“No… not at all… but—”
“Good. The topic is done. Keep moving.” He pinned her with a black look, and she swore he would have shoved her if she hadn’t obeyed and started walking again.
She stared at the vast distance between her and the mountains ahead of her and sighed. “If I am expected to walk that far without stopping, then you are going to have to take my mind off it. Answer a question for me.”
“I do not like the sound of this,” he muttered, but didn’t say no.
Which felt like progress, and permission.
“What happened between you and Hypnos?” She wanted to glance at him to gauge his mood by checking his eyes, but kept her gaze fixed on the mountains instead, some part of her aware that he would only grow darker again if she stared at him while he debated whether or not to answer that question.
Thanatos had to be handled with care. That much she had discovered. Something in his past had made him volatile and untrusting, and she had the feeling it had to do with the captivity he had spoken of. Not the trick Sisyphus had played on him, but the one following the defeat in battle he had suffered.
“The divide between us is my fault.” Thanatos heaved a sigh. “I drifted apart from him, even though he did his best not to let it happen.”
There was a note in his voice that struck a chord in her. Not reluctance. Not regret. It was something else.
Loneliness, she realised as she thought about how she had felt during her captivity.
Did Thanatos see how lonely he was?
Calindria risked glancing back at him and found him scowling at the ground, blue fire in his eyes. His dark power pressed against her, a tangible thing that skated over her skin and called to her own darker side, bringing forth black thoughts. She knew that look. She wore it herself at times, when she was thinking about her mission of revenge, when the need for vengeance consumed her and was too strong for her to ignore. There was rage in Thanatos, a black fury that felt malevolent to her, and dangerous.
Had his need for revenge against someone consumed him so fiercely that he had drifted apart from his twin?
Did it blind him to how lonely he was?
“Where do you live?” She faced forwards again, glared at those wretched mountains and the distance between her and them. “Do you live in a palace like my family?”
“I live in a castle. It is large, set deep within my own realm, constructed of the black rock of the mountains that border one side of it.” He sounded very proud of his castle. “All who dare enter my realm see it and tremble.”
She frowned back at him, ignoring his answering scowl, because someone in this world had to point out that what he had described might not be a good thing, even though he obviously felt it was, and it was down to her to do it.
“Who lives in this imposing, dreaded castle of yours?” She stifled a smile when her choice of words only caused his expression to blacken further.
“Only I live there.” His eyebrows rose slightly. “Although you could include my two servants.”
“Why only could include? A strange thing to say, Thanatos. You speak of them as if they are not real. What are their names?” She twisted to face him, walking backwards with a bounce in her step as light filled her, chasing some of the darkness away. She was enjoying this. Teasing him. It felt good. Like how she had felt long before her captivity.
“They do not have names,” he countered.
She pulled a face at him. “What kind of people don’t have names?”
She had forgotten hers, but she had known she had one, and it had turned out she did.
“They are golems.” He said that as if it would explain everything, and when she continued to look as puzzled as she felt, he waved his right hand through the air. “I made them. Fashioned them from the earth of my realm and a fragment of a fractured soul.”
“That’s… sad.” She weathered his glare, frowned at him as she thought about what he had said and could only feel sorrow for him. “You want to be alone so much that you will not even have someone alive in your castle to serve you. Do you really not trust anyone? Not even me?”
He didn’t answer that. He strode past her, his long legs carrying him swiftly away from her, and she turned and looked after him. His great black wings twitched and he rolled his shoulders, spread his wings and flapped them, and she knew that for a heartbeat he had considered taking flight.
Leaving her.
Because she wasn’t afraid to speak the truth around him and say the things he didn’t want to acknowledge? She believed it was better to know the absolute truth, whether it was about something else or about herself, than it was to bury her head in the dirt and believe in lies.
Which was why she had resolved to believe Thanatos about her family. No more swaying back and forth between what she had believed to be real and what he said was real. He was right. She knew that now.
When he didn’t slow, didn’t even look back to check on her, her mood took a dark turn. She glared at his back, the light inside her swift to give way to the encroaching darkness that whispered to her, spoke of how Thanatos wanted to leave her.
Everyone wanted to leave her.
No one wanted her.
Calindria tipped her head up, squared her shoulders and stormed after him, because there was no way in this world she was about to let him walk away from her. He had a duty to her father, and therefore a duty to her. He was getting her out of here whether he liked it or not.
The soles of her feet hurt as she marched towards him, but she refused to let it show. She kept her head held high, even when Thanatos finally glanced back at her.
“Keep moving,” he grumbled.
Something inside Calindria snapped.
“Order me again and you will not like what I do,” she growled, her hackles rising, anger surging like a hot tide through her to set her blood on fire. She curled her fingers into tight fists and clenched them, her breaths coming faster as her heart thundered, and wasn’t surprised when black brambles burst from the ground all around her.
Thanatos eyed them and then her, coming to a halt and pivoting to face her. His expression dared her to attack him again. If she did, he would deserve it this time. For the last day, all he had done was boss her around, making all the decisions for her, as if she couldn’t think for herself.
Because she was female?
Well, she might be female, but her father was Hades and her mother was Persephone, and their blood flowed in her veins. She had her father’s darkness and her mother’s ferocity, something she had witnessed in a distant memory, when someone had dared to try to hurt Calindria. Her mother had been swift to put them in their place, to reveal a darker side that few rarely saw.
She wasn’t going to put up with this overbearing male any longer.
“If I am not dead, then I must be alive, and that means I am still a part of my family. Hades is still my father. The same Hades who is your god-king. Therefore, you should respect me, but you do not. You do not seem to respect anyone, especially females.” She didn’t stop walking until they were toe to toe, struggled to hold her nerve as he glowered down at her, all dangerous darkness as his eyes shone with blue fire and the air around him grew blissfully cold.
Her neck ached from tilting her head back far enough to meet his gaze and being this close to him made her deeply aware of the difference in their sizes. Thanatos dwarfed her. He had to be at least thirteen, maybe fifteen, inches taller than her, and his arms were thicker than her thighs, his broad chest seeming impossibly wide, filling her peripheral vision.