The Spider Queen

by Emma Slate

“Why do you fight him?” Cass asked, jarring me out of my own thoughts as we walked down the dark hallway lit with twinkling lights in the floor.

  “Why did you?”

  “I already told you why. For Agamemnon. Because of my choices, I lost myself to insanity. Do you want that to happen to you? You want to go insane because you’re stubborn?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t pick insanity,” I objected.

  “You’re picking it now,” she said. “Don’t you feel like you’re losing your grip on reality and your own emotions? If you’d been someone else, maybe you would’ve wound up with Hunter. Married him, had children with him, watched your eldest son become another Hunter that served Thane.” She shrugged. “So you weren’t really given a choice after all, were you? This was your destiny.”

  Destiny. Fate. Soul mates. All designed to screw with my life.

  “Thane holds back because you do. But I’m telling you, Poppy. If you open your heart to Thane, and I mean truly open it, he will open his for you too.”

  “He doesn’t believe in love.”

  She snorted. “Of course he does. But the woman who freed him after countless others failed spurns him. How is he supposed to feel when instead of falling for him, you fell in love with one of his Hunters? You would choose a mediocre life, a finite life, instead of immortality with him. You reject him. You revile him. You make him yearn for his imprisonment again.”

  “What?” I gasped. “How could he possibly want that? To be trapped, to be—”

  “Because in his prison, he still had hope, Poppy. Hope that the woman he was meant to be with, to love, to raise his children with, would free him. But now… Now that you don’t want him, he is plagued with wanting you. There will be no other for him. If you choose to reject him, to go mad instead of being with him, then he will be tortured for all eternity.”

  I swallowed. “I didn’t know it was that…desperate. I had no idea.”

  “That’s why I’m telling you.”

  “Why didn’t Thane tell me that himself?”

  “Would you have heard him? Would that have swayed you if that knowledge had come from him?”

  I fell silent, knowing the answer. So did Cass, which was why she didn’t wait for me to respond. She went on. “Let go of your old life. Say goodbye to Hunter in whatever way you must, and mourn what you could’ve had together if it pleases you…but choose immortality. Choose Thane.”

  The dark hallway suddenly gave way to light, and we stepped out into it. The air was warm on my skin, and I gasped in wonder. Everything was richer in Purgatory. The colors were more vivid, the scents more potent. In the distance, I heard the sound of lapping waves.

  “Is this really how it looks?” I asked in wonder. “Like an island oasis? Or is this another one of those not-coffee situations?”

  “Not-coffee?” asked a low, male voice.

  I couldn’t stop the shiver of awareness that raced down my spine. I turned slowly, and my breath caught in the back of my throat. He was dressed in black leather pants and a black shirt open at the collar. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat, despite the warm temperature, and then I realized I wasn’t hot, either.

  It’s the clothes, he answered. They regulate our temperature, and will protect us from even the harshest elements.

  I hadn’t even been aware I’d asked the question through our mental connection. What kind of elements?

  I’m not entirely sure.

  I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”

  His eyes slid from mine to rest on Cass. I grimaced, having forgotten she was there. She smiled, though, when she looked at me—us.

  “Be safe,” she said.

  Thane snorted.

  “That’s not comforting,” I said, causing him to laugh.

  He adjusted the leather pack around his waist. “Are you ready to go into the wild?”

  “Are you wearing a fanny pack?”

  I heard Cass stifle her laughter.

  Thane glared at me, but there was no real heat in it. “No. It’s not one of those ridiculous contraptions that tourists and speed-walking middle-aged humans wear.”

  “Other people have them, too,” I stated. The humor died on my lips. Anita and I had matching fanny packs from when we were kids. Pink and glittery. We’d worn them everywhere, and we’d worn them together.

  I was suddenly homesick for the life I couldn’t go back to.

  “Poppy?” Thane asked. He reached out like he wanted to touch my cheek, but at the last moment, he dropped his hand.

  I knew what that gesture had cost him.

  So I grasped his hand and laced my fingers through his. “Ready to save the world?” I asked with far more bravado that I felt.

  Thane raised our clasped hands to his mouth. His lips were warm against my skin. “Or die trying.”

  Chapter 10

  We set off at a brisk pace, leaving the sanctuary of Thane’s home. We were silent for a while. Thane continued to hold my hand as we moved farther away from safety. When we got to the top of a small hill, I looked back, wanting to see the architecture, but when I turned, I saw nothing.

  “It’s warded,” he said, noting my dropped mouth. “To disappear when I leave it.”

  “So I shouldn’t think for a second about ditching you to run back and hide?” I asked with forced humor.

  “Definitely not,” he said as he huffed on a laugh.

  “So, what’s in the fanny pack?”

  He growled in annoyance.

  I shot him a cheeky grin.

  “Some necessities. Since we’ll basically be camping.”

  “Camping? We’re camping?”

  Thane shot me an amused look. “Do you see any five star hotels in Purgatory?”

  I gulped.

  “Relax, Poppy. I’ll take care of you. I’ll make sure you’re safe, warm, and fed. Do you trust me?”

  I took a moment to actually think about it. “Yes and no,” I replied with startling honesty.

  “You want to explain that?” He tugged on my hand to get us moving again.

  “I think there are still a lot of walls between us. Do I think you’ll protect me? Yes. Do I trust you? With my heart? My feelings? My innermost thoughts?” I shook my head. “But I think I’d like to.”

  “You do?”

  I could hear the stilted hope in his tone. Cass’s words came back to me.

  “I—haven’t been fair to you, Thane. While trying to figure out my own feelings, I’ve hurt yours. I never thought of myself as a callous person. But this has all been so…you know? I haven’t had any time to reconcile it.”

  “I’ve pushed when maybe I should’ve given you space.”

  When he looked at me, the glittering black orbs that were his eyes swirled with murky clouds, like there were gray shadows behind them.

  “Have your eyes always been that way?” I wondered aloud, lifting my hand to his face.

  “No. It’s a side effect. Of…”

  “Of?” I pressed.

  “Not being intimate with you. It’s”—he sighed—“the insanity. Taking over.”

  I balked. “We were intimate just a few days ago. On the altar.” My cheeks warmed when I thought about it and how eager I was to repeat it.

  “Poppy”—his hand on mine tightened—“that was three weeks ago.”

  “Three weeks? What do you—”

  “When you chose me, you opened yourself up to your magic, but you weren’t prepared for it. You fell unconscious, and it took time to heal. You woke up as a human because that’s your most basic form. Elemental.”

  I wrestled my hand from his. “Why didn’t you tell me? About me being unconscious for three weeks, I mean.” I was curious about the other stuff too, but I wasn’t ready to hear it.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t think it mattered. We wouldn’t have been able to leave any sooner. Not until I knew you were healed. Not until I knew you were well.”

  I swallowed. “We could be too late.”

  “W
e could’ve been too late even when you were on your quest to free me. No way to know.”

  I stopped walking and bent over at the waist, feeling lightheaded and in danger of fainting. “So, let me get this straight. If we’re not intimate on the regular, you’ll go insane?”

  “You will too.”

  “I looked in the mirror today, Thane. My eyes aren’t doing the weird shadow thing.”

  “The insanity will be slower for you. Because you’re not—you haven’t already gone insane.” He blew out a puff of air. “I told you I lost years to insanity. It’s…like an autoimmune disease. Dormant at times. Flares up at others.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose.

  “Have you noticed your mind feeling foggy? That’s usually one of the first symptoms.”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. I stood slowly, testing to make sure I wasn’t about to keel over. When I realized I was no longer in danger of fainting, I took a breath and then started walking again. “Three weeks, Thane? I lost three weeks of my life to—to some other physical state?” I hadn’t even been aware of it. I’d awoken and felt like I’d just had a normal night of sleep.

  “I’m sorry. I thought about telling you, but I wasn’t sure how to—after everything else.”

  I nodded. “I understand.”

  “You do?”

  “I’m trying to.” I flashed him a smile. “I guess there are worse things? Like Earth becoming a playground for ego maniacal immortals and humans are fodder for whatever horrors said immortals can think of.”

  “Deities,” he corrected with a small humorless smile. “They’re deities.”

  “Cassandra and I had a heart-to-heart,” I said, wanting—needing—to change the subject.

  “Did you?”

  “She’s bound to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to release her?”

  He sighed. “I’m not the one who shackled her to me. She did that on her own.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She’s bound by her human guilt. She took it with her when she died. Only she can free herself.”

  “How like the ancient Greeks. But then again, she isn’t Greek. She’s Trojan.” I shook my head. “It’s all still hard to wrap my head around. Not to mention that every story about her is wrong.”

  “Is it really a shock to find that Man has manipulated a story, and parts of it were left out?”

  “An epic, centuries-old game of telephone,” I said with very little humor. “What will they say about us?”

  “Nothing. Even if we lose.”

  “How is that possible? History is filled with—”

  “Have you ever heard of the Guardian of the Bridge?” he asked. “In all your studies, in any of the stories your parents might’ve told you when you were a child, had you ever heard of me?”

  “I’ve heard of Purgatory,” I pointed out.

  “But you never believed it was real.”

  I took a moment to look around. “When I thought of Purgatory, I thought of a vast gray space, with nothing really there, except, maybe a few floating ghostly spirits. I certainly didn’t expect this.” I waved my hand at the foliage and then turned my face up to the clear sky. If I closed my eyes, I could believe I was on an island paradise.

  “When you were Guardian of the Bridge—”

  “I’m still Guardian,” Thane interrupted. “I’ve just been…absent.”

  “Fine. When you were free, what did you do? What did your days look like? Did you sit on a carved throne and listen to the complaints of your people?”

  Thane’s lips curved in amusement. “I’m not a king. I oversaw things, I suppose. Made sure the bridge was secure and the souls found their way to their rightful places. I walked the realm. I encountered beasts and spirits that needed aid. But, as you can see, this is something of a paradise. A tranquil place…or it was, before Xan.”

  I swallowed. There was anguish when he spoke of his brother. Anger, too. But mostly, anguish.

  “Are you going to tell me how you know where we’re supposed to go? If there’s no map?”

  He paused and then finally said, “When the Ebony moon is at the highest point in the sky, the barren tree will appear.”

  “Ebony moon? Barren tree? That’s it? That’s all we’ve got?”

  Thane made a noise in the back of his throat.

  “Who told you this? Cass?”

  “Who else?” He smiled slightly. “Come on. We have quite a ways to go before we can stop for the night. Let’s pick up the pace.”

  Chapter 11

  “Can we please take a break?” I begged.

  Thane came to a halt and peered at me, a grin tugging at his lips. “All right.” He handed me a canteen of water, one he pulled from the leather bag around his waist. After I had my fill, I gave it back to him.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” I snapped.

  “What way?”

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  “Without a doubt,” he agreed.

  “I’m an academic, a student. I was anyway,” I muttered. “I’m not an athlete.”

  His eyes dipped down my body. “You don’t have to be anything more than what you already are.”

  I swallowed but held his gaze. Even from a few feet away, I could see the shadows swimming in his eyes.

  “How bad is it?” I asked softly, feeling a tremor of desire ripple through me.

  “Awful. But I’ll wait. Until you want me.”

  I already wanted him.

  “I ache in my bones for wanting you,” he admitted, his voice low, raspy.

  A vision of us flashed before my eyes. Naked, tangled limbs, temples damp with sweat, skin flushed from heat. Thane taking me in every position, deep and slow, drawing it out for us both.

  The perfume of our lust tickled my nose, and before I knew what was happening, I was running to him. I was in his arms, and my fingers were in his hair.

  Our mouths clashed, and the moment we touched, I felt a sense of tranquility envelop me. Though flames of desire continued to lick along my skin, the overwhelming feeling was one of peace.

  “You feel that?” Thane demanded as he tore his lips from mine.

  His hands cradled my face, and he looked down at me. His eyes were lighter. I still saw the shadows, but they’d been beaten back.

  “Feel what?” I gasped.

  “The rightness of it. The calm inside of you.”

  “You feel it too?”

  Thane nodded.

  Maybe I hadn’t known that the mind fog had been encroaching on my clarity, but suddenly I felt like I could take a deep breath, when all this time I’d been panting, inhaling shallow lungfuls of air in hopes of getting enough.

  “Poppy,” he whispered, his head descending toward mine.

  I eagerly rose up to meet him. My arms locked around his neck, and I sank into him, into our mingled breaths, the synchronized cadence of our thundering hearts.

  My brain tried to stop me; it wanted to stay outraged over the lack of choices in my life. But there was a very real chance Thane and I wouldn’t reach the mage in time, and the battle between Heaven and Hell would be inevitable. I didn’t want to take my last breath and have it full of regrets, of life not lived, of passion not explored.

  “I’m yours,” I said, digging my nails into his shoulders. “I’m yours, Thane. From now until the end. Whenever that might be.”

  He growled and sank his teeth into the side of my neck. “Be sure, Poppy, because I don’t think I could stop. Not now.”

  “Don’t stop,” I begged.

  “Then kiss me,” he demanded.

  He lifted me into his arms, and I wrapped my legs around him. I didn’t care what happened or where he was taking me. All I could do was enjoy the feeling of his hot mouth on mine, the irresistible desire I couldn’t slake.

  My back hit a smooth surface—a boulder perhaps—and then Thane looked down at me with black eyes. “One of these days, we’ll find
a bed.”

  I grinned. “A bed? How completely ordinary.”

  “I want to take my time, but I don’t think—I need—”

  I somehow got off my hiking boots and quickly shimmied out of my body suit. At some point in my life, I’d been modest. But Thane was making me bold, fearless. I had demands that needed to be met.

  His eyes were dark but not with shadows. The glittering orbs raked over me, until finally, in a frenzy of his own, he shucked his clothing. He took himself in hand. His impressive, throbbing erection made my mouth dry and my body wet.

  I needed him inside me.

  I needed him to take me so that I could give.

  Thane climbed on top, drugged me with another kiss, and then eased inside of me. My back arched off the boulder to meet him.

  I sighed. Or maybe that was him. It was a noise of sweet relief, of knowing what brewed between us. His hands held my hips in an almost painful grip, but I didn’t care—not when he started to move, not when he made me fall apart. Just when I came back together, he shattered me again and again.

  Relentless, unyielding, never tiring.

  “Thane,” I whispered, feeling tears seep out of the corners of my eyes to trail down my cheeks.

  “Give me more, Poppy,” he demanded as he continued to pump inside of me. “Give me more, and I’ll give you everything.”

  So I opened my legs and somehow found a way to take him deeper.

  Finally, too many breaths to count later, we lay unmoving, Thane on top and still fully sheathed inside me. I brushed my lips against his shoulder and felt him shudder.

  “Was it—was I too rough?” He reared up so he could look down at me.

  I smiled up at him. “No. It was…everything I needed.”

  His hand stroked my cheek. Closing my eyes, I breathed in the smell of Purgatory. It was musky and sweet. And not anything like I’d expected.

  Chapter 12

  We got dressed and continued on. Thane kept looking at me, throwing me small, knowing smiles. I pitched them right back, feeling strangely relieved and light. I didn’t know if that had been the result of our intimate time together, or if it had to do with me deciding to be with him.