17. Family Re
17
FAMILY REUNION
More guards stepped forth and filled the circle, kneeling alongside one another, heads dropping.
“Long reign Freya, High Goddess of the Sea.”
Their voices intertwined, forming a resounding crescendo that filled the great hall, amplifying the hushed whispers of the crowd.
“Mira has finally fallen.”
With her chin held high and her hands joined behind her back, Freya stood on the platform and scanned the hall.
Finnian had dreamed of this day, swearing to relish in the feeling bursting in his chest when it manifested.
He’d met Freya five decades prior, long after he’d dropped the barrier spell warding off deities from his city.
She’d first wandered in, oblivious to its population of witches and their hostile nature towards her kind. Her sprightly spirit and vivacious outlook on life reminded him of Naia and his apprentices. Although her naiveté and cheerful demeanor irked his nerves, he felt compelled to teach her how to protect it from the world’s cruelty.
It had been her to suggest taking over Mira’s title, for the sake of ending the High Goddess’s tyranny.
“Methodical as ever.” Solaris appeared in the space next to Finnian’s left side. “Bloody horrifying, but impressive. Though I expect nothing less from you.”
Without sparing a glance at the High God of Fire, Finnian acknowledged his statement with a breathy scoff, keeping his eyes on the triplets as they shoved their way through the bowing guards to Mira.
“Mother!” Astrid fell to her knees and shook Mira by the shoulder. “Awake this once!”
Marina and Malik loomed over them.
“Mother, can you hear me?” Vex stooped down beside Astrid. “You must get up!”
Malik glowered down at Mira, lip curled in distaste. “Get up this instant. You look pathetic.”
Marina’s deadly gaze constricted around Finnian, her brow pinched, a deep scowl carved over her features. Any display of emotion was uncharacteristic for her.
“The mortals know of Naia’s name.” Solaris’s scrutiny burned the side of his cheek. “Word of her title has spread amongst them—alongside the return of the Himura clan. It surprised her to learn the information came from the mouths of your former associations.”
“Back when the Himura clan first exposed the power of their blood, humans shunned them,” Finnian said. “Is that still the case with my sister’s involvement?”
“No. For the most part, they have been accepting. Did you plan that as well?”
Finnian gave a silent reply.
“Of course you did.” Solaris huffed out a sound, indicating he was not the least bit surprised. He followed Finnian’s line of sight to Marina. “She hasn’t left Mira’s side since Naia broke her own curse.”
Finnian smirked, the gesture sharp. “She is coming undone.” He could see the fracture in her stonelike persona. An obsessive ire skulked in the black pits of her dark allure, hungry for retribution.
Marina grimaced and shadows draped across the hall, a smoky darkness smothering the midday light sneaking through the gaping hole in the ceiling.
Finnian unfolded his arms, letting them hang at his sides. “Is Naia well?”
“Yes.” Solaris turned his head, studying the side of Finnian’s profile for a beat. “May I tell her the same regarding you?”
A pinch throbbed in Finnian’s chest. He longed to feel the familiar embrace of his sister, to meet his nephew and learn all the ways he favored his mother. The dream grew farther away by the passing second.
He recalled the stories of his uncle Xerxes and how it only took a matter of months for him to go completely mad from the Kiss of Delirium. It had been less than twenty-four hours since Cassian had cursed him. Then again, he wasn’t sure, due to the unnatural way time moved in the Land.
His throat tightened.
He swallowed thickly. “I am well,” he replied, knowing it would bring Naia happiness to hear he was doing okay. He hoped she was savoring her life, not wasting it away, burdened with guilt for allowing him to swap places with her. “Now leave. I have a family reunion to begin.”
Solaris sighed. “I feel obligated to say something along the lines of let your anger go , knowing it is what Naia would wish of me.”
The dusky shadows filtered around Finnian’s ankles, drifting up from the moonstone like black fog. “Then I suppose it is a good thing Naia isn’t here.”
“I'll leave you to it then.” Solaris vanished, throwing up a crackling gust in his wake. The night-black mist caught in its draft and swirled.
Finnian rubbed the tip of his finger and thumb together in hungry determination. His gaze flitted from Marina to Freya. His mentee gave a subtle nod.
He started across the circle between the guards. “I suggest you rise and get out of my way,” Finnian said as he passed them.
Their heads bobbed up. Several went to lecture him for disturbing the moment. At the recognition of him, their tongues caught, tripping over their words, and they quickly rose and did as he ordered.
The last time Finnian stood in this hall, anger and a broken heart had blinded him. He had been volatile and desperate to impose suffering on Malik for the act he’d committed against Arran. Finnian had obsessively thought each day about his rash actions and how they resulted in his banishment. He regretted his impulsiveness back then, for it had made him break the promise he’d made to Father.
Take care of each other.
Indifference was not the only thing Finnian had inherited from Mira. Her pride and selfishness lived roots-deep within him, and in those disgraceful moments where he rotted away while reliving his past, he longed for nothing more than to reach down into the darkest parts of himself and rip them out.
He’d failed once, but he wouldn’t a second time.
The shadows condensed and licked at his feet. They shrouded the floor like a crevasse and crawled up the walls of the hall. The room quickly emptied, vaporous puffs of fleeting gods whirling in the darkness.
Vex came at him first. Followed by Astrid. Always a duo.
With a swift and forceful rotation of his wrist, Finnian snapped their necks with a sickening crack, c ausing them to collapse.
A cleaver sailed over their bodies. The sharp metal of the blade stung Finnian’s cheek. He continued forward. Before he could acknowledge the scratch, the wound sealed itself up.
Malik moved with a harsh velocity, latching onto Finnian’s arm and hauling a blade straight into his gut. Liquid pulsed up Finnian’s throat and clogged in his mouth. Jolts of agony lanced up his torso.
He smiled through blood-stained teeth and wrenched Malik by the forearm. “Sangre hirviendo.”
Malik’s skin sizzled and bubbled against the inside of Finnian’s fingers. Between them, a sinuous trail of smoke curled in the air.
Malik’s face twisted from the pain, and he recoiled.
Finnian tightened his grip around Malik’s arm, ensuring both he and the dagger remained immobile. The lodged blade in his torso was a dull pain compared to the incessant years of Shivani’s torture and being feasted on by executioners.
Malik hoisted his free fist back, knuckles wrapped in brass and aimed for Finnian’s head.
Finnian caught him by the wrist, gripped tightly, and forced his arm up. The harsh snap of his elbow reverberated in Finnian’s palm.
With a furious look in his eyes, Malik ripped his hand from the knife's hilt as his convulsing forearm crunched back into place with an unsettling pop. Flexing his fingers, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a thick, fanged blade.
The shadows steadily rose to their waists like black mist.
Finnian’s eyes clicked over to Mira. Marina no longer stood nearby.
Malik twirled the blade in his fingers before gripping it and firing it at Finnian’s chest.
Finnian lifted his knee and threw out his foot. With a forceful kick to Malik’s abdomen, he plummeted backwards. Finnian tore out the blade lodged into his stomach. A warm crimson fled down his pelvis.
The shadows surged up his spine and over his nape, consuming the room with a prickling, black chasm.
“ Belyse. ” The incantation lit his vision.
Nightrazers whirred and stepped out of the inky mass—phantasmal forms with swarthy faces and folds of needle-edged teeth. Their low growls rumbled throughout the room, a barrage surrounding him.
Finnian positioned his hand in front of his chest, extending his index and middle fingers under his chin. “You spent your whole life mocking Naia for hiding behind Wren when you are no different with your nightrazers.”
Malik’s blurred silhouette flashed in Finnian’s periphery.
He spun and held out both arms. With magic crackling in his palms, he readied himself to unleash a fiery torrent.
The end of a blade pierced through his hand, driving him back on his heels.
His back slammed into the wall, the breath knocking from his lungs. Another blade punctured through his other wrist. The impact strained his shoulder.
With a sudden jolt, he tried to pull himself away, but Malik swiftly slammed him against the wall.
Malik’s blood-curdling smirk shone wickedly through Finnian’s brightened vision. “Brings up old memories.” He cocked his head, driving another blade deep into his diaphragm. Finnian’s nostrils flared against the echoes of pain shooting up his chest and into his throat. “I suppose it’s my turn to get even now. After the bullshit you pulled back at your hall.”
A fire eviscerated the nausea seething in Finnian’s stomach. Fueled by pure spite, he summoned the energy to push against the blades that penetrated him. The slits in his flesh widened as he strained against the knives. Pain wept up and down his arms. He pressed his tongue against the backs of his teeth as the hilts carved through his meat.
With his arms free, he caught Malik by the hair and slammed his face into the crystal wall. Fissures cracked across the sheen surface. Ruby red filled their creases.
Malik grasped at the knife stuck in the wall and tore it free. Finnian bent backwards, the dagger’s end swiping inches from the tip of his nose. He staggered as Malik rotated and swung the blade again. The tip scraped over Finnian’s chin, the pain like a cat’s scratch.
Malik’s infuriating smirk was accentuated by the sight of his ripened sinew and cracked skull. A murderous thirst throbbed in Finnian's veins—to put Malik in his place once and for all.
Finnian snapped his arm out, palm pointed at Malik. “ Thoir do chridhe .”
Malik halted mid-step and slapped a hand around his throat. A choke seized his breath. His eyes pulled back and went bloodshot. He gagged and hunched over. The blade in his hold clinked against the floor, lost in the pool of blackness.
Finnian curled his fingers like a claw, pulling at the control he had over Malik’s internal system.
Blood soaked down Malik’s torso. The pressure of bones splintering in his ribcage resonated; the sound of cartilage and muscle shredding followed. His heart bulged against the material of his shirt, like a magnet pulled to meet Finnian’s command.
A set of teeth bit into the back of Finnian’s right shoulder. He stumbled a little on his feet as claws impaled the base of his tailbone. Sharp talons ground over his spine. The nerves spasmed down his legs and his knees nearly buckled from the shock.
He growled.
Fucking nightrazers.
Their skeletal fingers roved over the side of his cheeks, dragging across his forehead.
With haste, Finnian formed a fist and yanked back his elbow. The muscled organ burst through Malik’s chest and met Finnian’s open hand.
Malik’s body hit the ground.
Finnian gripped the blood-soaked heart and ripped his body around. With ground jaws, he plunged his knuckles through the core of one of the nightrazers. Violent-blue currents crackled in his palm, electrifying the whirring shadow masses nearby.
Their wails screeched against the glass walls of the hall.
The flashing rays of lightning dimmed, and the disengaging particles of the nightrazers drifted like smoke.
Two left . Finnian searched through the abyss, gauging its veil for movement.
Marina’s powerful aura fabricated behind him, but before he could decide on how to diverge her attack, the slick tearing of flesh sounded. Pain ruptured between his shoulder blades. Liquid pushed up his throat, metal coating his tongue. He coughed, his circulation of breath suddenly cut off.
Tension squeezed behind his sternum. The beating of his pulse stuttered and his vision flickered.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Marina over his shoulder, feel her arm plunged into his ribcage, her fist wrapped around his heart. One sudden tug and he would pass out instantly, just as Malik did.
“I am nothing like Naia,” she spat roughly next to his ear.
The muscles in his shoulders contracted.
He thrusted his arm overhead and siphoned the energy from within the walls of the moonstone crystal. Hundreds of glowing particles levitated in the air.
Like fireflies.
A moment flashed in his mind—clear yet unfamiliar. A man with a face he had no recollection of stood next to him, peering into the distance that Finnian was pointing to. The air filled with the dazzling specks in a haze of summer-budded trees and a tranquil, gliding stream.
Finnian blinked.
The memory dissolved as the magical particles built and mounted above him. A beaming sphere of light, celestial and blinding.
Its form expanded and devoured Marina’s shadows, splitting apart the night.
Finnian pulled his arm down in a slicing motion and the bright, glaring orb dropped like a meteorite. The force pricked at his cheeks like a bitter frostbite. The glaring rays burned his retinas, but he refused to close his eyes.
Marina howled out in pain as she released the organ from her fingers. The scream was a sweet melody of what was to come.
But first, he needed to pluck the thorn out of his back that was currently her arm.
He pushed against the soles of his feet and drove himself forward. The release was instant, like the removal of a spear. Relief greeted him, followed by the throbbing of the wound. The stitching of skin and muscle was grounding.
An unrelenting anguish snarled and provoked his anger. That vibration of emotion echoed in his chest, up his neck, and into the tense muscles of his jaws.
How many years had he dreamed of this moment? To come face-to-face with his family . To revel in satisfaction with their blood coating his hands. Their bodies limp on the floor. Weak. Insignificant. Feelings he was all too familiar with. Feelings that seemed to follow him and Naia around and torment them every day of their immortal lives. These were feelings the triplets and Marina and Mira had never known the touch of.
It was an honor for Finnian to introduce them to such misery.
The incandescent light waned in its brilliance. The hall stretched out around them once again. Freya remained atop the platform, worry creasing her forehead as she frantically sought to find him through the dimming glow. Her look of concern caused his lips to twitch.
Marina’s silhouette came into view a few paces from where he stood. Scarlet tears streaked down her cheeks as she shielded her eyes with her hands. A deity of night was, he figured, sensitive to light—a theory he was glad to confirm true.
Finnian mustered up some of his divine strength and sped soundlessly across the distance.
He reached out and clasped her wrists. The muscles in her arms flexed, but she was not quick enough. Finnian squeezed her bones and fractured them in his hold.
With a cry, she threw her head back in an attempt to collide her forehead with his. He caught her with both hands wrapped around her skull. She jerked back, but he fastened his grip and prodded his thumbs into each of her eyelids. “Do you think Mira loves you?”
Marina wailed as her eyeballs squished like kiwi underneath the pads of his thumbs. Streams of blood fled down the crevices of her nose.
“You are nothing to her.” He lodged deeper until brain matter pushed underneath his fingernails. “Just like you were nothing to Father.”
Finnian removed his thumbs from Marina’s skull and threw her aside.
She collapsed onto the floor, unconscious.
A greedy power pulsed between the rush of magic and blood against his bones. The high of it swelled in his chest, behind his eyes, with the urge to be ruinous. An urge to rip apart the entire fucking palace and every revolting memory it held of his childhood with Mira.
He snapped his head towards the dais. “One to go.”
Mira was awake now, her drenched silver strands stuck to the sides of her cheeks and neck, the shine of her porcelain complexion faded to the shade of an egg’s shell.
As Finnian advanced, Mira fumbled on her hands and knees up the steps.
The distress shadowing Freya’s expression rearranged into amusement as she watched Mira scramble away. Only this time, Freya was no longer standing on the platform alone. Cassian was beside her, hands stowed away in the front pockets of his suit, a wolfish glint in his golden gaze as he watched Finnian.
The intensity of it didn’t flare any discomfort or annoyance within him. Surprisingly, it sated a distant hunger in him he was unacquainted with. A starvation he did not know existed deep within him until this moment. There was a pride Cassian wore that he could not decode. He enjoyed the way Cassian observed him.
Finnian disregarded the feeling and rushed to the steps. He caught the hem of Mira’s gown with the toe of his boot. She jarred backwards. The material ripped up her leg.
Finnian crouched down, eye level with her. “I do enjoy your fear, Mother .” He elevated a hand and fabricated an icicle out of the droplets dampening the material of her gown, frosty air encircling it.
Mira did a double take at the water crystallizing in his grasp. The air around her flared with divine power, its gust rushing across Finnian’s skin and coating his tongue like rotting fruit. With it came a bitter nostalgia of his time in Kaimana, with her divine power lurking in every living entity beneath the sea. He knew the repulsive taste of it well.
Finnian stabbed the spike through the back of her hand, pinning her to the step before she could teleport away.
The charge of her divine power fizzled out.
Her milky eyes flashed up at him, lethal and as sharp as needles. “It appears, after all these years, you are still unaware of your place. I am your mother.”
He tipped his head back in a laugh. It was nonsense. Fucking ignorant words. “I have never considered you a mother. Naia and I deserved far better than you .”
Mira flinched at the mention of Naia, as if he reached out and struck her.
She bared her teeth, her expression souring. “Do not speak of her to me.”
Finnian ground the icicle in between the tendons of her knuckles. “Naia is the queen of my city now.” He could feel the throbbing of his heart rate in his eyeballs; the tautness of his jaw muscles strained down the side of his neck. “She has a family, knows the warmth of love, the strength of power, and not a day goes by where she ever thinks of you.”
That familiar, vibrational hum festered beneath his ears, crawled up the side of his cheek and into his temples. The dissonant thrum in his skull sent a quiver of panic down his chest.
“But you have.” A smirk twisted on Mira’s lips as she leaned forward, disregarding the spike pierced in the back of her hand. “ You plotted my downfall. Tell me, how long did it take to come up with a plan? How much of your energy have I consumed when there has not been a day that I have spared my insolent son a single moment of thought? You are nothing but a foolish request from your father to have one more child .”
The itch festered behind his eyes, prodding deeper, deeper, deeper. In response, dread infected his bloodstream and fired frantically through his veins.
Somehow, he’d activated the curse. Was it the image of the man and the fireflies from earlier, or the venomous impulse corrupting him as he broke his siblings like old toys?
There was a trembling beneath his skin as the pulsing amplified inside of his head.
This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not when Mira was before him—powerless .
He glared at her—a face with perfectly proportioned features, round eyes the color of her moonstone palace, pooling with spite. Even after losing her title, her kingdom, any hope to break her dreadful curse, none of it had triggered a dose of self-reflection to admit how she’d ended up there. Her massive ego was still intact, and it disgusted Finnian.
Fury, resentment, it all muffled to the disturbing amusement rising in his throat. Silvery notes of laughter chimed out.
A flash of shock rippled through the vicious animosity of her expression.
“Look at you.” He gestured to her with a wave of his hand. “The beloved island father created now worships him. Naia’s name has spread among the mortals and she now has true power. You are stuck in a kingdom that is no longer yours, a prison you will never be free from.” He let his head fall sideways, smiling at her mockingly. “ You are nothing. A middle goddess of the sea who simply once was.”
Her slap stung across his cheek. The sound sliced through the empty hall.
“You both are abominations! Disgraceful children who take after him !” She snarled, face contorted in an ugly rage. “One day, I will break out of this cage and force you to repent for what you have done!”
The taste of copper filled his mouth. He swiped his tongue across the cut on the inside of his lip.
Know your place.
The hum rang louder in his skull.
The edges of his vision frayed. Behind her stood the thirteen-year-old version of himself—ashen complexion, staring down at the back of his mother’s head, a madness swirling in his black eyes.
Finnian blinked and the younger version of himself was no longer there.
Hallucinations.
He refocused on Mira and her hideous face, warped in anger.
You are not losing your mind. Not here.
He propped his elbow on his bent knee and shifted his attention onto his hand, curling his fingers into a loose fist. “Do you know what black hellebore does to a person?” He did well to keep his tone blank, pretending the icy fear in his veins was just another fabrication of the curse. “I would assume so, given Father was the High God of Nature.”
Finnian conjured his magic and unfolded his fingers. In the center of his palm was a saucer-shaped blossom, its nodding petals velvet-black. “It makes a wonderful ingredient for potions and poisons for the myriad of symptoms it can cause—emesis, catharsis, bradycardia, anaphylaxis…” He cut his eyes over onto Mira. “Are you familiar with such terms?”
“Do not spout your witchcraft?—”
Finnian snapped his arm out and rammed the pad of his thumb into the center of her forehead. “ Deglutire nigrum flore . ”
Mira gasped. A hex mark burned over her forehead, an onyx triangle with blossoms at each point, vines connecting them. A rune appeared in its center, slowly eating into her flesh like rot.
Her chest bellowed in uneven strides as she fought to breathe. She pawed at her neck, mouth split apart. The veins in her forehead protruded and her breath sputtered, like a stone caught in her throat.
Foam pushed out of the corners of her mouth—just as it had with Alke that day. Down his beak, over his feathers.
Mira fell over, the thud of her skull hitting the edge of the stair. He imagined it to split apart like a yolk, but it didn’t. He watched her writhe and stare blankly up at the vaulted ceiling through bloodshot eyes. Frothy trails ran down her cheeks into her ears.
Her body convulsed one last time, and the awareness in her eyes wilted.
She lay on her back, chest no longer rising and falling. Not dead. Only treading the line that all deities could not cross.
“You will wake,” he said, knowing she could hear him. “And suffer this same fate, over and over again with nothing but the silence of your own thoughts. Enjoy wasting away in your cage, Mother, for you will never lay a hand on Naia ever again.”
Finny, don’t do this!
The voice was Naia’s, shrieking in the walls of his skull.
He swallowed the acid in his throat and rose up.
What have you done to our mother?
Finnian stepped over Mira and started up the stairs where Freya and Cassian awaited.
She will suffer.
She deserved to suffer, after all the hell she’d inflicted.
Nobody deserves to suffer.
Guilt fastened down on the tops of his shoulders.
She deserved it.
Mira deserved it.
Freya threw her arms around his neck. Her presence, her warmth, was like the sunlight casting its rays down on him. He clung to it through the sickness roiling in his gut. She was a cloud of hibiscus, a smile that was all teeth, giggling like a child.
“Are you well?” she whispered it into his unimpaired ear.
Something in him screamed for help, hoping she’d hear it.
He awkwardly patted her back. “Enjoy your new title.”
“Visit anytime you wish.” She gave him a squeeze. “Consider your banishment lifted.”
He wanted to thank her. To tell her of all the nights he paced the square feet of his homes, longing to teleport back to Kaimana and check on Naia—to walk the cove, dip his legs in the water hole, be lulled to sleep by the clinking call of whales and the swarming jellyfish swaying through the moonlight glow. But the itch hewing his brain was growing louder, and the frantic edge was spreading in him like blood in water.
He released Freya and turned to Cassian.
The High God assessed him for a brief second before silently offering out his hand.
Finnian stared down at the smooth grooves of his palm, the slight curl of his long, pale fingers, with a frenzied desperation to grab onto him, a lifeline to pull him afloat from the dark waters submerging over his head.
He can fix this—fix me.
The voice was his own, hysterical and unhinged. A sound rattling in the inner depths of his skull that knotted his stomach.
Give him Ash’s blood , it whispered.
The sight of Cassian weathered, like ink blotches spreading along the blankness of a page.
Finnian’s heart rate jumped erratically.
He grabbed onto Cassian—solid, warm, familiar .
“Are you ready?” Cassian asked.
Are you afraid?
Finnian nodded.
Hardly.
The voice was one he did not recognize—deep, euphonious.
Cassian’s fingers tightened gently around his hand, the surge of divine power cresting around them like a wave.
Take my hand and step where I step. We’ll keep them as clean as we can.
The room around him, all his senses, slurred. He felt disoriented, as if he was trapped inside of a dream.
The memory was distant, nebulous, like he was looking at it through the bottom of a glass bottle. Though, it was a setting he’d been to before. In Augustus, walking the countryside and admiring the fireflies and nature, alone —until Cassian appeared and ravaged his peace.
Only, he wasn’t alone. He was alongside a man with short, black hair and round, blue eyes. A man Finnian had no recollection of ever speaking to in his life?—
Everett.
Delirium rattled in his bones, a resonance nuzzling marrow-deep.