she turned on him and anger rolled off her.
“This is that little bitch’s fault,” she barked and flexed her fingers around the hilt of the dagger. “She’s tainted you… turned you against me.”
“I was never with you,” he growled and tugged at his chains. His head turned and he shook it, fought the encroaching wave of heat and hunger, but it was too strong for him, easily overpowered him and dragged him back down into the thick haze.
Her eyes lit up as his hands fell limply to his sides and he couldn’t convince himself to lift them, and then he could. Because he wanted to touch her. He wanted to grip her waist as he pounded into her from behind. He reached for her and her lips curled into a satisfied smile.
“That’s right. I’ll give you what you want.” She trailed the tip of the dagger down between her full breasts, all the way to her navel and the thatch of pale curls between her thighs. “You know how badly I want it.”
His cock stiffened.
Hunger tore a growl from his lips and had him reaching for her.
A flash of another female overlaid onto her. Blonde hair. Eyes the colour of an endless summer sky. Soft pink lips that begged him to kiss her.
He reared back as that tempting image faded, revealing another female, one who made him feel sick just by looking at her.
Her face twisted, features pinching hard as rage lit her violet eyes. “You think of her.”
Her. Calindria.
His eyes widened as something dawned on him. The demigoddess wanted more than his body. She wanted him as more than her slave. He wanted to laugh in her face at that.
“I will make you think only of me.” She grabbed the waist of his leathers and yanked him towards her.
“Impossible. You will never have me. Never. You can touch this body, but you will never reach what you really want to touch… You will never make that part of me yours.” Glaring down into her eyes, he made sure she was looking deep into his so she would know how much he meant what he was going to say. “My heart already belongs to another. I love Calindria.”
She screamed at him and raised her dagger.
Thanatos saw a way out in the flash of that blade, saw freedom that might come at a high price, but it was his only option. The only way. It would send him into the veil, removing him from this place, and when he made it out the other side, he would be far from here. He swore he would see Calindria again and hoped he would remember her.
He would remember her.
His love for her would transcend death.
He closed his eyes, tipped his chin up and accepted his fate.
Accepted death.
Chapter 29
Calindria hurried across the black wasteland, rushing towards the mountain range where she had last seen Thanatos. Calistos kept pace with her, his blue eyes constantly scanning the terrain, charting everything.
She still couldn’t believe it was really him, here with her again, even when she could feel it in her soul. That connection they had shared was still there, weak but growing by the second as they marched to war.
But neither of them were the reckless young fools they had been when they were last together.
Calistos had proven just how much he had grown in their centuries apart when she had wanted to teleport him to the town that now stood over two miles behind them. He had made her teleport the commander who had helped her with them, and had dispatched him to the palace as soon as he had gotten his bearings so he could bring others to aid them.
So he could bring them an army.
When the commander had asked whether they would wait, she had bluntly told him that she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Thanatos needed her, and she had kept him waiting too long already. Faced with the problem of the forces he brought with him not knowing where to go, she had hit upon an idea.
Behind her, another black spike erupted from the ground. She summoned one every thirty feet, leaving a trail of them behind her to act as beacons, guiding the commander and the army he gathered to the castle where she desperately wanted to be already.
She focused on the earth beneath her feet, reached out with her senses ahead of her, seeking the point where she had stood with Thanatos outside the ruined fortress. Gods, she hoped he was