Chapter 34 DEEPER THAN THE EARTH
DEEPER THAN THE EARTH
Marina
Marina’s eyes ripped open.
“No!” She panted, the glass-like ground biting into her palms and knees. Directly below her was herself, floating, as if the floor was made of water. Ripples echoed from underneath her body, her own eyes staring up at her, glazed and unresponsive.
Marina gasped and recoiled away from her corpse. She lost her balance on her knees and landed in a sitting position.
What the…
She assessed the lapping cloak surrounding her, its dark shades whirling in a mesmerizing abyss.
It all came back to her in unstable glimpses—her fight with Soren, Ash’s cut, her nightrazers, Alke’s call, the stillness of her heart as she’d summoned Acacius.
She frantically observed the dark waves rolling around her once more.
This was not the Land of the Dead. Was she caught somewhere between the teeth of death?
Hope sparked in her chest.
There is still time.
Marina jolted, crawling up to her corpse. “Wake up!” She shook her shoulders. “You can’t leave him! You useless bitch, get up!”
Her corpse continued staring lifelessly up at the black sky.
The sides of her throat burned with rage, and her face twisted. “I said get the fuck up!” She slapped the corpse’s cheek, gritting her teeth through the sting behind her nose. “Get the fuck up!”
She hit herself again and again.
Her body did not move.
Marina threw her head back and screamed, releasing a fountain of resentment toward herself that had been silently growing for centuries.
A sob broke in her chest.
This is what you wanted.
She cried harder, the gut-wrenching sound spilling out of her without remorse. Uncontrollable and freeing, she let it all out.
I don’t care about anything anymore. Words that she had said so carelessly before, and yet, she could barely hold the agony that came with the end.
All her pent-up anger and sorrows snapped.
She slapped her palms onto the hard surface of the ground, hanging over her corpse’s face.
“I hate you for what you’ve done! I hate you so fucking much!
” She shouted each word. Spit and snot flew from her lips.
“You could’ve tried harder with Father! You could’ve been kinder to Naia and Finnian but you believed what she told you!
You were stupid and let her manipulate you and I will never forgive you.
I will never forgive you for the time that you let pass!
Because of you Father is dead! You deserve far worse than death! I hate you—”
“Marina.”
Her breath caught in the back of her throat, thick with mucus and tears.
The noise of her ruthless thoughts stilled to the sound of his voice.
She turned, blinking the moisture from her eyes. His blurred silhouette came into focus, tall and majestic and standing across from her.
He looked the same, and completely different too—less of a god and more of an uncontained, mortal being. His trimmed beard framed a soft smile that shaped his gaze, a pastel lilac sparkle. His dark hair rested over his ears without a single flower to decorate its waves.
The sleeve of his olive velvet robe hung widely from his arm as he outstretched his hand toward her. “Hello, my darling magnolia.”
Marina fumbled up onto her feet and threw herself into him, securing her arms tightly around his neck. A familiar cloud of sweet nectar and freshly cut melons swept up her nose. “I regret everything, Father. I am so sorry for what I have done.”
Father embraced her, cradling the back of her head.
“You’ve said that far too many times to me,” he murmured into her hair, squeezing her frame. “Pain is a lesson, and I believe you have learned from it this time.”
Her breath came out in a wretched string of weeping.
She hid her face into the crook of his shoulder, burying her knuckles into the fabric of his robe, never wanting to let go. “I cannot comprehend how you would ever forgive me after what I have done to you.”
“One day, you will.” He broke away enough to look at her. “Until then, you must decide where to go from here.”
“And if I wish to stay with you?”
Ash would be okay, protected by those she left behind—her siblings, Ronin and his organization, and Acacius. She had full faith that he would fight to see her wishes through.
“Then you can.” Father dried her face with the backs of his fingers. “Is that what you wish to do?”
She looked back at her corpse.
I want to stay, her heart yearned. To make up for all the lost time with her father, to exist in a realm without pain and hardship. It sounded like a utopia. A relief to her heavy, branded bones.
But…
Acacius waited for her.
Do you think you could? I mean, ever fall in love?
He’d acknowledged her with such tenderness in that moment, and it had terrified her how easily the answer came to her tongue.
It was the kind that saturated her like the molten metal of his forge.
She wanted to spend all her days with him, lost in him, in his realm, but that second of intimate falling had taken her by surprise.
Horror had wrung her insides, and she feared that when she hit the bottom, it would shatter her entirely.
It was a lie that she believed, exasperated by the falsehoods of gods and her mother, always chasing a love that did not choose her in the end. Over and over, she’d slam the ground yet never fall completely apart.
Proof of her resilience.
Her love for Acacius could be the thing to break her, but it could also be the thing that she’d longed for her entire life.
I will never disappoint you. She held onto his promises.
Not once had he failed in keeping his word.
Marina lowered her arms from her father’s neck, and grabbed onto his hand. “I have to go back, to the one that I love.”
Father cupped her cheek, smiling softly. “Go back and live the best life that you can. Forgive yourself. Do not cry for me any longer. When you killed me, you set me free, Marina.”
Her lips quivered, fresh tears burning her eyes as she tilted her head into his palm. “I love you, Father.” She grasped at his knuckles, memorizing the touch of his skin one last time. “Deeper than the earth.”
He laughed lightly, slipping his hand around her hair and pulling her forehead to his lips. “And I love you, deeper than the earth.”
She bowed her head, unable to control her blubbering breath.
Fissures cracked in her heart, swelling through her chest. It hurt, the grief and knowing that she would never see him again. And suddenly, she understood her little brother’s obsession of fighting the throes of death.
You set me free.
Marina remembered Father’s journey into the Land of the Dead, greeted by his lover and their child, and how his entire being had let out a breath of relief, holding them in his arms.
Pain is a lesson.
A heartbreak that had woken her up.
Perhaps, eventually, she could find the strength to forgive herself.
Father squeezed her hand as he dipped his forehead to hers. “I am so proud of you.”
Before she could respond, he lurched her forward off her feet.
She plummeted through the water beneath them, sinking into its vast stomach. Its frigid temperature shocked her system, and her body tensed under the weight of the waves. The ebony water filled her lungs.
Marina, a voice quaked, its sound muffled in her drowning ears.
She felt her pulse flutter in her throat, a lifeline that she grabbed onto, letting it anchor her back to where she belonged.
The shadows came alive below her, like an umbral, sentient whirlpool. Tendrils slithered up from its body and curled around her ankle, snatching her under.
Marina!
She choked on the lump swelling in her throat, watching the silhouette of Father from above fade into a glimmer of light.
I am so proud of you.
The words sank down into her soul, hugging the ten-year-old version of her that had longed to hear his praise.
She smiled as her wounds mended.
MARINA!
She was pulled into the heart of the chasm, drowning out the last of the light.
The midnight, it felt like home.