he stretched them slightly, busied himself with preening them as she went back to looking around the cavern, seeking a path to take. Only she couldn’t concentrate while Thanatos was stroking his hands over his feathers, carefully tending to them, as if they were precious. Questions bubbled up, ones she wanted to voice but held back, because she didn’t want to get comfortable around this male.
Did his feathers feel soft? How strong were his wings? What was it like to fly? Did he love his wings as much as it looked like he did?
Would it be such a bad thing to be more comfortable around him, to trust him?
The answer to that question hit her hard. Yes. Yes, it would be bad to trust him. She didn’t know him, still wasn’t sure whether or not he was with the enemy, or a fabrication created by this realm as another form of torment.
Until she was sure of him, she wouldn’t trust him.
Besides, it wasn’t as if he trusted her.
She hadn’t failed to notice how on edge he was around her, how whenever he gazed at her he would go from relaxed to tense, would seem shocked at times, as if he couldn’t believe he had been lowering his guard around her. She didn’t think that reaction was because of this realm, or because he needed to be alert at all times, prepared for those who were no doubt looking for her by now, aware of her escape.
She had the feeling that he didn’t want to trust her, just as she didn’t want to trust him.
He didn’t want to be comfortable around her either.
Calindria began walking again, frowned as the gentle plip of water striking something reached her ears and followed the sound.
Thanatos stalked after her, her constant shadow. At least he kept his distance this time, although she wasn’t sure that was a blessing when he spoke.
“Your family did not abandon you. They sent me to find you.”
She scowled at the boulders that blocked her path. “You have told me that many times now. You should try telling me something new. Perhaps I would believe that.”
She grunted as she scrambled over the first huge rock, struggling to find purchase, and eyed the next one. Her legs were getting stronger, the water she had imbibed reviving her and the exercise she’d had putting life back into her muscles. She glanced at the dark grey cloth wrapped around her right hand as she reached for the next boulder. The deep cut across her palm still stung from time to time, but she felt sure the bleeding had stopped now and it was healing.
“Calistos did not die.” Thanatos’s baritone echoed around the cavern, stirring the creatures. “You did.”
Calindria stilled with her hand on the boulder, twisted at the waist and looked back at him where he stood on the ground below her. His handsome face was deadly serious, his black eyebrows pinched together above his silver eyes, his broad mouth set in a flat and unyielding line.
She frowned as she pushed away from the boulder and came to face him, looking down at him. “I do not feel dead. I do not know what dead feels like, but I still feel alive.”
It dawned on her that this was the reason her father had sent Thanatos to find her—because he was the god of death.
She stared at him, struggling to take in the fact that she was apparently dead.
“I have been to the Elysian Fields many times… have seen those who call it home and have even spoken with some of them.” She eased back against the boulder, resting for a moment as she tried to make sense of what Thanatos had told her. “All of them had appeared real enough, as if they were flesh and blood… but while they could touch each other, they could not touch me. They were as ghosts to me, but solid to another of the dead. If what you say is true, then I should be as a ghost to this world too… yet I am not. I can touch and be touched.”
His broad bare chest heaved in a deep sigh. “While what you say is the truth, it does not apply to you. Your soul was not weighed by Hades. It never reached your father. Those in the Elysian Fields are souls, judged and sent there by Hades… but you appear to be something else.”
Something not a soul and not alive. That wasn’t a comfort at all.
Calindria