What I couldn’t understand was why she hadn’t taken it before? It made no sense that she’d had the thing in her hands and had decided to give it back to me, especially when I’d been more than willing to part with it. Her thoughts were like chaff scattered to the breeze, disjointed and hard to follow or understand.
But then I had a thought. Was she letting me keep the blade to make me believe I held power over her? What if her true aim was to get to her heart before she struck? The more I thought about it, the more likely that scenario seemed.
But why? That was the part that I couldn't fathom.
My Calypso would never have harmed me. She’d been devious herself, at times even cruel to those who didn’t know her, but she’d loved fiercely. Deeply. She’d never hurt any of those she’d truly loved. Could this creature boast such? I doubted it.
Our granddaughter was still frozen in her waters. Did she even once think of Fable? It seemed to me that Thalassa remembered a lot more than she let on, especially when that false mask would slip, and I could read the conflict brewing in her eyes. Deep down, a part of me suspected she knew what she was doing, which made everything a million times worse.
Suddenly, my weariness and rage morphed into one giant ball of disgust and loathing. Without thought, I twirled on my heel and called her soul blade to me.
She gasped, eyes going wide as she stopped in her tracks and stared at me and the blade, shaking her head back and forth and whispering, “What are you doing? What? What is this?”
I glared hotly at her. Detesting her ridiculous theatrics even as a part of me ached for the woman she’d once been.
“I’m done. I’m done with this nonsense. I have work that needs my attention, souls that depend on me, and you… you aren’t worth my time. Not anymore.”
I meant none of what I was saying, but I also did too. I wanted my Calypso, not this beastly goddess who was so full of anger and wrath and poison. I didn’t want to share space with someone whose only interest in me was in getting what they wanted so that they could then turn around and stab me in the back.
Her jaw dropped, but her eyes, which had been full of pain, were now flooding with rage and fury.
“How dare you?” she seethed.
The mask fell off, and I saw the truth reflected back at me. This was a creature full of pain and rage and fire. Her hair snapped and curled around her head like sea snakes, and even as I ached from this fight we were having, I stood in awe of her majesty. She was still as fierce as she’d always been.
“How dare I?” I snarled, standing over her, tall and proud, even knowing that if she really wanted to, she could snap my spine in two with a mere flick of her dainty fingers. “How dare you! Not even an hour into our journey, and you plan and plot against me.”
“I don—”
“Do not say it,” I snapped, cutting her off. “Do not lie to me again. You’ve forgotten who I am. That was your first mistake.”
I lifted a finger, holding it just before the tip of her pert little nose, which I desperately wished I had the freedom to kiss. I wanted her, wanted every square inch of her. I also hated her for what she’d done, hated her for exposing my one and only real weakness.
Her.
It had always been her.
The woman I loved was nowhere in this body, just pain and duplicity.
I swallowed hard, feeling as though I might break in two. I’d never imagined being with her could be this this hard, seeing her but knowing it wasn’t her at all. The more I tested her soul, the less I knew this woman, and the less I wanted to.
She breathed heavily, and I was brushed by a blast of her consciousness that was cruel and dark, so damn bloody dark that it made me gnash my teeth as I choked on the bottomless pit of rage and pain that dwelled inside her.
“How did you know?” she asked, voice low and silky and deadly. Her eyes glanced at the soul blade still gripped tight in my hands.
“Thalassa, in our other world, you were the greatest love of my life and I…” I stepped forward until the tips of my shoes brushed the tips of her toes. “I was yours. Now, do you honestly imagine for a moment that you would have allowed yourself to fall for someone less than worthy of you?”
She tipped her head back and laughed with cruel gusto. “Oh, and you’re worthy of me, are you?” she sneered.
Seeing that look of hate coming from her youthful face made me feel as if I’d swallowed a ten-pound bag of rocks. I fought back a flinch, concealing the pain of her words so that she would not see, would not know, just how much her cruelty had cut through me.
I wanted my heart back, but the truth was that it wasn’t the organ I was after. Unlike her, my heart stood right in front of me. And she was twisted, cruel, and ripping me in two.
I could not bear it. I could not bear to be with her. I just couldn’t. Being with her would taint the memories of the one I loved most, and I would never do that to Calypso. My memories of her were the only good things I had left in me.
“I was then,” I said honestly.
She scoffed and looked to the side, emotions flickering over her face that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to anymore.
“But in all truth, Thalassa.” I lowered my face to hers, so close that she and I shared breath, and a mocking grin curled her lips as if she’d thought herself victorious. “You. Are not worthy. Of me. Not anymore.”
She gasped, twirling toward me full on, so still now that she looked almost like a marble statue—beautiful, but cold, lifeless, a husk and nothing more.
It was my turn to scoff. “Take your bloody blade. I never wanted it anyway.”
I shoved it at her, but she gripped my wrist, her small hands so powerful, so full of barely leashed control.
The winds whipped around us, and her hair turned to strands of glimmering waves, rolling and undulating around her face, which was now no longer youthful but eternally beautiful and ancient.
Her lip was curled, but in her eyes glittered the dark and bottomless depths of her waves. My body responded with a craving like a ravenous beast on the prowl. It loped through me, making my skin shiver and flicker with the blue flame of my own powers.
She hissed, her fingers scorched by the heat of the fire, but my fires had never harmed Calypso. They’d burned with other things—lust, desire, love.
Her lashes flickered, and a smile, a real one, ghosted over her wide, wine-colored mouth. She exhaled, an ahh’ing sound that was not pretense at all, but real. And when she looked at me again, there was hesitation burning in her eyes.
I opened my palm, letting the blade glimmer in the blazing sun. It gleamed like molten metal and burned with the runic symbols that would give me the power to cleave her soul in two if I wished it.
She trembled violently, and I had to fight the urge to tug her into my body and shield her from it. That wasn’t my place anymore.
Without speaking a word to me, she curled my fingers very slowly over the blade and pressed my hand into my chest with a snapping kind of finality.
My brows furrowed. Was this real? Was she implying that she would not attempt to take it from me with treachery again? Or was this just another one of her twisted mind games? My nostrils flared as my stomach roiled with nerves.
Then she stepped back, and her shoulders were stiff and erect.
“You will not leave. You vowed to guide me to my heart, so do it, Reaper,” she said succinctly, almost with anger behind it. But I heard more than just the anger. I heard something I didn’t dare trust.
I heard a truth that left me weak in the knees and breathless.
And the hope I dared not indulge turned into anger within me. Was she still playing her games? I wasn’t sure. With anyone else, I’d have trusted my instincts, but she’d always had a way of getting under my skin, and now I doubted all that I felt. I wasn't sure about anything anymore, and the not knowing killed me. I snarled, vanishing the blade instantly into the hidden pockets of fragmented time all ar
ound us, and shook my head.
“Never call me that again,” I snapped.
Her eyes thinned. “What would you have me call you?”
Turning my back on her, I marched forward and muttered beneath my breath, “Nothing at all.”
I had had every intention of returning to my Underworld, but with every step I took, I only moved farther away.
The cards were on the table. She knew where I stood, and I knew where she stood. We weren’t friends. We weren’t even friendly. She treated me as her enemy, and yet, even knowing all that, I could never abandon her.
For all my bluster, she’d just learned my only real weakness.
“Hurry up,” I growled, marching faster and never bothering to look back. She either kept up or she didn’t, and that was all there was to it.
Chapter 26
Thalassa
We walked in silence for hours, his massive back to me as he made certain to keep several clicks ahead of me. At times, he was naught but a pillar of black off in the distance.
I frowned, clenching my palms so hard that my nails drove into them.
How had this happened? Had I been wrong in my initial judgment of him? I’d seen the depravity and wickedness of the other lesser gods and had estimated them all the same. But in truth, when I thought on my days of studying the Olympians, I could never place Hades amongst them. In fact, he’d never been around any of them but Aphrodite, who also was conspicuously missing from their gatherings.
I clenched my jaw. I hated weakness, in myself most of all. And being wrong about anything galled me to the point of fury. My nails dug into my palms so hard that they bloomed with pain, but the pain brought clarity.
When I’d first seen him, I’d honestly thought him weak, a dupe and a fool for so easily losing control of the only weapon capable of bringing me down. Betraying him had been an easy thought, then. I knew he’d cared once for the other me, that weak and silly female who’d spoken such utter nonsense in his ears during the long, dark nights we’d once shared.
I had many of the same memories he did. I remembered making love to the god of death, of actually enjoying his repulsive touch. I grimaced, reminded of how I’d felt when his big, hard body had moved into my own. I had been anything but repulsed. I swallowed hard as my stomach trembled with a riot of razor-tipped butterfly wings.
But no man or woman could ever touch me. I was a virgin goddess. I was superior to the lusts of the flesh, never needing or wanting carnal pleasure. And the fact that the other me had allowed herself to become sullied by such a vile and abhorrent weakness had made me loathe her.
In the beginning of her life, she’d been powerful. She’d flooded countless planets and continents just to let those around her become aware of her great and mighty power. Fear was the emotion that had driven her and that she’d instilled in those around her. Power and respect came from making the weaker fear.
But then the hag had gone and grown soft, had become curious by the mating of mortals and desired that experience herself. By so doing, she’d grown weak and stupid. She’d allowed herself to become slave to a curse that should never have harmed her.
She’d been all-powerful, and then she’d allowed it all to slip away because of him.
Sneering, I looked up at the broad back of the male marching ahead of me and dug my nails in deeper, hissing as droplets of my blood landed with a sizzle at the ground by my feet, causing great pools of water to form and burst forth with life.
I had the power to take it all back, be who I should have always been, take back what was rightly mine—the kingdom of Olympus and even beyond. Too long I’d been denied the reverence and awe of my lessers and the worship of the lowly.
This is not you.
That small and vexingly annoying voice that had haunted my mind since the reawakening spoke to me again.
“Shut up,” I hissed beneath my breath, hating her constant and unwanted interference in my life, loathing her very being.
So few gods knew that the primordials were born of a dual nature and only the strongest side of us would survive. There was not enough space within us to be both. One side had to win, and this time, it would be me.
This time, I would rule victorious. I would do things right. I would…
I frowned as I realized that we were approaching a small village. In the distance, I spotted running horses, but their upper half wasn’t horse, but human. This was a centaur village.
Instantly, I grew curious about the odd beings and enchanted by the perverse strangeness. Horses and mortals had mated to create these… things?
Why were we here? And why did I feel a vague sense of déjà vu, like I’d been here before or had seen it once?
I stopped walking and studied the thatched cottages large enough to accommodate the massive girth of a fully-grown centaur. The village was hustling and bustling with life. Children ran and laughed as they played games of catch. Elderly matrons sat around a fire, working chores together as they chatted. And males clipped and clopped throughout. Some of them were bearing fresh game across their backs, others showing adolescent centaurs the fine art of archery.
Suddenly, a memory burned through me of a centauress with gleaming amber withers and nut-brown hair standing high upon a cliff as she used bow and arrow with such a high-level of mastery that it had seemed almost otherworldly. But when I prodded at that memory further, trying to make sense of what it was I’d seen, it faded away like rolling smoke on a breeze.
Angry and very annoyed that I should feel so empty inside, I glared around, looking for Hades to demand he take us out of this place. I did not like it. Whatever sorcery was here, I would not fall prey to its trap.
But Hades wasn’t with me. In fact, I could barely even distinguish his shadow upon the horizon. I had to jog to catch up to him, and when I did, he walked toward a large body of black water.
My body trembled and my flesh puckered with desperate desire as I imagined taking a dip in its deep waters. But instantly, I sensed a presence in it, something violent and malevolent.
“Why have you brought us here?” I asked, not trusting him.
He knew what I was doing, and yet still he remained, which made him a fool and an idiot. But then he looked at me with his dark, starlit eyes, and I felt heat of a different kind roll through me, felt that other part of me flex and curl and lust. My nipples felt tight, and my legs quivered.
I wanted to rake my claws down his handsome face for it.
He gestured angrily at the pool. “I figured you’d prefer to rest by a body of water for the night.”
I sniffed, forcing a haughty arrogance into my face, but only because I felt very, very confused.
He’d thought of me. Even after what he knew of me, he’d still thought of me. I didn’t tell him thank you, but I did tip my head.
Rolling his eyes, he sat and stared glumly ahead. His hands curled laxly over his raised knees, and a pensive and sullen look touched his darkly handsome features.
I rubbed at my chest where my heart should be, but there was nothing there. There was never anything there.
With a huff, I shed my clothes and turned for the pool. The second my toe touched the waters, I felt the darkness stir, felt it shoot toward the surface. I grinned as I awaited my monster.
I was rearing for a fight, ready for it. Hades had disrupted me so completely that I was like a lit fuse ready to blow and this pathetic creature would soon bear the brunt of my wrath.
When it showed itself, I wasn’t shocked at all to see the gray-skinned creature with clear white eyes break its head through the surface. Its mouth was full of fangs, and gills on its cheeks flexed as it breathed. Thin tentacles swirled around her alien head like hair.
It was a soul siren. Beneath the water, there wasn’t a lovely body but an abomination of flukes and tentacles, scales, and millions of suction cups.
“Ssssooo hungry,” she hissed at me, and I grinned.
“Are you such a bloody fool that you do not
recognize your own maker, Sithica,” I whispered, my voice grown as sibilant as hers. I let all the rage, anger, confusion, and fury that burned constantly through me climb to the surface.
Sithica gasped, no longer looking so smug and arrogant. She cried and screamed at me to forgive her, to have mercy. But I snapped my fingers, parting the waters, and commanded her to me.
Helpless to resist the will of her mother, she came, sobbing out streamers of black pearls as fat as my wrist.
A dark and deadly grin stole across my face, and I grasped her neck in my bare hand, squeezing slowly. Her flukes and tentacles twitched, and her gills fluttered as she clawed at my hands.
“Bet no one’s ever treated you thus, have they, soul stealer? How does it feel to hurt? Hmm?” I squeezed just a little harder.
“Thalassa, stop it!” The voice rolled like thunder through the heavens, cracking so violently that the ground beneath us trembled.
Hissing, I twirled, still gripping tight to Sithica as I stared at the massive pillar of man glaring hotly down at me. His eyes were no longer blue-black and full of starlight, but burning with blue flame.
My soul stirred, fluttering with long forgotten memories. That other soul within me flooded my body with emotions I did not want, like desire and primal, decadent need. That made me angry enough to want to kill.
I grinned, squeezing the creatures neck just a little harder. Sithica’s hold grew weaker. I had to destroy that thing inside of me, that creature that made me so terribly weak.
“Why should I, Death? Hmm? I would be doing this world a favor by destroying her. She’s a monster, you see. She’s killed hundreds already and will kill hundreds more. Why should she live?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Sounds familiar.”
I stilled, feeling as if he’d just sucker punched me. “I’m nothing like this thing.”
“That thing is a creature. It lives, it breathes, and if it is cruel, then it is for the Fates to hand down justice, not you. You are her mother. Teach her. Show her how to be. But if you do this thing, then you are no better than she.”
The Greek Gods of Romance Collection Page 28