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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.”

With a 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.