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Ronin spread his long legs out across the concrete as he bobbed his head. “They immigrated to the island a long time ago.”
“Oh, I see,” she said. “What about you then? Do you only partake in the festival for the sake of island traditions?”
He gave a small shrug, popping his knuckles. “I did it to help my parents out.”
The ice cream in Naia’s stomach churned as she assessed the side of his tense profile. “Not to worship the High Goddess of the Sea, the way the others do?”
He turned his head to look at her then, and for the first time since meeting him, she saw a faint flicker of something in his eyes. A lively, poetic darkness.
“My family doesn’t worship the gods,” he told her. “We despise them.”
Naia’s heart sank.
This was more like it. Her pitiful luck had led her to a man who loathed deities.
She couldn’t blame him, whatever his reasons were. Deities were cruel and selfish. She knew this better than a mortal like him ever could. Admitting she agreed would open the opportunity for an explanation she could not give him unless she wanted to spill her truths.
Yet, even though she understood his hatred, disappointment chiseled away like an ice chip in her chest. Whether she agreed, the fact remained. She was a goddess.
Naia stood from the bench, her gaze grabbing ahold of the small stucco structure a little way down the path with a sign above the door reading restroom.
“I need to wash my hands. I’ll be right back.” It was an excuse to expend some of the nervous energy buzzing through her.
Ronin nodded casually. “I’ll be here.”
She took off across the road, her hands trembling against her legs. We despise them. Not only him, but Yuki and Akane, too.
Naia whipped around the corner of the building, her mind sparking with half-baked, worst-case could happens?—
A pair of hands caught both of her arms. She gasped and recoiled from the man’s chest she’d almost collided with.
“Whoa, you okay?” His voice perked her ears. Its rich, melodic tone was familiar, but too gravelly to fully decipher, as if she had heard it through static.
She brought her gaze up to his face, fully aware of his touch on the skin of her arms. Light brown hair, cheeks sprouting a thick beard, and sitting on round cheekbones were a set of emerald eyes.
A rock settled in her stomach.
His eyes flitted all over her face, brow creasing. “Ma’am, are you okay?”
She’d seen such an expression before. Boyish and brutally handsome, silently communicating his concerns or grave apologies—equally conflicted as it was sincere. Except, it was eyes the color of a thunderstorm always gazing back at her, and they belonged to the man she was destined to wed.
“Solaris.” Naia stepped back, yanking her arms away with her true strength as a goddess.
It did not snap his arms from their sockets, as she had suspected.
He simply rocked back on his heels.
Naia’s mind jumped to Ronin, less than twenty feet away, waiting for her. Had Solaris come alone? What if he brought his attendants—or Marina?
A horrific visual of Ronin slumped on the bench, blood pooling from his throat, flashed behind Naia’s eyes. It took less than a second to end a life. A gruesome sight from Naia’s past that took her well over a century to recover from.
“Naia, love.” Solaris’s charming accent revealed itself, his voice shedding its static and melting back into its usual honeyed pitch. “You’ve wounded my pride.”
Naia clenched her fists, prepared to knock his head off his body if he took a step towards her. “How many of you are here?”
“You left an outstanding impression on all the High Gods who attended.” As he spoke, his features rearranged into high cheekbones and a diamond shaped face. The pigment of his faded brown t-shirt switched into a leather tunic with thick buckled straps across his chest. A cloak grew down his back, lined with fur around the collar, and a chained rose appeared on the lapel of the fur. The appearance of a true High God.
“Your absence entertained them,” he continued. “To witness the High God of Fire stood up at his own wedding, and the High Goddess of the Sea’s head explode in fury.”
