Chapter 15 A NEW FORM OF REVENGE
A NEW FORM OF REVENGE
Acacius
Acacius’s body trailed with sweat.
He wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, holding the forge hammer in his other hand. He inspected his design. The iron rail burned a bright tangerine on the wide, weathered anvil. He’d nearly perfected the shape to replace the rusted fence post in his garden.
Using his tongs to hold the molten metal, he lifted the hammer again.
These moments of creation were small ways to channel his destructive tendencies into something useful.
He halted, his senses attuned to another’s energy infiltrating his realm. Tavora’s ground was like a second skin to him, the earth his terrestrial blood, and he could feel it flutter, alarming him of the intruder.
Her aura infused in the air. Blackness blotted around him, the particles spreading like a miasma in the firelight glow.
A zealous elation lit in his veins.
Acacius put his tools aside on a nearby stone workbench.
Above, the ebony mass unraveled and clung to the sides of the towering walls.
Acacius reached for his shirt from the stool and wiped his damp face with it, watching the veil enclose the hellfire.
He smirked, impressed by her efforts and eager to continue their feud.
In the five millennia that he’d resided in his realm, not once had anything taken him off guard there. His realm always spun in a violent ellipse, constantly reforming its own damage. Tavora was built to be a breeding ground for anarchy, a satiation for Acacius’s eternal thirst.
Not bothering to put his shirt back on, Acacius teleported from his smithing station onto the isle of pines that surrounded the mainland.
His boots touched on a carpet of moss as he took in the view of the obsidian mist, thickening like a blanket of oil over his Land. The growing void smothered all audible movement, leveling Marina’s odds even within his own realm.
“Well, this is quite interesting,” he mumbled.
The High Goddess’s divine power pricked his arms, like a sea of needles, and dissolved through his skin. He could feel her presence, thorns coiling around his tendons and squeezing, the pain equally arousing and infuriating.
His eyes pried through the onyx cloak surrounding him, unable to see mere inches beyond where he stood. The lack of bedlam pinched his ears, a cluster of nerves overstimulated by the uncomfortable peace.
He held his knuckles up to his face, unable to make out a sliver of flesh. No deity had ever held the audacity to traipse into his Land and provoke him in the palm of his own hand.
How long had it been since he felt a flicker of fear? Afraid of the darkness—it was a new terror for him. A child’s imagination conjured monsters in the night. But in Marina’s, the monsters were real, and Acacius was their prey.
How delightful.
Perhaps he could coax them out to play?
Her intense, enchanting aura pressed against his backside. She was near.
Devour her, his Chaos whispered.
A twisted rhythm palpitated in his chest. “Do you honestly think you can hide from me in my own damn realm?”
Laughter sprung out to his right from a distance away, a bewitching motif that thrummed under his skin. He despised how much he wanted to hear it again.
“Who says I am hiding from you?” Her tone was coy, teasing.
“Oh, Rina,” he said as his smile widened, vengeful hunger growing wildly in his stomach. “I do intend to punish you for this.”
“You will have to catch me first.” As the last word left her mouth, a distorted sound hissed in the air, and her aura vanished.
He released the dam of his mind, opening the connection between him and his many Olethros.
The vanilla and amber fragrance of her perfume trailed amongst the wet bark of the evergreens. The Heralds who resided in the misty forest of the isle growled out as one.
Every footstep she took traveled like a wavelength through the mossy terrain and flashed in his mind.
The force of shifting gravity lurched him into a whirring cloud of his divine power.
He hit the ground running through the opaque darkness, sidestepping and materializing around the earthy pillars in his path.
Ground cover crunched under his boots. After the centuries spent in Tavora, he’d memorized this woodland—each dip, each path, each shrouded cavern.
It was one of the few places safe from the inherent destruction of his realm, so he retraced it often.
In the swath of the night, the beaming eyes of his monsters glowed in soft halos, like topaz jewels.
Marina’s footsteps came to a standstill.
Acacius slowed his pace until he stopped entirely, relying on his heightened senses to feel the faintest mist of her breath in the air of his Land. He could envision her tucked away in the boundless dark, breath held, smirking in arrogant delight at her game.
Acacius zoned in on the shape of the divine energy around him. Instinct sent a shiver down his middle, and he slightly angled his head, the sharp prong of her power piercing into his side.
He rotated and fabricated in the space of a nearby stone arch. It was the entrance of a temple that the realm had assembled on its own, in honor of its monarch. His Heralds scattered, like mice in sunlight, as he strolled down the long corridor.
“For a god who is determined to seek his revenge, I’d say you are doing a poor job. I am right here before you, yet you do not attack me.” Her voice came from a short distance directly ahead of Acacius.
Exhilaration bloomed in his groin, and he smirked darkly, nearly halfway to her voice. “I intend on taking my revenge in a new way. One where you’re writhing beneath me, calling out my name like a desperate prayer. I know it will kill you on the inside to relish my tongue inside of your—”
Marina gave another smooth, mocking laugh. “What makes you think you were so memorable?”
Acacius was amused by her attempt at lying. He recalled the way she squirmed the last time he brought her pleasure. “You’ve returned, haven’t you?” He stepped up, anticipating the dais in front of him.
Her words were impish and much livelier than when he last left her, and Acacius couldn’t help but feel partially responsible for her change in mood.
“It was my move, remember?” She said it with a bite to her tone that only amplified his arousal.
He took another daring step until his shin met the toe of her shoe. “Oh, I recall vividly.”
Acacius looked down, still unable to see through her nebulous shroud, but from the height of her resting foot, her legs were crossed.
She sat on his altar, and a flush of warmth pooled in his core imagining what she looked like doing so—her long black strands grazing the tops of her thighs, slouched back in an unbothered demeanor, lulling him with her irritating confidence and lethal, vacant gaze.
Acacius dropped to his knees, gently removing her suede heel.
Marina’s breath caught, like the quick dip of a breeze, barely audible if not for his heightened hearing. The challenge to unravel her, piece by piece, kindled within him.
He dragged his lips up the top of her bare foot to her ankle. Gooseflesh spread across her skin. “Release your darkness from my realm, Rina, or I will unleash my Olethros on you.”
“Are there teeth behind that threat?” She bent her knee and lifted her leg, deepening the slit of her gown for Acacius to leave wet kisses up to her thigh.
He paused, fully intending to tease her until she became crazed, begging for more. “Absolutely. I crave for our monsters to meet.”
Marina’s long nail caught underneath his chin. Her strands spilled into the crook of his elbow, and her breath fanned over his mouth. “Our monsters live within us, Acacius.”
The muscles in his abdomen clenched, exercising his self-control at the sound of his name on her lips. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” He slipped his hand underneath her dress, his fingers grazing the elastic of her lacy underwear.
“Go on then.” She held his jaw between her fingers and licked up his cheek. His body flushed with a rush of heat. “Do as you say. Take your revenge.” He shivered in response to her breath in his ear, raspy and warm.
Her knees parted for him, and he slipped two fingers inside of her.
She sucked in a sharp breath, lifting her hips to him.
He curled his fingers into her center, the muscles in his forearms flickering with his languid movement.
Her breath picked up, and she arched back, slapping her palms on the altar.
Acacius’s jaws flexed. To have this control over her was intoxicating. She was becoming an addiction, something he still craved even when he was deep inside of her.
An overwhelming desire for more accelerated in his pulse.
He pulled his fingers from her warmth, slipped them into his mouth to taste her, and lifted from the floor.
His palms planted on each side of her, caging her against his altar.
Her breath sped up, and she locked her legs around his waist, grinding her hips against his length, all too eager. Tangible proof that the goddess was just as much of a fiery mess as he was.
His mouth came down on her collarbone, and he tugged at the neckline of her dress.
“You are maddening.” He dipped his head and devoured her breast, flicking her pebbled nipple with the tip of his tongue.
She jerked underneath him and gripped the backs of his shoulders, digging her nails deep into his skin. “It seems that you don’t mind being mad.”
Her mischief sparked his lust, and he tugged at her body chain with his teeth, tempted to rip it into fragments. Breaking it didn’t feel right, though—not when he knew the effort that had gone into making something so beautiful.
Instead, he dragged his lips up her sternum and painted thick bruises across her neck, tired of talking. It had been days since he last had her, and it was all he could think about. The ways he wanted her, where he wanted her, how he wanted her.
Her hand moved up his nape and into his hair.
Acacius’s breath quickened.