“Aria,” Achi said, forcing his way from his father’s arms. “Listen to me. You have the right to justice and I will give it to you. But you need to talk and listen.”
“You want to give me justice?” Aria asked.
“Yes.”
"I want the right to pull their hearts from their chests, put it back in, and pull it out again."
Achi sighed. "Normally, I would try for reconciliation but I think they care as little as you do. Granted."
"That request includes you and your father," Aria said.
"I know," Achi said. "He too wronged you. Killing him will be a challenge, but if you are capable of it, then you may have it."
"And killing you?" She asked. "I don't suppose a kiss would work now."
"Why wouldn't it?" Achi asked. "I still love you to death."
He said that so matter of factly that it took Aria a moment to grasp the ridiculousness of the statement.
"You're awake," Aria said. "And I didn't wake you. So, either someone else did or I have no more hold over you."
He hesitated, long enough for her to know that she was on the right path.
When he spoke, it was with reluctance as if he had hoped to avoid the topic. "No," he said, "I woke because you became a rage-fueled force bent on world-shattering retribution and I am, in most ways, the opposite of that. If you continue like this, we are not compatible. That broke the hold you had over me, but not my love.”
“You say the sweetest words of anyone I’ve ever planned to kill.”
“You don’t have to do this Aria.”
“Stop with the ridiculous proclamations. Just tell me, will a kiss work?”
“If you change back, it will,” Achi said. “You want to kill me? All you need to do is find something soft inside you. It’s there. You can be more than just a vengeful deity. Now, before your formation is complete.”
“What a bore.” Aria took in the others, each watching her with tense expressions. The tethers she had placed on them were still active. Every few seconds, they reset into the positions they had been in when she fixed them. “I love you, Achi,” she said. “I realized it while you were burning. It was a strange feeling. But I’m going to kill you anyway. Do you know why?”
“Why?” He asked.
“Because you lied. You pretended that you wanted to save me. You put on the most impressive act. And yet, all that time you knew what your father could do. You knew that he could see the future. You knew what he would do to me, and you didn’t stop him. Just now, you ordered him about like a slave. But to protect me, all you could do was talk.”
“I tried -”
“Shut up! Tried what?! Tried to tell me? Tried to tell me that you were attached to a bloodthirsty maniac who has no conscience where anyone but you is concerned?! Who planned, ages ago, to strip me of every bit of dignity and torture me into loving you?! Who has plots so intricate that four gods all millennia old could not plan their way out of it?! You tried to warn me?!
“Gods! I hope you never try to find the sun at midday. It would take you centuries!”
“I told you what to -”
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“Yes, you told me what to do. Good job. You told me to apologize. You told me to hide and hope for his forgiveness. You told me to live in your giant palace and eat your food and wear your clothes until I die. By all the gods, even saying that out loud I want to die from the stupidity. Do those sound like things I would do? You, with your centuries of knowledge and intelligence. Tell me, did you for one moment believe that you could convince me to do any of those things?”
“I hoped - “
“No. Let’s be honest. You didn’t hope. You didn’t wish. You knew. You knew that this would happen. You went through the motions. You pretended to help me because what other choice did you have? Control your father or control a worthless mortal girl?”
“I couldn’t control him!” Achi said. “I can command him to do things for me. I cannot command him to do things that will hurt me. I could not command him to forgive someone who poisoned me or to stop a plan that was intended to save my life. It wouldn’t have worked.”
Aria raised an eyebrow. “Really? Because I say a knife to your own throat would have made a convincing attempt.”
“No,” Achi said. “It would not. ‘Forget your plots and let me die or I will kill myself?’ What sense does that make?”
“A lot,” Aria’s voice was low. “A lot, when you truly love someone.”
“And it wouldn’t have worked!” He was now so loud that she could not speak over him. “I cannot command him to do anything that will hurt me. If I command it, he cannot complete it. And if I give him a command he cannot fulfill, he dies.”
Aria nodded. “So,” she said, “you tried to play both sides; begging him for things he would never give, cautioning me with warnings I would never hear. So that when it was all over, you could say that you tried.
“But that wasn’t trying. That was choosing. You weighed my life against your father’s. Weighed my torture against his life. Kill him or let him torture me. You considered them both. Perhaps not explicitly, but you knew it. And by choosing to ‘try’, you chose him. I’m not killing you for his crime. I’m killing you because you decided that letting him harm me was better than killing him. You wronged me. And I understand why you did it. You love your father. So, you should also understand that I’m only claiming what you owe me.
“I could lock you in that statue and let you see what your indecision brought. I’m not doing that. Consider that my mercy. So, if you know another way to kill you, tell me what it is or I’ll do to you what you let your father do to me.”
Their eyes locked in a long silence. Achi searched hers, obviously desperate to find some softness, but it would not save him. It was not anger that had turned her against him, but cold, hard logic. He had declared her life worth less than his father's. She now declared his worth less than hers.
“Let me move,” he said.
Aria removed the tether and he rose and approached her. She could still see the lingering effect of the flames on him, an uncertainty in his steps, a fear, with the world no longer as safe as he used to believe.
“I think you respond better to the truth, Aria, so I will be frank with you. I can’t let you kill me, not because I wouldn’t die for you, but because you cannot win that way. Did you not wonder why my father let you harm me at all? You are strong, but in this matter, he is your equal. He could have protected me.
“You are not winning this. You are losing. He turned you into this. He wants to cement you into this mold, into something that I cannot be compatible with. Then, no matter how much I love you, no matter how much I cling, I’ll wake up one day and you will have destroyed half of a kingdom in your thirst for vengeance, and I will realize that I don’t love you. I only love the thing you could be. Then, he hopes, I would find someone who is already that thing. You would live the rest of your days in misery, burning for a justice that will never satisfy you.”
“Or you could just let me kill you,” Aria said.
“But I can’t,” Achi said. “Because then you would lose.”
Aria tilted her head, waiting for the explanation. Achi was standing right in front of her now.
You’re not a ghost anymore,” he said. “I cannot sustain you by feeding you energy. You generate your own. And right now, your driving force is vengeance and only vengeance. Like most gods, you are nothing but a ghost with an unresolved grudge, clinging to this plane by the strength of your longing. What happens to ghosts who achieve their aims?”
Aria went cold. The answer was so obvious, she felt foolish for not seeing it.
“The trick to being a deity,” Achi said, “is to want something unattainable. Garo wants to be the strongest, but he will never be. He can keep striving toward it, and the striving keeps him alive. Evera wants to be loved. No amount of adoration will satisfy her, so she need never fear being satisfied. Vengeful gods can only live if their enemies are too powerful to be punished. The day you win your vengeance would be your last. And then my father will have won. Because he and I can never truly die. You can kill me and you can kill him. But someday, if another Ovi appears, she might wake me, and I might wake him. And there is my father’s aim fulfilled. A world where I have my love and my life, and I live without you.
“I am so sorry, Aria. I am sorry for what he has done. I do not condone it. I will help you kill him. But I can’t die. And I can’t let your story end this way.”