I’d told myself that it was time to be brave, and I’d meant it.
Snatching up the blade, I hid it deep within a ley line and then got smoothly to my feet and stared at her face.
She looked at me, and there was still pain in her eyes, but I could see it was already fading. A small grin curled at the corners of her mouth.
She was going mad, flipping between the darkness and something else with cruel rapidity.
“Who are you?” I asked slowly.
She opened her mouth, but at first, no words came out, though her throat worked as if she were trying to say something. Finally, she sighed and shrugged.
“Sometimes, I think I know. Other times, I know nothing at all. Do you know where my heart is?”
Suddenly, I heard words whisper through me, not in my voice or even in hers, but in something else, something fuller and deeper and alien to me, but not alien at all, as if I’d known that voice forever but hadn’t remembered it until just now.
When the world says, “Give up,” hope whispers, “Try it one more time.”
My breath stuttered through me, and my skin shivered because that voice hadn’t been my imagination.
“I do.” My voice came out gruff. “I know where your heart is, Thalassa.”
She shuddered, long lashes flickering against the tops of her pale cheeks like a fanned paintbrush. “Then take me to it.”
I suddenly understood my dream of the past few nights. It’d been this very moment. The dreams had shown me the beginning of the end. Or rather, the end and the beginning. This was it, the start of another us, and whether we were as one again was entirely up to us. Up until just now, I hadn’t remembered where the journey would begin. But I knew now. And I also knew where it ended.
But the middle… the middle was the part that really mattered. The middle was where I’d make her love me again.
The middle was where we’d be reborn.
I stepped to the side and crossed my hands behind my back. I knew what to do now. Dipping my head, I whispered, “After you, goddess. A long journey awaits us.”
She hissed, face contorting into one of extreme rage and fury. “You lie! You do not know, and you—”
I shook my head. “I would never lie to you, Thalassa. I never have and never will. If you wish to find your heart, then you must trust me.”
And in a blink, that madness was gone from her. In its place was the broken shell, the woman that I loved, but who was scared and alone and fighting to make sense of her new normal. She was still in there, and it was that woman that I would save. I would save her. Just as Rayale had done, I, too, would manage the impossible.
Thalassa trembled. “I do not understand myself.” Her confession was small and tremulous and came out sounding broken. She looked down at her feet, but not before I caught sight of the tears rolling down her cheeks.
Telling myself I should not touch her because I did not know what kind of madness I’d ignite if I did, I ignored all caution anyway and tipped her chin up with my thumb and forefinger.
She hissed, face once more a mask of intolerable hate. But she did not move to strike at me. Thalassa could break me, but she didn't, which meant she was fighting in there. Calypso was still in there. I had to believe that. I had to.
Ignoring my own pain at seeing her like this, I smiled gently at her. “Trust me as you once did, sea goddess. Believe in me, just as you did when you gifted me your soul blade. Trust that I can help you. You believed it then, so believe it now.”
“I don’t. I don’t believe in you,” she said, ripping my soul in two.
But though her words were laced with cruelty, she reached for my hand and gave me the gentlest of squeezes.
I thinned my lips, but I nodded. She’d told me once that she was dual natured. Dual meant she was two at once. Somewhere inside of this beautiful shell, my woman fought to regain control of her true self, her real self. And if she needed me to fight, then that was what I’d do. To my dying breath, I’d fight for her.
I would always fight for her.
I turned us toward the trail that would lead us out of the Underworld, and we took that first step into the unknown together.
Thalassa
* * *
I would make him believe in this kinder, softer version of myself, and then when he least expected it, I would kill him for stealing my heart and for having my soul blade. I let him keep the soul blade because as long as he did, he thought himself in control, but he wasn’t. Not even a little.
I hated him.
A flutter of something roiled through me, leaving me breathless and weak in the knees. But I locked the emotion down tight. I did hate him for making me feel things I’d never felt before. I’d not lied when I said I’d felt him watching me for months, studying me, keeping a distance, and yet somehow pulling me in. It hadn’t been hard to figure out who’d taken my heart.
I peeked at him from the corner of my eye and frowned deeply. He was a problem that I needed to rid myself of. And then… then I’d be free. Free of the torment of him.
Of the dreams.
Free to be me.
Chapter 25
Hades
I stood in the above lands for a moment, reacquainting myself with the feeling of sunlight upon my skin. Apollo was in a fiery mood today. I knew it had been months—since the curse had struck, if I was being technical—since I’d come out of the Underworld, but it was so bloody hot out that it felt like my skin would soon blister. Even the trees wavered with the image of a heat mirage above them. The air was redolent with the warm scent of berries baking right on their branches. The jewel green grass rustled from a hot, northern breeze that cut through the meadowlands as sharply as a knife.
Our first stop on our journey toward reclaiming our hearts would take us right through the center of centaur lands. The forest we were in would soon give way to rocky fields, a sea of lilac heather, and flatlands that rolled for as far as the eye could see.
It’d been a place she’d once dearly loved to explore with me back before our world had imploded. She was a being of water fascinated by the strange and wondrous creatures of land, and for some reason, the centaurs had always intrigued her most. I suspected it wasn’t simply their bodies but their above average intellect that had always inspired her. To an outsider, Calypso might have seemed silly and child-like in so many ways, but she had never thought as a normal person did. She was an elemental who’d seen the world through vastly different eyes than any of us could or would. She was ancient with an ancient’s knowledge, and if one had ever taken the time to know her, they’d have seen just how quick-witted my bride had truly been.
I frowned, wiping at my brow with my heavy black gauntlet as the miserable sun continued its cruel assault on me. For months, I’d been surrounded by dark and ice and cold, so I was utterly miserable in the heat. It was like my own personal brand of hell. I grimaced and tugged on my chest armor.
Calypso—no, she wasn’t my Caly anymore, but Thalassa—stepped beside me, and I felt her looking me up and down.
“You know,” she said softly, with a hint of teasing behind it, “I don’t think armor is what one wears when one goes on a long march.” She shrugged and held up her hands in a defensive pose. “Or maybe they do. I hear sweating like a stuck pig is the height of masculinity these days.”
Her eyes sparkled just like they used to when she’d tease me before. But her lips frowned, and her brow wrinkled in obvious consternation, as if she wasn’t quite certain why she was acting and doing as she was.
Not sure whether she was sincere or acting, I was wary in my response to her. “Is that so?”
Twitching as if she suddenly recalled where she was, her eyes shot to mine and she nodded. But she seemed much less flirty than before. “Why do you wear such ridiculous looking armor, anyway? I’ve already proven that scrap of metal cannot stand against my might. So you might as well take it off and cool yourself down.”
I stared at my arms. I’d
never really questioned why I’d begun wearing it again with such frequency. I was the god of death and as such, rarely had enemies to worry about. Except for when I’d gone to war against the Titans in the previous life, I’d never once worn my war suit. But there was a type of security that came from being encased in steel. Even though she was right, she had stabbed me right through it as easily as sticking a knife into hot butter.
I narrowed my eyes. “I did leave my helmet at home, Thalassa. Surely, that counts for something?”
She snorted. “Well, while you swelter in your metal oven, I’ll be nice and cool and enjoy the warmth.”
As she said it, her flesh, which had been half water, transformed yet again. She became wholly fleshy, and the dress she’d been in was gone. Now she wore the tinniest pair of white shorts I’d ever seen. She was barefoot and only had on a seashell bra, loosely tied together with a thin strand of braided kelp. Her hair, now a shade of sea-foam green, was threaded through with dozens of miniature buff-colored starfish and glittering mother-of-pearl shells. Her eyes were extraordinarily green-blue and as fathomless as the waters she called her home. Her nose was pert, tipped up slightly more than usual, and her jawline looked even rounder than normal. She was like a teenage version of herself.
I frowned because I did not wish to walk with a teenage version of Caly. By comparison, I must look like her doddering and ancient uncle.
She rubbed her arms, looking around, her features full of innocent trust. Shading her eyes with her hand, she looked first in front of her then turned to looked behind.
“Which way, wayfarer?” She turned to me, and I almost grinned, because that had definitely been reminiscent of the Calypso I’d known.
Snorting, I shook my head before planting my hand on the back of my neck, now coated in so much sweat that anyone might think I had just crawled out of a pool. Damn Apollo. I had no doubt the god had known I’d be coming to the surface. He and I had never gotten on, but then I wasn’t exactly chums with any of my peers save Dite.
“Wouldn’t you just love to know,” I murmured, not sure I could completely trust her. That was the whole reason I continued to wear this bloody armor, not that it had helped at all. My insides was still tender from where she’d stabbed me earlier, though I’d almost fully mended at this point.
Like it or not, I had to admit to myself that the woman who lived and breathed inside of me and meant the whole damn world to me was someone I could also least afford to trust.
She punched my bicep. “Well, Death. Lead on then, since you’ve decided to be a curmudgeon about it.”
Her smile grew wide, but there was something behind it, something forced and unnatural, something that caused all the blood in my veins to freeze. It was the kind of smile that someone with no soul or humanity would give, something to make themselves appear more human than they actually were, and because it was so forced, it only made them look even more unnatural.
I gritted my teeth. Thalassa was a primordial and very dangerous if she chose to be, but she’d clearly forgotten who I was too.
Giving her a clipped nod, I set off straight ahead. I kept my steps slow, keeping an eye on the road and also on her. We followed a meandering, almost nonsensical trail, but there was actually a purpose to all of it.
I curled my hands into fists, my stomach a riot of nerves. I was not a wayfarer as she’d dubbed me. It was not in my nature to travel much at all. Even in the other life, I’d only gone outside of her world or mine at her behest and only then because she’d been Calypso and could have made me hand over the keys to my very soul if she’d asked it of me.
Humming softly beneath her breath, I saw her fingers working dexterously, moving in a blur as she wove something together, pulling nautical, sea-faring items from thin air.
I frowned.
As if she was aware of my studying her, she lifted her hands but never stopped or looked over at me. “Just some little baubles I like to make in my spare time. I like pretty things,” she said, and suddenly, I saw the item began to take shape. It was a nautical crown, held together by kelp and brimming over with strings of pearls and gem-encrusted crustaceans.
In next to no time, she had it finished and placed precariously on her hair, then turned to me with a wink and a smirk. But again, like a great white with its double eyelids and inky-black eyes, there was something strangely off about her mannerisms.
“So… how do I look, Reaper?”
She twirled, hands on her hips, rotating her body from side to side so as to show off her best angles and features—long, curvy legs, small waist, and full breasts. But all I saw was a child’s face fixed to a woman’s body, and I felt nothing. Who in blazes did she think I was? Some perverted male who’d be ready to sacrifice life and soul for this?
The cheek muscles in my jaw flexed as I bit down. Ridiculous, small games—that was what she did with me now. Toyed with me. Tried to play me for a fool. More than that, she’d used the one word for me she knew I hated, had known it in the other life, anyway. I stared down at her full mouth and felt a giant wave of disappointment spread through me.
She was trying to trick me. I wasn’t a fool. I knew a trickster when I saw one. But she was abysmal at it. I’d spent enough time with my dead to know when they tried to get one over on me, not to mention the whole weighing of the souls thing I could do quite easily, even to another god. I knew the intentions, good or ill, of a person simply by testing their soul, and I tested it with a simple prod at their consciousness, one not even the gods could sense. But whenever I did, it told me all I needed to know.
If the soul was weighted down, if it was heavy, it meant it was no good. It meant that if they were mortals, they did not gain the peace of Elysia, but the damnation of Tartarus.
Her smile faltered, and the flirtatious look on her face began to fade as she studied me back. I didn’t lie, not because I couldn’t but because I found the entire exercise pointless and the sign of a weak and pathetic mind. I believed one should say what one meant and mean what one said.
Thalassa’s soul was wrapped in chains and heavy as sin, a millstone tied around her neck. She wasn’t who she’d been, and at this point, I honestly wasn’t sure she ever would be.
My Calypso had given me an out, told me that she would not despise me if I chose to walk away, that I could leave her to her new life and her new persona. No harm, no foul.
She wore no smile now, and we’d stopped walking. I wasn’t sure when that had happened, but she was standing in front of me with her small hand on my chestplate.
“Hey,” she said simply, and that false mask slipped for only a millisecond, a moment of time. In her eyes, I saw something completely different—the pain from before, that conflicted anguish that tugged at my heartstrings.
And for just one second, I was buoyed by the memory of my true love.
“Who are you now, Thalassa?” I asked, words shivering from deep inside me. I let her hear the pain in those words because I’d never been any good at pretense. “Do I dare trust you? I think I’d be a fool to try.”
She gasped, shoulders drooping just slightly as she pushed back on her heels. “Wh-what?”
“Do you really imagine me a fool that I would fall for these childish games you play?”
She blinked. “I… I…”
“Stop.” I curled my lip. “Do us both a favor and end this nonsense. You do not need to talk with me, nor do I need to speak with you. We don’t have to be friends in this life if you don’t wish it. But do not delude yourself into believing that I’ve fallen under your spell. At least have a little more respect for me than that.”
She swallowed hard, staring at me as though I were a completely different thing from what she’d imagined me to be. “Who are you?” she asked me right back, throwing my words back in my face.
Disgusted, but more than that, deeply disappointed by the creature who wore my woman’s skin, I rolled my eyes and stepped to the side so I could walk around her.
“I
’m just a man, elemental, and I grow weary of this heat, so if you’d like to pick things up a little, we can get to where we’re going.”
I wasn’t sure what she’d say to that, if she’d tell me that I was wrong—I wasn’t—or that I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about—I did. But she did neither. I sensed her walking behind me again, her steps slower than mine, pulling slightly away from me, but also making certain that she kept me within seeing distance.
I didn’t care.
I should leave her to it, tell her exactly where her heart was. In truth, it was in the least likely place she’d expect. When she’d given me her heart to guard in the previous timeline, I’d chosen the most obvious place to hide it, literally right under her nose. My Calypso would have known immediately where I’d hidden it because she’d known me that well. In that life, we’d been one heart, one mind, and one soul. But in this one, she seemed entirely clueless. I knew I had to have patience, had to be understanding, and wait. I’d even promised her as much, but making promises when someone made you feel like their whole world, and then trying to keep said promise when that same person looked at you like you were no better than a bug beneath their heel, was a type of hell unlike any I’d ever known. Either way, this entire idea of journeying together seemed suddenly futile and a waste of my time and hers.
She did not want me. She did not even like me.
I was bloody Death. Did she imagine for a moment that I didn’t realize she’d been planning an attack on my person at some point during our journey? Her entire plan had been to woo me in with her nonsense and petty silliness, and then she’d strike when I least expected her to, when I’d dropped my defenses and fully began to trust her.
Her entire plan was to regain control of her soul blade. The only way she could get it back would be for me to part with it willingly, which meant she’d have tried to harm me in some deviously awful way so that I’d have no choice but to let her have it back or die.
The Greek Gods of Romance Collection Page 27