She tossed the blade aside and stroked his cheek as he struggled to breathe, as the fire consumed him and burned his will to ashes. He leaned into her touch, savouring the coolness of it, aching to draw her against him so her flesh would touch his elsewhere and quench the fire.
He weakly growled at that, shook his head and tried to shut down the urges running rampant through him.
He didn’t want this female. She couldn’t sate this need inside him. Only Calindria could.
But he couldn’t stop her from caressing his chest, could only stand there and stare blankly at her as he waged an internal war, fighting to overcome the drug as it ravaged his defences.
“Last time we did this, I was under orders,” she cooed and sidled closer to him, angling her head back to keep her eyes locked with his. “This time, I’ll be doing it for pleasure.”
“Under orders?” His tongue felt too thick for his mouth, his words distant and wobbling in his ears.
She smiled slowly and walked her fingers down his chest. “You didn’t know? I was chosen, told that if I spawned the breed needed for their plans that I would receive this realm, and I did.”
He tried to growl, thought he managed it, but no sound left his lips.
She was with the enemy, just as he had suspected. She had held Calindria caged here for six centuries, had been responsible for not only her torment but her death too. A necromancer had been the one to kill his little goddess, and now he suspected a necromancer had brought her back too. That was why she felt different to him. Alive, but not alive.
But what had happened to Calindria hadn’t only been this demigoddess’s fault. It had been his too. He had been weak and had given her what she wanted, was just as responsible for spawning the wretched necromancer breed. It was his fault Calindria had died and had been brought back, and had been caged for centuries, forced to endure a terrible life of torture.
“I have been well rewarded for my service.” She smiled a little wider and raked her violet eyes over him. “Well, now, I shall be well rewarded.”
She wouldn’t be. He would see to that.
“You killed her,” he croaked, fighting the effects of the drug, desperate to make the most of how talkative the female was. “But she is not dead… family saw a body…”
Each word was an effort that drained him, but it seemed enough to convey what he wanted to ask.
She stroked patterns on his chest and he let her. He would endure almost anything to keep her compliant and liable to tell him things he wanted to know, things that might benefit Calindria. Not only Calindria. If he could convince this female to talk more, she might tell him something that would prove valuable to Hades too.
“Oh, they saw a body. They saw what we wanted them to see. And you are right. The goddess is no longer dead. She was resurrected the moment Calistos blacked out and teleported elsewhere.” Harleena kissed his chest, stroked her tongue over his flesh, and he reined in the urge to slap her away, forced himself to endure her touch.
Hated that it wasn’t really a feat, that he withstood it too easily as the drug stoked the fire inside him, made him ache for her hands on his flesh. Not her hands. Any hands. He just wanted relief and she just happened to be here. He didn’t care about her, didn’t really want her. He just needed someone to quench the fire, to satisfy this lust that gripped him like a fever that refused to break.
Thanatos swallowed thickly and fought the wretched needs that wracked him, struggled to focus on what he had been doing before the feel of her hands on him had caused his mind to wander off track.
Calindria. Her death. Her captivity. This bitch’s role in it.
He had been right. Calindria had died and had been resurrected before her soul could pass through the veil, which meant her soul was intact. She was as much alive as he was, as any of her brothers were. Her death had been a clever illusion, lasting just long enough for her whole family to feel it and for her bond with Calistos to be weakened, making her appear as if she was dead.
“Why are you so interested in this goddess?” She searched his eyes and he hid his feelings from her, aware that if she saw them then she would no longer talk to him, would know what he was plotting.
He distracted her by shifting his hands forwards, brushing her bare sides. Heat bloomed in her eyes, dilating her pupils, and she inched closer to him, went back to kissing his chest. His stomach turned, but he swallowed the bile that rose into his throat and made himself keep his hands on her when what he really wanted to do was wrench them away from her disgusting flesh and strike her.
“Her parents buried a body.” He knew he had sounded far too like his normal self when she frowned at him and then glanced at the blade she had discarded.
Her drug was still working its way into his system, but he had taken great pains to build up a tolerance of toxins over the centuries since she had last held him captive. Every year he subjected himself to several rounds of being poisoned by various drugs by his golems, maintaining a certain level of resistance.
He distracted her again by gently pressing his thumbs into her bare stomach and rubbing it, teasing her with a touch that repulsed him and aroused her judging by how hazy her violet eyes grew.
“A serving wench.” She smiled languidly and ran her hands over his chest and down his stomach, traced the ridges of muscles that arched over his hips and led downwards towards his groin. “It was easy enough to make her appear to be someone else.”
“An illusion.” He didn’t resist her when she cupped his crotch, weathered it and growled internally at her instead of lashing out at her. “I thought you an illusion too at first. Nothing in this realm seems real.”
She looked as if she wouldn’t answer that, as if she was holding something back from him, so he dropped his head and brushed his lips across her shoulder, feathered them up to her throat and forced himself to kiss it.
She moaned and arched against him, and sickness brewed inside him, a thousand curses screaming in his mind as rage poured through him, directed at himself this time. He was betraying Calindria by doing this, even if it was an act.
He was about to draw back and shove her away when she spoke.
“Mnemosyne’s doing. This place…” She brushed her breasts against his chest and lifted her left leg, stroking her knee up the outside of his thigh as she hooked an arm beneath his left one and moaned. “Born of her. Corrupted by her.”
He did growl now, pretended it was one born of pleasure rather than fury by nipping at her neck. He wanted to sink his teeth into it and rip it open, was sorely tempted to surrender to that urge, but killing her would only marginally improve his situation. Guards would come and he would still be shackled, drugged. There was a chance those guards would kill him for slaying their mistress.
He kept his mind on track, mulling over what she had revealed.
He had thought the illusions cast on the body to make her family believe it was Calindria, and the one shown to Calindria to make her believe her brother had died and her family had betrayed her, had been created by the daemon who had worked with Eris, one the sons of Hades had killed.
Gods, he had been so mistaken.
The damned goddess of memory had been behind it.
He needed to warn Hades.
He drew back and looked down at Harleena, schooled his features so she wouldn’t see the rage burning inside him, the twisted desire to grip her by her throat and choke her to death, and then cross into the veil and kill her there too, so her despicable soul would cease to exist.