2. Nohealani Island

There were two ways out of Kaimana.

Teleportation—a talent Naia did not have, thanks to her confinement. And the River of Souls—the route Naia took the last time she ran away, prior to her curse.

The river flowed through Kaimana into the Land of the Dead—unless traveling against its stream. Then, it came out into the sea.

On the ground, with her back pressed against the smooth bark of a palm tree, Naia looked over her shoulder to evaluate her current predicament.

Nightrazers lurked in the garden. Obsidian mist rippled in the shadowy wraith creatures' wake as they glided in search of her.

Naia despised the grotesque creatures.

Mortals believed nightrazers were entities born from the High Goddess of Night's sorrows. In truth, there was no poetry to their existence. The monstrosities were a testament to Naia's little sister's vile nature.

It appeared Marina had discovered Naia was no longer in her bedchamber, and judging by how the kingdom wasn't quaking from Mira's rage to find Naia, she didn't know of Naia's absence—yet.

Naia lowered onto her elbows in the sand and crawled alongside a plump hibiscus bush. Her feet got tangled up in her dress, and she mentally cursed. If it weren't for the sound, Naia would've considered ripping the skirt to give herself more room to move.

She remained hunkered with her breath held and gauged the distance between her and the bridge in the garden's center. It was less than a sprint away. All she had to do was dive into the river.

Something tickled the bottom of her foot.

Her pulse jumped, and terror the size of an avalanche froze over her.

A low growl rumbled behind her. The sound rolled through her skin, and her breath locked in her diaphragm. She twisted her head to look behind her to find a black hole for a face staring at her. Within its folds bared a mouth full of thin, needle-sharp rows of teeth.

Naia spun on her knees and threw her arm up to drive her fist into the ground between them. Vibrations from her punch sent tremors up the soles of her feet, shaking the fat leaves of the palm trees overhead.

The nightrazer lunged for her; its elongated, carcass-like fingers scraped across her cheek.She pushed back to her feet and landed on her tailbone. Scrambling on her elbows to crawl up, Naia righted herself and darted through the cloak of dust in the garden.

The ghastly creature screeched, announcing to the others of her location. She winced. The sound was like driving a knife into her ears.

Naia leaped over the craters she'd created in the sand and ran towards the bridge.Her foot came down on the hardwood as darkness swallowed the rays of the palace lanterns slipping past the tall flora of the garden.

Her stomach plummeted at the sight of Marina materializing in the middle of the bridge, and she halted. The milky glow ofMarina's complexion against the divine, black veil was hauntingly beautiful.

It was a frustrating reflex of Naia's body to purge with a white-hot dread when standing against her little sister.

Marina strutted towards her in a black gown, the gold chain finishing down the long sleeves and around her slender waist, clinking with each step.Marina's regality alone was enough to give Naia an inferiority complex.

"You are a nuisance. Go back to your bedchamber."Marina's expression was desolate, voice monotone, as she spoke through dark-stained lips.

Nightrazers floated around them, and Naia's mind scrambled trying to figure out her next move, while intentionally ignoring the part of herself that was convinced it would be easier to give up. She'd made it this far. "No."

Marina cocked her head. The gesture was patronizing, and her eyes filled with a twinge of enjoyment. "Then I will drag you back there myself."

Naia snatched the butterfly hairpin out of her updo and tossed it in the air. "Wren, go!"

The ancient relic's wings fluttered to life and fired.

A warping hiss sounded. Marina's figure dissolved into a chiffon shadow.

A billowing ebony form came at Naia from the right. Wren whipped past her hair and punctured through the nightrazer's core before it could touch her. The creature roared. Slices of light pierced through its whirring black body and exploded.

Marina's blurred figure reappeared. Naia threw her elbow back, connecting with Marina's temple. Her sister grunted and disappeared into fluttering strands of smoke again.

A black mass draped over Naia like a wool blanket, smothering her senses.

The sound of the stream and the fragrance of the orchids and plumeria on either side of the bridge muffled.Naia's racing heart palpitated, and she lifted her trembling hands and blinked, trying to see through the thick shroud of darkness.

I'll suffocate. She'll drag me back. What was I thinking?—

No.

Marina's wickedness could not kill her. You are a goddess, too.

Through the broad walls of the abyss, Naia picked up on the faint hissing of Wren flying through the garden, cutting down nightrazers.

Without her ability to see, Naia needed to draw Marina out.

"What is your plan?" Naia taunted. "Blind me until I give in?"

Naia stepped to the left, extending her arm. The railing had to be nearby.

When Marina did not respond, Naia tried again. "Mother does not deserve for her curse to be broken?—"

Marina's forearm crushed into Naia's windpipe. "Do not be disrespectful."

Naia coughed as her tailbone smashed the rail of the bridge. She gripped its edges, her fingers straining against the wood.

"Wren and I will escape," she croaked. "No matter what."

A glower cracked through Marina's vacant expression—proof Naia had nipped a nerve. "Father only gave you his relic because you are weak."

Wren emerged from the dome of darkness encasing over their heads. It was like watching a fly buzzing through the air as the metal edge of Wren's wing slit across Marina's jugular.

Naia winced at the painful sound of her sister's skin tearing open.

Blood gushed like spilled wine over Marina's collarbones and down the front of her gown. The copper scent invaded Naia's nostrils and a violent dizzy spell caused her vision to tunnel. She breathed in through her mouth and pushed aside the tingling in her cheeks, refocusing on the matter at hand.

Ever since she was a little girl, she detested blood.

Marina swayed, seeking purchase on the railing. Rasps spluttered from her mouth. Her other hand came up and pressed to her wound.

She would heal in a short time, but it gave Naia the opportunity she needed.

As she turned away from Marina, a pang of guilt caught up with her.

Naia was never fond of violence. Although Marina probably deserved it, Naia didn't hold enough hatred in her heart to feel satisfied by hurting her. Hatred implied Naia craved to make her sister suffer, which was not the case at all.

The dream Naia harbored in her childhood to be more than the estranged sisters they were sat in a pyre. After the unforgivable act Marina had committed, Naia didn't mind lettingher ignorant hope burn.

The cloak of night suffocating around them thinned.

"Lady Mira! In the garden!" a guard shouted.More voices carried from the palace.

An echo of footfalls thudded along the cobblestone.

Backing away, Naia raised her arm over her head. "Wren, come!"

She filled her lungs with air, hauled over the railing, and dove as Wren landed in her palm.

The transformation of her body came as natural as walking. Like many deities, Naia was capable of shapeshifting. Her legs fused together underwater, forming an elongated fin, and scales the color of a lazurite crystal.

Naia held Wren firmly in her grasp and swam up the river against the stream. Souls screeched and cried, begging to take them with her. Their grasps were like snakeskin, coiling around her arms as she fought through their prying hands. I'm sorry!

Naia braced herself as she was spit out into the sea. Her eyes stung, adjusting to the salt water. She kicked her fin to launch herself forward.

The tide was calm, unmoving. A tranquil roll, barely a murmur. It told Naia the weather was stable above the surface. Which would cause alarm among the mortals when a random storm blew through.

Mira's wrath would not draw in heavy, lead soaked clouds to the horizon, or coat the air with a forewarning dew.

From past explorations, Naia had every inch of the Kaimana Sea memorized.

A groan shook through the water. Fish scampered across her path, popping bubbles over her cheeks. The sudden pull of the riptide jarred her backwards.

She gritted her teeth and flapped her fin, propelling her arms against its suction.

You can do this.

Locking the muscles in her abdomen, she pushed her fin harder to force herself up and out of the tide's grasp. She reached her arm out. Her fingers broke through the surface of the sea and met the warm air of the Mortal Land.

Naia floated with the tide, swinging her head to peer over the stirring, white-capped waves. Ahead were the twinkling lights of Nohealani Island. She wasn't far.

A rod of lightning impaled the billowy gray clouds. A deafening cacophony of thunder rang out behind it. The tide furled around her fin and seized her back under water.

"Come back at once!" Mira's voice trembled through the sea like an earthquake.

Naia's heart pounded painfully in her chest as she thrashed her fin to fight free.

Mira could shake the waters of the sea with all her strength, but Naia wouldn't give up.She just had to make it onto the shore.

Deities could travel on Mortal Land as they pleased, but Naia's mother was not one of them.

Naia clamped her teeth together and screamed.

With the willpower of a goddess of war, she fought against Mira's riptide.

Naia's vision flickered.

She blinked through the stinging of the salt water as agony stabbed in her right temple. She cringed, sucking in a breath through her teeth. A bolt of pain rippled through her ribcage from the inhale. The pungent taste of metal flooded her senses, snaking tingles up her nape. Her head went light, threatening to clip the last thread of her consciousness.

Another wave clobbered over her back, and she groaned, sinking her elbows and knees further into the sand. The persistent downfall of rain beat against her backside as she dragged herself across the bank, before the claws of Mira's tide could suck her back in.Her fingernails clung to the wet slab of sand, and she buried her elbows and knees into its surface.

Wren held in her cemented grip.

When she could no longer feel the washing of the warm tide grazing her toes, her arms gave way and she collapsed onto her stomach.

A burst of euphoria exploded like a firework in her chest.

I did it!

The storm continued to rage over her with a deafening clap of thunder.

You're not out of the woods yet.

Naia drug her chin through the sand to lift her head and assess her surroundings.Beyond the shore was a silhouette of trees—colossal palms with enormous leaves whipping in the wind. In the distance, a faint light broke through the rain and thicket.

The town square.

The distance. The sense of direction. It was all committed to memory from her last time on the island.

Marina could appear any moment and resume where they'd left off.

While she was aware of such a fact, Naia couldn't conjure up enough motive to care. She was drenched and cold in her torn wedding dress, sticky with sand, mentally exhausted from her constant state of anxiety leading up to her wedding.

She could feel her cuts and scrapes healing and her stamina rebuilding.

The downpour eased to a light dabble, and the sudden shift of the storm only piqued Naia's suspicions.

She lifted to sit up on her knees and stared across the endless darkness of the rolling waves.

Mira could not step foot from beneath the sea, but she would send others in her place.

The snap of a twig sounded from the shadows of the trees.

Naia jumped to her feet and whirled around with her arm raised. Wren's pointed end positioned in her grasp like a dagger.

Please don't be a nightrazer.

Keeping her eyes peeled for the night to come alive around her, Naia's body stiffened.

She waited with bated breath.

Moonlight speared through the storm clouds. A dusky glow cast across the shore. From its luminosity, Naia saw clearer, finding nothing before her but a grove of palms and papaya trees and various shades of wild greenery.

Perhaps it's only an animal.

After several long seconds, she took a cautious step to investigate, hoping to spot something small and fuzzy.Her eyes scanned the groundcover and slowed over the tropical ferns and fallen breadfruit.

Her gaze connected to a stranger's face.

Naia gasped. The muscles in her arm tensed as she gripped Wren tighter.

A man stood a few yards from her on a dirt pathway leading through the forest.Hands in the pockets of his black trousers and eyes wide, as if he'd stumbled upon a ghost.

God or mortal?

It had to have been well past midnight. Humans slept. What was the slim chance one was out in the late hours of the night, taking a stroll?

The man lifted one hand from his pocket, mouth parting, and took a step towards her.

Frenzied desperation shot through her system with one thought on loop: I will not go back.

She lunged over the tropical ferns in her path and tackled him to his back before he could come any closer to her. With his torso pinned beneath her thighs, she drove her palm flat on his chest to hold him down. Any sudden movement and she could crush his ribcage.

She drew Wren to his throat with her other hand. "Tell me who you are."

The man made no move to fight against her, but there was a boldness in his deep-set gaze. "Are you going to slice my throat if I don't?"

Naia's resolve faltered, not expecting such a blunt response from him. A contradiction to the thrumming of the wild stride of his heartbeat beneath her palm.

She edged Wren's needled tip against the bulge of his throat. "Do you want to die?"

While she didn't have the heart to kill, she could bluff. And if it wasn't for her senses loathing the crimson sap filling the veins of all living things, she would've drawn blood to prove her point.

"At the hands of a beautiful woman like yourself would be a decent way to go. Better than a car accident, or when I'm old and gray and can't piss by myself."

Naia gaped at the man, horrified by his indecency towards such a grim subject. "How can you be so indifferent when it involves your death?"

"Death is a part of life," he replied in a cavalier disregard.

Not her life—thankfully.However, his answer meant he was harmless. Deities did not discuss death so casually.

"You're a mortal then…" Naia mumbled. Her shoulders relaxed, and she lowered Wren, lifting off him with her knees.

His black strands were tied up in a loose, carefree bun. Damp pieces stuck to his cheeks and neck from the downpour. His face was handsome—short, solid jawline, and dark eyes, the color of the earth's soil after rain, intensely pinned on her.

He made no move to sit up. The sensation of his gaze roaming her face was like rays of the sunlight nipping her skin. Naia chewed on the inside of her cheek, at a loss for how to get out of the situation.

She could already see it in the newspaper headlines: UNHINGED WOMAN ATTACKS MAN AT NIGHT.

"Are you not?" he asked.

It took her a moment to understand his question, what he responded to, and where she messed up. Referring to him as a mortal implied she was, in fact, not one.

His arm came up and Naia's palm met his sternum, pushing him down onto his back and drawing Wren to his jugular once again. "Did she send you? How much did she offer to pay you?"

He didn't so much as flinch. "I guess sitting up is out of the question."

"It's an odd hour to be taking a stroll," Naia said.

"I was trying to clear my head."

Naia applied a small amount of pressure to Wren at his throat, raising her brow. "Care to oblige?"

His body tensed beneath her, flicking his eyes from her face to her hand clasping the hairpin.

She looked down at his neck. The faintest hint of blood trickled down the knoll of his throat.

Naia eased up her hold directed onto Wren. A cold sweat doused her palms. She was too on edge, and her strength had escaped her.

"Who are you?" she demanded through her twinge of remorse. She hadn't meant to draw blood.

Something wet seeped across her index finger.

Naia dropped her gaze down to the scarlet trail running down his neck and onto the backs of her knuckles.She felt the blood drain from her face. Slightly panicked, she swallowed thickly to fight away the needle-pricking sensation in her cheeks.

When she looked up, the man's face was a blurry puddle, and he was sitting up. She blinked. Her ears popped and then rang.

Naia sloped sideways. She caught herself on the heel of her hand against the rough groundcover.

"Are you okay?" She heard the man ask, but his voice sounded far away.

Disoriented, her eyes sought the thin stream along the man's skin, disappearing behind the collar of his shirt.

Why now?

She'd watched Wren cut open Marina's throat and made it through fine. This was barely a scrape.

"Hemophobia," she spat out. "I… don't like?—"

"Blood," he finished. "Yeah, I know what it means."

He reached for her.She jerked back to avoid his touch. Paralysis nipped down her arms and legs and she wobbled.

"Whoa, easy there." He caught her by the shoulders. "I've got you."

She attempted to lift her hands to push away from him, but her limbs weren't listening and the spinning in her head only grew worse.

It was foolish of her to lose control of herself in front of a stranger this way—a mortal, no less. If her traitorous body gave out on her, it couldn't be mere feet away from Mira's territory.

With her forehead smudged against his chest, she forced out the words from her numbing lips. "Get me out of here."