When they had been flying for some time and he was looking tired, she dragged her eyes away from him and took in their surroundings, trying to find a suitable place for him to land for a moment. She spotted an area that was all black sand and dark shrubs.
“Fly there.” She pointed to the desert-like patch of land.
He didn’t question her, simply banked left and swooped lower, seemed to pick up speed as they descended. When he reached the rolling black dunes, he lowered his feet and landed without so much as a bump. Again, she wondered what it would be like to have wings. She imagined he’d had to master them, learning to control them, just as she needed to master her power.
“I travelled through an area like this once.” She pushed from his arms and landed on the sand. It was warm beneath her bare feet. Her gaze darted over the rippled surface. “There were beetles with incredible blue shells.”
“You want to collect some beetles?” He arched an eyebrow at her.
“No. I want to test my powers on them.” She spied one a short distance away and ran to it, cornering it before it could scuttle under a bush.
Calindria crouched and drew down a breath, focused on her power, unsure how to actually do that but unwilling to admit it. When she reached out and touched the beetle, it instantly charred and turned to ash.
Pain bloomed inside her, guilt chasing on its heels.
She didn’t dare look at Thanatos. He would probably laugh at her for feeling bad about killing something so small, but all life was life. It was all important. Her mother had told her that. Everything in this world was an important part of it, and all life should be valued.
Thanatos presented her with another glossy blue beetle, the size of his palm. He set it down before her and this time she covered her hand with her tunic and touched it. Nothing happened to it. It merrily moved around in the sand, leaving little tracks behind it.
She looked at her hands. So covering them did work. But that didn’t mean she could go around as she pleased as long as she wore gloves. What if someone touched another part of her? She felt terrible as she leaned over and pressed her cheek to the beetle, drew back and stared at it as she held her breath, waiting to see what would happen.
It scuttled towards Thanatos, completely unharmed.
He caught it and placed it back in front of her and she tried again, just in case it had been a fluke. She touched it with her cheek, and then with her shoulder, and even with her foot. It survived every time.
“It has to be skin contact with my hands?” She cast Thanatos a hopeful look.
He shrugged and picked the beetle up. “It does appear so, and in many ways, it would make sense. I cannot make fire with any other part of my body. My hands are the tool, the pathway for that power. If I were to say… stare at a log and will it to burst into flame, it would not. If I held my hand out to it and willed it, it would.”
So her hands were the only route her power could take to reach another? If that were true, then it was a blessed relief. It meant she could wear thick leather gloves around others and her fear of hurting them would be gone. She wasn’t going to just accept it as fact though, not without further testing.
The beetle seemed to sense her desire to continue experimenting as Thanatos set it down before her. It burrowed into the black sand, disappearing from view. She let it go. She had put its life at risk enough times, would find something else to experiment on.
As soon as she stood, Thanatos stepped up to her and stooped, scooped her up into his arms again and spread his wings.
“It is not far now.” He kicked off, beating his wings, carrying them back into the air. “Perhaps when this is over, you could test your powers on… You could test them on something in your family’s palace. I am sure your family would be able to supply you with living things.”
Her heart ached for Thanatos as he refused to look at her, as he flew harder, his handsome face settling in hard lines and a deep frown knitting his eyebrows.
He hadn’t wanted to talk about her testing her powers on things provided by her family. He had wanted to talk about him providing those test subjects for her. Had he been thinking about making more golems just for her?
As far as she knew, golems were living but not alive. They didn’t have feelings or experience pain. They just existed to carry out the commands of whoever had made them. Thanatos had seen the pain it had caused her when she had killed the beetle, and had found a solution for her, one that would spare her the guilt and the hurt whenever she accidentally killed whatever she was experimenting on.
It was thoughtful of him.
Beautiful.
What had stopped him from offering to do such a thing?
It hit her that he thought she wouldn’t want to leave her family once she was back with them—that she wouldn’t want to continue seeing him.
He thought that what they had would end once she was free of this realm.
How wrong he was.
Before she could say anything, he jerked his chin towards something.
“There. Do you see it?”
She turned her cheek to him and peered into the gloom, beyond the next mountain range, trying to see what he had. The shadows were too strong at first, but as he approached the cragged black peaks, something in the next valley began to take shape.
It was a sprawling ruin for the most part. The large walls that surrounded the central building had crumbled in places, revealing it and rendering it vulnerable. That building was big, several storeys in places, and it looked as if it had once had a tower of some sort. It lay as rubble across one of the perimeter walls now.
“I can see it.” She studied it as Thanatos flew around it, high above it. “We should set down and try to touch it. That way we will know if it is real.”
She sensed the fear in him as he looked at it, together with pain.
“No.” He banked right, beat his wings and gained elevation, taking her further from it. “You see it and therefore I am sure it is real.”
She wasn’t.
“The realm could simply be showing us the same illusion.” She leaned away from him and he growled and tightened his grip on her, so fiercely she gasped as pain speared her where his fingertips pressed into her thigh. She shifted her weight back towards him. “Sorry. I just wanted a better look.”
She hadn’t meant to make him feel he was going to drop her.
He blew out his breath and swept lower. “Do you think you could sense if anyone was inside it from a distance?”
She nodded. “If they are in contact with anything joined to the ground, then yes, I think I should be able to sense them.”
Thanatos spread his wings and glided down to the ground around two hundred feet from the building. He landed gently and walked a short distance, furling his wings against his back, and then set her down on the loose black ground.
Calindria eased to her knees and pressed her hands to the dirt, closed her eyes and drew down a deep breath. She felt it when the connection between her and the earth opened, revealing Thanatos and then a multitude of small creatures as her senses sharpened, rushing outwards in a wave all around her.
They reached the building and she focused on it, narrowed her senses down to that point so she didn’t miss anything. When she was sure of what she felt, she opened her eyes and looked up at Thanatos.
“It is empty. No sign of life there at all.”