For the first time in her life, she felt like one. She had powers, strong ones, a little darker than she had expected, but she could get used to that. Her smile widened. When she saw Calistos, she was going to show him the things she could do. Not the death touch thing, but how she could create things with her somewhat black and dead brambles and vines. She couldn’t wait to see his face light up, or hear how he would tease her about her grim powers, and maybe even say she was much like their father when he had always told her she was too like their mother.
The light and warmth that filled her and the course of her thoughts gave her pause, made her still as she stared at the crystals.
It was the first time she had truly thought about her brother as alive. It was the first time her thoughts of what came after her escape from this realm hadn’t been dark and filled with death and vengeance.
And gods, it hurt for some reason.
Tears lined her lashes, welled up from her heart as she pictured her brother, tried to imagine how he would react when he saw her. She missed him. She missed him so much, had mourned him for centuries, carrying that pain within her every day of her life. Had he missed her too? Had he felt as if a part of himself had been severed?
Lost?
She wanted to see him again. Needed to see him again. She needed to see all of her family and see that what Thanatos had told her was true—they had never abandoned her. They had all mourned her, and now they all wanted her back with them.
Calindria pulled her knees to her chest and held them as she thought about her brothers and her parents, as the hurt grew sharper, cutting her like a blade until she was on the verge of sobbing. Her throat closed and she sucked down a breath, refusing to let the tears fall. She had to be strong. She had to survive this place, and that meant she couldn’t let her softer emotions get the better of her. She needed to be a powerful warrioress worthy of her parents’ names.
The tears still wanted to come though, burning the backs of her eyes as she fought the rising tide of melancholy, trying to break free of it. She wouldn’t cry now. She would cry once she was reunited with her family, and they would be happy tears.
As she stared at the opposite end of the cavern, a solution to her problem presented itself.
Anger was swift to surge through her, obliterating her sorrow and all the softer emotions she had been drowning in, as Thanatos emerged from the end of the tunnel. His glowing blue gaze scanned the cavern and narrowed as it settled on her.
“I told you to stay put,” he snarled and stormed towards her, rage rolling off him in fierce waves that stoked her own fury and had her rising onto her feet.
“And I told you not to order me around!” She tilted her chin up, embraced the darker side of her blood that was seething with anger, pushed her to put him in his place and make him pay for wounding her. For daring to pursue another female. Her blood boiled at that. “I do not need your help anymore, god of death. Leave me. I will find my own damned way home.”
Rather than shocking him, that declaration only angered him further, had him striding up to her. She turned her back on him. He grabbed her left arm in a bruising grip and pulled her to face him.
“You are not going anywhere without me,” he growled, blue eyes on fire as he glared down at her, his broad mouth compressing into a thin line.
“The same rule doesn’t seem to apply to you.” She scoffed at that, at the way his eyes gained a confused edge as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. He knew. She was sure of it. The hurt that had bloomed inside her out in the valley was swift to return, erasing all the warmth thoughts of seeing her family had caused, making her feel cold as ice inside even as she burned with rage. “I saw you go after that female. Did you get what you wanted from her?”
Thanatos leaned back slightly, still frowning at her. “You saw the female too?”
She rolled her eyes and yanked her arm free of his grip, refusing to flinch when it hurt her. “It was very hard to miss her… or the way you went flying after her with your tongue hanging out.”
He arched an eyebrow at that. “What?”
Calindria wanted to pace away from him, needing the space, but she planted her bare feet to the ground and refused to let him see how much he had hurt her. He would never see her softer side again. Never.
“I might have spent six centuries in a cage, but I am not innocent. I know when a male wants something… intimate.” She stared him down.
He squared up to her, closing the gap between them down to only a few inches, his head tilting downwards as he forced her to look up at him to keep her eyes locked with his.
“Do you now?” he purred.
She swallowed and cursed her nerves as they rose, as they swamped her and pushed her rage down. She clung to that anger, refusing to let it fade, using it as a shield to protect herself.
“I do.” She put force into those two words, but uncertainty still flooded her as he gazed down into her eyes.
Her heart raced, her mouth going dry as his eyes dropped to her lips.
Gods, she wasn’t sure she could breathe. He stole all the air from her lungs with that hungry look, with the silent promise that shone in his blue eyes, one that said that if he kissed her, she would feel it all the way to her bones.
To her soul.
But he didn’t kiss her.
He stepped back.
“I am sorry,” he muttered and paced away from her, running his hand over his black hair. He twisted at the waist and glanced past his wings to her. His throat worked on a hard swallow, his voice low and holding a hint of something like nerves or fear. “Did I frighten you?”
She shook her head. He hadn’t frightened her at all.
“Did the ones who held you ever—” He didn’t need to finish that sentence for her to know what he was asking and why he felt sure he must have frightened her by looking at her as if he wanted to kiss her, by clutching her tightly in a way that said he didn’t want to let her go.
“I told you. They feared touching me. I had always thought it was because they would be punished by whoever was behind my captivity, but now I know it is my power that made them wary of me.” She smiled tightly, feeling only cold as she looked at Thanatos and thought about her power. She thought about what it would be like when she returned to her family. When she had been imagining their reunion, she had pictured them hugging her, holding her tightly. She had forgotten that couldn’t happen. If she touched them, she would hurt them. That same problem extended to everyone but Thanatos, and even then she wasn’t convinced she couldn’t hurt him with her power. “Am I doomed to be alone?”
Thanatos was quick to pivot towards her, to shake his head as all trace of anger fled his handsome face, replaced with warmth and a need that touched her. He wanted to comfort her.
“What made you say that?” He took a step towards her and then another, closing the cold distance between them again.
She felt small, oddly vulnerable as she looked into his eyes, as she let the question tumble from her lips. “Who would want to be with someone who might kill them?”
His soft look told her he had thought the same thing in the past, and he had closed himself off to the world instead, erecting barriers around his heart, determined to live alone rather than risk potential pain by living with others.
She wasn’t sure she could ever do that.