Thanatos: Guardians of Hades Series Book 8

by Felicity Heaton

  Thanatos wanted to growl at how she had been treated, knew without her saying it directly that she was talking about going to the bathroom. The bastards who had held her for almost six hundred years hadn’t even allowed her to do that in private and he would make them pay for that, for humiliating her.

  Her cheeks reddened and she gazed at the ground before her. He wanted to walk beside her, to touch her blushing cheeks and tell her she had no reason to be ashamed, but while the tunnel had smooth walls and was free of stalactites and stalagmites for once, it wasn’t wide enough for him to walk beside her.

  So he would settle for another way of making her feel better.

  He would show her that she wasn’t the only one who had dark days in their past.

  “I was captured once.”

  She immediately looked back at him, her beguiling sapphire eyes wide and bright with a spark of interest. “You were?”

  He nodded and adjusted his grip on the hilt of his sword as he thought about when the demigoddess had captured him and lost his nerve.

  “Zeus sent me to retrieve a male named Sisyphus and bring him to Tartarus, where he would be chained.” It seemed like a safer way to make her feel as if she wasn’t the only one who had been through the terrible trials she had. “The bastard asked me to demonstrate how the chains worked and I was tired of him resisting me, so… I explained them. It was not my finest hour… you must understand that. Sisyphus was swifter than I had expected, bound me with the chains instead.”

  “What happened?”

  He shifted his wings, restlessly flapped and furled them. “When no one died in the mortal realm because I was bound, unable to do my duty, the god of war grew irritated that his battles had lost their… fun… because what good is a battle where no one will die?”

  “The god of war freed you?” Her eyes leaped between his and when he nodded, she frowned at him. “It does not sound the same as my captivity. I doubt you were tormented in Tartarus. I am surprised my father did not release you.”

  Before he could stop himself, some foolish part of him that was striving for a connection with her, a long-dead part that she had somehow revived, had his mouth moving.

  “It was not the only time I was taken captive.”

  She looked back at him again. “It was not?”

  His mood blackened at just the thought of it, and he knew she had seen it when her features softened, a hint of warmth surfacing in her eyes.

  “I was held once in a place much like this… and I knew no one was coming to save me.” Each word was a struggle, but somehow he managed to get them past his lips, found the strength to speak about this dark part of his past as he stared at Calindria.

  She paused and turned towards him, stepped up to him, narrowing the distance down to only a few feet, close enough that her soft fragrance of wild lilies reached him, cutting through the fouler odour of the realm. “How did they catch you? You are strong… a warrior.”

  Gods, he wasn’t sure he deserved to be called strong by her. She was strong. A warrioress. She had survived things far worse than what he had suffered. Or perhaps not. No one had dared touch her.

  He clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block the memories.

  “Thanatos?”

  He felt her reach for him, moved his hands back and stepped away from her, needing the space. He tried to ignore that trace of hurt that shone in her eyes when he opened his and looked at her, focused on getting this over with as quickly as possible.

  “I was defeated in battle by a demigoddess. Weakened by a poisoned blade.” His voice sounded hollow to him, wooden. “She kept me drugged while she was holding me and regularly came to torment me.”

  He couldn’t bring himself to tell her more than that.

  The soft light in her eyes said she understood why he wouldn’t continue, and this time when she reached for him, he didn’t move to evade her. He accepted her touch, savouring the light caress of her fingers over his left biceps when that same touch from another had sickened and repulsed him.

  Her fingers drifted off him, her hand falling to her side, and an awkward look settled on her face before she gazed down at her other hand and the waterskin she held in it.

  “They would bring me water in this every few days.” She lifted the leather pouch and looked at it, a light in her eyes that told him what a relief it had been for her to have water. “A sip of it was like ambrosia… even though it was filthy.”

  Thanatos didn’t like the sound of that. When he had been held, the demigoddess and her minions had given him liquid that had contained a drug. It had kept him weak, stripping him of his powers. When he had realised what the water contained, he had tried to refuse it, and they had forced it down him instead.

  “Where did you get that waterskin?” He held his hand out to her and she tucked it to her chest, holding it as protectively as she had when they had first met.

  “It is the one they used to give me water… only a bare sip of it whenever I was parched… but it restored me.” She clutched it more tightly when he rolled his fingers and gave her a hard look, silently demanding she hand it over.

  “I only want to check it.” He wanted to toss the damned thing away, and he hadn’t even found any proof it was drugged yet.

  No. He had proof. The way she protected the waterskin was proof enough. She feared he would take this water and it wasn’t because she was thirsty. It was because she was addicted to it and how it made her feel.

  She reluctantly held it out to him. He took it and opened it, brought it to his nose and sniffed it, and growled when he smelled the barest hint of something in it.

  “What’s wrong?” She looked as if she wanted to reach for the waterskin, fear emerging in her blue eyes as she lifted her hand slightly.

  “It is not just water. They were drugging you.” He turned the pouch on its head, pouring the water out, and refused to feel bad about it as she gasped and lunged for it.

  She looked ready to lash out at him as her eyes snapped to lock with his, but as the last drops of water soaked into the black dirt near her bare feet, the anger he could sense in her faded. She looked down at the damp patch and sighed.

  “I think this water inhibited your powers, combined with the power woven into your cage to ensure you were not aware of them, and kept you complacent to a degree.” When he offered the empty waterskin to her, she took it.

  “Is this why I cannot teleport too?” She lifted the pouch and frowned at it.

  “No.” Thanatos shook his head. “I think it is something about this realm that prevents us from teleporting. Do not worry though. I recognise this tunnel and the last cavern we passed through. We are heading in the right direction, back the way I came to find you.”

  She murmured, “To save me.”

  He chuckled at that. “It turned out you didn’t need saving. You didn’t need me after all.”

  She raised her eyes to meet his and the softness in them unnerved him, had him pulling his barriers back up and cursing himself for lowering them around her—around a female.

  Her softly spoken words undid him, tore down the walls and shook him to his core.

  “I do need you, Thanatos.”

  Chapter 13

  Thanatos had fallen quiet. Calindria glanced back at him as she walked, crossing the space between two great mountain ranges. He refused to look at her, kept his silver eyes on the ground. She wasn’t sure how long they had been walking like this—him refusing to speak, and her unsure how to break this silence.

  Unsure what she had done wrong.

  She held back a sigh and looked up at the sky, watching the thick black clouds rolling across it. They were low, brushing the cragged peaks of the towering mountains in places, and churned constantly, like bubbling water. A faint orange light touched them and she looked off to her right, to the volcano that spewed another wave of lava, sending a huge plume of smoke into the air to block out the sky even more.

  Calindria fanned hersel
f with her hand as she walked, trying not to think about the fact she had no water or how parched she was, or how her skin was slick with sweat that made her feel uncomfortable. Gods, she would kill for another bath.

  She grimaced at that word. Kill.

  Perhaps she wouldn’t go that far, but she did want one. Badly.

  “Can we rest?” She looked over her shoulder at Thanatos again.

  He glowered at her. “No.”

  The same response he had given her every time she had dared to ask that question. She was sure he was trying to march her to death as punishment for whatever she had done wrong.

  “Can we at least rest soon?” She gestured to the valley. “It is a delightful spot to take in after all.”

  He huffed. “We rest once we are clear of this valley.”

  She huffed right back at him and folded her arms across her chest as she turned away from him and muttered, “I swear you are trying to kill me.”

  He growled now. “If I were trying to kill you, you would be dead already.”

  She was well aware of that.

  She stopped and twisted to face him. “Can you even kill me?”

  His answering growl had a harder edge to it, a threatening note that sent a shiver skating down her spine and made her painfully aware of him.

  “Do you wish for death?” he snapped.

  “No… not at all… but—”

  “Good. The topic is done. Keep moving.” He pinned her with a black look, and she swore he would have shoved her if she hadn’t obeyed and started walking again.

  She stared at the vast distance between her and the mountains ahead of her and sighed. “If I am expected to walk that far without stopping, then you are going to have to take my mind off it. Answer a question for me.”

  “I do not like the sound of this,” he muttered, but didn’t say no.

  Which felt like progress, and permission.

  “What happened between you and Hypnos?” She wanted to glance at him to gauge his mood by checking his eyes, but kept her gaze fixed on the mountains instead, some part of her aware that he would only grow darker again if she stared at him while he debated whether or not to answer that question.

  Thanatos had to be handled with care. That much she had discovered. Something in his past had made him volatile and untrusting, and she had the feeling it had to do with the captivity he had spoken of. Not the trick Sisyphus had played on him, but the one following the defeat in battle he had suffered.

  “The divide between us is my fault.” Thanatos heaved a sigh. “I drifted apart from him, even though he did his best not to let it happen.”

  There was a note in his voice that struck a chord in her. Not reluctance. Not regret. It was something else.

  Loneliness, she realised as she thought about how she had felt during her captivity.

  Did Thanatos see how lonely he was?

  Calindria risked glancing back at him and found him scowling at the ground, blue fire in his eyes. His dark power pressed against her, a tangible thing that skated over her skin and called to her own darker side, bringing forth black thoughts. She knew that look. She wore it herself at times, when she was thinking about her mission of revenge, when the need for vengeance consumed her and was too strong for her to ignore. There was rage in Thanatos, a black fury that felt malevolent to her, and dangerous.

  Had his need for revenge against someone consumed him so fiercely that he had drifted apart from his twin?

  Did it blind him to how lonely he was?

  “Where do you live?” She faced forwards again, glared at those wretched mountains and the distance between her and them. “Do you live in a palace like my family?”

  “I live in a castle. It is large, set deep within my own realm, constructed of the black rock of the mountains that border one side of it.” He sounded very proud of his castle. “All who dare enter my realm see it and tremble.”

  She frowned back at him, ignoring his answering scowl, because someone in this world had to point out that what he had described might not be a good thing, even though he obviously felt it was, and it was down to her to do it.

  “Who lives in this imposing, dreaded castle of yours?” She stifled a smile when her choice of words only caused his expression to blacken further.

  “Only I live there.” His eyebrows rose slightly. “Although you could include my two servants.”

  “Why only could include? A strange thing to say, Thanatos. You speak of them as if they are not real. What are their names?” She twisted to face him, walking backwards with a bounce in her step as light filled her, chasing some of the darkness away. She was enjoying this. Teasing him. It felt good. Like how she had felt long before her captivity.

  “They do not have names,” he countered.

  She pulled a face at him. “What kind of people don’t have names?”

  She had forgotten hers, but she had known she had one, and it had turned out she did.

  “They are golems.” He said that as if it would explain everything, and when she continued to look as puzzled as she felt, he waved his right hand through the air. “I made them. Fashioned them from the earth of my realm and a fragment of a fractured soul.”

  “That’s… sad.” She weathered his glare, frowned at him as she thought about what he had said and could only feel sorrow for him. “You want to be alone so much that you will not even have someone alive in your castle to serve you. Do you really not trust anyone? Not even me?”

  He didn’t answer that. He strode past her, his long legs carrying him swiftly away from her, and she turned and looked after him. His great black wings twitched and he rolled his shoulders, spread his wings and flapped them, and she knew that for a heartbeat he had considered taking flight.

  Leaving her.

  Because she wasn’t afraid to speak the truth around him and say the things he didn’t want to acknowledge? She believed it was better to know the absolute truth, whether it was about something else or about herself, than it was to bury her head in the dirt and believe in lies.

  Which was why she had resolved to believe Thanatos about her family. No more swaying back and forth between what she had believed to be real and what he said was real. He was right. She knew that now.

  When he didn’t slow, didn’t even look back to check on her, her mood took a dark turn. She glared at his back, the light inside her swift to give way to the encroaching darkness that whispered to her, spoke of how Thanatos wanted to leave her.

  Everyone wanted to leave her.

  No one wanted her.

  Calindria tipped her head up, squared her shoulders and stormed after him, because there was no way in this world she was about to let him walk away from her. He had a duty to her father, and therefore a duty to her. He was getting her out of here whether he liked it or not.

  The soles of her feet hurt as she marched towards him, but she refused to let it show. She kept her head held high, even when Thanatos finally glanced back at her.

  “Keep moving,” he grumbled.

  Something inside Calindria snapped.

  “Order me again and you will not like what I do,” she growled, her hackles rising, anger surging like a hot tide through her to set her blood on fire. She curled her fingers into tight fists and clenched them, her breaths coming faster as her heart thundered, and wasn’t surprised when black brambles burst from the ground all around her.

  Thanatos eyed them and then her, coming to a halt and pivoting to face her. His expression dared her to attack him again. If she did, he would deserve it this time. For the last day, all he had done was boss her around, making all the decisions for her, as if she couldn’t think for herself.

  Because she was female?

  Well, she might be female, but her father was Hades and her mother was Persephone, and their blood flowed in her veins. She had her father’s darkness and her mother’s ferocity, something she had witnessed in a distant memory, when someone had dared to try to hurt Calindria. Her mother had been swi
ft to put them in their place, to reveal a darker side that few rarely saw.

  She wasn’t going to put up with this overbearing male any longer.

  “If I am not dead, then I must be alive, and that means I am still a part of my family. Hades is still my father. The same Hades who is your god-king. Therefore, you should respect me, but you do not. You do not seem to respect anyone, especially females.” She didn’t stop walking until they were toe to toe, struggled to hold her nerve as he glowered down at her, all dangerous darkness as his eyes shone with blue fire and the air around him grew blissfully cold.

  Her neck ached from tilting her head back far enough to meet his gaze and being this close to him made her deeply aware of the difference in their sizes. Thanatos dwarfed her. He had to be at least thirteen, maybe fifteen, inches taller than her, and his arms were thicker than her thighs, his broad chest seeming impossibly wide, filling her peripheral vision.

  Calindria stood her ground, even when her instincts commanded her to back off, because she was no match for this warrior.

  She gentled her tone as her anger slowly abated, replaced with a need to know more about him, born of a yearning to understand him. “Why do you hate company, Thanatos? You despise it so much you drove your own twin away from you. You hate it so much you live in a castle alone with servants you made just so you don’t need to be near another living soul. You must be lonely. Are you not lonely?”

  He gnashed his teeth at her and growled as he leaned towards her, his immense body crowding her as he spread his wings. Threatening her. She had struck a nerve then, hitting too close to the truth.

  Thanatos was lonely, but he refused to admit it.

  Why?

  It dawned on her that he viewed it as a weakness.

  She didn’t.

  If he asked her, she would freely admit that she had been lonely. Part of her still felt that way, even with Thanatos’s company. He was so distant from her at times, holding himself away from her even when they were only feet apart. There was a chasm between them, or a wall, one so high she could never dream of scaling it.