Ache of Chaos (The Fragile Divine #3)

Prologue

Marina

The Past

The palms of Marina’s hands were sticky with his blood.

“Tell me of the situation,” Mother commanded.

Marina stared down at the moonstone floor, her arms stiff at her sides, fingers flexed, attempting to process the sequence of events.

Less than five hours ago, tassels rained down from the vaulted ceiling in the great hall.

Deities roamed the grand space within its walls, picking at all her favorite foods spread along the tables.

Mother gave an endearing speech on behalf of her twentieth birthday, and Father had spoken to her about a game of chess while they swayed on the dance floor.

It was the first real conversation she’d had with him in nearly a decade.

She’d gone to bed content—happy even.

The sap dried on the inside of her hand, sending every synapse, every spare nerve into a panic. She needed to clean it off—remove any evidence that what happened wasn’t some lucid horror.

“Lord Evander paid a visit to Lady Marina in her bedchamber,” Raksa, Mother’s attendant, said in a tone devoid of the urgency consuming Marina.

Her ears rang violently, drowning out the bellowing thunderstorm that rumbled through the sea and into the palace.

Two days ago, the middle god arrived in Kaimana. Evander’s blatant staring during feasts did not go unnoticed. Nor did the low murmurs exchanged with the other gods who accompanied him from his land, their heads swiveling in her direction with lips carved in malicious curves.

Evander was one of many who visited Kaimana, ordered by his mother, the High Goddess of the Moon. A way to remain in good graces with the Sea.

Marina grew up catching glimpses of Evander skirting around the palace grounds, much like she had with Solaris. Aside from a few passing courtesies, Marina disregarded Evander, expressing her obvious disinterest.

So why was it that she could still feel the god’s fingertips bruising her skin, his heavy weight trapping her against the mattress? The marks were healed. She was safe now. But her body shook, as if it were still stuck beneath him with no way to escape the snare of his firm hold.

Her breath went shallow, and she clenched her jaw to combat the paralyzing fear snaking down her spine.

“What of Lord Evander now?” Mother asked. The rich blue hue of the moonlight shone through the sea and spilled across her frame, glinting off the silver strands of her neatly pinned braid.

Marina pressed her thumb into the top of her index finger, holding it firmly against her palm until pain webbed up her knuckle.

Do try not to be loud, Lady Marina.

Heart palpitating, she flitted her eyes around the room and grasped at any distraction to remain grounded. The sheer white curtains dusting the moonstone floor, draped around the canopy of Mother’s bed. The incense of coconut and mandarin wafting in the air.

She could still feel Evander’s hand pressed over her mouth, his lips against her ear.

The edges of her vision tunneled.

She sucked in a breath, but it did not fill her lungs, and panic tightened the reservoir of her chest.

“In Lady Marina’s hysteria,” Raksa explained with an infuriating nonchalance, “she decapitated the lord. He is currently regenerating back in his bedchamber.”

She’d been asleep when Evander slipped into her bed, giving her barely enough time to register the glisten of his tongue in the dark, the wine spilling off his breath as he urged her to be still before slipping his hands up her nightgown.

In her frenzy, she’d commanded him to stop and latched on to his wrists, fighting his advances. When he did not listen, she’d ripped her arm free out from under his body weight and called on her divine power.

A thin, jagged shadow, shaped like a scimitar, sprung from her fingers and carved straight through the god’s neck. His head flew like a bloodied stone across her room. Warm liquid sprayed over her cheeks, stung in her eyes.

She gaped at the torso sprawled across her bed as the blotting of bruises along her thighs already began to heal.

“What shall you have me do?” Raksa asked Mother. “You and I both know Lord Evander will depart offended by this situation. The High Goddess of the Moon will not take kindly to what has transpired here.”

A sour taste hit the back of Marina’s throat.

Offended?

She snapped her head up, fury fresh and cresting over the shock in her veins.

“He entered my bedchamber without permission! I demand he be punished for this!” She seethed, her chest rising and falling in vicious strides.

“He has shown interest in you, Lady Marina.” Raksa kept his gaze trained on the wall ahead, arms pinned behind his back, posture strong.

She loathed how he said it, like Evander’s interest in her justified his despicable actions—as if that was that. Nothing to be done.

Marina curled her fingers into fists to control the tremors shaking her arms. The honeyed layer of Evander’s essence crusted under her fingernails. “That does not give him permission to enter my bedchamber!”

She sealed her lips into a tight line to smother the scream clawing up her throat—a violent, hysterical, furious scream, desperate to escape and loosen the knot in her chest.

“As a goddess, you have an obligation to—”

Marina jerked her hand up between them, her pulse raging in her ears. “Do you wish your head to experience the same separation as Evander’s did?”

Raksa narrowed his eyes at her.

She held his challenging glare, more than happy to put him in his place.

“Marina,” Mother said in a warning.

Marina could not ignore the obedient pull in her muscles, despite her desire to see Raksa bleed for his foolish ideology of subservient goddesses.

She lowered her arm, gritting her teeth to keep the shadows from bleeding through her fingertips.

A beat of silence passed.

Marina’s anger burned up her neck and into the tips of her ears.

She looked over her mother’s head onto the iridescent pattern glimmering along the crystal wall.

Emotions bubbled and spilled out in Marina’s expression, her voice, her mannerisms. Marina could not meet her stare.

Her mother’s disapproval was not something she could hold at the moment, and the shame that came along with disappointing her.

It was all too much, and Marina longed to disappear. No, to sleep. One of the only mortal luxuries she found joy in. A form of escapism, to drift off into the world of dreams and linger somewhere others were not. That blissful activity was now tainted.

The tips of her fingernails bit into the skin of her palms as she clutched her fists tighter.

“Daughter, look at me.” Mother’s voice cut through the thrum.

Marina’s gaze fell onto her, unable to disobey.

The High Goddess’s pale eyes drifted from her face to her trembling limbs.

Her knees were on the verge of buckling, and her shoulders relentlessly quivered, as if she were covered in snow. It was an uncontrollable, treacherous bodily action that she fought by stiffening her muscles, to no avail.

Tears bit at the back of her nose as she met Mother’s stare, her revulsion toward herself hot in her stomach. Showing such emotion was weakness.

Marina forced her chin up, grounding her jaw. “I will not apologize for what I did. He forced himself on me.”

Mother stepped out of the shadows, her brow soft and head tilted. She reached an arm out and cupped Marina’s cheek. “Your fierceness is what I love about you so, my daughter.”

Marina eased into her mother’s palm for comfort. She was a safe place. Someone who would never harm her.

“That will be all, Raksa,” Mother said without looking over at him. “You may leave.”

Footfalls of the attendant echoed as he saw himself out.

Marina waited for the sound of the door to click shut before speaking. “Mother, I—”

Before she could finish, Mother hauled her forward by the wrist into an embrace.

The affectionate gesture shattered Marina’s barrier, weakening the dam of her willpower to hold herself together.

A sob sprang from her lips, and she threw her arms around Mother’s waist and clung to her like a child, digging her face into her shoulder as she wept. The act of crying felt good, like a purge, dispelling the poison trapped under her skin.

“Listen to me carefully, Marina.” Mother held her tightly, caressing the side of her hair. “Evander will not be the last. There will be more. I will punish this one, but you must deal with the others. If I fight your battles, they will see you as feeble.”

It was an ugly reality of their world that Marina had thought wouldn’t touch her. The enraging truth festered in the marrow of her bones. She knew of too many gods like Evander, overheard them bragging about their dozens of children, each with a different goddess. As if their seed was gold.

Marina cried harder, tightening her hold around Mother’s waist. “Can you not station more guards at my door? We can tell Father of the situation. I know he will want to assist.”

Mother scowled. “You see how your father looks at you with disdain, Marina. Gods do not like powerful goddesses. They fear us most.”

Marina had memorized Father’s every look of contempt.

She was not stupid. He had an excuse at the ready whenever she requested to walk through the garden with him or to dine together in the great hall and play a game of chess—his favorite.

Another harsh truth she avoided: Father had not wanted anything to do with her since she’d mercilessly taken the lives of two mages in her mother’s arena.

Perhaps there was more to his ire—perhaps he did not simply disapprove of violence.

Did he loathe her because of her title? Because goddesses were not supposed to be powerful? Perhaps that is why he favored Naia.

“It is up to you, Marina,” Mother said, “if you wish to be more like your sister.”

At the mention of Naia, Marina’s tears ceased. She grew heavy with the memory of her older sister cowering on the training grounds, and the repulsion twisting Mother’s face at the sight of it.