Chapter 7 Tenebris #2
She snatched his hand and squeezed until she felt his bones crack against her fingertips. “I am in no mood for your games, Malik. If there is no point to your little visit, might I suggest a phone call next time.”
Malik laughed, the vile sound raising the hairs on her nape. “Funny how Mother rots in a cage and here you are, in a damn tub.”
Marina went to release him, but he locked a tight grip around her wrist.
She tugged her arm. He held it firmly. Water sloshed in the tub, rearranging the bubbles. Air chilled her breasts.
Malik leaned forward. Up this close, he smelled metallic, like steel and blood. It turned her stomach.
“Our home was stolen from us.” His eyes were vacant, but the muscles in his neck were corded.
His harsh grip bruised the bone of her wrist. “Now, I’m going to need you to get your little ass out of this bath and unleash your nightrazers on that bitch sitting on our mother’s throne, so we can all go back to the way things were. Sound easy enough, Sis?”
Months had passed since she visited Kaimana.
Months since Finnian swooped in and Freya dethroned Mother as the High Goddess.
And now that Mother did not reign over Kaimana, the triplets were exiled from the only home they’d known.
Three spoiled little deities without a playground.
Take away their toys, and they were bound to throw a fit.
Pathetic.
Marina was in no mood for Malik’s bullshit.
She ripped away from him in a sharp pull. He did not fight her this time.
She rose to her feet. Bathwater cascaded down her naked body.
Malik’s jaws set, the muscles flickering under his skin. His eyes held on her face, proof that she could make him feel just as uncomfortable as he did her.
She wasn’t naive to his manipulative personality. Ambushing her during a bath was meant to take advantage of her in a powerless situation. Anything to make her feel smaller—weaker—than himself. As if baring her body made a difference in her strength.
Idiot.
Malik was no different than all the gods that trespassed her bedchamber, that sought her out in shadow-lit corners of the palace, trying to take when told no.
She teleported across the bathroom to the towel hanging on the wall.
“I never make rash decisions based on fleeting emotions.” She wrapped herself up and weaved the wet ends of her hair into a hairclip. “Perhaps you might learn to do the same.”
“Fleeting emotions?” Through the mirror, he gave her a tense smile as he loomed behind her. “While you are here in your precious village, Astrid, Vex, and I are working to free Mother.”
“Good.” Marina spun to face her brother, her nerves growing frailer the more he spoke. “It is about time the three of you use your heads for something.”
Malik strolled past her to the bathroom vanity, plucking one of her rings from the crystal tray. He held it up and pretended to assess it. “Stop playing with me, Marina.”
He tossed it back down and ran his finger along the row of necklaces hanging on the organizer, coming up beside her. “I’m itching to tear into someone.” He shoved his puffed-up chest against her shoulder as he hovered over her. “Hear their screams.”
She twisted her neck to him, eyes sharpening as a caution. “Make me bleed, and you will wish that you were never born.” The threat came out like second nature, but she could hear how her tone lacked its usual bite—devoid of her inherent severity.
“How odd.” Malik backed away, searching her face, his smirk widening with bloodlust. Her stomach dropped. Of course, he’d noticed it too. “In any other circumstance, you would’ve already chopped my hands off for touching you.”
He referred to the one time in his youth when Marina commanded him to fetch a servant for Mother.
Malik responded by snatching her by the arm and heaving her back before she could walk off. “I am no errand-boy. Do it yourself.”
The moment his skin touched hers, a dark fog burst between them, and a nightrazer crawled out of its jaws. Malik was younger back then, only a middle god, and it took hours for his arm to regrow. However, he never laid a hand on her again.
She stared at him absently, reaching for something in the emptiness of her chest. Whatever fueled her to stand up for herself, enforce boundaries, and protect her pride, was nowhere to be found.
The tub was still full of bathwater, and she wished she’d drowned herself when she had the chance.
“She asks for you all the time, you know,” Malik said.
A twinge in her chest cut through the hollowness. The image of Mother assaulted her thoughts, in a dark cell under the kingdom, suffocating eternally from the effects of Finnian’s hex.
Malik inclined his head, as if he spotted the flicker of emotion pass over her expression. His gaze twinkled with a disturbing fervor. “It’s all your fault she’s even in that hellhole.”
Her chest went light.
He was right. She was the catalyst—the one who failed to bring Naia home, and the reason Mother was still cursed. If she had been free, she would’ve won against Freya, and Finnian wouldn’t have been able to hex her.
You failed Mother.
Pressure drove down on her sternum, constricting the muscles in her ribcage with every inhale.
You do not deserve her love.
“I made a promise,” she forced out through her teeth.
Hold on to it.
“A promise?” Malik huffed out, running his fingers through his silver hair.
You must see it through.
“Yes.” She pressed her knuckles against her collarbone to distract herself from the ache tearing wider in her heart. “Tell Mother that I will visit soon.”
Malik gave her a condescending pinch on the cheek, grinning like a gleeful sadist. “Such a good girl.”
Marina recoiled from his touch, ripping her hand up to break his fingers.
He stepped back, flashed her another shit-eating grin, and then he was gone.
Father always smelled of nectar and something aquatic, fresh, like melons and cucumbers. Marina never asked where the fragrance came from.
Why did she never ask?
“I turn away because I do not wish for you to see my disappointment.”
She was ten years old again, his words puncturing her chest and the walls of the training grounds closing in on her. She felt small, brittle, ashamed of what Mother would call an accomplishment.
I’ve done everything asked of me. Why?
No, she wouldn’t say that to him this time.
Instead, she reached for his hand.
The box high in the amphitheater fell around them like crumbling walls, and the ashy grove in the Land of the Dead took shape across the terrain.
“Father, please don’t leave me! Not yet!
I didn’t mean—” Marina cried, her limbs shaking uncontrollably.
She squeezed her fingers around Father’s hand, panic torching her chest. “I need you to stay! We’ve barely gotten time to—” Tears flowed into her mouth, the salt dissolving on her tongue.
She couldn’t get her words out fast enough.
Time approached like a bullet’s inevitable path, and the second it hit, everything would end.
“I want more time—”
Father rotated to her, the motion slow, graceful. Vermillion streaks washed down from his eyes, leaving trails down his cheeks, over his smiling lips. Sunlight shone like a halo behind him, brilliant and white, soaking him into its chasm.
“No.” She dug her long fingernails into his wrist, scraping into his flesh and refusing to let go. “No. No! Take me with you!”
An explosion rumbled in the distance.
Marina’s eyes shot open, her mind fuzzy with pieces of the dream. A mind-numbing ache flooded behind her sternum.
She ran the heel of her hand in circles over her chest, lulling herself back into reality.
Another boom erupted, shaking the house and rattling pictures on the walls of her bedroom.
Her body stiffened.
What the hell?
Pulse jumping, she whisked out of bed and moved across the room to the window, ripping back the curtain.
Through the veil of mist and darkness sprouted vicious flames that devoured Tenebris. Smoke gathered like horrid storm clouds over its peaks. Electric poles sparked violent blue. Structures crumbled like they were made of chalk. In the chaos, she could hear a cacophony of mortal cries.
Acacius.
Swirls of her divine power wrapped around her and transported her to the heart of her village.
The dewy, hot breeze rushed through her hair. Smog stung her eyes. Shards of broken glass and stone lodged into the soles of her bare feet.
She looked down at the rubble she stood on. Once a café. The inferno consumed the bank beside it as well, a frame of brick slowly charring into something unrecognizable.
Frantic, she peered out at her surroundings, her stomach curdling at the wreckage.
Everything burned. Businesses, homes. Screams cut through the crackling flames and fractured buildings. People crowded the clear pathways to evacuate down the mountain, their prayers filling Marina’s ears.
High Goddess of Night, lend us your aid!
She gritted her teeth as his wicked energy appeared behind her.
“Our little feud is growing on me, Rina.” The playful lilt in his deep voice traveled through her, reviving a fraction of the vitality that had died with Father.
Rage swelled in her gut as she spun on him. “You’ve come and set free your Ruin, I see.” It took everything in her to keep her balled fists at her sides.
Acacius stood atop the remnants of what was once a small bookstore, arms crossed, leaning against a steel beam.
Tangerine flames danced in the backdrop.
“It appears the mayor of Tenebris returned home tonight to find his lovely wife in bed with another. Knives were drawn and somehow, your entire village became involved in the matter.” He gave a lazy wave toward the devastation.
“A bit of anger and deception is all it takes to unravel the seam and allow my Chaos and Ruin to slip in.”
Marina envisioned carving the satisfied look right off his face.
“You’ve ravaged everything here. Now leave,” she commanded.