28. Until Death Do Us Part

"Naia!" Ronin bucked in Marina's hold. "No?—"

Marina slammed his forehead down on the gravel.

"Marina!" Naia took a step, but Solaris caught her by the crook of her elbow. His touch was fiery, and she gritted her teeth to keep from recoiling from his grasp.

He dragged her into the center of the graveled road.

"Marina," he called. It was an order, not a request.

Marina released Ronin's hair and materialized at Naia's side. Another barricade of flames engulfed them. The nightrazers wreaking havoc vanished in an instant.

For that, at least, Naia was grateful.

Marina positioned herself behind Solaris as an intimidation factor, locking her cold eyes on Naia as she pulled her mask down underneath her chin. A smirk split apart her lips and Naia's palms went clammy in her gloves.

"High God of Marriage," Marina said, each syllable measured and slow. "I summon you."

Naia couldn't resist looking back at Ronin, catching glimpses through the crackling flames. Theon held him back by the arms. Avi was on his other side, fighting to get him to swallow the potion. He batted them both away, attempting to stand up. His beautiful hair, disheveled and bloodied, clung to his face. She wanted to push it back and fix it for him; run her fingers through it one last time.

The High God of Marriage, with his slender arms and short, plump figure, hardly exuded power, but his soft-spoken nature drew Naia towards him.

He observed his surroundings with little interest, took in Naia and Solaris before him, and recognition flickered across his face.

"Solaris, High God of Fire." He bowed his chin respectfully. "Do you take Naia, daughter of Mira, High Goddess of the Sea, to become your wife? To have and to hold, to love and cherish, until you make your journey into the Land of the Dead?"

Solaris kept his firm gaze on the High God. "I do."

He clenched one hand into a fist at his side while holding Naia's hand with the other. Thankfully, the thick material of her gloves kept their skin from touching.

Her fingers quivered in his grip, but she steeled her jaw.

I won't let Ronin die.

"Naia, lesser goddess." The God of Marriage—to her surprise—bowed his chin in the same form of respect she hadn't expected from him. He pulled out a handkerchief from his robe pocket and handed it to her. An unspoken request to clean the blood off her face.

She did as he wished and ran the cloth over her features, trying not to think too hard on the reasoning for the High God's request. It had been centuries since she last kissed Solaris.

Rolling her lips to inspect their cleanliness, she focused back onto the High God.

"Do you take Solaris, High God of Fire, to become your husband? To have and to hold, to love and cherish until you make your journey into the Land of the Dead?"

Naia held her breath to smother the lump in her throat.

Solaris turned to look at her. His expression held centuries of fond, bitter memories together, but all she could focus on was the threat lurking in Marina's glare from over his shoulder.

She had to work the words up from her throat.

They sat idle on her tongue.

A silent tear slipped down her cheek.

She squeezed Solaris's fingers with the urge to crush his bones.

It splintered her heart to know Ronin watched.She needed to connect to him in some way.

His face was contorted as he raged, fighting against the steel grip of Theon and Avi. Others flocked around him. Noah and Damian, faces streaked with sweat and blood. The only proof of Ronin's injury was the tear in his shirt. A heavy relief fled through her, lightening the worry that had been suffocating her. Whatever potion Avi had given him worked. He was fine now.

It is only the two of you. Nobody else.

Looking at Ronin, she said, "I do."

A brilliant bolt of lightning slashed through the sky, punctuating the ceremony.

Levina. Solaris's mother.

Naia flinched.

Solaris released her hand.

The High God of Marriage bound their wrists together with a dainty gold chain, and it felt as if a brick had settled at the bottom of her stomach.

The Chain of Union.Naia had heard of it. A relic sprinkled with the High Goddess of Fate's power. The final link in binding a matrimony.

Naia thought she would be sick as the High God lifted their bound wrists. "By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Solaris, kiss your bride."

Her body went stiff when Solaris moved in and drew his mouth over hers.

"Mira, High Goddess of the Sea," Marina called out clamorously, her voice audacious and clear. "I summon you."

Naia's pulse surged madly.

No.

She lurched away from Solaris with the need to flee biting at her legs; to turn away and settle her gaze upon Ronin again.

Solaris caught her by the chain binding their wrists with a hard look that said, don't you dare run.

The seconds passing were agonizing and painfully quiet. It was as if everyone had stopped breathing. The popping and hissing of the flames played in the background, only to be drowned out by the blood roaring in Naia's ears as her heartbeat palpitated.

Something was wrong.Too much time had passed.

With a quick glance around, Marina's eyes betrayed a touch of unease as she fixed Solaris with an intense, demanding stare.

"Levina," Solaris tried. "High Goddess of Lightning, I summon you."

The night sky was illuminated once again by a streak of lightning. Naia startled at the sound lancing through the sky.

Why didn't it work?

She focused on unwinding the chain from her wrist as her fingers trembled.

"What did you do?" Marina snatched Naia by the forearm before she could get the chain off.

"I didn't do anything."

Marina dropped her gaze to Naia's hand, eyeing the glove with explicit blame. She went to rip it off.

Naia struggled to pry her arm free, keeping her from doing so. "Marina, stop this!"

Marina clasped ahold of the thumb of the glove and tore it off in one fell swoop.

Naia's breath died in her lungs as she took in the marks etched on her skin. Her vision swam and her knees threatened to give out on her.

She'd been utterly foolish.

Naia held up her shaking hand to examine the fresh curse mark; on the same hand she'd used to shake Cassian's that night.

The delicate touch of black lace graced the back of her knuckles, its intricate patterns wrapping around each finger. There was an elegance, a refined exquisiteness in its design—breathtakingly beautiful, as much as it was tragic.

Same as the one branding her skin before, this one held no pain, and had she not accepted Theon's gloves, she would've seen it the moment it appeared on her flesh. Marking her soul for whatever cruel, twisted curse Cassian had placed on her in exchange for her freedom to leave Kaimana.

How could she have forgotten about the deal she'd made?

I will activate it when the time is right, he'd said.

"Naia, no." Solaris's expression crumbled devastatingly as he gaped at the mark. "What did you do?"

Her eyes bounced from him to Ronin.

The weight of his watchful gaze was palpable. Mouth parted, body frozen as he analyzed every gesture she made and examined the intricate pattern on her hand. She wanted to explain how she buried the wretched deal she'd made in the darkest trench of her mind.

After numerous decades of practice, she was exceptionally skilled at dissociating.A coping mechanism to avoid her demons and pretend as if they did not exist. If she'd thought about the curse, unknowing when it would activate, such suffocating anxiety would've pushed her into insanity.

Marina's fingernails sunk into Naia's skin as she seethed. "What deal did you make with him?"

Stupefied, Naia shook her head. "I don't know."

It couldn't have appeared more than an hour prior. The mark was not there before she put on the gloves.

The High God of Marriage cleared his throat uncomfortably as he unraveled the chain from Solaris and Naia's wrists. "I do not believe a union was truly forged here today."

Witha chilling look, Marina fixed her gaze on him, silently demanding further details.

He concealed the chain back into his robe."I suspect there is an obstacle preventing a true union from being formed between Naia and Solaris."

It clicked then, at the words union and formed.

Naia's eyes widened in horror.Her heart crawled up in her throat and she stumbled back, her bare fingers pressing to her quivering lips.

Marina whipped her head towards Ronin and then back to Naia, her eyes slitting. "Did you lay with him?"

Sex was only a temporary binding, nothing to prevent a true union. However?—

Naia faced Solaris, the shock of the situation shuddering up her spine and constricting the muscles in her neck.

"I am sterile," she said to him. "I cannot—" She couldn't bring herself to say it, but she needed some peace of mind.

Solaris's eyes fell shut with the revelation. "You are not, Naia. I consumed a potion I got from a mage every night before we?—"

It was as if the earth dissolved beneath her feet, and she was floating.

A humorless, dry laugh scraped out of her mouth as her fingers came up to her hair and fisted her roots with the urge to scream and hurl and cry.

What was she to believe? That his action was because he cared for her, or for him? Neither of them had wanted a child together.

A child?—

With Ronin.

A thought prompting her to seek him out among the faces watching them through the flames.

He was gone.

Naia's breath hitched, flicking her eyes around in search of him. Theon and Avi were no longer there. As well as the other members of the Blood Heretics. Only lifeless bodies sprawled out on the ground remained.

Marina's grip on Naia's wrist loosened, subsiding in an unsettling state of stillness. "I'll make you suffer for this."

Solaris took a step. "Marina," he warned slowly. "Don't."

"Mother will never be free because of you." Her sister kept her chin tucked to her chest, her curtain of hair blocking the view of her face.

Naia's throat tightened, her fight-or-flight thrumming in her bloodstream, preparing to run.

A mass of shadows formed over her head, a dense, black mist twisting and writhing.

The High God of Marriage was gone.

Solaris took another step. "Marina, we will figure out another?—"

Marina lifted her head, and Solaris was thrown back with the movement.

Her murderous eyes flashed to Naia. The darkness, thick and suffocating, enveloped them in a fog. Naia could no longer make out the warehouse or the brewery. Her breath locked in her diaphragm as she stepped back. Her eyes strained through the veil of onyx, keeping a close watch for her sister's presence.

A set of arms enclosed around her waist, and she yelped, rearing her elbow back.

A familiar hand, chilled to the touch, caught her by the arm. "It's me," Ronin whispered in her ear.

She let out her breath, relaxing her body into his.

A flash of white hair appeared at her side.

Theon's hand rose, and a towering barricadeof ice emerged from the ground. The force of Marina's hit dulled against the impenetrable glass wall.

She threw herself into it from the other side like a feral animal."There's no escaping me, Naia! Do you hear me?"

Avi stood at Naia's other side, his suit tattered and stained with Ronin's blood, tightly holding onto a vial full of a vivid blue serum.

"Wherever you go, I will find you, drag you back to Kaimana, and make you suffer eternally for what you have done to Mother!" The deranged pitch of Marina's voice disturbed Naia. In all of their centuries, Marina had never bared such emotion.

"Theon, now!" Ronin ordered, his hand planting on the god's shoulder.

Avi reached over Naia, grabbing onto Theon's arm.

And the universe heaved against her.