Home > Thanatos (Guardians of Hades #8)(8)

Thanatos (Guardians of Hades #8)(8)
Author: Felicity Heaton

Necromancers.

If he had been stronger, perhaps Calindria would never have been captured, would never have been killed.

Perhaps she would have never been similarly abused.

He cast his gaze down at his boots, unable to bring himself to look at her as his dark thoughts and his memories weighed him down, attempting to break his spirit. He mustered his strength and shored up his walls, purged the heaviness that infested him and focused back on his task.

Getting Calindria out of this realm.

It was going to be harder than he had anticipated. He couldn’t teleport with her and he couldn’t fly with her, not without touching her.

He lifted his gaze and looked at her again, studying her as she sipped her water and led the way. She had courage, but then that was something she had never lacked. None of Hades’s children were weak, fearful fools.

But none of them were as dark as the female marching ahead of him either.

She exuded darkness as if she had been moulded from the same clay as her father, had not even a trace of her mother in her.

When he had known her as a child, she had been like her mother. Sweet. Bright. Dazzling almost. Now, she was the opposite of the girl he had known. She was darkness, calculating and distant, her heart closed off to everyone.

He could understand why.

He had emerged from his own captivity a different male.

Untrusting. Cruel. A hardened warrior who had shunned everyone, preferring to be alone.

She huffed and stopped, and so he stopped too, keeping the distance between them steady. When she lifted her right foot and brushed stones from the sole of it, guilt churned his stomach again and he despised the feeling and how often it bothered him when he was around her.

But couldn’t shake it.

Whenever he looked at her, at the small crudely made sky-blue bandeau that barely covered her breasts and the matching tiny shorts, and her bare feet, that guilt returned. He hadn’t thought to bring clothes or supplies on his mission, hadn’t considered she would be in need of anything despite the fact she had been held for centuries.

Because part of him hadn’t believed Keras when he had said she was grown now.

That still felt impossible when he looked at her. As a soul, she shouldn’t have aged.

But then, he had the feeling she wasn’t a soul. He wasn’t sure what she was, not yet, but he was determined to unravel the mystery of her.

“When we leave this mountain, I will find a way to get you back to your family.” His words weren’t well met.

She set her foot back down and glared over her shoulder at him, fire in her blue eyes. The black dirt that streaked her face made them appear brighter, and the feral edge to them warned him to keep his distance. She looked like a warrioress when she scowled at him like that, a fierce female who didn’t need any male to fight her battles for her.

She looked like a wild creature, a dangerous goddess despite her petite size.

Shadows flitted across her face, adding a ring of crimson around her pupils, a flare of the darkness he could feel in her.

“When we leave this mountain, I will be finding whoever killed my brother,” she spat and started walking again.

Thanatos stared after her. “Whoever killed your brother?”

She didn’t slow, just kept striding on ahead. His frown deepened as he noticed how she reached for the black spikes of rock that jutted from the ground or hung from the ceiling of the tunnel, how she leaned on them for support as she passed them. She was tiring, but he got the impression that if he demanded she rest for a while, it would be met with the same black look she had given him a moment ago.

He started after her, determined to get to the bottom of what her mission of revenge was, because it sounded a lot like she thought her twin was dead.

And that unsettled him.

“Calistos is alive.” He caught up with her in only a handful of long strides and fell into step behind her, maintaining his distance.

She halted and looked at him, her blue eyes wide. “Calistos?”

He nodded. “Your twin. Calistos. He is alive. All of your family are alive.”

She frowned at him, a wary and calculating edge to her gaze, and then shook her head and backed away. “Do not lie to me, god of death. I saw him die.”

And he saw in her eyes she truly believed that.

“I know what I saw,” she spat and kept moving backwards, placing more distance between them, rousing a feeling that she was going to run again.

If she did, he would have to run to catch her. He couldn’t use his wings in such a cramped space. Not that it would be a problem. She was tired. Her pace had been slowing over the last mile or so. He could easily catch her.

But stopping her would mean placing a hand on her, and he didn’t want to frighten her. He didn’t want to put her through the torment of having a male’s hand on her without her consent.

“I know what I saw,” he countered and resisted the urge to advance on her, sure she would run if he did. “Calindria, your brother is alive. I fought beside him in a war just four years ago. I saw him no more than a lunar cycle ago. Calistos is alive.”

“Liar!” She hurled that word at him, so fiercely he flinched. “I knew I should not have trusted you.”

Her gaze darted left. She was going to run.

He braced himself, his muscles coiling tightly as he prepared to give chase and, gods forgive him, grab her.

Only she didn’t flee. She tipped her head up and stood her ground, her free hand curling into a trembling fist near her hip, causing the dirty cloth that was wrapped around it to tighten across the back of her hand.

“I know what I saw,” she hissed, that corona of scarlet shimmering around her pupils again. “My brother is dead and my family abandoned me.”

“Gods,” he uttered, shock sweeping through him, followed by disbelief when he saw in her eyes that she believed that. There, in the depths of them, beyond the shadow of darkness, pain shone faintly. Buried deep. Cold rushed through him as he pieced something together, hollowing him out. “Calindria… your mission of revenge. Tell me it is not against your family.”

“And what if it is?” She threw each word at him like a barb, a dangerous edge to her expression as she glared at him, as if daring him to attempt to stop her.

The resolve in her sapphire eyes had him shaking his head, had him feeling like a fool.

Because she had been playing him well.

Now, her acquiescence made sense. She had agreed to him escorting her because she had been intending to use him, to fashion him into a weapon she could wield. He growled and bared his teeth at her, darkness pouring through his veins, surging like white water as he thought about her manipulating him like that.

Some of the fire in her eyes abated, and he sensed a ripple of fear in her as he closed the distance between them, as his chest heaved and the urge to reach out and grip her throat in his bare hand, to grasp it tightly and teach her to never attempt to manipulate him again ran rampant through him.

“Thanatos,” she murmured.

And just like that, the darkness rushed from him.

He stilled and stared at her, cursed himself as he saw the way she held herself, how small she looked as she curled inwards. The look on her face cut him to the bone, the way her brow furrowed and fear danced in her eyes slashing at his soul.

He backed off and tamed the darkness, pulled back on the reins and drew it back under control.

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