6
Callia’s POV
I could barely recognize the sound coming from my own mouth.
It was a sound caught between a scream and a sob. It sounded raw, ragged, ripping through the air like a curse torn straight from my gut. I paced the room, naked and seething, my teeth bared like a cornered animal trapped in a cage far too beautiful for its fury.
The chamber echoed with my rage. The coral walls didn’t tremble. Of course they didn’t. Nothing down here broke but me.
“Do you even care what you took from me?” I shouted, spinning to face the empty space as if he were already in it. “Do gods even feel guilt, or is it all power and prophecy and taking?”
He appeared as if I’d summoned him.
Tall. Calm. Bare-chested, again. Always that same unsettling stillness, like the tide just before it pulls you
