exactly known much about it himself at the time, and he’d had to do it in secret. Their father had wanted her far from battlefields, had coddled her and not allowed her to learn to fight as her brothers had.
She drew her sword and it felt heavy in her hands. She stared at it, trying to recall how Thanatos had wielded his, the actions he had made when they had been fighting together. Maybe she was better off relying on her power over nature than a blade. She would use it if anyone got too close to her.
“How are we going to get through all those warriors?” She tried to assess them all, but it was hard from this distance. Her senses said there were many people ahead of her, but she couldn’t tell how many. “I do not think they are an illusion. I can feel them.”
“Some of them might be. Won’t know until you stick them with a sword.” Calistos frowned at them, his pale eyebrows drawing down, and the tips of his ponytail fluttered gently in the breeze that began to build around them. “There’s only one good way to fight.”
He glanced at her.
“Together.”
He cracked a smile when she frowned at him.
“I do not think I will be good with this.” She pulled a face at the sword.
Calistos took it from her and inspected it, and then shoved the tip of it into the ground. “Forget the sword. You’re a kickass goddess. I’m guessing they’re regular folk. Steel is for them. You just hit them with everything you have.”
He had a strange way of speaking at times.
She had the feeling that by everything she had, he was talking about her death touch. That wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t know what would happen if she touched someone and they touched another while they were turning to ashes. It might spread to that person and so on, and so on.
And eventually it would reach her brother.
So no, she wouldn’t be hitting them with everything she had.
But she would hit them with half of what she had.
Her power over nature.
That would be her sword and her shield.
“Ready?” Calistos glanced at her and drew down a deep breath.
The breeze picked up.
Calindria nodded. “Ready.”
She wasn’t. She really wasn’t. The last fight she had been in against these warriors had been terrifying enough, but she had the feeling this one would be far worse. If all those males she could see weren’t illusions, something her connection to nature was telling her was true, then they had a real battle on their hands. She could only hope that the commander would bring the army they needed sooner rather than later, because there was no way in this world she could wait for him.
The darkness within her seethed and raged, prowled beneath her skin and goaded her into attacking those who stood between her and her god of death.
Calindria surrendered to it.
Her last thought before it overtook her and stole control was a prayer that she would come back from stepping into the abyss and letting her darker side take the helm.
She kicked off, launching herself towards the wall of warriors that surrounded the old black stone fortress, leaving Calistos behind as she rapidly closed the distance between her and her target. Ahead of her, vines burst from the ground, arcing high into the air before they thundered downwards again to pierce the earth, moving like great serpents.
Calindria sensed it the moment the males noticed her approach, felt the wave of tension that rushed through them and knew they were gearing up to fight her. She focused on the vines and the first line of defence, tried to shun the pleasure that rolled through her when the sharp black spears shot from the ground and impaled two of the warriors, and injured another six. The vines rocketed from the ground in a wave that rippled outwards in both directions, tearing along the frontlines, filling the humid air with the bellows of the warriors.
Other warriors hollered orders, and the males were quick to form groups, to hack and slash at her vines.
A group of a dozen males came at her, charging across the flat ground.
They flew backwards before they could reach her, toppling another group as they struck them, and she glanced off to her right at her brother. Calistos’s eyes swirled like a summer storm as he cast his hand forwards, unleashing another wave of wind at a section of the wall of males,