Chapter 21 My Chaos
MY CHAOS
Acacius
Golden sunlight poured into the alcove, its brassy rays painting a heavenly glow over Ruelle’s statue.
Acacius peered up at her shining face, the smoothed edges of her features, every detailed curve of her wavy hair, adorned in molten threads.
His last memory of her, standing in his bedchamber, that dagger in her grasp, flashed in his head.
It triggered a rush of anxious desire, a helpless dread he could not fight away.
But the anger that usually surfaced alongside it did not come—the anger he’d folded and packed away and hid from himself until it had multiplied and bubbled up on his tongue.
It had been germinating long before her death. A piece of him had always known the true ways of her heart. From the first moment she approached him at Iliana’s birthday celebration all those years ago, laughing at his tales, feeding him berries from her fingers.
Acacius was aware of her history with Cassius, but her company, the way she regarded him with glittering eyes and a stroke of her hand to his cheek, it was too hard to turn away from. He had been tired of walking life alone, sentenced to the isolation of Tavora.
And while he entertained her to sate his loneliness, somewhere in the time they spent together, he grew to care for her.
Though, Ruelle had done nothing but take advantage of him, using his Chaos for her barbaric cause. That road led him to nothing but agony and a caustic memory of her happily ending her own life.
And as he stood in front of her statue, chewing on his time spent with her, fury did not bristle in his veins. Without his anger, the grief still lived, but like the tender bruise of a healing wound.
If Acacius could talk to her one last time, what would he say?
He ran a hand over his face and exhaled, studying the intricate lines of the statue’s facial features.
“I always noticed your half smiles and distant looks. The way you would stare at nothing as I told you a story. When I hugged you unexpectedly, I could feel your cringe. Yet, I never brought these things up, despite hating them and the way they made me feel, too afraid to lose you when I never had you to begin with.”
He continued to unravel the knot tangled in his chest.
“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 their desires, 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 he wanted himself to want.
Marina, though, was more than that. She was the 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 always caused 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, and how 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.
If he wished to have a place in her life, he would need to prove that much to her. Even if allowing Naia to keep her power and Ash to live frightened him to his core, he was confident that he could fight to keep himself alive and protect Marina from following the same fate as Ruelle.
With that, he bit into the back of his lip, tasting the cherry ooze to distract himself from the dip in his stomach, and gave a silent order, through the waves of his consciousness, so all of his Heralds could hear.
Return home, and leave Hollow City be.