“I’m not… I was… I’m not like that.” She tensed her fingers against the rock beside her, gripping it tightly as pain welled inside her, tore her down all over again and left her feeling as if she was bleeding. “Not anymore.”
She moved on before he could say anything, shuffling forwards along the ledge, her focus on the point where it broadened. She couldn’t shake what he had said though. Not the part about her being reckless, because he was wrong about that. The part about her being spirited and wild.
Was that such a bad thing?
To be wild was to be free.
To be spirited was to not let events in her life bring her down.
She thought about Thanatos, trying those words on him for size, and realised they didn’t fit him. He wasn’t spirited. He wasn’t wild. He was controlled. Disciplined. Perhaps he had said what he had with an air of disgust because being like her was incomprehensible to him. He had already revealed he was very loyal to her father, that he served another with pride rather than contempt towards the perceived difference in their statuses. She was beginning to feel Thanatos wasn’t just loyal. He was a male with rigid principles, one who took nothing lightly.
Calindria found being like that incomprehensible. She had been trapped in a cage for so long, but she had never allowed it to break her. She had thought of the future, had held on to her dream and had known one day she would fulfil it. She would live in a bright, verdant world, with room to roam as much as she wanted.
A world where no one would bother her.
She stepped onto the wider ledge, relieved to leave the treacherous one behind, and turned her back to Thanatos.
Cursed.
Ahead of her, the broad slab of rock ended abruptly. She hurried to the edge, stopping a few feet back from it, and scowled at the enormous drop into darkness. There had to be another ledge she could use to navigate this abyss. She peered left and then right. There was not. She planted her hands on her hips and huffed as she surveyed the ravine. It was at least twenty feet to the other side, probably more. There was no way she could leap it.
“I will have to fly you over.” Thanatos stopped a short distance to her right, at the very edge of the plateau.
With wings like his, she wouldn’t fear any drop either.
“No.” She kept looking, sure she would find either a way across the ravine or around it, and if that didn’t happen, she would go back the way she had come and pick another tunnel.
“Calindria—” Thanatos started.
She barked, “I said no!”
He gave her his patented scowl, and she knew she was being difficult, but he didn’t know what she did. If he touched her, he would be hurt. Worse, she might kill him. The thought of hurting him was horrible enough. The thought of killing him—she shut it from her mind.
Some of the tension building inside her flowed away when she spotted a bridge of rock connecting the two sides of the ravine just beyond Thanatos. She started towards it, and Thanatos reached for her, clearly thinking she meant to take him up on his offer after all.
She was quick to leap to her right, away from him and the edge, and scowl at his hand. “I said not to touch me, and I meant it.”
He looked wounded by that for a moment, but it was gone when he blinked, a hardness settling over his features that made her feel he was bringing a wall up.
Or building the one that surrounded him higher anyway.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, not anymore. If he had wanted to get his hands on her to capture her, or to do something else to her, then he would have done it by now. It was fear of harming him that made her stop him, and no matter how many times she tried to put into words why she was afraid of him, they refused to leave her lips.
She walked past him, heading for the bridge, one that looked more and more treacherous by the second. It was little more than an arch of black rock, and there were cracks in it in places, ones that worried her. Would it support her weight?
The alternative was Thanatos insisting he fly her, maybe even going as far as attempting to force her, so she strode up to the start of the span of rock and sucked down a fortifying breath.
“Calindria, do not be so foolish,” Thanatos growled and stormed after her.
His wings shifted against his back and then spread, and fear that he would grab her when he reached her propelled her into action.
She stepped onto the bridge, moving quickly at first, but slowing as Thanatos came to an abrupt halt at the start of it.
“Damn you, reckless female,” he muttered, his voice backing up the feelings she could sense in him as he watched her.
Fear. Anger. Irritation. Concern.
When the rock beneath her wobbled, she made the mistake of looking down into the ravine. Her breath hitched, her eyes widening, and her heart felt as if it might stop as the bottom of the abyss seemed to zoom towards her. Her skin prickled, ice chasing over it, and she spread her arms out at her sides, seeking some balance as fear gripped her. The bottom of the ravine wasn’t rock as she had expected. Water rushed down there, black and dangerous, crashing against boulders and swirling in deadly whirlpools.
She was immortal in the sense that she lived for millennia and could heal quickly compared with a human, but she could be killed, and she had no doubt that she would die from falling such a height and being smashed against the boulders, or sucked deep beneath the surface by one of the eddies.
She tilted her head up and fixed her eyes on the other side of the ravine, where dead-looking trees that were little more than gnarled stumps crowded the plateau. She shuffled her right foot forwards and then her left.
“Just let me fly you.” Thanatos sounded angry, but he made no move to grab her against her will.
She shook her head and kept moving, kept breathing. In. Out. Calm. She was almost there.
A great groaning noise echoed around the cavern, followed by the sharp crack of rock splintering. Her heart leaped into her mouth, her gaze whipped to her feet, and adrenaline shot through her as the section of bridge she was on gave way. On a shriek, she launched herself forwards, stretching for the other side of the ravine as the entire bridge collapsed. Everything slowed as she sailed through the air, as she reached for the plateau beyond the wall of rock in front of her.
As she realised she wasn’t going to make it.
She grunted, air exploding from her lungs as she hit the wall almost ten feet below the plateau. Her fingers burned as she scrabbled for purchase and pain blazed up her right arm as she managed to grab a small crack in the rock and the weight of her body yanked on her shoulder.
Wind buffeted her as Thanatos flew to her and she screamed again as he reached for her.
“No!” She twisted and grimaced as her shoulder ached, wanted to swat at him to keep him away from her, but focused instead on finding somewhere to hold on to with her other hand to stop herself from falling.
He beat his huge black wings, holding steady in the air just behind her, no doubt giving her that look.
And then he grabbed her by her waist and hauled her up, his wings beating the air as he lifted her.
“No!” She tried to jerk free of his grip, gave up when she realised it was too late to save him even if she did break free of him.
He had touched her.
Sorrow welled inside her, had her gaze falling to his strong hands where they gripped her bare waist, his arms as he banded them around her and held her close to him, her back pressed to his front as he flew with her.