished to grasp. Ones that involved true love, a slow life in the countryside, to be a mother with the privilege of watching their children grow, to walk through life with their lovers at their side until their hair wilted and death caressed them home. To live and die peacefully.
He remembered the twinge of guilt in his chest as he listened, knowing well that was not what he craved.
But as time carried them forward, he couldn’t ever unsee Iliana and Cassius’s mutual interest, and the way it brought them closer together, naturally excluding him.
He looked down at the flower arrangements decorating the feet of Ruelle’s statue.
All his life, he’d felt like he was five paces behind his siblings, watching them walk side by side. The need to always catch up to them never relinquished in his feet. Perhaps if he desired the same as they did, he could.
And love was the deliverer of tranquility.
He lifted his head back up and studied the face of Ruelle’s statue, really looking at it this time—the refined angles of her features; the angelic, inviting expression carved into the stone.
“You were my peace,” he murmured.
But Marina is my chaos.
The realization hitched his breath.
He blinked, his focus of Ruelle’s statue blurring.
He was like one of his many moths, circling around her light. But she was only a dimming lamp, a distraction from his loneliness, just as he had been for her—an illusion of love and what hewantedhimself to want.
Marina, though, was more than that. Shewasthe flame, and her darkness sang to him. Mayhem unfurled around her like a constant dance. She was calamity, beautiful and destructive.
The day of Evander’s punishment, he’d teleported to the highest story of the arena to be alone. His presence alwayscaused distress, therefore it was easier to be isolated. He told himself to leave Marina be, but he could feel her intensity like the tide against the moon. In that moment, she had intrigued him, and against his better judgment, he’d approached her.
As she spoke to him, unafraid of his title, spilling her animosity toward gods and the insecurities of herself, he was enamored by her depths. Lurking deep within her was a gloaming that coaxed out his own shadowy desires.
He’d never felt more himself with another than he did in the moments spent with her.
He didn’t want to let her go. Whether they were fighting or talking or losing themselves in one another, he wanted whatever she would give.
He finally understood, and now, it was time to make his move.
But first, he needed to put to rest this part of his heart once and for all.
“I forgive you.” Acacius bowed his head in a respectful honor to Ruelle’s statue. “I do hope you rest well with Klaus. Like you said, we both deserve the happiness that we could never give to each other.”
With one final look at her, he took in a deep breath.
Goodbye, Ruelle.
Acacius spun around. The amber glow warmed his face.
He closed his eyes and relished in it, the choir of his beating heart now free, before teleporting from the granite effigy.
His divine power carried him back to the ledge overlooking his realm.
He watched the churning orbits of jagged rock encircling his fortress. In the distance, meteors of earth pelted the flatlands, and he reminisced of the night he danced in the rain with Marina outside Tenebris: tendrils of her long black hair stuck to her face, the way her fingernails clung to the back of his shoulder, andhow she’d relinquished control and allowed him to lead while she spoke of her father.
Keeping the Heralds in Hollow City would only work against the vow she’d made to Vale. Her desires, her beliefs, the things that were important to her—they were important to him as well.
