If Thanatos had flown up there, she would never find him. As it was, it was going to be difficult. Any time he wasn’t in contact with the ground, she wouldn’t be able to sense him. She focused and reached further with her senses, felt a few beasts roaming the canyon plateau above her, all of them small.
She hurried forwards, picking her way over boulders that had fallen down into the canyon, grunting as her muscles cramped and protested. The heat in the canyon was intense, as if it had all fallen to pool in the ravines. She swigged her water and wiped the back of her hand across her damp brow, kept marching forwards. Ahead of her, the canyon opened up again, the distance between the towering black walls spreading to what had to be almost forty feet.
Calindria flexed her fingers around the grip of her dagger and stalked forwards, moving beneath an arch of rock that was smooth and flowing, as if water had once run in this dry and dusty canyon. She brushed her free hand across the stone, feeling the layers in it that were varying shades of grey and black. It must have taken thousands of years for the volcanoes to form this land and the mountains too, and thousands more for the river to carve this canyon. It was incredible.
She tensed as she sensed something above her. Large. Not Thanatos.
Slowly looked up and froze as a huge dark grey reptilian beast with six long horns that fanned out from a plate encircling its head loomed at the edge of the plateau.
Looking down at her through glowing yellow eyes.
It opened its sharp-beaked mouth and screeched.
Kicked off and dropped into the canyon, spreading enormous leathery wings as it hurtled towards her.
Calindria broke into a sprint, her legs pumping hard, grip tightening on the dagger. She glanced at her hand, fixed her eyes ahead of her and kept on running. Her touch hadn’t hurt the Messenger when there had been a barrier between their skin. She wasn’t sure whether the same thing would happen with scales. Would this dragon’s scales prevent her from hurting it with a touch?
Or not?
She flicked a panicked glance over her shoulder, her heart shooting into her mouth as she saw the bipedal creature was closing in on her, the talons on the tops of its wings scratching great grooves in the ground as it used them to walk and its huge back paws kicking up dust into a cloud that filled the air behind it.
It stretched its head forwards and screeched again, flashing the fact that it not only had a sharp beak that tipped its snout.
It had fangs as long as her arms too.
Oh gods.
She ran harder, desperately looking around her, trying to find a tunnel or even a crack she could press into to avoid being captured and eaten. There was nothing. As far as her eyes could see, there was only smooth, worn rock—the same rock she had admired before for its gentle waves and stripes. She cursed it now.
Stifled a cry when she sensed the dragon closing in.
She was going to die here, without ever escaping this realm.
Her mind suddenly cleared.
No. She wasn’t going to die. She drew down a deep breath and purged the panic, focused her mind and summoned her strength. Behind her, the dragon roared as a great thick black vine burst from the ground and snaked around one of its legs. She sensed it falling further behind her as she carried on running, hope blooming inside her as sweet as a sip of ambrosia. The thought that she could fight this beast gave her courage that calmed her nerves further, crushed her panic and had strength flowing into her.
On a keening cry, the dragon broke free of the vine and thundered towards her.
She summoned more vines, forming a wall between them. The dragon barrelled straight through it and she constructed another and then another, sure that if she made the fiend break through enough of them that it would grow tired of trying to eat her.
At the fourth wall she created, the dragon took another tack. It scrambled over the wall, using its talons to grip the rock. Damn it.
She spotted a narrower canyon ahead of her, branching off from the main one. She made a break for it.
Shrieked and stumbled backwards when the huge beast dropped from the air to land in front of her. She twisted and narrowly avoided the fierce snap of its beak as it lunged at her. Kicked off and ran back the way she had come, choosing the other path. The dragon chased her, shaking the ground beneath her feet with each thundering footfall, far too close for comfort.
Calindria summoned another wall of vines, sending them shooting higher this time. The dragon burst through them, sending pieces of the wooden material flying past her. She ducked and dodged, avoiding being hit by them, and kept running. There had to be a way out of the canyon.
She looked back at the dragon.
Faced forwards and spotted another junction. The path to the left was narrower, but the one on the right. Her eyes widened. Hope bloomed.
There was a cave at the end of it.
She sprinted in that direction, pushing herself to the limit, desperate to reach the cave and escape the dragon. It fell back as she created another wall across the entrance to the branch of the canyon she had picked, scaled this one and dropped down on the other side of it.
The cave loomed just ahead of her.
She was going to make it.
Glowing yellow eyes appeared in the gloom.
Calindria’s heart jacked up into her throat and she skidded to a halt, her brow furrowing.
“No,” she breathed, staring into the eyes of a second dragon as it emerged from the cave.
She whirled to face the direction she had come, cold prickles sweeping over her skin beneath her black tunic as the dragon there slowly eased towards her, blocking her only exit.
“Oh gods.”
It had been driving her towards this spot.
Into this trap.
It growled at her, huge fangs dripping with strings of saliva.
She palmed her dagger and gathered her strength, but in her head, a single thought echoed.
She had survived six centuries in captivity.
But she wasn’t going to survive this.
Chapter 22
Pure, unadulterated rage flowed in Thanatos’s veins, replacing his blood as he chased after the female he had sensed—the demigoddess. The second he had felt her approaching the cavern, the urge to protect Calindria had hit him hard, had him moving in a heartbeat. He couldn’t let the female near his little goddess of death. The gods only knew what the fiendish bitch would do to her, or the things she would say to poison Calindria against him.
It was only once he had chased the silver-haired female out into a canyon that he had realised what he had done.
He had left Calindria in the care of that male and he was sure she thought he had walked out on her, had done as she had demanded and left her to find her own way home. Over his dead body. As soon as he was done with the demigoddess, had secured her somewhere she wouldn’t be able to escape so he could retrieve her later and take her to Tartarus, he would return to the cavern and if Calindria wasn’t there, he would hunt for her. He had her scent now, could follow it to wherever she was, and as soon as he found her again, he would make her see that for all his faults, she was better off with him.
Messengers were not to be trusted.
That one in particular.
Calindria could deny it all she wanted, but that male wanted her.
Gods, the thought of him with her right now made Thanatos sick to his stomach. She was strong and able to defend herself. He kept telling himself that. A Messenger was no match for Calindria. If the male dared to try anything, Thanatos was sure she would put him in his place.