Her heart thundered as he dragged her across the ground, her bare feet bouncing off it as she tried to find some purchase and fight the male.
“Can touch you all I want if he doesn’t know about it.”
“No,” she gasped. “Please. I didn’t—”
He lifted her off the ground by her hair and threw her past him, and she grunted as she slammed into a rock in a shadowy alcove. The male lunged for her. Darkness surged through her, panic making it rise swiftly to the fore, and she growled as she shook off the blow and reacted on instinct. Everything seemed to slow and she felt as if she was watching herself from outside her body, as if something else was in control of her, as she kicked off.
She slammed into the male, her slender weight no match for him. She didn’t even knock him backwards. He made another grab for her and she batted his hand away, bared short fangs as she exploded towards him.
Managed to grab his arms.
She went to headbutt him and stilled as he howled in pain as if she had struck him already. He reared back and easily dislodged her as she tried to figure out what was happening. Her eyes widened as he rubbed at his bare arms, as she looked at them.
Her stomach turned.
His skin was black where she had touched him, flesh flaking as if she had burned him, and onyx threads snaked outwards from those two points, spreading the darkness across his flesh as he desperately battled it.
She blinked hard, shocked to her core, unable to believe what she was seeing.
Her head lifted as he fell and she looked around her at the cavern.
Unable to believe she was free.
As he rolled on the ground, crying out in agony, she hurled herself into action, aware she had only moments before the dark-haired guard came to see what all the noise was about. She grabbed the full waterskin from his waist together with the dirty rag and tried to run, tripping her way across the floor of the enormous cavern. Her muscles burned with each stride, but she forced herself to keep moving, and not look back.
Sickness washed through her as the warrior cried out again, as that bellow of pain suddenly cut off.
She hurried into the darkness, into a tunnel she had often stared at during her captivity, not slowing until she was deep in the twisting labyrinth and sure the other guard wouldn’t find her.
Her eyes fell to her left hand as she slowed to a walk, the sickness brewing again as her mind filled with an image of the male she had touched—a male she had somehow harmed with only that touch. The darkness within her writhed, but it wasn’t restless this time.
It was sated.
Fear trickled through her. Fear of this newfound power. Fear of what lay ahead of her.
But it was nothing compared with the renewed sense of determination that flowed into her as she mused her dark power.
A power she could use to have her revenge.
She lifted her head and stared at the route before her as she tucked the waterskin beneath her arm and wrapped the dirty rag around her injured hand, tying it tightly to stem the flow of blood. Her fear fell away as she followed the narrow tunnel, picking her way around jagged black stalactites and stalagmites that joined the ground to the ceiling in places like dreadful fangs.
Her mission was finally beginning.
She was going to find the male who had killed her twin and avenge him.
And then she was going to find her family.
And when she did, they would die.
Chapter 2
Thanatos ducked beneath a dip in the roof of the tunnel, bracing his hand against the onyx rock as he worked his way downwards, watching his footing. He grimaced, lips pulling taut as the tops of his black wings knocked against the rough ceiling and caught on the protrusion of rock. He ducked lower, almost on his backside, and hunched forwards, easing his wings past the obstruction.
Maybe continuing along this path had been a mistake.
He probably should have turned back the moment the tunnel had started to narrow, picking another route to explore and chart in his mind.
Behind him, something chittered, as if mocking him.
He huffed and gripped the wall, fingers tight in the holds he found as he carefully navigated the steep slope. He hoped to the gods it opened out again soon and didn’t get any narrower. Fitting his seven-foot-two frame into small spaces was difficult enough at the best of times, but this was beginning to move past difficult into impossible territory.
A little like his mission.
Four years of searching and he had nothing to show for it, and his god-king, Hades, was growing impatient. Thanatos had charted realm after realm at the very edges of the Underworld, places beyond the sight of his god-king, seeking the one where Hades’s only daughter was being held.
With only a description of what Hades’s oldest son had seen in the memories of another to go on.
Thanatos raked his free hand through his damp onyx hair and exhaled hard.
He was beginning to doubt those memories, but every meeting he had with Hades and his sons had him coming away with a renewed sense of determination to complete the mission Hades had entrusted him with and find Calindria.
It wasn’t only the thought of pleasing his god-king that had him scouring uncharted lands day after day without a break though, refusing to admit defeat.
It was the toll he could see those days were taking on his god-queen, Persephone. Now that they knew Calindria’s soul had form, the gentle goddess needed her daughter back, a child she had mourned for almost six centuries.
A girl who had been ruthlessly murdered in front of her twin, Calistos.
His king and queen had believed her soul lost forever when it hadn’t passed through the veil to reach Hades for judgement. Now, they had entrusted him with her rescue, and he would do all in his power to bring her back to them.
Because she fell under his domain.
As god of death, it was his duty to reap the souls of the dying when their allotted time in this world ended, only he had never been summoned to separate Calindria’s soul from her body, as he should have been, and her soul had never passed on to Hades. Thanatos pondered that, for what he was sure was the millionth time, as the path levelled out and the tunnel thankfully widened. If she was dead, lingering in the place between worlds where he ruled, he should be able to feel her as he could others who moved through the veil.
Only he couldn’t.
He had tried. He had tried so many times and in all the ways he could think of to get a fix on her location, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t feel her.
The tunnel opened out into a cavern with a jagged ceiling only thirty feet above him that dipped lower in places, great pillars of rock joining it to the uneven ground. He kept a wary eye on the shadows as things moved in them, chittering to each other, wanting to avoid another encounter with some of the local wildlife. The largest bats in the mortal world had nothing on the leather-winged black beasts that called the stretches of tunnels and the caverns home. These fell creatures resembled gargoyles the mortals had once adorned their buildings with, with snub upturned noses and pointed ears, and claws as long as their fangs, and a dragon-like tail.
The first time Thanatos had encountered them, he had accidentally disturbed a large nest of them, and they had descended on him as one, ripping at his feathers and clawing his bare arms and chest. They had forced him to retreat and return to his castle to heal.
Something he had to do on foot or wing since there was a strange power over this wild land, one that stopped him from teleporting.