Chapter 36 ACHE OF CHAOS
ACHE OF CHAOS
Acacius
A gust of moths fluttered over her corpse, their white, silky wings decorating her long black hair. The snowy clearing around them was empty, entrapping him in a peaceful mourning.
A static hummed through the trees. There was no movement, no wind. Just the thrumming in his ears as he clutched the rose pendant in his pocket.
Tears rolled over his lips and into his mouth. He tasted salt on his tongue, the bitter chill of the cold wrapping around him in a haunting chamber.
The rose pendant’s metal edges cut into the creases of his palm as he stared down at Marina’s body, his insides hollow, reverberating the irregular beat of his heart.
What was the point of immortality when he spent it walking through heartbreak, only to heal and experience the agony all over again? Suddenly, he understood Marina’s grief after losing her father.
I do not care about anything anymore.
She cared too much, just as he did, and it hurt.
He’d resisted Naia and the Himura demigod’s power, out of fear. A fear that no longer existed within him. Death brought reprieve from the pain of this world, and death would reunite him with Marina.
“Is this the misery you walked with?” He hung his head and brought his hand up to his eyes, catching his sob. “I am so sorry, Ruelle. I understand now.”
“ACACIUS!” A voice screeched through the sky, resounding like sharp birdsong in the trees.
Acacius snapped his head up.
His pulse fired like explosives in his throat as he jerked down to her corpse.
It was no longer there.
Acacius spun, hysterically searching his surroundings—over the frost, through the thin bodies of the trees, into their shadows.
“ACACIUS!”
His dissociated state of mind began to fracture, and everything returned to him in pieces—how she’d summoned him, and how the clearing had become a battleground of monsters. A battleground that he watched from…
What is going on?
Acacius shifted toward the direction of the bluff that loomed over the forest.
“Come back to me!” Her cry shook the terrain, reverberating like thunder in his bones.
He crouched and gathered snow between his fingers. It was not cold to the touch.
Then he saw it: an explosive surge of fury and ruin manifesting from his grief, pouring out of his chest and erupting in the space around him; the gates to Tavora, the breaches of Chaos entering the snowscape surrounding him.
He recoiled and stumbled back on his feet.
No.
He looked out through the clearing.
Swirling, black fog blanketed over the snow. Its misty haze covered his ankles, sticking to his legs. It dissolved through the material and into his skin.
He jolted as her power collided with his own. He recognized its feel from the many times she had impaled him with it, or when his own reached out to her during their moments of pleasure.
He slapped a hand over his chest, sucking in a breath.
She was here, alive, reaching out for him.
“Marina!” He took off toward the gathering shadow. It bled across the land.
The night was a beacon, his way to claw out of this nightmare of his own creation.
His sight went black. Her power sparked in his blood like tiny currents slowly reviving him back to life. He stood in its storm, breathing heavily, letting her devour him.
Gravity warped and forced him to his knees. A scalding pain seared through his skull, and he screamed out, clutching the sides of his head. It felt as if his brain had turned ichorous and flowed out of his ears, down his jaws and over his neck.
The darkness around him was swept away by a harsh gust, and the opaque gray clouds gave way to glowing white rays cascading out like melted silver.
The light glowed brighter, the wail of his realm beginning to pierce through the reverie.
And then, it burst.
“Come back to me, Acacius, so we can feel it all together.”
The world around him came into view.
Marina’s arms were braided around his chest with her body snug against his backside. Hot, sticky liquid seeped from the wound in his chest. In front of him, the apparition of her Night dissolved into dusty wisps.
He choked on the copper in the back of his throat as the hole in his chest slowly mended.
What have I done?
He gaped out at the wreckage before him. The snapped trees and demolished forest, the craters in the terrain and chunks missing from the cliffsides.
His Olethros, their sleeping frames, dissipated into cobalt curls, returning to their home. The unsewn cavities hemorrhaging destruction above him fully sealed, stowing away the wind and clumps of hurtling land.
The magical globe containing it all cracked, its structure shattering down like the bouncing pieces of a glass chandelier.
Acacius’s breath quickened, remorse filling his insides.
“I am with you now, Acacius.” Marina hugged his frame tighter, wafts of her amber, vanilla fragrance catching in the breeze.
This was real.
She was real.
He snapped around and crumbled to his knees, throwing his arms around her waist. “I-I am sorry Marina—I am so— his blood— the child’s blood and you were and—” his voice cracked. “I am sorry. I am so sorry!”
Marina wrapped her arms around his head.
“I am too much!” He buried his face into her stomach, holding her tighter. “I lost control. I—you were on the ground—I couldn’t bare it—I didn’t mean to—”
Another woeful sob tore up his throat, and he wept through his shame and relief, clinging onto her, afraid to let go.
Marina curled over, resting her cheek on the top of his head. She twisted her knuckles into his hair, embracing him as close as their physical bodies would allow.
“Do not apologize. I love you just as you are, Acacius.”