Page 62 of Heart of the Villain

Her hands shook with nerves, but there was no time for that. There was no time to second-guess what she was doing.

She wouldn’t lose.

Marlena wouldn’t let herself become the person people expected. The girl who waited around for what she wanted.

No, no. I’m going to get what I want. What I deserve.

Marlena leaned her head back, and in a natural Latin tongue, she began to reach out to the gods who’d visited her once already tonight. “To the gods who were stolen from, who knew what our powers meant. To the gods who wanted more but had their lives cut short. I come to you tonight to promise liberation from the hell you’ve been trapped in. I come bearing myself as a vessel. I come to offer myself to you.”

The wind around Marlena stirred, the flames of her candles breathing the oxygen swirling around her. Marlena’s hair rose, and goosebumps formed on her arms.

“I feel you,” she said, opening her eyes and looking around at the clearing and the foliage ruffling in the breeze. “No one has my rage. No one can promise you what I can. Mira was close, the closest anyone has ever been… but she wasn’t right. She got it wrong. You don’t care about love. You want power. Like me.”

A candle’s flame shot up, reaching out at Marlena. It didn’t burn her, but it seemed to watch her, examining her every move. She stared it down, watching the flame ride pieces of her wind.

But nothing more than a few elemental changes happened.

Marlena rose from the ground, turning to take in her surroundings. The sky was clouded with an oncoming winter storm, but above was clear, and stars twinkled in the darkness.

She could feel a presence slithering up her spine, but nothing spoke back. Nothing more than a few gusts of wind that weren’t hers skirted around her circle.

No one came.

And the longer she stood on the edge of the lake surrounded by pines, the warmer her body got from the rage of being ignored.

You’ll always be ignored.

No, Marlena wouldn’t be ignored, and she wouldn’t fail. Marlena was the only choice the dead gods had.

Marlena was the only one who could promise them their own form of revenge.

“What is it that you want?!” she screamed in the new language. “What must I prove to you?” Marlena spun, following a gust of wind with her eyes. “I am the one you’ve been waiting for. After thousands of years stuck in the in-between, you can finally let someone take over and get what you couldn’t.”

A bolt of searing heat poured through Marlena’s body, burning every part of her until it settled in the core of her brain.

She stripped out of her cloak, the change in her body temperature becoming unbearable.

Lighter than a feather and softer than an early morning breeze, a voice inside her head asked the question she’d always wanted to hear. “What is it you want?”

Marlena inhaled a sharp breath, but it caught in her chest when the voice rang again. “Do not waste our time.”

She spoke out loud, unsure of how she was supposed to respond. “Power.”

The voice changed this time, becoming something new. “So does everyone else. What makes you so special?”

“Because I want it the most.”

A laugh tickled her insides, the sound lazy with a hint of pity. “Everyone who's tried has wanted it, Marlena. You’re no different.”

She stopped talking out loud, turning to the voice inside her head—leaning into the part of her who knew this was her destiny. “Then why are you here? If I’m no different, you would have killed me already.”

No one responded, but Marlena could still feel the whispers swirling around her. The voices mixed together like the hiss of an unintelligible argument. “I am the first of our kind to have two powers. I’m not like the others.”

“What about your sister?” a new voice that was somehow different, yet still sounded like the others, clamored.

“The sister,” another new voice hummed.

“She’s not here!” Marlena screamed. She was so fucking sick of talking about Vega. “She’s not here and she had the opportunity, but it’s too late.”