“Very well. I will not press you to talk of it. Do you have other siblings? You mentioned them in plural.”
He nodded and averted his gaze.
“I have many siblings. Erebus often summons my mother for… disgusting things. She bears him many children, as if the ones she has are not enough. So you see, I have no need for friends when I cannot escape my constantly expanding family. Still… sometimes, family is enough. Family can be trusted…” He scoffed and chuckled in a cold, empty way. “I was mistaken in that. Even family cannot be trusted.”
The way he stood and brushed his backside down warned her that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and that he wasn’t speaking about his twin or how they had drifted apart this time. Had his other siblings betrayed him in some way? She wanted to know about that, just as she wanted to know why he felt guilty about his relationship with his twin, Hypnos.
Why he felt responsible for what had happened between them.
Why he regretted it.
And why he couldn’t trust anyone.
Chapter 11
Calindria didn’t push Thanatos for answers, didn’t have the heart to press him to tell her more about himself and the things that had happened between him and Hypnos, and his family. She stood and watched as he kicked dirt over the fire and scattered the logs, covering their tracks, and searched for another topic of conversation, determined to keep him talking now.
She had been alone too long, had thought she had been happy that way, that she didn’t need anyone anymore, but spending time with Thanatos had opened her eyes. She had been lonely, and now she craved company, wanted to talk for the first time in centuries, wanted to know everything she had missed and all the things she had forgotten.
No, she didn’t just crave company. Not anyone could satisfy this need inside her. She craved Thanatos’s company. The sound of his bass voice teasing her ears. The brush of his gaze over her. The way he constantly watched out for her. A craving that felt dangerous, but too right to deny.
She looked around them at the trees, at the brambles that laced some of them together, and the prickly cones that hung from some of the branches, marvelling that she had been the one to change this landscape. To breathe a strange sort of life back into it.
Thanatos’s gaze tracked her, searing her back as she went to one tree and twisted a cone from it, and tested the fine teeth of the spines that formed its oval shape. She turned back to Thanatos and brushed her hair with it, flinching at each knot she found and tried to untangle, deeply aware of what she must look like to him. A mess didn’t seem a strong enough word. She had looked bad enough before, but now his blood stained the blue fabric of her top, a constant reminder that she had injured him.
“Tell me about my mother.” She approached him, retrieved her waterskin and gripped it in her other hand as she started walking with him.
He fell into step beside her and she didn’t make him move away this time, because she had touched him more than once without hurting him now, believed he was right and she couldn’t harm him with her power.
“She mourned you for centuries and still wears black for you. She is eager to see you again.” Thanatos tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling of the long cavern. His head dropped, his gaze landing on her, but she kept hers on the path as she brushed her hair. “She has transformed the palace grounds in recent years, growing flowers everywhere. The gardens there are beautiful now. Like nothing else in this world. There is every bloom imaginable. I hear that recently she has even summoned trees to form an orchard where fruit grows… food for the new residents of the palace.”
She untangled another knot. “I do not remember the palace.”
“What do you remember?” He spoke that question softly, a gentle prompt that had her mind wandering, delving deep into her memories.
“I remember the Elysian Fields… I think. It was green and lush, and so many poppies bloomed there. The sun was warm on my skin.” She looked down at her body, saw a dress in the same colour as her scraps of clothing on a figure far smaller and far less womanly than her own. “I remember my dress… this dress.”
She toyed with the material around her hips.
Thanatos’s gaze left her. “I wish I had brought something for you to wear.”
Heat bloomed on her cheeks, a wave of awareness crashing over her as she looked at her meagre clothing, as she saw how her top and shorts barely covered her intimate parts. She brushed her hair a little more frantically, unable to keep her nerves in check as the thought of Thanatos gazing upon her curves heated her blood to an unbearable degree.
“I outgrew my dress. It was ripped in places too. So I tore the fabric into pieces.” She plucked one of the needle-like teeth from the cone and showed it to Thanatos, tried and failed to stop herself from rambling as her nerves got the better of her. “I used something like this to make holes in the material for me to thread the pieces together.”
His silver eyes fell to her body and darted away. “You couldn’t have made yourself something that covered more?”
She tossed the spine aside. “You do not wear much either.”
And gods, she had noticed. She noticed it whenever he moved, stalking like a predator, every muscle shifting in a powerful symphony that shook her.
A hint of colour touched his cheeks now as he looked at his leathers and his bare chest.
“My wings,” he muttered. “I tried to wear robes around them once or twice long ago, but having material near them irritated me. I do not like to feel my wings are hindered.”
That, she could understand. “If I had wings, I wouldn’t want them constrained either.”
He flicked her a glance and then moved away from her, heading around the other side of one of the black trees to her. He joined her again on the other side.
“If you had wings, where would you fly?” he said.
She didn’t even need to think about that. “The Elysian Fields.”
The air between them seemed to cool again, a distance growing as Thanatos fell silent. She looked at him, studying his noble profile, seeing something akin to hurt in his eyes.
“What is it?” She lifted the hand she held the waterskin in, meaning to touch his arm to make him speak.
He edged away from her, beyond her reach. “Your brothers were desperate to guide your soul to that place.”
“And now?”
He looked her over, from her head to her toes and back again, heat blooming in his gaze that warmed her too before he shut it down. “I do not think you belong there. You are definitely of death, touched by it, but you are not dead. You are not a soul. I am certain of that.”
“How do you know?” She looked herself over. She felt solid and real enough, she felt alive, but she wanted to know what she felt like to him.
“I just know.”
That wasn’t a good enough answer.
“It might be an illusion caused by this realm. It is a strange place and tends to play tricks on people. I have been here a long time by your account, but even I am not immune to these illusions and lies it casts.” She finished brushing her hair and tossed the cone away. “I am haunted by some of them.”
“Haunted? Is that what you saw in your nightmare?” Thanatos closed ranks with her, drawing so near to her that his black wings were in danger of brushing her skin. His grim expression amused her as he glared at everything around them, as if he wanted to protect her from the illusions that tormented her, even when it was impossible.