Her lips flattened. Almost a pout.
“I did not mean it like that. I meant only to help!” She folded her arms across her chest, and it looked an awful lot like she was holding herself, trying to make herself feel better because he had made her feel bad. Thanatos refused to be swayed by it, held his ground and kept his glare in place. She did pout now. “What has put you in such a foul mood anyway?”
Her.
She had put him in a foul mood when she had dared to touch him. Damn her. He flexed his fingers again. Still couldn’t shake the tingle that lingered, or how hyper-aware he was of her where she sat close to him, her gaze scalding him.
Setting his blood on fire.
Blood that had been as cold as ice for centuries, just the way he liked it.
He pulled back on the reins, bringing his mood back under control, and pinched his nose, using it as an excuse to close his eyes and not look at her. “I am tired. Someone refused to rest. I have been trekking for… weeks… I think.”
It sounded like a reasonable excuse for his mercurial mood, one she seemed to buy as she brought her knees up, resting her feet on the curve of the log, and held her legs to her chest.
“Fine,” she muttered. “You can make the fire. Will you rub sticks together? I vaguely remember being taught to do that.”
“Rub sticks together?” He glanced up from his work, pausing with one of the branches in his hand, ready to place on the fire he was constructing. “I mean, I can if you wish… but…”
“How else are you planning to make fire?” She rubbed her bare legs.
Thanatos diligently kept his eyes off them, somehow managing to resist the urge to look that blasted through him with every glide of her palms up and down her shins.
He finished building the fire and sat back, made sure she was paying attention, because some deeply buried part of him wanted her to witness that he wasn’t only good at dealing death.
When he was sure she was looking, he held his hand out to the wood and focused.
Summoned a power he rarely used in public.
One he felt sure would impress her.
Chapter 8
Blue flames flickered over the pile of black wood as Thanatos focused on it, small at first but building rapidly into a smokeless fire that danced in an unfelt breeze.
Calindria stared wide-eyed at it, and then at him, and then back at the flames. She eased from the log, one hand trailing behind her, remaining planted against it as she moved to her knees in front of the fire.
“Is it warm?” She reached her other hand out, jerked it back when a log cracked and blue sparks showered upwards, spiralling and twirling in the air. She eased her hand forwards again and looked at him, surprise written plainly across her face. “It’s warm.”
Her gaze darted between him and the fire again.
A satisfactory reaction. One that made him want to puff his chest out a little. He tamped down that urge, his mood threatening to take a dark turn as the voice inside him hissed questions he didn’t want to answer. Why had he wanted to impress the female? Why did he want her admiration?
“How did you do that?” She stared at the fire, her voice lowering to an awed whisper. “It’s so beautiful.”
“Most think it cold. Dead. Fire without life. A grim shadow of true fire.” He stared at it too, lost in the beauty of it, in the comfort he felt as he gazed at it.
He had always felt deeply connected to this power, one that set him apart from others. Anyone could kill. No one else could make this fire though. This was his and his alone.
“I think it’s beautiful.” Calindria eased to her backside before it, her seat forgotten, her eyes never leaving it.
The blue fire danced in them, brightening their colour, as if she had the same fire inside her.
“You asked about the veil.” He settled on the other side of the fire to her, didn’t do it so he could easily look at her without drawing her attention to the fact he was doing such a thing, not at all. He did it so he could watch her back, and she could watch his.
She nodded, but continued to stare deep into the flames, as if they had bewitched her.
“The veil is a dark place, absent of light. It is endless, spanning the universe. A place between the planes of life and afterlife.” He picked up a long, thin stick and poked at the fire. “I can pass into the veil as I am, a physical being in a realm that… has no form. It is difficult to explain.”
“It sounds dreary.” She inspected her scraps of clothing and frowned at a small tear in the blue cloth near her right thigh.
Thanatos tried not to look.
And failed.
She was graceful in her movements as she brushed long fingers across a scrape on her thigh on the same side, a sigh escaping her. “Is it dreary?”
“Not at all. The veil is beautiful… to me. Perhaps only to me. The only others who see it are those at the very brink of death. The veil is the darkness that takes them, separating body from soul.”
“Is it only black?” She lifted her head again, that shimmer of curiosity back in her eyes, enticing him to tell her.
He shook his head. “Perhaps upon first glance… but deep in the veil, where a body is parted from its soul… it is as if a star is born. A star which moves and glitters, dances like these sparks into the darkness.”
He prodded the fire, releasing a wave of cerulean sparks that leaped and danced, whirling high into the gloom. Calindria’s gaze followed them, an edge of fascination to her expression.
An edge he felt sure his own face had as he gazed at her.
She sank back against the log behind her and tilted her head back, staring at the ceiling of the cavern. “I cannot remember what stars look like… I only remember I found them beautiful, but melancholy.”
He frowned and leaned forwards, resting his forearms on his bent knees. “Why melancholy?”
She sighed, her chest expanding with it, attempting to lure his gaze downwards. “Such slender light… travelled from so far across the universe… alone… constantly striving to make contact with another.”
When she put it like that, it did sound melancholy. He wasn’t sure he had ever taken the time to look at the stars. If he had, he was sure he wouldn’t have seen them in the same light as she did. Her view of the stars seemed to reflect something he was coming to feel about her.
She was lonely.
“Did you ever look at the stars with Calistos? I do not think I ever took the time to look at them, not even with Hypnos.” He moved the stick in his right hand, toyed with the other end of it with his left as he thought about his brother.
Calindria sat up. “Hypnos?”
“My twin. Like your twin, he is alive… but I have not seen him in some time.”
She frowned now. “Alive. I saw him die. How am I to know what is real and what is the lie?”
He had the feeling that she already knew which was which, and that was why she had stopped trying to make him leave her alone and had accepted his company. Either that, or she was still trying to manipulate him into carrying out her vengeance.
He realised he would if she asked it of him, only he wouldn’t kill the ones who had apparently killed her brother. He would slay the ones who had killed her. Every single one of them, no matter how small a part they’d had to play in her death.