“No. They haunt my waking hours.” The things she saw in her sleep were always the same—a horrifying replay of watching her brother suffer and die, and her family abandon her.
“Tell me an illusion you have seen that haunts you.” He sounded as grim as he looked, and she wanted to tell him he couldn’t fight an illusion or stop it from haunting her.
She settled for picking a lie the realm had shown her recently instead, sure that talking about it would make him see he couldn’t protect her from everything.
“I swore I saw my eldest brother looking at me from the bluff above my cage… but then he disappeared and one of the guards attacked me.” She couldn’t shake that, had been convinced for weeks that it had been Keras come to save her, only to abandon her again.
It had reopened old wounds and still grated on her now, filling her with a need to seek her family and make them pay for what they had done.
“Keras,” Thanatos started and then drew down a deep breath, one that stretched his wings and made them brush her arm.
He was quick to distance himself.
Slid her a black look as if she had been the one to touch him.
Why did he do that? For the same reason he had looked afraid when she had touched his face? The same reason he had been swift to break contact with her before that, when she had touched his hand after she had discovered her power didn’t hurt him?
“I am here because Keras saw you in another’s memories. He told me of the vision he witnessed, of how you were in a cage suspended from the ceiling of a great cavern, and how a male had come to you with a black spear… and how you had screamed.” His tone lost all warmth and light, was blacker than the Styx.
She shook her head. “No. That doesn’t make sense. I had been in that cage for a long time, but I never saw anyone else watching me from that vantage point. I only saw Keras.”
Thanatos frowned at her, clearly not believing her. “You must have seen someone there, because Keras said you looked right at him.”
“I did. I saw Keras. I saw him as clearly as I see you before me now. The guard did come to me and he hurt me, made me scream.” Calindria flexed her fingers around the waterskin and couldn’t resist the urge to take a sip of it, lifted it and uncapped it. She swigged it, wanted to sigh as the liquid flowing down her throat calmed her, setting her at ease. Her gaze slid to Thanatos as she capped it again. “I thought Keras a vision… a twisted version of a memory. The realm does that sort of thing. It warps the mind, turning memories into illusions that seem real.”
“How long ago was this?”
She immediately shrugged. “I cannot say. Not long ago. I… I do not know for certain. Time when you are…”
Thanatos nodded, understanding dawning in his silver eyes to chase the hardness away.
“I am familiar with how easy it is to lose your awareness of time. A minute can feel like an hour, and an hour can feel like a day.” He looked around them at the dead forest, giving her the impression he didn’t want her to ask about this either, regretted that he had told her such a thing.
She didn’t. It made her feel closer to him. Made her feel that if anyone could understand her, it was Thanatos. They shared more than a power born of death.
“Would you say perhaps it might have been four years ago?” He glanced at her.
“Perhaps.” She shrugged again. “It is hard to say. It might have been longer, although it doesn’t feel as if it was that long ago.”
“Keras saw the memory four years ago. You must have seen someone before that.”
She shook her head. “I know I didn’t. I would remember, because I have been hoping to see the one who killed my twin. I have catalogued the faces of all who have come to me.”
“Calistos is alive.” Thanatos gave her a hard look, his tone unyielding, as if he could force her to believe that.
She swayed between doing just that and being sure he was dead.
“If it was Keras you saw, how is that possible?” Thanatos rounded another tree, drawing away from her and remaining away this time. The distance between them felt cold, a yawning chasm that had her aching to move closer to him.
What was it about this glowering, gruff god that had her wanting to be close to him?
Was it merely because she had been alone for so long and he was an ally she had badly needed in the years of her captivity?
Or was it something else that drew her to him?
“The realm takes memories and makes them real. Perhaps it was my doing? Maybe the barrier between the present and past was thin enough and it was my need to see my family that summoned Keras since he was walking in someone else’s memories.” That sounded crazy even to her. “Maybe I somehow pulled him to that spot, although I didn’t see him until he was about to disappear.”
She edged closer to Thanatos as he fell silent, frowning at the ground as he walked, his left hand balancing on the pommel of his sword, fingers drumming against the black leather on the grip.
He was silent so long that she thought their conversation was done, was searching for another topic to keep him talking when he finally spoke.
“I have a theory. Your brother, Ares, told me that Keras almost killed himself with that dive into the wraith’s mind.”
Calindria stopped dead. “Wraith?”
He nodded and turned towards her. “Eli. He was with the enemy who attempted to rise up against your father and claim this realm by shattering the gates between it and the mortal world. They had intended to cause the two realms to bleed together. Eli was instrumental in many of their plots, but he met his demise that night, before my cursed siblings made one final attempt to succeed.”
Her eyes slowly widened. “Your siblings… You said family couldn’t be trusted. Your own siblings rose up against my father.”
His lips flattened, blue fire filling his irises to devour the silver. “Cursed siblings. Hades now holds the ringleader in Tartarus. Questions her daily.”
“Her?” She blinked. “I thought perhaps Hypnos—”
“Good gods, no!” Thanatos boomed, anger tightening his handsome features, the force of his denial shaking her and making her feel bad. “Hypnos would never betray our family or our god-king. It was vicious little Eris and devious Apate, and they lured poor Moros and Oizys into it too. I do not wish to speak of it.”
Calindria did, but she held her tongue, because she could see this betrayal had deeply scarred him. She was familiar with how terrible it felt to have family betray you. Or was she? She wasn’t sure anymore.
“Eli was…” Thanatos looked away from her and sighed, and then met her gaze again. “Your brothers learned that Eli was the one who captured you and Calistos.”
She frowned at that, mulling over what she remembered of that day. She remembered a village. She remembered a black-haired man appearing. And she remembered him stabbing her brother and how afraid she had been, both for Calistos and for herself.
She remembered the same male torturing them, taking pleasure in tormenting them both. He had hurt her brother, making her watch while she had been unable to do anything, and then he had hurt her, causing Calistos to suffer as she had. It had gone on for so long and she had been so weary, had even wished that death would come for her.
And according to Thanatos it had, but in her version of events, she had watched her brother die and had blacked out.