Because she really didn’t want to hurt him.
She finished washing herself, stepped out of the water and waited for it to settle before she checked her reflection again. She was cleaner now, but her blonde hair was still matted and filthy. It irritated her as she tried to untangle some of the knots in it, hung heavily against her back and stuck to her damp skin.
She looked at Thanatos.
Or more specifically, his sword.
“Lend me your weapon.” She turned to face him.
He twisted at the waist to look at her. “Lend you my what now?”
“Your sword.” She pointed at it where it hung from his hip.
He glared at her, a flicker of blue emerging in his silver irises, and his hand went to the grip of his weapon in a very protective gesture, as if the thought of letting her near it disturbed him or set him on edge for some reason. “Why do you need my sword?”
“I do not intend to kill you, if that is what you are thinking.” She grabbed the matted length of her hair and lifted it. “I intend to kill this.”
“You want to cut your hair with my sword.” He frowned harder, and she sighed and rolled her eyes, because he was making a big deal about nothing.
“It will not blunt it.”
He huffed. “That is not my fear.”
“I said I would not kill you.” She risked a step towards him, eyeing the weapon again.
His long fingers flexed tightly around the hilt, making her feel that if she wanted it, she was going to have to prise it from his grip. That wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t touch him. It also made it clear just how little Thanatos trusted her.
“I doubt you could,” he scoffed and chuckled softly. “You are so small.”
She scowled at him now. “I am not small.”
She might barely reach his chest and her build was far slighter, but that meant nothing. She was powerful, more powerful than he knew. If she wanted the sword, she could get it. The darkness purred that at her. Thanatos wouldn’t be able to stop her. All it would take was one touch.
She shut down that line of thought. Never. She didn’t trust Thanatos, but he had been kind to her. So far.
He did his best to make her remove that caveat she had tacked onto her thought by lifting his right hand and doing something with the thick black metal vambrace that covered his left forearm. Part of the design near his elbow slid upwards towards his biceps and silver glinted, catching her eye.
A blade.
He had another blade in his vambrace. What a clever little god he was.
He finished sliding it free and walked towards her, but stopped as she backed away, maintaining the distance. Rather than trying to hand it to her, he placed it on the ground and moved away from her. She hurried forwards and snatched the short dagger.
Thanatos watched her closely as she inspected the blade he had offered, as she pressed her finger to the sharp tip of it. “Careful.”
Calindria eased the pressure of her touch, not wanting to cut herself again, and grabbed a fistful of hair, dragging it over her shoulder. When she sawed at it with the blade, the strands easily separated and relief swept through her as she tossed the first length of hair aside. She attacked the rest, cutting it just below her shoulders, not wanting to take too much off it so she didn’t risk catching her skin by needing to use the blade high up her back near her neck.
When she was done, she looked at her reflection in the pool again, breathed a sigh of relief as she felt pounds lighter and a cool breeze caressed her back, drying her damp skin. Skin that felt too tight as Thanatos gazed at her.
She swallowed as she straightened and stared right into his eyes. What did he make of her now that she was clean and her hair was a little more tamed?
He held his hand out to her, silver gaze holding a flicker of blue that she was sure had nothing to do with anger or irritation this time. That gaze scalded her as she braved a step towards him, growing more intense and sending another wave of shivers tripping over her bare skin as she risked a second step, closing the distance between them.
Her heart drummed hard in her breast as she looked at her bare feet and then at his boots, and dared another step and then another, bringing them to within less than ten feet of each other. Fear trickled through her, flashes of what she had done to the guard tormenting her, unleashing panic into her veins that she fought by telling herself that she wouldn’t touch him. She wouldn’t hurt him.
She quickly but carefully gripped the blade of the dagger and held it out to him with the short handle facing him.
Thanatos closed his fingers around it and she stared at their hands, at how close they were.
The panic won, fear quick to overwhelm her, to show her a vision of their skin touching and his blackening.
She snatched her hand back.
Flinched as she cut her index finger on the blade and stared at it. Crimson bloomed along the thin line on the pad of her finger.
“Calindria,” Thanatos started, warmth in his deep voice, and took a step towards her.
“I’m fine.” She moved away from him, quickly distancing herself, and sucked on her finger.
He looked as if he wanted to pursue her, might even force her to show him the cut so he could check it, but then he huffed and slid the blade back into the sheath on his vambrace and jerked his chin towards something to her right.
“I spied a tunnel that way.”
Calindria looked over her shoulder in that direction, trying to see what he had. There was a shallow indent in the rock, but it didn’t appear to be a tunnel. She turned and strode towards it, still sucking her finger, and frowned as she saw he was right. What she had thought was only an alcove in the black rock was in fact a tunnel. It banked right at the entrance, the left side of it all she had been able to see from a distance, but opened up just behind the wall of the cavern.
She followed it.
Deeply aware of the towering dark god who entered behind her, his gaze locked on her back, sending heat skittering over her skin.
And the dangerous path she was treading, one that might lead to her trusting him.
One that already had her wanting him.
Chapter 6
Calindria was doing her best to maintain the distance between them. Thanatos was doing his best to narrow it down.
“Your brother is much like you.” He had been talking about her family non-stop for the last mile, as if facts about them would change how she felt.
She hated the fact it was changing how she felt.
“How so?” She didn’t look back at him, focused on her footing because she was damned if she was falling from this narrow ledge and plummeting into the ravine far below. She wouldn’t die here in this wretched realm, not after she had survived for so long and had finally found her freedom.
“Spirited. Wild.” He said those words as if they were disgusting to him. “Reckless.”
She stopped dead, leaned her back into the rough wall of the cliff that had been waiting for them at the end of the last tunnel, and frowned at Thanatos. Reckless. Something she had been once, and to her detriment and that of her brother. She saw him die again, saw the one who had taken them slit his throat before her and felt powerless to stop it just as she had back then.
Calindria closed her eyes against it, drew down a shuddering breath and held it as she sought calm, hoping it would erase the images from her mind.