Hades was growing impatient, visited Tartarus daily to interrogate Eris and Harleena, was becoming darker and darker by the day. Even Persephone was having trouble calming him according to their oldest son, Keras, who was understandably worried about his father’s state of mind.
Thanatos was too.
Now more than ever, Hades needed to keep his head, to seek patience and deny any reckless urges that might come over him. Thanatos feared it wouldn’t be long before the darker side of Hades’s blood made that impossible though. Reports from the palace were not good. Hades was restless, hungry to bathe his claws in the blood of Mnemosyne, and constantly on edge, awaiting her appearance.
Fearing his family would be placed in danger.
Thanatos feared that too.
His thoughts drifted to Calindria and his castle as he approached his mother where she stood with her back to the tall black fluted columns that framed the entrance to the main prison of Tartarus. The silver stars delicately stitched on the fine dark blue fabric of her dress shimmered in the torchlight, bringing to mind his conversation with Calindria all those weeks ago when she had spoken of the lonely light of the stars.
Worsening the ache in his chest.
He needed to see her.
Nyx lifted a pale hand and held it out to him, and he took it and pressed a kiss to the back of it, part of him marvelling at how he could touch her now without memories surfacing and making him want to lash out at her because of her sex.
“And how is my most beautiful son?”
He almost snorted at that. “Do you ask the same thing of Hypnos?”
They were identical twins after all, but only he had wings. Perhaps that made him more beautiful in their mother’s eyes.
Those navy-to-aqua eyes shone brightly with amusement today. His mother’s mood had been steadily lightening over the past few weeks and Thanatos suspected it had to do with him and Calindria. She was pleased he had found someone to love, and someone who loved him.
“Come, Thanatos.” She looped her arm around his and gazed up at him, a wicked edge to her smile. “Do not be so quick to bear your fangs.”
She patted his arm.
He huffed. She was teasing him now.
He gently extricated himself and looked at the entrance of the prison. “Is Hades here?”
She was quick to shake her head, her glossy black hair shifting ethereally against her bare shoulders. “Hades grew bored and returned to the palace, leaving me to continue questioning my loathsome spawn. I think perhaps he wished to see Persephone. He was eager to leave.”
“I had wished to give him my report here, but now it appears I must go to the palace.” Thanatos sighed as the path of his thoughts shifted from his business back to his female.
“You seem as eager to return to your love as your god-king was.” Nyx’s smile took on a teasing edge as she stepped in front of him, her eyes locking with his. He felt as if she was trying to peer right down to his soul as she stared into them and he didn’t like it. Her smile widened further. “You did not visit your castle before you came to see your god-king? Come, Thanatos. That is no way to treat your lady. I am sure she will be missing you as sorely as you are her, awaiting your return. I remember when Erebus would go—”
Thanatos growled and rolled his eyes. “Gods, please… not with the talk of Father.”
Her smile only grew wider still, her navy-to-aqua eyes glittering with it, and he realised with a grimace what he had said.
“You called Erebus your father. My, how he will be delighted to know you have acknowledged him as such.” Nyx went to stroke his arm and he moved it back and scowled at her. She sighed softly. “Very well, I shall not tell him… but… I wish you would make some effort with him. He is so very proud of you most of all.”
He was? Thanatos glared at her, shutting down the part of him that felt warmed by that.
Nyx didn’t help matters. “Out of all his children, it is you he is most concerned with and you he often asks about during my visits to him. Hypnos runs a close second of course. I think he was always pleased I gave him twins, both so handsome and powerful.”
A huff burst from his lips. “It sounds as if he likes the thought that if something were to happen to me, then he would still have Hypnos to admire and laud to others. Am I so replaceable?”
Her slight shoulders lifted in a delicate shrug. “I do not think so… but speaking of Hypnos… He mentioned he had been to the castle to visit you but you were not there, but Calindria was most accommodating. So much so in fact that he returned just today to see you… or was it to see her?”
Thanatos growled at her as rage rolled through him, as the thought of his own damned brother attempting to court Calindria out of his hands stirred the darkness within his soul and had him hungry with a need to end him. The flash of mischief in his mother’s eyes revealed she knew what she was doing, had said such a thing to stoke him into a rage and send him back to Calindria rather than to the palace and Hades. She was meddling. Pushing him and Calindria together, and to what end he wasn’t sure, but it had worked. Thoughts of delivering his report to Hades disappeared in an instant and he couldn’t stop himself from teleporting to his castle instead, the need to see Calindria and see that she was still his and his alone driving him.
He was not replaceable.
He appeared in what had become a garden in the short time Calindria had been living with him, his silver gaze frantically scanning the low black hedges that formed two long rectangles that echoed the shape of the pond between them and followed the line of the black walls his golems had helped construct. Columns cut across the far end of the formal garden, drawing his eye there, and beyond those columns was a smaller area of plants all created by Calindria as she attempted to master her power.
And deep in the heart of that wild patch of land, knelt his beautiful goddess, a streak of cerulean and gold against an inky backdrop.
Thanatos strode along the path between one of the rows of low hedging and the pool, his eyes locked on her, never straying for even a heartbeat. Calm suffused him as he saw she was alone, quick to come over him and ease his mood. She had that effect on him.
Among others.
He shook out his black feathered wings as nerves trickled through his veins, couldn’t quite shake what his mother had said about Hypnos, even when he knew she had only been teasing him and that his brother would never do such a thing. He had spoken with Hypnos soon after he had returned with Calindria and his twin had been overjoyed to see him and to hear about his little goddess. The second time they had seen each other, Hypnos had come to visit him and had marvelled at the transformation that had already taken place in Thanatos’s castle.
Thanatos marvelled at it himself from time to time. Calindria hadn’t only been busy transforming the grounds into something less wasteland and more garden. She had been working to make the inside of his castle more comfortable too, brightening it in her own little way.
Although she had done him the kindness of keeping the entrance hall and his throne room intact and as imposing as it had been.
Behind the scenes though, where visitors never set foot, she had softened things, and he found he liked the splashes of colour she had injected. He especially liked her drawing rooms, where the walls had been painted with a scene that resembled the Elysian Fields, with a sea of red poppies, lush green fields and trees, and endless blue sky that ran onto the ceiling and turned to starlit darkness in the middle above the chandeliers.