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Naia winked at him before hopping back into the water.

There is a divine fate that awaits you, the words the High Goddess of Fate spoke to her as a child resounded. Every word humming to the rhythm of her blood, etching itself into her being.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Ronin’s lips lightly feathered the place her jaw met her ear. “I wanted to hate you. I tried. All the gods have ever brought me is pain. But you…”

An amalgamation of emotions and sensations flooded her. The way his fingers delicately touched the side of her neck, the silky strands of his hair brushing against her, she had never realized how intimate such simple gestures could be.

As their mouths met again, her hands glided up his chest, his heartbeat quickening beneath her touch, until they settled on his jaw as she deepened the kiss.

Another memory unfolded in her mind.

Ronin looked to be a little younger—eight or nine—walking down a busy sidewalk with a bag strapped over his shoulder. Lost in the world of his handheld device, he remained unaware of the man silently tracking him from behind.

It happened quickly.

The burly man snatched Ronin by his arm and threw him into a dead alley. Ronin cried as he attempted to run away. The man murmured an incantation under his breath. Ronin tripped and hit the pavement.

The man pinned Ronin’s arms behind his back and slit the side of his neck with a pocket knife. “Sorry, kid, but Lord Finnian wants your blood. Don’t take it personally.”

Ronin whimpered, squirming in the man’s hold.

The man pulled out an empty vial and stuck it beneath the cut on Ronin’s neck. A roadway of blood drained down the collar of Ronin’s t-shirt.

“Let me go!” he shrieked.

The glass vial shattered, suspending the blood into scarlet brambles, and coiling around the face of his attacker. The thorns mercilessly drove into the man’s eyeballs, embedding themselves into the bridge of his nose and his cheeks and forehead.

He screamed and flailed about, trying to pry the briars from his flesh.

Naia pulled away from the kiss again, gritting her teeth. Tears burned the back of her nose.

Ronin was only a boy. How could Finnian do such a thing?

“It was the first time I killed another,” Ronin said. There was a palpable heaviness in his voice exposing the shame he carried. “I’ve killed many more since.”

Her heart thundered and ached all at once, disappointed in her brother. Sick for all the lives Ronin had taken. She asked herself what she would do in his situation, but in all honesty, she couldn’t say. Because, the reality was she had no idea what it meant to be mortal; to fear her life ending by the hands of another. Ronin only did what he had to do to survive.

Naia wanted to barge back into her brother’s home and rip his head off for the torment he’d forced upon Ronin.

With a gentle touch, she softly caressed Ronin’s cheek. “I am sorry for what he did. Is that why you moved to Hollow City?”

“I was sick of living in fear, so I moved to the city to confront him and end it once and for all.”

She held his eyes, stepping into their rich brown layers down to his soul. No judgment, no lies. Delving beneath his exterior, she uncovered a well of loneliness, fear, and pain she resonated deeply with.

“You know who I am now,” he said.

Her previous doubts and suspicions about his intentions faded away completely. The feeling expanding in her heart felt bigger than her, bigger than anything she’d ever experienced.

Naia curled her fingers in the collar of his shirt and guided him onto the couch with her. He reclined on the cushion while she positioned herself on his lap, her legs straddling him.

Naia was hardly confident, barely a goddess, but this, she was well versed in—the act of meshing her body with another and losing herself in the dance. And right now, she wanted to lose herself in him.

Ronin reached his hand up to grip the side of her neck. His palm was cold against her skin as she curved her head to rest her cheek on his wrist. Tension twisted in her core, prompting her to settle her full weight into his hips. She could feel him, hard and pressed into the inside of her thigh.

“Naia.” His voice was faint, a gentle warning. Using his fingers, he traced down her clavicle and across the inside of her arm, eliciting a shiver out of her. His gaze flitted down to her mouth, and his pupils flared. He brought his hand slowly back up to hold her neck. “You started this.”

Leaning in, she brushed her lips against his, her long hair grazing his chest. Blurred by the ecstasy pulsating in her bloodstream, she could barely focus on what she wanted to say.