“I must take you home.” He stepped towards her.
She backed off and shook her head, panic lancing her at the thought of leaving Thanatos in the hold of that female for any longer than she already had. She wasn’t ready to face her family yet either. Seeing Calistos had been overwhelming enough. She could only imagine how she would feel when she saw everyone else, and she couldn’t do it alone. She needed Thanatos beside her when it happened.
“There is no time. The enemy has Thanatos. I have to save him. He surrendered to them to protect me and now I fear he is in grave danger, Calistos.” It was strange saying her brother’s name again, and the look in his blue eyes said it had felt just as strange for him to hear it.
Her heart beat faster as she thought about Thanatos, as she kept fighting the images that wanted to pop into her head. Nothing would happen to him. She would find him somehow. But how? She didn’t know where the demigoddess had taken him, and he had spent years trying to find her in that realm. She didn’t even have wings to help her cover the ground more quickly.
And what if the female hadn’t taken him anywhere in that realm?
What if he was somewhere else?
Panic mounted inside her, making her hands shake. She cursed Thanatos as she realised that he had known there was a danger the enemy would take him somewhere she wouldn’t be able to find him, but he had gone through with it anyway, sacrificing himself to save her.
Was he out there now, thinking she wouldn’t come to save him?
Well, she was going to prove him wrong if he was. Nothing was going to stop her from finding him and rescuing him.
“Where do they have him?” Calistos stepped up to her, a breeze swirling around him, rustling his strange clothing.
He wore what looked like a drab, thin off-green tunic that only reached his biceps and ended at his waist, and black trousers with far too many pockets. His boots made her think of Thanatos though, black leather with lacing up the fronts of them.
She shook her head as her heart ached with a need to see him again. “I do not know.”
“Who has him?”
She frowned now, fury roaring to life inside her. “A demigoddess… She is working for the enemy you all fought and controls the realm where I was held. Thanatos knew her. He said she was the one who defeated him in battle and held him captive before.”
“The one who used him to spawn the necromancer line?” Calistos’s words hit her hard, shaking her to her soul. “Big guy hates it when you mention that breed around him and I can kinda understand why.”
The female had used him to create a new breed?
A chill tumbled down her spine and her eyes widened.
Gods.
That was the reason he distanced himself from everyone and had found it so hard to be with Calindria. The demigoddess had drugged him and had abused him, had seduced him by force. He had brought walls up around himself because of that, had shut even his twin out of his life because he was ashamed of what she had done to him and what he had done with her.
No wonder he had found it so difficult to speak to her about it.
She felt sick to her stomach, had to clutch it because she was sure she would vomit, as it hit her that he meant to put himself through that torment again for her sake.
Around her feet, black brambles shot from cracks between the deep grey cobblestones, and she bared her short fangs as anger surged through her, as her thoughts turned dark with pleasing images of finding the demigoddess and ripping her apart with her bare hands.
“I need to find him. Now.” She pulled her right hand into the sleeve of her jacket and risked it.
She grabbed Calistos by his shirt.
“Where are we going?” His stormy eyes locked with hers, the breeze that swept around him tousling her hair too, and she was glad he was on her side, wasn’t going to make her go back to the palace or suggest she wait somewhere safe while he dealt with the threat to Thanatos.
He had always had her back.
So had Thanatos.
She remembered what he had said to her.
I will meet you at the castle.
She had thought he had meant his castle, but he had said the castle.
Hope sparked inside her.
“I know where he will be.”
And she feared she would be too late.
Chapter 28
Thanatos blinked hard, trying to clear the salty sting of sweat from his eyes. He lifted his hand, fighting the heavy weight of the thick shackle that bound it, and rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead, wiping the beads of moisture away. His entire body felt as if it was on fire and shook so badly that he was surprised he was still standing.
Sickness brewed in his stomach, churning it to acid as he stood in the middle of a large room lit by torches that flickered brightly against the black stone. His hand fell to his side, his muscles trembling from the strain of lifting his arm for so long. The world swirled again and he blinked faster, trying to stop it from whirling into darkness as it had around an eternity ago.
He had woken in this room, shackled by cuffs made of the metal of Olympus, unbreakable even if he had been at full strength and not ravaged by the drug.
Captive again.
He swallowed thickly and twitched, wanted to scrub at his burning chest to rid it of the irritating feel of sweat, but his hands wouldn’t cooperate. The shackles weren’t his cage. His own damned body was.
The sound of water sloshing pulled a growl from his lips.
The silver-haired female bathing in a large wooden tub before him, her back to a roaring fire, smiled slowly as she scooped water over her bare body, causing some of the rose petals that floated on the surface to stick to her skin. He was meant to be watching her, and he was, but not in the way she wanted.
He watched her as a prey animal would watch a predator. Wary. Nervous. Waiting for the moment she struck.
She angled her head to her right and moaned as she swept water over her neck and it cascaded down her breasts, a blatant attempt to get him to look at them. As if her curves could inflame him.
He could think only of Calindria as he stood in the middle of the room, long thick chains tethering him to a point ten feet behind him, anchoring him to the strong metal posts of the bed there.
Had she managed to escape or had the demigoddess betrayed him as expected and her men had already placed his little goddess back into a cage?
He wanted to rage at the thought she might be captive again, that all this might be for nothing, but he didn’t have the strength. All he could do was stare at the female before him. His fingers twitched and flexed, and his right eye burned. He rubbed it, didn’t care as the manacle beat against his face, he just wanted the damn burning to stop. He wanted to quench the flames that consumed him. Sweat rolled down his spine and his own rough breaths filled the silence as the demigoddess paused to rake her eyes down him, the heat in them sickening him.
Scaring him.
His head turned again and the trembling worsened, racked his body and made his knees weak beneath him. He scrubbed at his chest, scratched and clawed at it as his heart thundered. Gods, he just needed to quench this fire.
He knew what would stop it.
The fever would break if he just surrendered to the drug.
No.
He swallowed and shook his head, frowned and gritted his teeth. He couldn’t. He had to be strong. He had to keep fighting. He couldn’t let this bitch get her way, not again, and not only because the shame he’d had to live with for centuries would be made all the worse, and he would never want to see another living soul again.