Before she reached it, she locked up tight and pivoted to face him, causing her blonde hair to sway outwards from her shoulders, flicking water across the dirt.
“You know what, Thanatos? You should be sorry. You should be on your knees, begging for forgiveness.”
If anyone else had told him to get onto his knees, he would have laughed in their faces and then cut off their head.
But for her, he dropped to them in an instant.
“Forgive me, Calindria,” he husked, his brow furrowing and his chest aching as he waited to see if she would.
Rather than giving him the absolution he desperately needed, she stormed away from him and sat by the fire, scowling at it. He wearily pushed to his feet, his body feeling as heavy as his heart as he sighed, as he realised that this time, it wasn’t going to be as easy to convince her to forgive him.
He moved to the fire and sat on the other side of it to her, focused on cooking for her and cutting off pieces of meat before it charred. He offered them to her. She took them but she only picked at them, her gaze downcast as she nibbled small pieces of the meat.
He ached as he stared at her, as he sat in tense silence with her, a cloud hanging over them both. All the light that had been in her eyes had vanished. His fault, and nothing he could say or do right now would make it better. He had been the one to extinguish the light in her when he should have made it shine more brightly.
He was tainting her with his darkness, dragging her back down into the black abyss when she was doing her best to shun the shadows and step back into the light, to cast off her past and look to her future.
Thanatos wished he could do that.
He wrestled with the words again, sure that if he confessed the things that had happened to him, even in the most basic detail, that she would understand why he reacted the way he did whenever they were intimate. She would understand how difficult this was for him. He wanted to be with her, wanted to give all of himself to her, but he feared it at the same time. In the heat of the moment, when his past clouded his mind and awakened the instinct to protect himself, he saw her as a female who meant him harm.
A female who meant to treat him as the demigoddess had.
The ache in his chest worsened as he stared across the fire at Calindria, as the small distance between them felt like a vast chasm.
He wasn’t sure he had ever felt like this. Tied in knots. As if his very life depended upon one person. As if that one person turning her back on him would be enough to destroy him.
He picked at his own food, losing his appetite as the gloom in the air grew thicker, weighing more heavily upon him.
In fact, he was sure he had never felt like this, because he had never been in love, and gods have mercy on his wretched soul, he knew this was love. He felt it in every fibre of his being as he looked at her, as he went in circles desperately seeking the words that would be the ones to make her forgive him rather than make things worse.
He wanted to move to be near to her, as close as she had allowed him to be before, but he knew she wouldn’t accept it and he hated that. He hated that she was distancing herself now, drawing away from him. He craved her, was sure she had cast some sort of spell upon him to make him want her so badly when he hadn’t wanted a female in centuries.
The depth of that want only grew as the air between them chilled, as that chasm yawned wider.
As he began to think about every moment they had shared.
He already missed the way she would smile at him, how she would glance at him whenever she thought he wasn’t aware of her and would let her eyes linger. He missed the way they had talked, how at ease he had felt around her, and how good it had felt to unburden himself a little and learn more about her.
All things he hadn’t been aware of at the time, but now that they had been taken from him, he needed them with a ferocity that shook him to his soul.
He curled his fingers into fists, drew down a breath, and let resolve flow through him to chase his fears away. If he had to hurt himself, expose himself, to make things between them right again, he would do it. He would tell her every humiliating detail of what had happened to him.
“Calindria—” he started.
She stood and brushed her backside down, making it clear she wasn’t interested in listening to anything he had to say.
His courage took a hit and faltered.
“You need to eat more.” He offered another piece of meat to her like a messed-up olive branch he knew she wouldn’t take, worry arrowing through him. She had eaten barely a mouthful, not nearly enough to sustain her.
She shook her head and wouldn’t look at him as she mumbled, “I want to sleep.”
She wandered off again and he twisted to look over his shoulder at her, tracking her as she went back to the area she had walled off and disappeared from view.
He cursed himself a thousand times over as it felt as if he had just watched his future disappear and had condemned himself back to the shadows, to a life without light. He rubbed at his sternum, aching with a need to go to her and make her listen, even when she wouldn’t right now. She needed time, and he would give it to her, even though it pained him.
Thanatos stared at the fire, his focus behind him on Calindria as she settled down to sleep. He would keep watch over her and if the nightmares returned, he would wake her, saving her from them. Maybe he could use that as a starting point for a conversation, discovering what she dreamed that made her so fitful and frightened, and he could talk about the nightmare that still haunted his every waking and sleeping moment.
She deserved to know.
He had told others of what he had been through, in the barest detail. Her own brother, Calistos, knew the demigoddess had defeated him in battle, drugged him and stolen his seed. Surely, he could tell her more than he had told her twin? Hell, he would settle for telling her the same thing as he had Calistos. It might be enough for now, would make her understand him more, and perhaps forgive him.
Thanatos poked at the fire and ate more of the meat, forcing it down to keep his strength up so he could continue to protect her. Healing had taken a lot out of him and he needed to replenish his body. He would be no good to her as he was now. If the Keres attacked again, he might not be strong enough to protect her.
Why did he find it so difficult to tell her what had happened to him?
She had proven time and again that she was understanding, a compassionate female and one he could trust.
Telling her about his past would only be making himself vulnerable in a different way and he doubted she would spurn him for what had happened to him, or view him as less of a male.
It hit him that fear of her doing such a thing was the true reason he couldn’t bring himself to tell her.
He worried that she would see him as weak when he had given her the impression he was strong, powerful. He didn’t want her to think less of him.
Thanatos lost track of time as he thought about that, about how much she was coming to mean to him, and not once did Calindria stir. She slept soundly, her breathing even, and it was a relief to him. She needed rest almost as much as she needed food.
His muddied senses picked up something and he tensed, rising to his feet as his right hand went to his sword. He drew it slowly, scowling into the gloom, trying to pinpoint what he had felt.
A black-haired male stepped from the tunnel, his mismatched eyes—one green and one blue—scanning the cavern and settling on Thanatos. Messengers all looked the same, but he knew this one. It was the male who had been looking for Calindria, the one Thanatos felt sure had been tailing him through this realm before he had found her.